NEWS UPDATE: Supply Drops, Field Kit and the terminal

UPDATE: SUPPLY DROPS, FIELD KIT AND THE OPERATIONS TERMINAL

Encrypted Supply Drops now pay out in named tiers, can contain consumable gear you spend in Darknet Operations, and open with a proper decryption sequence instead of a loading bar. The attack terminal shows you the dice. There is also a rules page and, for the first time, a way for staff to suspend somebody from Operations without touching the rest of their game.

SUPPLY DROPS HAVE TIERS NOW

• Every result has a name and a colour. Scrap, Cache, Payload, Credits and Black Ice. The payouts themselves are unchanged, but a 47 Shard roll and a 12 Shard roll no longer look identical.
• Opening one is an actual sequence. A hex key breaks apart and resolves left to right, then the container cracks and the reward slides up in its tier colour with the number counting on.
• The result stays until you close it. Nothing auto dismisses any more.
• The odds are printed before you spend anything, on the decryption screen and on the card. Including the part nobody knew: Shard payouts lean low, so a typical container returns around 22 against a 10 Shard cost.

FIELD KIT

• A quarter of every drop now contains a consumable you spend from the Operations terminal. Shards gave up that slice, NVC and Black Ice are untouched.
• Overclock Cell adds 4 operation charges. It never pushes you past your ceiling, so a full reserve cannot burn one.
• Stim Patch raises your full rate threshold from 20 to 32 operations for two hours. It does not clear fatigue you already carry, it moves the line, and it expires on its own.
• Recon Uplink redraws your target list without paying the Shard cost for a shuffle.
• Firewall Patch shields you for 4 hours. It cannot be stacked on a shield you already have.
• Kit items cannot be bought, traded or farmed any other way. Mining feeds your drops, drops feed your kit, so the quiet half of the game now has a direct line into the loud half.

DROPS ARE TWICE AS COMMON

• Mining a block now has a 20% chance to yield a drop, up from 10%. Without that the Field Kit would barely exist. At the old rate the whole server produced about two and a half items a week between everybody.
• With the change an active miner sees roughly one item a week and the heaviest miners around three.
• The item effects themselves are deliberately modest. Charges and fatigue are the two brakes that keep this game honest and both of these items aim at them, so the Cell respects your ceiling and the Patch only shifts a threshold for two hours. Neither one lets you bank unlimited operations or wipe a day of grinding.
• For scale: even the busiest miner on the server earns under one Firewall Patch a week, which is about three hours of shield out of a hundred and sixty eight.

THE ATTACK TERMINAL SHOWS THE DICE

• You now see the roll. A bar fills to your success chance, a marker travels to the number that actually came up, and it turns green or red where it lands. No more bare ACCESS DENIED with nothing behind it.
• Hack and DDoS finally look different. One is surgical and green, the other floods in orange, with their own log lines.
• The target defence breaks on screen. Their firewall blocks burn out one by one when you get through, and hold and pulse when they stop you.
• It runs in about four seconds instead of eleven, the text types out, and a failure now glitches the screen properly rather than twitching two pixels.
• The result waits for you. Press space or tap to move on, at your own pace, with a real button on phones.
• The fake connecting screen is gone. It cost a second and a half every time you opened Operations, which meant after every single attack.

OPERATIONS SUSPENSIONS

• Staff can now suspend an account from Darknet Operations, timed or permanent, with a reason attached.
• It only touches Operations. Wallet, rigs, skills, supply drops and mining all carry on as normal. A suspended account also cannot be seen on the warfare leaderboards while it lasts.
• You can still be attacked while suspended. It is not a shield.
• Anyone suspended sees why and when it lifts, on a page of its own with the reason and a countdown.

ALSO

• There is a Coin Miner rules page in the sidebar. Seven rules covering automation, alts, real money, exploits, conduct in Operations and what happens when a rule is broken.
• The skill tree shows live numbers. Hacker XP per win reflects your current fatigue, and Data Intercept now prints your real chance to lift a drop instead of a percentage nobody could read.
• Every stated percentage was checked against the code. What actually rolls is 1% Black Ice, 39% Credits, 25% Field Kit and 35% Shards, and that is now what the tables say.

FEEDBACK

• The Field Kit drop rate and the item numbers are a first pass. If the kit feels like it never shows up, or if it turns out to be handing out too much, post in this thread and the numbers will move. Same as always, it is easier to change a percentage than to argue about it.