It's a holiday weekend and with such so many new players in the game, we've just got another nice bug fix and quality of life patching coming out tonight. This one hits on the latest F10s, improves grenade throwing animation and VFX for enemies, re-adds the warning confirm to deploy with less than max mercs, and tweaks and improves the balance of Siege (easier, higher Power Level requirements).

Without further chatter - let's dig in.

Confirmation for Deploy

In the transition to the new Matrix Tutorial, we had lost the confirmation required to deploy to a mission with less than maximum mercs. This can be a big mistake if you don't intend to do it, so the confirmation can help avoid that. It's back!

Siege Balance

We've started with Siege balance tonight. These can be pretty hard levels, especially depending on the faction. The balance we applied here is threefold - first, we have made Siege's have a higher Power Level minimum before they begin to appear (PL 3) and an even higher minimum to allow them to proc against milsec factions (PL 5, definitely the hardest form). Second, we have reduced the starting enemy head count from 11 to 10. Minor but its 10% reduction. Third, we have reduced the size of the subsequent wants that are sent from anywhere to 18% to 40% depending on some (per wave) RNG and placement of enemies.

Altogether, hopefully this can help prevent the siege proc-gen missions from being a deadly, early, surprise.

Team Power Level on Pause Menu

Your Team Power level is now available while in mission on the pause menu. This one just helps make key information more readily available, if you're asking for help at a certain point in the game, knowing your Team PL is often one of the early questions.

Enemies Throw Better

There were a few mistakes with the visual elements on enemy grenade throwing. First, the throwing timing was off for when the grenade left the hand, making for a low arc and just feeling … bad. Now it feels way better as we've aligned it like your mercs.

Second, the VFX for the result were accidentally switched in the game's data set. Now targets who are buffed will get a very clear buffing VFX played on them, as the colorful cloud of hype-dust spreads out.

Third, we fixed a possible case where the throw could lock the game up. This was pretty rare but could happen if the timing was right (or … not right!)

v1.8.77 - #136: - 9/2/2024

- Re-added missing warning when deploying with less than full merc team
- Tweaked enemy and wave counts in Siege: reduced starting enemy count by 1, reduced wave size by up to 25%
- Improved Team Power Level minimums for Siege proc-gen missions, especially for those vs. milsec
- Added Team Power Level stat to pause menu in missions
- Fixed issues with enemies throwing buff cloud grenades - VFX were flipped, animation timing was off
- Fixed Sec Level hover sometimes showing rules for Q-Sec Level instead (matrix vs. physical)
- Fixed button label in Contact Limit Breaks not changing by selection (Confirm Favor / Confirm Upgrade)
- Contact Faces correctly shown in Counter-Intel Token-for-Favor offer
- Fixed issue with mercs sometimes starting floating in Corner Holdout X Siege Objective