News Tower News

• Employee Traits System: In this new update we wanted to bring some personality to your employees, and at the same time bring a skillful twist to existing pillar mechanics of News Tower.
  
  
• Monthly Calendar: We added this calendar to unlock rewards in a cool new and interactive way. Our goal has long been to introduce something more connected to the yearly cycle, complementing the existing weekly and monthly gameplay. This Calendar is part of the perception bar system and adds this extra layer to it that it really missed.
  
  
• Prestige System: Employees who now reach the max base level of 5 become senior and require Prestige to gain an extra bonus boost. Prestige works almost like comfort but requires different objects that make these employees' surroundings more prestigious.
  
  
• New in-game year: There is also a whole new in-game year: 1934! This should give you plenty of time to enjoy all the new features we've included in this update.
  
  
• Optimization: We've optimized the game by reducing loading times, improving performance for larger towers, and lowering memory usage by trimming oversized assets.

1. Open the Steam client.
   
2. Click on the "Library" tab.
   
3. Right-click on "News Tower" and select "Properties".
   
4. Click on the "Betas" tab.
   
5. In the "Beta participation" field, select "community_test".
   
6. Click on the "Close" button.
   
7. The game will now be updated to the "community_test" branch.

• Employees now possess Traits that can enhance your tower's performance beyond their basic levels. Here are just three examples of the many traits available:
  
  • Yearly Peaker: Gains a 2% speed increase on tasks every month, but resets in January.
    
  • Musical: Likes to sing and counters noise.
    
  • Perfect Angle: 50% chance of taking the perfect shot and adding one quality star to a photo.
• Traits are categorized into two types: Personality Traits and Trainable Traits.
  
  • Personality Traits are inherent to employees, adding complexity to the hiring process.
    
  • Trainable Traits can be unlocked through a calendar event or purchased at one of the Colleges and then taught to an employee of your choosing.
• Personality Traits are introduced in March 1930 when playing with the intro. Trainable Traits are unlocked when you first encounter one in the monthly calendar or when you purchase one at the Universities.

• We’re introducing a Monthly Calendar that offers rewards to seize and risks to avoid.
  
• Rewards include Trainable Traits, objects, Influence Points and money.
  
• The Monthly Calendar Event unlocks in January 1931.

• Employees who reach the maximum base level of 5 become senior and require prestige to unlock an additional bonus boost.
  
• Prestige functions similarly to comfort but requires specific objects that enhance the prestige of the employees' surroundings.
  
• Some of your older objects may need to be replaced with more prestigious variants. Prestige objects can be bought at shops and unlocked through the monthly calendar.

• We added a year of news items, breaking news and calendar events for you to enjoy!

• Loading times for starting a new game and loading existing games have been reduced.
  
• Performance has been improved for larger towers.
  
• Reduced memory overhead for some unnecessarily huge assets.

• Skill levelling speed has been reduced and may be further adjusted during the community test.
  
• Hempstead district no longer has a photo chain lockout, allowing access to the Trait University that lies behind it without first unlocking the photo chain.
  
• The Mirror now needs to be unlocked at the Ritz Theater.
  
• Numerous bugs have been fixed.

• Although saves from previous versions are compatible with this update, we strongly recommend starting a new game with the intro to fully experience and understand the new features.

• Sometimes, you couldn't take out a loan.
  
• A possible loan you might have had in a savegame would have been displayed as zero.

• This new feature takes away the burden of needing to order resources manually. You can buy these as upgrades on the NYC map and opt in per resource type. The system will make sure there is always enough available! Do keep in mind that your resupply workers will still need to keep up with the pacing!

• Overall the transportation AI should be a little smarter. A new feature is that the placement of the resupply desk influences which resources get prioritized. For example, placing a resupply desk close to the printer will hint the employee to mainly resupply your printer with paper.
  
  
  • Placement of the supply desk matters. Supply employees prefer targets that are closer to their desk.
    
  • Resource transport AI improved.
    
  • Repairing + sweeping AI also improved. They prioritize better, also dependant on the proximity to their desk. But if you drop them next to something, they will work on it.
    
  • Toilet visits and food visits prefer the same floor or close floors a little more, being a little more tolerant to queues.

• Elevator group letters: Another feature that helps to avoid mistakes. All elevator doors that belong to the same system share the same letter on their display.
  
• Printer requires a little less paper. Used to be one crate per 5000 sales. Now is one crate per 7500 sales.
  
• Tiered resource discounts: Instead of a single 25% discount on paper, coal and food, the discounts have been split up into 10, 20 and 30 percent.
  
• Unreachable room warnings: A new icon that shows up if a room is unreachable for your employees. This can help to prevent mistakes in your tower’s design!
  
• Globe filter lights now always show red when that category is depleted, even when the button is not engaged.

• “New Actions possible” and reward suitcase in news now have a notification sound.
  
• Fixed audio ping sometimes playing on load games.
  
• Eating audio for all eating related objects.

• Splash screen is now skippable.
  
• Mouse cursor is hidden on splash screen.

• Fixed telegrapher lamp morse code sound hanging when pausing the game.
  
• Fixed news stand only appearing after when the intro camera has settled.
  
• Fixed bug that occurred if you manually dragged a lawsuit and it expired right at that time causing a corrupted game state.
  
• Duplicate Triumphant tag for Great Neck district is removed.
  
• Fixed newsbook expire time display not displaying LINE CLOSED on last hour before expiration.
  
• Lots of news items have had a dot (.) at the end of the subtitle removed, as this looks strange on the newspaper.

Extra, extra, read all about it, news hot off the presses right here. Sorry, I don't know what came over me there. News Tower is a game about building up your own newspaper company and cornering the market on news. It's got a brilliant rating already even in early access, and it just launched a brand new update that adds a ton of stuff.

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