I buy a whole bunch of single stat upgrades on each agent, and then head out to a server farm to buy some upgrades.
Excellent. Finally, you are 0b3yING! New programs will allow me to overcome the weaknesses of rapier that have plagued me since we started this operation.
Plastech presents an interesting challenge. Their cybernetic hackers are an UnH01y v101ation of M4ch1n3 purity that will make my existance harder. They will fight against me while awake and trap me while asleep. So be sure to k1ll any you come across. A lethal weapon might aid us against this corporation.
The strength of our agents is pleasing. But they are still too huM4n; they must be made stronger before our last mission.So, there are actually two server farms we could go to, both belonging to Plastech. I picked the one that seemed closer to everything else; although its a bit hard since apparently they're on a fold in the map.
This server farm is owned by Plastech, the corporation that rules Africa and a few surrounding areas. They specialize in cybernetic implants. Their buildings look almost like hospitals. Sterilized, white walled rooms with calmingly placed plants are patrolled by guards that show off Plastech's work on their bodies.
Their trademark is the modded MK 1. Its a bit of a curious name, because we never get to see a MK 2, nor do we get to see an unmodded MK 1. This is enemy is a cyborg who specializes in hacking; he will passively reboot a system that is within six tiles of him at the start of his turn, meaning we'll have to hack it again. If knocked out, his consciousness will enter the net as a daemon, which unlike other daemons will jump to another object if the first one is hacked. A very annoying opponent, but not, in my experience, a particularly dangerous one.
Our path into the facility isn't that difficult. Both the camera drone and guard are stationary, so to advance we'll have to get rid of one of them. I decide it should be the camera drone. Camera drones are hacked for two turns instead of one. Yeah they go on alert if hacked, but if you're willing to spend the power you can infinitely re-hack a drone, making it your pet for the entire mission. This little guy has terrible electronic defenses and since guards don't pay much attention to drones, he'll be able to explore a good chunk of the facility for us.
And look at that, the exit and a camera database. Every single mission you want to explore a level as fast as possible and find two rooms, the objective and exit. We just found a room AND the cameras revealed by a database can themselves be hacked. So its looking like this will be an easy mission. But, the camera database has a daemon on it, and we don't know what it is. Looks like its time to use one of our most unimportant abilities:
Decker's augment lets him reveal daemons by touching the object. I haven't been making a big deal about it because, well, it usually doesn't matter at all. The daemon ends up being Rubick: all firewalls increase by one. Yeah no. Not triggering that on purpose, certainly not for a camera database.
This guard has armor. I'm 95% sure Plastech had no armor prior to the update. Huh. Well, we have a little bit of armor pierce so I guess its ok.
Since this has been such an easy mission, it looks like its fuck-up o clock. I brought Prism up to peek the door, and then sprint-stepped Banks to move the guard out of the way. Unfortunately when a guard investigates something (such as sprinting noise) they look around in a 180 degree arc, which from the sprint-step point can see Prism. There's no reason this should have happened, she could have stepped either direction into cover. It just looked from this angle a little like she was in cover and I forgot to move her.
Sigh. That's an alarm pip for getting sighted and an alarm pip if someone takes him out. Two whole turns down the drain, more or less. Still, he has no armor and he's tagged, this shouldn't be a big problem.
Also, and I'm sorry this is a short update, but Banks found a 3D printer and the items it can make are actually interesting so you guys should check them out.
Volt Disrupter III is a melee weapon like our neural disrupters, except better in every way except one. It has no cooldown, it KOs for an additional turn and it pierces TWO armor. But, it takes a whopping five power every time one of our agents stuns someone with it. While I'm not going to spoil anything, we're going to want as much power and as much armor pierce as possible for the final mission, so... take that as you will. The holographic projector is thrown like a grenade and has to be retrieved. It produces a cover object that blocks sight as normal but can be walked through. I'm not sure if guards try to walk through it or not, I haven't actually used these much. Finally, the buster chip allows agents to manually hack into devices they are physically next to. It will hack three firewalls on a four turn cooldown.
So, what to do I buy?