Kept you waiting, huh?
For real though, i am sorry it took so long - a combined storm of my master thesis, issues with the 3d models, FCS setups, and FCS in general meant this took me much longer than i originally anticipated. Although on the flipside, the update got much larger than anticipated, too!

The main focus of this update was to add clothing and armor, something that was missing from the original mod launch. At the same time, this update also includes tons of bug fixes, rebalancing, and other requested features (crafting, recruitment, etc)! Let's take a look:

Armor/Clothing:

• Hazmat Suits: They are pretty self-explanatory in what they do, offering exceptional protection against the elements of the continent while being lightweight armor. They are primarily meant for the organic races of kenshi, such as humans and sheks. They come in two versions: Hood down consists of pants and torso clothing, where your character has the hood leisurely pulled down for extra fashion points, and hood up, where... well, they have the hood up. Unfortunately due to FCS restrictions, the hood itself needs to be an actual armor piece so that character hair can be hidden, which means this set consists of pants, torso and head clothing. An alternate version of the pants with different folds is also included for variation. They come in three color schemes: Original, featuring the markings and color of the oldworld rigs; faction color 1 (F1 ingame) and faction 2 (F2, respectively) don't feature the original markings and can be colored as you wish. A version without gloves for the hood down variant also exists, fitting hivers much better. These suits can clip with vanilla shoes, so i added thematically fitting rubber boots. These also fit the riot armor well.
  
• Riot Armor: Now, hear me out... I swear, they fit into the lore haha. Essentially, the goal with this armor piece was to introduce a modern version of heavy armor that fits the overall style of my mod well. I can also see it fit in great with the tech hunters, who currently don't have their own heavy armor. Like above, these come in three color schemes, and also feature a torso variant without gloves that fits skeletons and hivers better. The helmet has two variants, visor up, and visor down.
• Gas masks: Pretty much just normal gas masks, although tailored to fit the hazmat suits perfectly. They come in both head and belt armor versions. The belt version pairs really well with the riot helmet with its visor up, highly recommend it for maximum oppression!
  
• Service Jackets: I finally made a good version of the service jacket i originally shipped with the mod for the K-Units, being much closer to what i originally planned on. This thing was an absolute nightmare to rig because it is so loose, and i had to tweak the original mesh which was simulated to hand even lower a few times, but it works now. Features 4 versions, a special K-Unit scheme similar to the original that you can only spawn with, a generic grey version, and two faction color versions. Is classed as medium armor due to its heavy fabric intertwined with additional polymer fibers.

These sets represent the bulk of the mesh updates for the mod. While i am happy with how they turned out overall, they still need some minor tweaks i will hopefully get to at some point. The Hazmat suit can fail to cover parts of the body if you really go ham inside the character creator, for example. I still hope you like them! Feel free to leave feedback on their stats, currently they are very close to vanilla counterparts.

Backpacks:

• Tactical backpack: These are meant to go with the riot armor, but do look very decent on their own. medium inventory size.
  
• Improvised pressure converters: I made these for two reasons: first, to help alleviate issues with the crafting chain, allowing your chars to store pressurized canisters more efficiently when moving them around, and secondly to offer players a more agile playstyle that trades off ammo capacity for less combat penalties. The first reason become obsolete during rebalancing, see that section down below. Also exists as a normal backpack for items, because fashion is endgame.

Melee Weapons:

• Crowbar: Is a crowbar. Blunt secondary weapon that features a decent mix of stats.
  
• Pipe Wrench: Also a secondary weapon, but heavier, so it hits harder.
  
• Combat Spate: I originally planned on this as a dedicated secondary weapon for K-Units, but never got around to it. A hacker that has quite good reach.

All melee weapons can also be found as manufactured by Ever-Blue Sky on your starting drones or wandering remnants, their manufacturing proving to be of decent quality.

K-Unit/Drone Upgrades:

• Utility Vest: A specialized torso armor made for drones - all kinds of drones, these fit hivers too, due to their similar body structure to worker drones. Offers high agility and great bonuses to its wearer, but they completely lack arm protection. Quite good for ranged units.
  
