Update 25: Curfew

Mars now runs on a clock. BetterLife gives you a job and a ration by day, the underground gives you work after curfew, and both keep a record of what you did.

Start a new game. Saves from Update 24 are not supported.

The Day Loop

• A day lasts 45 minutes. Work from 06:00, curfew at 20:00, sleep until the next morning.
• Morning statement at 06:00. BetterLife files your social credit changes with a reason for each, issues your ration by standing, and rolls the day's weather.
• Company assignments replace the terminal shift. Each day brings one job in the world, due before curfew. Twelve assignments, one per skill, with survival work coming up most often. Pay rises with rank: 20 credits as a Worker, 45 as an Overseer.
• Company Training at the BetterLife terminal is optional. One session counts per day, and 3, 8 and 15 sessions promote you to Operator, Overseer and Director.
• Missed work costs you. A day without a finished shift is 50 social credit at the next statement, and each assignment left open is 20 more.
• Curfew. BetterLife warns at 19:30 and calls curfew at 20:00. Scanner drones photograph anyone they catch outside after that.
• Real sleep. A bed fast forwards to 06:00 and saves the game. Taking damage wakes you up.
• The ration now includes Soy Drink alongside Soy Food.
• The company farm in the jail yard: beds that grow on their own. Harvesting without the harvest assignment costs 15 social credit.

Night Work

• 26 faction jobs across the nine faction leaders, offered only after curfew. Ask "Any work?" in their dialog.
• Paid in dollars, in person. Hits and sabotage end with reporting back, stash runs and fetches end with handing the goods over. Pay scales with the ring the job sends you to.
• One job per leader per night. Open jobs lapse at 06:00 and cost loyalty. Finished jobs move your standing with the factions involved.
• The underground gathers at campfires after curfew until 02:00, then goes to bed. At 20:00, up to two leaders you are on good terms with call you in for work.
• Hits get answered. Kill for one faction and the target faction sends three armed hunters after you until morning.
• Two currencies. Days pay BetterLife credits, nights pay faction dollars. Credits buy legal goods, dollars buy guns and contraband. Dart changes money at 70% either way.
• Dollars are illegal. Entering the city through a checkpoint in daytime can get you searched: half your dollars and 10 standing gone. How often depends on your standing.
• Checkpoint tag board. Hang your tag before you leave the city and take it back when you return. Leaving without one costs 10 standing, and a tag left up overnight is billed as a missing person.

Squads

• Winston walks out of prison with you and joins your squad.
• Hiring is paid in dollars: roughly $500 to $1,800 depending on the person, up to 20% less if they like you. Their loyalty grows from how you treat them.
• Orders: follow, hold and work.
• Squad members breathe too. They carry their own tanks and guns, wear armor, and use medkits on themselves below half health.
• Squad row on the HUD with health and oxygen, squad markers on the map, and a Gear screen to hand items over.
• Friendly fire counts. Shoot your own people and they will turn on you.

BetterLife

• The Kaiser Institute is now part of BetterLife. The regime holds the city and nothing else. It never takes territory and is not a starting faction.
• Registration numbers. Citizens carry a BetterLife number, shown on your ID card and on the inspect screen.
• Safety units. City pedestrians are BetterLife machines, and 22 armed patrol drones have been replaced by three unarmed scanner drones.
• The plaza: a panopticon spire on a concrete deck at the center of the city, a statue on the podium, sodium floodlights, waving banners and eight propaganda posters.

People

• 13 new characters to talk to, and the English text rewritten against a style guide.
• Faction dress codes. Every faction dresses its own way, and no two unique characters look alike.
• Anselm Voss, the launch director, now waits at the sealed launch pad.
• The Crimson Church offers a paid sacrament.
• Live portraits replace the old head cameras in dialog, quests and the character screen.
• NPCs sit on benches by day and sleep in beds at night.
• NPCs fight back instead of running, hated factions attack on sight, and they shout while they do it. Everyone past the first ring carries a gun.
• NPCs open unlocked doors on their way.
• The dark hides you unless your headlamp is on. Faction grudges now survive a save.

Weapons

• Aim down sights by holding the right mouse button.
• Your arms only show with a gun in hand, as in Half-Life 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
• Tracers leave the muzzle, and every unsuppressed shot has a real muzzle flash.
• Fire rate and damage now follow each gun's action and calibre.
• Ammo fixes: the AK-74 fires 5.45x39, the P90 fires 5.7x28, and the .357 revolver holds 6.
• The AS VAL is now the quiet rifle.
• Suppressors are single use, drop from military loot and are sold by Dart. Revolvers, shotguns, bolt rifles and both Deagles refuse them.
• 2mm Kolibri and PG-7 rockets drop, so the Kolibri and the RPG-7 can finally fire.
• Hovering a gun in the inventory highlights the ammo it takes.

Survival

• Out of air, you bleed by ring: 2 hp per second in ring I, 9 in ring II, 21 in ring III, 40 in ring IV. Ring V is survivable on a tank. Past the edge of the map you do not last long.
• SCBA air management. A turnaround warning once a third of your tank is used, and a bell when a third is left.
• The Halligan bar forces a locked door open in four strikes, loudly.
• Fall damage follows the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. curve, and every landing counts.
• No more double jump.
• The headlamp is on L and no longer needs a battery.
• Water works: taps and showers run, toilets hold water, and you need 2 liters a day instead of 4.
• Medical conditions now survive a save.
• Butchering puts organs and meat into the corpse.

World

• The playable map is 3.14 square kilometers inside the world edge, with 16 areas. Quarry and Crater Quarry are merged, the Spire is cut, and the Walled City is denser.
• The jail cell block and the hospital are rebuilt.
• 88 flying cars removed.
• The PDA map shows who owns each area, with the oxygen rings numbered I to V.
• Weather: all eleven weathers can now come up in the daily roll, including rain, snow, thunderstorms and marsquakes.
• City ambience follows the time of day, the ring you are in, the weather and whether you are under a roof.

Inventory and Trade

• Loot opens beside your bag, and items you drop land where you drop them.
• Your cash is shown per currency instead of as one total.
• Traders pay by condition, and they buy your most worn copy first.
• Martian soil weighs 1 kg instead of 3.

Tutorial

• New games start at 07:30.
• The first company job is fifteen loads of regolith, handed in to Warden Ivan Chen.
• Quest 2.2 now sends you to the water plant. It used to ask for a pipe wrench that needed research you could not have yet.

Fixes

• Fixed a hidden copy of the player that made your hunger and thirst rise twice as fast.
• Fixed items being miscounted after a wide item in your bag.
• Fixed payments that took less than the price when an item was spread over several stacks.
• Fixed company pay disappearing when your bag was too heavy.
• Fixed Sister Olivia repeating her quest instead of thanking you.
• Fixed the oxygen bar not flashing when your tank is empty.
• Fixed eight item names that did not match their items.
• Fixed the debug overlay showing in release builds. F3 still toggles it.
• Fixed memory growing every game hour from NPC outfit changes, and halved the stutter when the world loads.
• A playthrough test of a new game's first day now has to pass before every release.