Update 30 Changelog

Post-Apocalypse Updates

• Probe Exotic Comms Rebalance: Probe Exotic Comms now costs all of your remaining mental energy, or 1 mental energy, whichever is higher. It also causes a lot more aggro than in the past, and has a fixed range of 45, rather than a range of whatever the movement range of the Red CombatUnit is. These changes ensure that later dialogue talking about all your dead Red CombatUnits is accurate.
• Network Expansion: The network ranges of the post-apocalyptic hidden relays are now 50% higher.
• Android Convenience: In the post-apocalypse, there's now a hidden version of the Android Launcher that unlocks, and which can be built anywhere regardless of your network, making it much more efficient to send units to probe comms.
• Construction Speed: A lot of the buildings in the post-apocalypse now install much faster than before. Network connectings in particular are instantaneous, allowing you to expand a lot faster.
• Cleared Useless Structures: Remote Unit Controllers and Robotic Motivator Factories are no longer buildable in the post-apocalypse, as they are not needed there and were simple clutter since they actually can't do anything useful.
• Accurate Quiet Looting: Fixed an issue with the Quiet Looting project in the post-apocalypse, where if you were already using the resource that you were looting, it would not count correctly.
• Removed StreetSense Distractions: A variety of streetsense items no longer show up in the post-apocalypse that previously did. These were all pointless distractions in that context.
• Intelligence Class 4 Unlock Visibility: Unlocks have been adjusted so that when you gain certain things for the first time after solving the T1 goal in the post-apocalypse, you get notified about these new elements that previously would not be evident until you moved to a new timeline.

Clarity

• Mind Farm Clarity: After the Company Plateau project is completed via any means, the option to do coupons or nicotine additions are removed. A number of people had been confused about why that was hanging around.
• Large Number Readability: In your changes over time for a resource, if there is a number that needs to be shown that is larger than 10 million, then it now abbreviates it instead of showing the full number.
• Ignored Item Sorting: If you ignore items in the information window -- contemplations and StreetSense items in particular -- then those immediately are sorted to the bottom of the list, keeping them more out of the way. All of the non-ignored items are now shown first.
• Nonlethal Takedown Clarity: Substantially improved the feats framework so that clearer information can be given in the case of Taser and Shock Drones in particular. These no longer have extra non-applicable information in their tooltips (things like Ambush bonuses, damage from above or behind, etc, don't apply or matter with a non-lethal takedown). In the event that you do some non-lethal takedowns and then have that same unit do a regular full attack, if it's the first regular attack of the turn, they can get their ambush bonus unambiguously, which is also now much more clear.

Balance

• Post-Economy Mind Farms: If wealth doesn't matter anymore because everyone is now super wealthy thanks to you, then your problems with your shell company will quickly resolve themselves if sales have plateaued. No nicotine or coupons required.
• More VR Pods: The total number of upgrades you can do for VR Pods has increased by 10 (at 60 each, this leads to an increase of 600).
• Storage From Disabled Buildings: If you have paused a structure, of if it's disabled until you get the proper deterrence or protection at it, then it no longer incorrectly gives you whatever resource storage it would normally provide.
• Post-Economy Wealth Generation: If wealth no longer matters (because you've become a quadrillionaire or more), then the StreetSense options for wealth generation (wiretap, steal from syndicate storage, selling to casinos, and selling to the religious co-ops) all go away.
• NPC Targeting Intelligence: Adjusted the targeting logic for npc units (including your own) so that AOE damage is done first rather than second. This makes units target more intelligently. This was the original intent for the targeting logic, but at some point it got inverted.
• Nonlethal Attacks From Firing Hatches: Fixed an issue where if an attack from within a cloaked vehicle did not do enough damage to kill a single squad member of the target, then it would not be forced to decloak. And similarly, morale attacks from within it were not causing it to be decloaked.
• Aggressive Abilities And Shell Company Units: A variety of abilities that would blow the cover of shell company units are now barred from being assigned to them -- flamethrower, slayer mode, wallripper, remote demolish, and some more esoteric things.
• Thrown Spiders/Bees Balance: Throwing spiders, bees, or saber bees onto enemies now has a flat multiplier to enemy movement range, attack range, and attack power instead of it being a flat amount. It also has a cap on just how negative the percentage can be; higher-agility units inflict a higher malus, but no longer a truly paralyzing amount. Spiders and bees are still mainly only useful on extreme mode (the time to kill on normal mode just makes them pointless there), but on extreme mode they are no longer so intensely potent as they could be previously (they could turn certain powerful enemies pretty much stationary and blind). With that said, there may be further balance needed in terms of nerfing them more or relaxing the nerf. If folks have a feeling about that, please just let me know!
• Excess Resource Clearing: A large variety of resources now clear themselves out if you have an excess of them, rather than complaining about the excess. In some cases this is for balance -- when some structure gets destroyed, the things inside it go up in smoke. In most cases, this is to allow you to retire structures you no longer need once you're past some part of a storyline that uses them.