• Extended sensor array: An unique belt slot upgrade for drones, offering bonus stats to their wearer. Can even be crafted to upgrade all your drones before the final fights of the game.
  
• External cooling system: An unique upgrade for K-Units. Quite the upgrade for your unit, but it can't be crafted, only be found in the wild - it was incredibly rare to begin with.

These where also planned from the start, with their 3D models existing pretty much from day one. However, i never got around to port them over, but they are here now at last. The vest fitting hivers as well is a fun coincidence, but i don't think it breaks balance or anything so i allowed it.

K-Unit remodel:

I finally (mostly) finished "Observer", or K-Unit, as you know them. I have to be honest, the original K-Unit that launched with my mod was a partially finished highpoly model that i rushed a lot of parts temporarily so i could put it in this mod. However, with it being mostly done now, i implemented the "real" version. Features much higher detail fidelity, mostly around the lower legs and hands and a completely different headplate. I know this might be a bad decision for some people. I never thought i'd see handdrawn fanart of my mod, and when i did, it made this decision even harder. Still, while i think the new model is better for this mod, i have uploaded a patch that gives you the old K-Unit back (i won't judge, trust me).

Secret items:

Yes, there are secret items for you to hunt down - two in total, so far. One is more of an easter egg, but the other one can be quite powerful. Check the spoiler section if you want to know the what and where, but i recommend looking around a bit yourself - they aren't hidden too hard, i think. Just doing your normal ruins looting runs should be more than enough.

Recruitment/Game Starts:
Drones can now be found wandering the continent, and feature new dialogue. They belong to their own faction, and might even rely on shoddy replacement limbs after an especially rough landing. They also draw from their own list of unique names! You are still able to recruit drones from bars as you are used to, but they also feature the new dialogue and naming system.
I wasn't able to test the world spawns too much on my own, please let me know if they work well for you! otherwise i need to adjust their spawn rates.
You can now also recruit a K-Unit in any of your playthroughs, so you no longer need to rely on the game starts of the mod. They also have a new, custom name list now.
New starts:

• High tide: A start with 5 K-Units, 20 Drones, and all three walkers (without their equipment though!). This is meant as a way for people who want to build a drone army to get right into the fray instead of having to run around for hours recruiting. Don't think it's balanced, but fun anyway.
  
• Lost Signals: Starts you off with a single K-Unit missing an arm. They are immediately hunted by their surroundings - you need to think fast if you want to survive! Might want to make use of your last scan results...

All Starts now feature a custom note that should help locate the Walkers through some rough hints. It also hints at what they are carrying.

Dialogue/Lore:

As said before, there is a new dialogue tree for drones that chooses from one of three branches that hopefully add some flavor to the lore and immersion of the mod. If a drone has lost a limb, they feature special dialogue. I hope the new dialogue reads more fluently than the old one since it less ambitious in its worldbuilding ambitions... The K-unit also has a custom dialogue tree. And yes, i will ramble about the FCS here again - There is no way to have NPCs check for your subrace, so i had to make some heavy tradeoffs. I originally wanted completely different dialogue and outcomes for both trees depending on if you talk to a drone with another drone, K-Unit etc, but the only check that works is for skeletons. You will recognize this in some parts of the dialogue, i tried to write around the issue though. If someone ever finds a way to make the subrace checks work i will redo the dialogue yet again. Also no idea how many lines of dialogue i've written, but it really is a lot. Feel free to leave your feedback, as usual!

There are also now lore snippets on all Walkers that detail different aspects of life on the rigs and their eventual downfall. Unfortunately, you will need to re-recruit the Walkers so they spawn with them and their adjusted loot.

