"See this graph? This is Weyland’s profits during the War. Up, up, up. Notice the spike at the beginning, here, where hostilities broke out, and then again after, when reconstruction contracts were awarded. Weyland profits off the war, Weyland profits off the peace."
     –The Worlds of Android

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Daedalus Complex, the first Data Pack in the Red Sand Cycle for Android: Netrunner!

After previous Data Packs have explored the game's cyberstruggles with the settings of Luna, SanSan, Mumbad, and a New Angeles wracked by economic chaos, Daedalus Complex and the Red Sand Cycle turn our attention to Mars. There, terraforming is already well underway, and millions of humans live alongside clones and bioroids in a handful of cities and nodes protected by transplas domes.

Still, life on the Red Planet is markedly different than life on Earth. It requires a certain ruggedness to live and work on a planet where simply traveling outside of the protected cities requires breathing assistance and protective gear. The shared hardships of survival have led to the de facto authority of the clans, and even though the Martian Colony Wars have ended, the tensions between the clans, the Martian Colonial Authority, and the corps remain high.

This is the volatile situation into which we are thrust by the sixty new cards (three copies each of twenty different cards) of Daedalus Complex. Named for the site where the Martians have developed the foundation for a space elevator similar to the Beanstalk on Earth, Daedalus Complex takes us deep into the conflicts between corps, clans, and the MCA. What we find is that Mars very much remains a semi-lawless frontier… and one in which any given spark has the potential to ignite a much larger flame.

Welcome to Mars

Mars is a planet of immigrants. Although several generations have lived, died, and worked to transform Mars into a planet that can sustain life, they're not yet done, and the planet remains plainly marked by the presence and influence of Earth's largest corporations. These corporations funded the earliest missions to colonize the planet and continue to invest in its workforce and resources, arranging spaceflights for would-be settlers willing to sign multi-year contracts akin to indentured servitude.

As a result, Martian laws tend to treat these Earth-directed corps quite favorably, and there's very little the corps cannot legally do. Shifts in ag-bubbles are long and grueling. Work conditions in the manufactories are dangerous. And the corps don't even have to pay workers in real money; they are entirely within their rights to pay in credits that workers can use only at corporate shops. Most importantly, the laws that regulate androids and their behavior on Earth do not extend to Mars.

These facts are not lost on the clans. Nor are they lost in the cards and Data Packs of the Red Sand Cycle. Instead, you'll uncover the secrets of warroids, military grade clones, and clan violence. You'll find the game's Criminals adapting to the challenges of running undetected within the confined spaces of Mars. After all, the planet isn't just a long flight from Earth; it's far enough away that even data traveling at the speed of light takes minutes to transmit to or from Earth-bound servers. This places a new emphasis on the structure and containment of the Red Planet's network, and the game's Shapers see these particular puzzles as new challenges worthy of their time.

And while the game's Runners are modifying their old tricks to suit these new circumstances, you'll find the Corps hard at work mining, terraforming, and building. In many ways, they're just conducting business as usual, but veteran players will quickly recognize some subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences in the ways the Corps flex their might with greater legal freedom. These lead to tensions among Haas-Bioroid's mining operations, and in Jinteki's work in agriculture.

Other businesses, like Weyland's Jemison Astronautics (Daedalus Complex, 16), simply use their legal and economic freedoms to pursue new advances, playing the sort of gambles that might not meet approval back on Earth. While most of the Red Planet's resources remain up for grabs, Jemison Astronautics intends to push forward at all costs, even if that means quickly leveraging its early successes for higher risk investments in the future.

The favorable Martian business enviroment, plus the fact that Weyland's Board of Directors sit more than two-hundred million kilometers distant, affords Jemison the autonomy it needs to do things like dump a Hostile Takeover (Core Set, 94) or an outdated Firmware Updates (Order and Chaos, 4) in favor of the High-Risk Investment (Order and Chaos, 7) that you can install, advance, and score in the same turn you rez your Oberth Protocol (Daedalus Complex, 18).

The Edge of Humanity

Mars doesn't just represent the extension of human influence throughout the solar system, it's also a place where the boundaries between human and not-human are blurred more heavily than on Earth. Bioroids and clones operate with fewer regulations. Humans live and work with fewer freedoms. Corps are free to pursue their profits with fewer ethical obligations.

These are the circumstances that drive our exploration of the Red Planet in Daedalus Complex and the Red Sand Cycle. We have many factions, all pursuing their own interests. We have a history of violence and rising tension. And we find tremendous opportunity for those men and women with enough talent to stalk about or secure the Network, removed from Earth and its system defenses by hundreds of millions of kilometers and several minutes worth of time.

Begin your exploration of Mars and its unique blend of cyberstruggles when Daedalus Complex arrives at retailers in the first quarter of 2017!