Bugfixes

• Number Abbreviation: Large negative numbers properly abbreviate themselves now, if they need to.
• Ledger Warning Overflow: Fixed an issue where if it was going to take more than about 2 billion turns for you to run out of a resource, an integer overflow would happen and the ledger would complain as if the resource was going to imminently run out. This was mostly happening when you have an absurd amount of wealth.
• Occult Participation Fix: Fixed an issue where "Occult Participation" was not available outside of chapter one. This meant that the Spooky Nonsense Generator was extremely hard to come by outside of your first timeline.
• Doubled Tentacle Fix: Fixed an issue where if you took a certain route through the prison unlocks, you could get two different and identical copies of Liquid Metal Tentacle. It now keeps one locked away if the other is present.
• Suppressing Fire Fix At Long Ranges: Fixed an issue where suppressing fire was not being applied to any units beyond range 30, even if the attacker had a larger range than this.
• AOE Ability Range Fixes: Fixed an issue where Repair Nearby, Network Shield, and Network Targeting were all unable to boost any allied units or structures beyond range 30, even if the attack range of the unit in question had been buffed beyond that.
• Temporarily Invisible Contemplation Fix: Fixed an issue where a contemplation could stick around on a destroyed building.
• Stacked Exploration Site Fix: Fixed a bug with exploration sites that could cause two to be linked to the same spot in rare cases. This was previously fixed with contemplations a long time ago, and basically had to do with "remembered spots" pointing to a place that something else had just been assigned. Also fixed the same issue of being assigned to destroyed buildings, same as is being fixed this build for contemplations.
• Pollinator Shortage Fix: Fixed an issue where giving a queen bee to a farm via Pollinators Wanted was not properly resolving the pollinator shortage.
• Android Launcher Predicted Range Fix: Fixed a typo that was causing the predicted range of the android launcher towers to be incorrect during build mode. It was predicting larger than its actual range after construction
• Doubled Exploration Site Fix: Fixed an issue where an exploration site you were already exploring could appear somewhere else, leading to confusion and the potential for doing a single exploration site more than once.
• Exploration Site Autosave Fix: Fixed an issue with loading Exploration Sites that were ready to be completed, but had not quite been completed yet. It was marking them as complete (just in case there was an error with the data), but in so doing was preventing you from getting the inspiration points from them. This mainly affected autosaves, but it wasn't technically a bug with autosaves themselves. This was just error-correction logic causing an error, go figure.
• Shell Company Torpor: Fixed an oversight where shell company androids were not able to use Android Torpor.
• NPC Unit Fog Of War Targeting Fix: Fixed an issue where NPC units that were hidden in the fog of war (this is pretty rare, all told) could not target each other properly in most cases. They would avoid shooting at each other, only shooting at other units out of the fog of war. The normal fog of war restrictions should only apply to player units, since this is only the player fog of war being modeled in that way.
• Doubled Prison Observation Fix: Fixed an issue in For The Sake Of Those Bound where you could get two styles of Prison Observation if you followed a specific sequence of events. Now it only lets you do it once.