DEMO IT! - Update 0.4.0

Update 0.4.0 — two new jobs, and the stars were measured

Two new jobs, which makes nine. A shop the campaign can come close to paying for. And the star bars on five existing jobs have moved — with numbers, as promised, not by feel.

New jobs

• Job 4: Tight Squeeze. A mid-terrace at dusk. Party walls on both sides, the neighbours' windows lit, and the one dark building in the row is yours. A Clean Sweep: bring it down in two shots, under a tight collateral budget. The neighbours have left their lights on.
• Job 9: The Flat Upstairs. The second interior job, and the new end of the campaign. A one-bedroom flat, two storeys up a tenement close. Gut the partitions and keep everything the flat shares with somebody else: both party walls, the ceiling and the floor. The neighbours' rooms are off limits. So are the cars in the street. The floor is not as solid as it looks, and there is another flat underneath it.
• Tight Squeeze slots in after Contained Demolition, so everything behind it moves down one: The Core is job 5, The Vault 6, The Yard 7, The Strip-Out 8.

Your progress

• Nothing you have cleared re-locks. Stars and completions are kept per job, so they stay where you earned them.
• Tight Squeeze opens once Contained Demolition is cleared. The Flat Upstairs opens after The Strip-Out. If The Core was open but not yet cleared, it now waits behind Tight Squeeze.
• Your best result on every job stands. Replaying a job under its new bars can only raise it.
• The sandboxes open when every job in the campaign is cleared. There are two more jobs now, so if you had the sandboxes open they will ask for the two new jobs first.

Star bars, moved with numbers

In 0.3.1 we said star thresholds would be moved with numbers, not by feel. This is that pass. Measured first; then five jobs changed, so that three stars is something you can earn by playing well; then each one measured again with tools at base tier and at top tier. Every change is a number on the job. No tool was retuned.

• The Approved Removal. Collateral budget 8 → 20. This is the re-measure owed since the shed started honouring your upgrades.
• Contained Demolition. Now graded on where the rubble lands, which is what the job was always about. The second star asks for 40 % of it inside the cordon, the third for 50 %. Collateral budget 90 → 360, demolition goal 90 % → 85 %. We are calling this one a stopgap, and would rather say so now than later.
• The Vault. Now graded on what you leave standing. Lose the part you were told to keep and the job is worth one star, whatever else went right. Collateral budget 30 → 60, and the demolition goal no longer sits on a rounding edge.
• The Yard. Demolition goal 75 % → 62.5 %. It still means three of four. The old figure sat exactly on the line, and rounding was deciding it.
• The Strip-Out. Collateral budget 600 → 80. That is tighter, on purpose: the budget now measures how much you chip the shell.

The shop

Every price roughly halved.

• Tool upgrades: 1 star, then 2. Were 3 and 5.
• Pocket Singularity: 2 stars. Was 4.
• Shaped Charge: 3 stars. Was 5.
• Orbital Laser: 5 stars. Was 8.
• Third and fourth loadout slots: 4 and 6 stars. Were 6 and 10.
• Owning everything used to take 73 stars. It now takes 35. That is still more than the campaign pays out, so what you carry remains a choice.
• Anything you already bought stays bought. Stars already spent stay spent; there is no refund of the difference.

Fixed

• The Shaped Charge stays inside the structure it is stuck to. Listed under "Not in this patch" in 0.3.1; here it is. A charge on the target could reach into the building you were meant to protect, damage it, and bill you for it. It now works through the structure it is stuck to and nothing else. This can only lower your collateral, never raise it.
• A charge stuck to rubble cuts the building the rubble came from. Keeping a charge inside one structure raises a question: what does a loose piece of wall belong to? The building it broke off. Place a charge on fallen rubble and it works through that building, not just the piece in front of you.
• Slot 5 has a key. In the sandboxes, where you can carry all five tools, 5 now selects the fifth. Campaign loadouts stop at four, so nothing changes there.

Leaderboards

• Nine boards now. Tight Squeeze and The Flat Upstairs each get their own.
• Five boards start again from nothing: The Approved Removal, Contained Demolition, The Vault, The Yard and The Strip-Out. The scoring those boards ranked has changed, and a board that outlives its scoring is not a record of anything. Those five jobs now file to new boards.
• Condemned and The Core keep their boards and every entry on them.
• Only rankings reset. Stars, cleared jobs and purchases are untouched.

What we are not claiming

• No tool was retuned. The Shaped Charge was fixed, not rebalanced. The other four behave as they did in 0.3.3.
• Not that balance is finished. Five jobs moved. Contained Demolition is a stopgap. The two new jobs are new. If a star feels unfair, that is the report we want.

Found something? Press F8

Anywhere in the game. It grabs the frame, the job state, your system info and the last round's performance line, and drops it where we read it. If a star still feels unfair after this, tell us which job. Two of them are brand new and have only met us so far.

— CrossAge Studio