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Feature Loop
Red: Drain - Green: Trader - Orange: Converter
Overview
Firmware Updates
The Firmware system allow players to pick from 3 archetypes, each with a perk tree.
Only one Archetype can be enabled at a time.
These are meant to be soft classes, that only grant passive abilities to enhance specific playstyles.
Firmware Update screen
Unlocking Updates
Updates needs to be unlocked before being installed, and they can require any of the following:
Updates can be unlocked in any order, and are arranged in ascending order of unlock difficulty.
Unlocking a Firmware Update
Installing Updates
Players can only install as many Firmware Updates as they have Update Slots.
They start with 1 Update Slot.
In the Firmware Update screen, you can see the progression of your next Update Slot.
To get the conversion level of experience to Update Slot progression, round your level to the nearest 10th, and multiply by 10.
A maximum of 8 Upgrade Slots can be earned this way, adding to the starting one, for a total of 9 max Update Slots.
Unlocking a new Update Slot
Archetypes
The Archetypes available are:
There are no limits to the number of Archetypes that can be picked in a team.
The Pathfinder is a the expert at navigating hostile terrains, and managing loot.
The Commando is the best in high-stress combat situations, what ever the environment.
The Sapper is a one-man tinker army, adept at dealing with circuits, security systems and drones.
Examples of Perks per Archetype
Hardware Modifications
These modifications are applied to weapons, chassis and special equipment.
They’re lost when the support they’re installed on is destroyed or abandoned.
These upgrades are either attachments, like scopes and magazines, or spare parts to put on your Operators and their Special Equipment.
Hunting Rifle outfitted with 3 Hardware Modifications
Acquiring Hardware
Hardware Items are physical objects, stored in the Player’s Stash.
Jovian Death Merchant buying screen
Types
Hardware Upgrades are spare parts that can be installed on items from your arsenal to bolster their efficiency or cater to a specific playstyle.
They come in the following types:
Hardware Examples on a Hobgoblin Suit and an Operator
Durability
Hardware degrades naturally over time, and becomes disabled or destroyed when their Durability reaches 0.
The following events can cause an increase in Durability loss:
The risk of a malfunction becomes more important the lower the Hardware’s Durability is.
X% probability of malfunction every time the Hardware is used, with X being:
Hardware can be repaired, gaining a percentage of Durability by using Repair Kits of a tier equal to or above the item’s Tier.
Repairing a Legendary Tier Attachment
Installing Hardware
To install Hardware Modifications on an item, that item needs to have a corresponding Workshop. See how to build them in the .
Workshops come in the following types:
Players start with one Armory and one Griffin Nest.
Each Workshop allow for one item of their type to be modified.
Multiple workshops of the same type allow multiple items to be modified, effectively serving as loadout presets.
Two Workshops each allowing for a customized weapon
Narrative
Firmware
The Firmware Updates are permanent upgrades to any Operator the Player is using, because they originate from a central AI, housed in the Player’s lobby.
We use those instead of actual classes physically different from each other to represent the mass produced side of the Operators.
Same chassis, different OS.
Hardware
The Hardware tiers range from “broken down and duct taped together”, to “military grade” (actual military grade, so mass produced and easy to maintain), to “so advanced the only thing we can do is pull the trigger and hope for the best”.
This is in line with our intentions, especially the technological patchwork one, because the Operators use everything they find.
Flowchart
External Work
References
Upgrade Reference
Name
Developper
Publisher
Release Date
Notes
Payday 2
OVERKILL
Starbreeze
2013
Character Perks
Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl
GSC Game World
GSC Game World
2007
Impact of Low Durability
Minecraft
Mojang
Microsoft
2009
Item Durability and Repairing
SULFUR
Perfect Random
Perfect Random
2024
Permanent and Temporary Attachments
There are no rows in this table
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