Rebalances:
- All normal backpack inventory sizes increased. As people pointed out, there is no reason for them to be different to vanilla.
-Gas Canister Rebalance: this is the big one. Resized both natural gas and pressurized gas to fit normal inventory (natural gas from 2x10 to 2x8, pressurized gas canister from 2x13 to 2x8).
resized pressure converter inventory from 2x13 to 2x8, but it now stacks to 6. reduced combat speed mult from 0.6 to 0.8. Increased encumbrance reduction from 0.4 to 0.2. increased charges of pressure canisters from 1 to 3. increased weight from 4 to 40.
With this, The biggest issue of chars not correctly hauling the canisters because they do not use backpack space (only "body" inventory space) is resolved. Even though the canisters now fit different backpacks, you will still find an incentive to use the pressure converters: they can carry 6 canisters with 18 shots in total with only a weight of 48kg and a combat speed reduction of 10%, while a large backpack can carry 30 shots in total with a weight of 200kg and a combat speed reduction of 20%. I will adjust the value of stackable canisters/chargers based on community feedback, for now this is just a buff across the board (less movement penalty for pressure converts, 3x as many shots in reserve, smaller inventory footprint of both canisters, rifles could be used with normal backpack/from inventory if you want to. )The rest of the values stay as they are (athletics, melee attack, stealth penalties).
It is not a perfect solution though, and i fully blame the FCS for that. If i was able to simply restrict pressurized canisters to my backpacks this would not be an issue. Upping the weight to use stacking/encumbrance reduction as means to balance is clunky, but necessary. And yes, you can break this balance very easily by using trader backpacks. Again, it is your playthrough, play how you want to.
-adjusted building inventories according to canister rebalance.
-all backpacks and crossbows can now be crafted. Keep in mind backpacks having no crafting time is a FCS restriction, as you were never meant to be able to do that.
-Heavy bolting rifles: now have different min/max per level instead of being uniform, since they can be crafted. adjusted min/max values since they can now be crafted. adjusted max price value (30-40k to 12-28k). no longer sold by scrapyard.
-gas rifles: adjusted prices (1500-25000 to 5500-16000). now have a different min max dmg per level since they can be crafted. no longer sold by scrapyard.
-Significantly increased the buffs offered by K-Unit prosthetics, so that they are still useful in endgame compared to other prosthetics. Focus on dex and ranged combat.
-Drones can now spawn in The Eye, Stormgap coast, Shem, Northern Coast, Cannibal Plains, Border Zone, Dreg, Stenn Desert, Shun, Bonefields, high bonefields, Stobles gamble, stobes garden, sniper valley, the great desert, heng, south wetlands, the hook, vain. They belong to "Remnants" and feature new dialogue.
-All Walkers now feature deterministic lootpools, meaning you ALWAYS get the same loot - this is very important as it means i can ensure that all the items show up at least once for you, instead of duplicated pushing out other stuff. Setting this up was a pain, but i think you'll enjoy the change.
-I probably have forgotten like 80% of the stuff i adjusted or fixed, i will come back to this list at some point.

Known Issues:

As always, nobody is perfect, and i am sure as hell not. Here's a list of known issues i hope to fix over the coming days:

• Clipping issues on the hazmats suits around the shoulders
  
• Shoes clip with the hazmats suits. Was hoping the vanilla ones fit, but they don't. Already have a mesh for rubber boots ready, just need to implement it. This has been implemented!
  
• The bolts of the gas rifles and heavy bolting rifles need to be remade to better make use of their textures. Nobody ever mentioned this though, so very low priority.
  
• The bolt clips ever so slightly when loaded on the heavy bolting rifle. Again, nobody ever mentioned it, so i never fixed it till now.
  
• Wasn't able to redo the pressure converter arm piping for now so it better connects to the rifle.
  
  Again, i probably forgot half of what i wanted to mention, not just for the balance portion, but the update in general, i am really not good at writing precise patchnotes - thank you for bearing with me through this wall of text lol.
  I am very thankful for the very warm reception i got ever since the mod launched. I never thought it would garner much attention, being so "out there", but here we are. I am, as usual, gonna patch out any launch issues and bugs ASAP, to ensure a smooth launch. Best of fun!