With all the excellent testing and bug reports from the preview branch, only a small number of bugs were found so far with the public EA 0.5 release! So thank you all for your help in making this a very smooth release!

Here's a small patch to address those few issues!

• Fixed mouse clicking. Previously, if you clicked and held the mouse for more than 0.14 seconds, it wouldn't recognize that you clicked an item, and would treat it like you clicked and dragged the mouse instead. We have changed this behavior, and everything seems to work much more smoothly now!
  
• Fixed a couple ways you could recruit/poach the same employee multiple times.
  
• Fixed issue that was causing a few people's Uncle Fred tutorial to go back to an old objective
  
• Fixed a few spots in the Casino wasn't using the correct localized keys
  
• Fixed several spots where Chinese localization wasn't displaying properly
  
• Fixed a few spots where Japanese localization wasn't displaying properly
  
• Fixed a few specific cases where old saves weren't adapting to rivals properly
  
• Fixed an issue causing compatibility issues with older savegames!

---

Now enjoy getting back to the smoothest and largest update yet!

~Hovgaard Games

Hello and welcome back!

It's time for our next big update, EA 0.5, featuring AI competitors, a new neighborhood, lots of economic balancing and more!

---

There are four Special Rivals, each dominating their own neighborhood. As you start to take up space in their neighborhood, these Special Rivals will target you with various attacks, based on your game difficulty!

• Thierry Laurent Moreau, Murray Hill
  
• Huang Guo, Midtown
  
• Jessica Johnson, Hell's Kitchen
  
• Ingrid Schneider, Garment District

The rivals have several ways to hinder your progress.

• Rent Refusal - If a rival owns a building, they can refuse to rent it to you
  
• Price Manipulation - If a rival lowers their selling prices below market value, you might have to lower your prices on those items as well to avoid losing customers.
  
• Market Manipulation - If a rival opens stores that sell similar items to you, this will lower the demand for that product and reduce your overall customer flow!
  
• Employee Poaching - Your rivals can attempt to poach your employees. You will be forced to give them their new demands or replace that employee when they leave.

Additionally, there are 15 minor rivals scattered throughout the city who will try to steal your other employees from time to time! Usually, these employees will give you the chance to keep them if you agree to give them a raise, but you can also choose to ignore them and let them quit!

Your headhunter will still replace these employees who resign or get poached, but it will take a few days to find that replacement. So, you'd better not let the rivals steal them from you!

• Retiring employees are still replaced instantly
  
• This currently does not apply to Headquarters employees

There's an app for that! Check out the BizPhone Rivals App to keep track of all the rivals and their current attacks and see your ranking in the top 20 leaderboard!

Now it's time for you to fight back! Each attack will ultimately weaken the rival and lower their weekly income. A lower weekly income will slowly reduce the valuation of their businesses, making it easier to buy them out!

• Price Manipulation - If you lower your selling prices below market value, the other rivals in that neighborhood will be forced to drop their prices as well.
  
• Market Manipulation - If you open stores that sell similar items to your rivals, this will lower the demand for that product and reduce their overall customer flow!
  
• Employee Poaching - Each AI business now has an employee list you can access through their store's BizMan page. From here you can choose which of your rival's employees you would like to attempt to poach! If you steal an employee from the rival, they will be forced to replace them with an inferior employee, which will lower their customer satisfaction and make them lose some customers.

But how do you poach the employees? Through negotiation! Similar to negotiating health care prices, you can now negotiate the salary of all your employees - whether you recruit, headhunt, or poach them!

Please note: When hiring new employees, you can still choose to hire instantly and avoid the negotiation. It's up to you.

While the rivals were busy taking over the existing four neighborhoods, we expanded the map and made a new neighborhood!

• 100+ new buildings
  
• 4 new warehouse layouts
  
• Above-ground parking structure
  
• Hudson Wholesale
  
• Essentials Appliances
  
• Skate park (visit this park for a new happiness boost)

With the addition of Essentials Appliances, we figured it was time to rearrange and organize the three appliance stores!

Essentials Appliances sells security and nightlife retail:

• All security items
  
• Liquor Store
  
• Nightclub

Square Appliances now sells most food-related items:

• Fast Food Restaurant
  
• Coffee Shop
  
• Supermarket
  
• Fruit and Vegetable Store

AJ Pederson and Son sells most retail and customer-related items:

• Customer barriers, tables, chairs, signs
  
• Bookstore
  
• Clothing Store
  
• Electronics Store
  
• Florist
  
• Gift Shop
  
• Hairdresser
  
• Jewelry

This update also brings a new retail business type - the Bookstore

Bookstore can sell 6 types of books, found in the new Lower Manhattan wholesaler, Hudson Wholesale.

