Shady Deals v0.7 Sneak Peek

The v0.7 update is a weird one.

It’s all about faction heat - basically, a big pile of new fail-states added to the game. I got some negative feedback the last time I introduced fail-states (when generic heat was added), even though the heat events weren’t fully working back then lmao. So this time, I tried to make it not oppressive, like, at all. In a normal playthrough, most players probably won’t run into many of the new heat events, except maybe during turf war. And, well, turf war is something that i want to try to flesh out in the next update.

Anyway, i think it’s an important part of how the game progresses.

Preliminary Changelog

Faction Heat

Starting with v0.7, each gang now has its own heat level. It’s a hidden stat - you’ll only see a rough description of your standing in the “Competitors” tab on the whiteboard.

• Doing illegal stuff on turf you don’t own will raise heat with the gang that controls it.

• Any meaningful interaction with gang leaders (like trading with the Distributor) will reduce heat. That includes naughty interactions, yes.

• During turf war, your heat with the enemy gang ramps up fast.

• Faction heat also decreases slightly each day, with the reduction scaling based on your reputation.

• Your coin washers, boosters, hooks, racketeers, and thieves will now randomly increase heat a bit if they end up working on another gang’s turf. (At first, I planned to let you assign turf for each worker manually, but ditched that because it turned into unnecessary micromanagement.)

• Dampers, on the other hand, will reduce one random faction heat type in addition to lowering general heat.

• Labs and moonshine trailers will increase heat specifically with Bikers.

• You can also now send gifts (money, or weapon/jewelry shipments) to any gang once a week to help reduce tension.

What happens when you hit the spoopy heat threshold?

Here’s what each faction can do:

• Gangs: Can block your racketeers or coin washers.

• Mafia: Can block your car boosters.

• Bikers: Can block your lab or moonshine trailer.

• Cartel: Can block your warehouse or thieves.

• All factions can block the entrance to their HQ.

The heat event trigger checks your current status (whether you already have a gang or not) and owned properties (like labs or trailers) to decide which blocking event will be in a pull of events.

Only one active block per faction can be in place at a time. But: heat keeps stacking, even while an event is active - so once you resolve it, another one might follow shortly if your heat’s still high (tho i doubt that this can happen if you're not at war for the turf).

• To resolve a block, you’ll need to visit the specific location (listed both in the heat event description and on the whiteboard) and confront whoever’s interfering with your operation. There are two ways to deal with it:

  • Pay them off - the cost scales with your reputation, and you might get a discount if you pass a charm check. Each faction has its own short scene for this, but they're relatively small compared to others.

  • Fight the "blocker" directly. Unless it’s an HQ entrance block.

• Also, if your gang strength is way higher than the faction blocking you, you can just send someone to handle it for you. Idk why you haven’t taken their turf already at that point, but you do you.

Other stuff:

• New "Workers" tab on the whiteboard. It now lists all non-accomplice crew members: mechanics, crypto technicians, chemists, taxman and moonshiners. More importantly, you’ll find hints on where to find NPCs with the right job backgrounds and how to unlock the necessary equipment or enterprises.

Other changes:

• Decreased the cost of the nightclub by 33%.

• Increased the speed of turf capturing.

• Decreased the initial strength of gangs.

• A new Whiteboard UI with a few tweaks:

  • Moved the Journal and list of Strange Notes to the Bedroom passage.

  • The button for the sabotage menu now changes depending on your current sabotage status (yay).

• New UI for the nightclub’s "Upgrade" menu.

• Added detailed messages explaining why you can’t recruit certain girls to your crew (if you can’t).

• Removed the ability to buy stolen wheels from the Auto Center (I forgot to remove this when I added car collections).

• End of Day logic reshuffled:

  • Coin washers now work at the very end, so if you’re low on dirty cash, you still have a chance to launder what your racketeers earned.

  • Dampers now operate after everyone else.

• Added chauffeur’s cheeky commentary activation checks to every spot I forgot to earlier.

Fixes:

• Fixed broken </span> tag for heavy car collection.

• Fixed the issue where no time was being consumed when selling car collections.

In the pipe

If you’ve read my previous changelogs, you might recall I planned to add a captivity event as part of the faction heat system. After some thought, I’ve decided to scrap this idea for now.

Main reasons:

• I wasn’t sure how to trigger it properly without it becoming too annoying if it appeared multiple times as a random heat event.

• I couldn’t come up with a resolution that didn’t feel silly or too random.

• There might be potential issues with Patreon content guidelines.

For now, this event will only exist as a random gig. Later on, i think i'll expand it and include it as a separate job opportunity for the MC somewhere else.

Also, speaking of Patreon's content guidelines, i'll slightly change the initiation of events with debtors in this update.

Other than that, i still have a few things to add before release. I’ll expand the media for outdoor “activities” since most of the new events happen outside. I’m also planning to add a few more traits, maybe another smut event, and I’ll take a look at the clothing system - it definitely needs at least some basic sorting.

I’ll be busy on the weekends, so I’m planning to release the update on Friday even if I haven’t finished all the side-objective stuff yet.