Dear chief of whatever officers and office drones
Patch 1.9.0 is mostly about UI improvements, decreasing the use of the dreaded sub-(sub)-menus, flattening them. For example, sending executives around the map now takes one hover+click instead of three. The construction screen was integrated into the main desktop screen, and so on.
Hopefully these improvements do not take away too much from the immersion of using a corporate UI. The old behavior will stay available via UI options, and there are still plenty of odd quirks left.
Also, good news for our DACH-region Bürodrohnen: holonoptic can now be played in German. Q&A is still ongoing, but the language can already be selected in the options menu.
Complete list of changes:
1.9.0
Features & gameplay
- At most 3 items can be requisitioned at once; the Requisition Management feat, the Additional space upgrade and the Logistics network project each raise the limit by one
- External storage is now a numbered inventory tab you drag items in and out of, rented per budget cycle at a price that doubles with every tab (1, 2, 4, 8 million)
UI Improvements
- Geist packages are installed straight from the architecture screen: no sub-menu, and the install progress runs in a small popup instead of taking over the screen
- The holonoptic eye sits on the left with the selected ideocluster and its unlocks always shown next to it, and the icons in the eye got bigger and a score bar
- Hovering the holonoptic button in the dock shows every measured ideocluster score and unlocks all available business opportunities with one click
- Clicking the hidden items counter on an owned company label starts the asset recovery operation right there
- The slider of the business opportunity bar sits above the opportunities instead of covering them
- The button to send executives to a company now shows a plane icon, making it clearer what it does
- The same plane button was added to every company label on the map, so executives can be sent to companies with one click (=2 clicks less)
- Missions in their details screen got the same plane button, next to the executives already assigned
- Hovering a mission on the map shows its resources, requirements, rewards, what blocks it, and the executives that can be sent on it
- Owned subsidiaries got a construction button that builds assets straight from the map, without opening the modify assets screen
- Company labels on the map got icons for deals, acquisitions and espionage, so those actions can be achieved with 1 click instead of 2
- UI options for turning the business opportunity hover panel off and for what escape does on the desktop (marketscape or menu)
- Text no longer shrinks below a readable size on low resolutions, adjustable with the new minimum text size setting in UI options
- The emotion buttons at character creation sit in two rows of four, leaving the trait list below more room
- The feedback button moved into the top right menu, next to log and terminal (Ctrl+F still opens it anywhere)
- Locked feats now name the skill level required to learn them instead of only saying a higher skill is needed
- Finishing a floor acquisition no longer shows a second, empty "floor unlocked" screen
- F10 opens the menu from anywhere, and it now lies over the current screen instead of replacing it
- Options are grouped better: screen mode and aspect ratio now sit in the Graphics tab (former Performance), the Display tab is now UI
- Font size, minimum text size and UI scaling moved into their own Font & Scale tab, the UI tab keeps colors, design and opacity
- New UI option to always show the company action icons on the marketscape instead of only on hover
- The desktop now shows the building with its floors, replacing the build app; the old backgrounds (follow your character, company from outside) are UI options
- The personal wealth screen opens with "buy shares" already selected
- Emotion bubbles carry their today/tomorrow bars, so what is rising, falling or stable can be seen without clicking, and hovering one lists everything that moves it
- The emotion mine draws the whole influence network at once - emotions, substances, conditioning and courses - instead of only the picked node's
- A running conditioning shows its days left and speed wherever it appears, names the mental states to raise to speed it up, and its event opens the trait list
- Traits around an emotion bubble show their effects on hover
- Hovering emotionmine in the bottom bar shows every emotion with its bars, and opens substances or conditioning from there
- Stopping a conditioning keeps its progress, and the trait list shows how far each one got
- In the trait list, hovering a trait shows its details and the start, stop and un-condition buttons sit in the row itself
- A skill check can be aborted before the roll, returning to the dialogue menu it was picked from
- Queued projects in the event list say "queued" instead of showing an endless eta
Fixes
- Business opportunities only show the executives actually working them, no longer everyone who happens to be at that location
- The bonus above items and traits on the skill check screen is no longer cut off
- The substance tooltip in the emotion mine opens at the mouse instead of the top left corner
- Fixed a random crash while executive or company sprites were being rebuilt in the background
- Fixed a crash when a screen was closed by a button on it, most often seen when entering a terminal command
- Fixed potential crashes on the map while the game recalculated in the background
- Synergy lines between subsidiaries no longer stay on the map after switching to another industry
- Fix an out of memory crash when entering the marketscape
- Recover dead assets for 4k screen users
- Fixed a crash on the main menu when playing offline
- Items sent to external storage no longer disappear on acquisition instead of showing up in storage
- Dragging an item onto a completely full company or storage tab snaps it back instead of leaving it stuck behind the icon
- The budget hover lists the rent for external storage it deducts
- Chat message popups grow with their text instead of cutting off longer messages
- The item tooltip disappears while an item is dragged in the inventory
- Quicksaves made during dialogue no longer overwrite each other, and saving from the F10 menu mid-dialogue returns to the dialogue instead of the desktop
Story & dialogue
- The qMolecule debriefing now uses your chosen CEO name instead of always saying Nicole
- The qMolecule ending now names Faivre instead of his outdated draft name
- Hylke's farewell and the Hordbank share price event now use your chosen CEO name instead of Nicole
- The chairman congratulations and the Amoeba ending now use your chosen CEO name instead of Wyss
- Loan, project and summon log messages and the share price history now use your chosen CEO name instead of Wyss
- The Persona avatar project is now erased after the shadow imago ending, as intended
- First dialogue with Jon will no longer show the option "where is everyone" when you had prior meetings
- No emergency board meeting about Amoeba's hostile takeover when a particularly efficient player already acquired Amoeba
Performance
- The marketscape runs smoother while time is fast, especially after saving during fast time
Localization
- German localization added (text only, Q&A still in progress)