You can also find a few new decorations as well! There are 2 decorative stacks of books, and decorative bookshelves that you can interact with to read and gain happiness!

AI store income is now more accurate to the items they have in the store and employees that are assigned.

• Wages now go up with training
  
• Reduced maximum wages at 100% skill
  
• Base Wage Changes:
  
  • Cleaners ($5 -> $12)
    
  • Headquarters Employees ($15 -> $30)
    
  • DJs ($15 -> $20)
    
  • Hairdresser ($15 -> $18)
    
  • Programmers / Graphic Design ($30 -> $25)

• Clothing nerf - expensive clothing customer flow and weekend customer flow reduced
  
• Fast Food Restaurant buff - sale prices have increased.
  
• Florist buff - slight boost in customers
  
• Fruit and Vegetable Store buff - sale prices have increased
  
• Gift Shop - expensive gift customer flow reduced
  
• Hairdresser nerf - decrease in customer flow
  
• Jewelry Store nerf - expensive jewelry customer flow reduced
  
• Electronics nerf - all items' customer flow and weekend customer flow reduced

• Cleaners are 2X more effective
  
• "Off-hours" (non-typical opening hours) have fewer customers for each store
  
• Products not listed as "Primary" or "Additional" for a store don't sell as well
  
• Large Drinks Fridge price reduction to $2,200

We made a lot of UI changes, and this is only part 1 - EA 0.6 will continue to bring more UI and UX improvements!

• Split Contacts into groups to more easily find specific contacts
  
• Can toggle headhunter between searching forever and searching for a specific number of employees
  
• Can pay the employees bonus
  
• HR can upgrade their insurance plan without needing to set up a new contract
  
• Improved how tooltips work, and added many more
  
• Fixed some VoogleMap icon placements
  
• Fixed building overlay popup wouldn't stay visible when moving the mouse
  
• Reduced size of building overlay popup
  
• Fixed GPS icon still visible after selling the business
  
• Display abbreviated large numbers ($12,224,581 is now displayed as $12.2 M)
  
• Fixed several cases where interacting with the UI can move the player
  
• Fixed Subway map toggle in VoogleMaps couldn't be toggled off
  
• Fixed BizPhone layering to always be on top
  
• Fixed "Best Selling" list 4th color was incorrect
  
• Added direct links to help pages throughout the game
  
• UI hides and screen blurs when opening the mini-menu in-game
  
• Better search ability, when typing in drop-down menus,
  
• Can now use your Operating System number formatting (example: 1,000 vs 1.000)
  
• UI pop-ups don't show when mopping
  
• Improved number inputting
  
• Improved UI scaling on many items for super widescreen monitors
  
  • Main Menu
    
  • City Map Filters
    
  • Time Machine
    
  • Persona App
    
  • Contacts App
    
  • MyEmployees App
    
  • MarketInsiderApp
    
  • BizMan Summary Page
    
  • BizMan Business Info
    
  • BizMan Building Info
    
  • BizMan Insights
    
  • BizMan Deliveries
    
  • BizMan Marketing
    
  • Notifications / Notification List
    
  • F1 Help Menu
    
  • Interior Installation Firm Preview Terminal
• New Pricing & Inventory tooltip per item
  
  • Shows how items were sold at different price points in the last week
    
  • Now includes Hair Care Products that were used in different hair services (previously it only showed the items actually sold)
    
  • Note - this is a new feature, so for the first week, these numbers might be inaccurate

• Added furniture items at stores have "for sale" tags on them
  
• Added elevator to K1 buildings
  
• Added more street vents
  
• Made glass shelves on Rounded Shelves more visible.
  
• Improved tree hider
  
• Prevented a few furniture items from going through walls.
  
• Improved asphalt color
  
• Casino Upgrade - lots of new animations and now AI guests join you on the casino boat!
  
• Can freely rotate objects before placing then on a table/desk
  
• Computers can be used on Round Table now
  
• Gas Station
  
  • Upgraded fueling area to fit Freight Trucks
    
  • Upgraded Gas station repair shop
    
  • Improved gas station interior

• Office Printer
  
• 2 new wall-mounted lights
  
• Computer Monitor
  
• Wooden Cocktail Bar Set
  
  • Bar
    
  • Bar Corner
    
  • Bar Roof
    
  • Bar Roof Corner
    
  • Beer Shelf
    
  • Drinks Counter

• New, expanded tracklist of music
  
• When using your own music, the lag issues should be fixed now!
  
• Jingles/Ads! After a few songs, you'll hear a short radio ad/jingle for an in-game business!
  
