NEW MECHANICS
• Dormant Protocols — forgotten processes wake up during explorations. Keep them active for a temporary bonus (1 to 10 min) or sacrifice them for an immediate CPU burst. Expired protocols are logged in the syslog.
• Hardware Degradation — upgrades can degrade over time (−10% to −30% efficiency). A ⚠ indicator appears on affected upgrades. Repair them for a CPU cost.
• Signal Echo — a synchronization mini-game triggered randomly after an exploration. A cursor sweeps across a bar: the closer you click to the center of the target zone, the higher the SIG multiplier (×1.2 to ×3.0). The zone shrinks as chapters progress.
• Corrupted Fragments — some lore logs can be recovered through defragmentation (CPU cost). The fragment content is displayed directly in the popup after restoration, without leaving the main screen.
EXPLORATION
• New option: auto-relaunch exploration as soon as it completes (if MEM is sufficient).
BALANCE
• CPU threshold for CH.02 lowered (80 → 35/s) — progression was blocked at the end of CH.01.
• Base SIG capacity increased (10 → 20) — allows accumulating enough SIG to unlock CH.02.
• Chapter SIG thresholds adjusted for smoother progression.
UI
• CPU and MEM tooltips expanded: breakdown of production sources (base, upgrades, multiplier, total).
• Degraded upgrades display their status in red with a ⚠ indicator.
• Active protocols and their remaining duration are shown at the bottom of the screen.