Shady Deals v0.4.0: Heatmap

The public release will be available on 08.05;

Patreon: Big Shot; Hustler;

v0.4 finally brings some retaliation for the player's actions, with the whole update centered around the new "Heat" mechanic - and the ways to manage it. Plus, a few nice QoL improvements along the way and a few more things.

You can find a few screenshots in the sneak peek, though they're a bit outdated.

Changelog

Heat

• Any criminal activity now increases your general heat level (I'm planning to add faction-specific heat later when I expand the gang wars). Petty crimes generate only a small amount of heat, while major heists will draw a lot more attention to you;

• Criminal activities carried out by your gang will also increase your heat by varying amounts - you can check the potential heat gain for any gang position on the Whiteboard. It also includes hostile actions toward other gangs;

• There will be additional descriptions for the streets if your heat level is high;

• After experiencing your first heat event, you'll start seeing an animation signaling heat changes;

• Reaching 100% heat will trigger a Heat Event that will hit your gang or your finances very hard, also scales;

You'll be able to see the full heat meter on your Whiteboard if you have a scout. Otherwise, you can only read the approximate heat amount there. Also, you won't see your heat meter before your first heat event.

Heat will mostly be felt at the gang stage. It's basically another resource you have to plan around. Early on, it shouldn't be a big problem - though you're kinda supposed to hit your first heat event during the pre-gang stage, but it's not necessarily the case.

So, how to counter this heat?

• Heat cools off slightly every day, scaling with your reputation;

• There's a new thief position in your gang: Damper - someone who handles heat management. The amount of heat reduced depends on the damper’s cunning stat.

• A Policeman NPC now spawns in City Center and Suburbs. He can help you to lower your heat... once. He can also get your accomplice out of jail - for a solid price. And yeah, your accomplices can now end up in prison through a heat event, not just by failing "Cash on the Wheels." Also, yeah, policeman from suburbs can spawn as a thug, it's intended;

• Volkov (the biker gang leader) can now stir up some noise with his gang once a week to lower your heat - for a fee;

• There's a new upgrade available for your nightclub that passively cools off your heat;

• A new gang type focused on anonymity that passively reduces heat;

And main source of heat reduction is a new enterprise, called "404 Bleach":

"404 Bleach"

A new enterprise that can be unlocked by reaching your very first heat event.
It's a pretty simple biz, fully focused on heat reduction and small-scale money laundering by providing fake cleaning services under contract and doing setups, blackmail, and intel work.

• Unlocking "404 Bleach" will allow you to take contracts for any skill with random difficulty (difficulty changes daily). Each contract is a simple skill check that is either completed successfully or failed; it will reward you with heat reduction accordingly;

• Contracting work has a cooldown of 3 days, so you won't be able to spam it to dump heat. More advanced means of heat reduction will become available if you decide to buy "404 Bleach."

• Buying "404 Bleach" will let you assign your girls to work there as fake maids - the higher their rate, the bigger the heat reduction and money laundering;

• Biz upgrades will help you to increase the amount of money laundered, the number of girls working there, and will unlock new contracts for you personally that yield additional rewards;

Other implementations:

• Ability to work in your own brothel.
  You can meet customers just by hanging out in the lobby. Customers have different kinks tied to traits and charm requirements - they might ask for someone with "Maid", "Fitness", "Stripper", and other traits. You can still take any client even if you don't meet the requirements, but you won't get full payment. Also, some clients can be mean. The more popular your brothel is, the more customers you'll be able to meet.

• New Raw Format tag "Uniform" added to all police-themed events and "404 Bleach" events;

• New trait "Maid" - gives cunning. Pretty self-explanatory how to get it, right?

• Atelier with T3 clothes in the mall, accessible after you hit "Big Boss" reputation;

• Hints on how to achieve all traits in the red phone;

• Deposit account at the bank — you can interact with it only once a week, and you'll receive a 0.5% daily deposit interest rate. However, you can only withdraw a specific amount of cash;

• "Racketeer" - a new gang position for thugs that will yield you dirty money. Racketeers are increasing heat very quickly, and the maximum number of racketeers depends on the number of turfs you control;

• Added the ability to permanently increase your cunning by 1 at the Gold Digger's for 2 gold bars;

Changes:

• Redesign of the Contacts page: now you can sort male NPCs by their jobs or traits, accomplices by thieves and thugs, and girls are sorted by their jobs and work locations by default;

• A lot of work done on EndDay formatting (much more than you can see on the screenshot in the sneak peek). Now, all the "details" about your gang members' work are hidden by default, and all changes to money and heat are colorized;

• Added a few more gradations to the descriptors of your style;

• Buffed all hand-to-hand drug sales, especially in the park, due to the addition of heat price;

• Added a cooldown to the burglar event, it's active right from the start so you won't get burglars in the first few days;

• All deals with generic NPCs will now scale according to your reputation - it’s kind of logical that people would want to get more money from a more notorious person.

Fix:

• The fitness perk wasn't granting HP;

In the pipe:

Honestly, I didn’t really plan to add brothel work in this version, and it’s still kinda undercooked. But there were quite a few questions about it, and since I didn’t add much smut to v0.4, I decided to include it. From now on, whenever I’m not sure what to add to the naughty department, I’ll just expand the brothel.

I'm still figuring out what to focus on next. I want to expand gang wars, rework relationships with generic NPCs, and do a full polish pass on the home and warehouse UI. I'll start by sketching out the gang war expansion, and if it feels good, I'll stick with it. It also feels like a good time to add faction-based heat instead of stashing it away for later.
I also have a few neat ideas for heists, but I’m not sure when I'll start implementing them. Maybe I'll squeeze something in for the next update. Maybe.

Also, I didn’t have time to thoroughly playtest the game with the heat mechanic, sorry. A reasonable amount of time was spent on the web version during v0.4 development. Please let me know if it feels like there’s too much or not enough heat. I’ll make sure to playtest it myself over the weekend.