• Each AI business has specific radio settings
  
• Radio music now continues to play in BizPhone Apps or while looking at VoogleMaps
  
• Radio tracks won't restart when you enter buildings/vehicles
  
• Fixed when fast-forwarding time, the radio station changes
  
• Speakers placed in buildings are no longer controller by BizPhone volume
  
• When player DJs at home, the DJ booth now plays music

• Water sounds from fountains
  
• Adding boxes to hand truck
  
• Adding product into a shopping basket
  
• Police Sirens (ambient sounds)
  
• Forklift Sounds
  
• Better "error" sound

• Reduce vehicle damage by 20%
  
• Broken/sputtering vehicle engine sounds when the car is out of fuel or too broken to drive
  
• Better vehicle crash sounds
  
• Can enter vehicles (including taxis) from either side now
  
• Fixed 3rd Ave / 7th St light out of sync
  
• Fixed several issues with large trucks on 6th Ave
  
• Fixed traffic gets stuck at 30 2nd Ave

• Fixed issues where you could get stuck in Manhattan Business School
  
• Fixed issues making it difficult to click in some situations
  
• Fixed left-click now grabs boxes
  
• Fixed a couple memory leaks
  
• Fixed issue if you click to "discard" an item while your mouse was over an employee
  
• Fixed some issues causing the time to appear incorrectly
  
• Fixed could exit a scooter without stopping
  
• Fixed product backorders could overlap the same item that was already on backorder
  
• Fixed repair UI not appearing if you leave the vehicle in the garage overnight
  
• Fixed cash register customer queue resetting the path in some instances
  
• Fixed issue where time could sometimes unpause in a building preview
  
• Fixed forklift can grab items that are out of stock
  
• Fixed scheduling display issue with two shifts, if you put the second shift in front of the first
  
• Fixed dirt doesn't generate on tables/chairs if the player isn't in the business
  
• Fixed dirt doesn't generate from customers in front of the cash register
  
• Fixed MarketInsider events shouldn't include office fees
  
• Fixed the building hider sometimes activating when it shouldn't or not activating when it should
  
• Fixed camera doesn't lock to car in warehouses or underground parking
  
• Fixed an issue where player could soft-lock themselves if they got a $14,999 loan instead of $15,000
  
• Fixed employee demand exploits with scheduling: Employee now remembers how many days and hours they have worked that week, so you can't adjust their schedule in the middle of the week to make them work longer
  
• Mouse driving has returned to "click" to accelerate (rather than based on the mouse position)
  
• Fixed "MyEmployee" alert indicator not updating if the employee offer has expired
  
• Fixed various collider and navigation bugs
  
• Fixed no confirmation on mass candidate actions
  
• Fixed changing business type while waiting for interior installation can cause soft-lock
  
• Fixed changing the autosave timer was not updating until after the next autosave
  
• Fixed soft-lock if hairdresser closes while player is getting a haircut
  
• Fixed default rotation of wooden product case is wrong
  
• Fixed health insurance wasn't listed on EconoView
  
• Fixed some incorrect placement/navigation in Ika
  
• Fixed incorrect Cigar Shelf capacity in help files
  
• Fixed could interact with two activities (TV / computer / bed) at once and soft-lock yourself
  
• Fixed blueprints don't save the hand truck location
  
• Fixed issue where your character was trying to navigate to an object you deleted
  
• Fixed failed furniture deliveries that were sporadically happening
  
• Fixed that other cabinet types weren't fulfilling a tutorial objective.
  
• Fixed LuxConcept customer queue
  
• Fixed eating food while in business school could soft-lock you
  
• Fixed sometimes can't discard mop
  
• Fixed Jensen Capital front desk worker wrong uniform
  
• Fixed hand truck makes noise while paused
  
• Fixed Interior Designer reset some unsaved floor designs when overlapping with new floors
  
• Fixed subway names were showing the wrong names
  
• Fixed a few issues related to longer game sessions.
  
• Fixed Contacts App showing wrong opening hours for businesses
  
• Fixed some instances where MarketInsider was showing the wrong number of items
  
• Fixed multiple speakers don't always sync up in larger buildings or after being placed
  
• Fixed noticeable loop in Vord Tiara Vic
  
• Fixed some issues causing players to see boxes of "undefined"
  
• Fixed antialiasing not activating when changing settings in-game
  
• Prevented newer blueprints from being seen in older versions of the game (doesn't apply to blueprints created prior to EA 0.5's full release)

---

Special thanks to everyone who tested things out on the experimental branch and gave a lot of valuable feedback! Due to all your help, we're really hoping this is the best update yet!

From the entire Big Ambitions team, we hope you enjoy this update!

~ Hovgaard Games