Cyber Knights: Flashpoint News

Knights, a big update has arrived tonight. This one has been months in process, slowly moving forward to complete the heavy lifting of rebuilding the game's meta-visualizations for Talents, Full Auto, Overwatch, enemy Sight Cones and security devices. It's a huge scope but we're glad to have arrived here with a big update tonight for all of our heisters. We've also scored a win for Steam Deck verification with this build, added movement alerts for prox-mines, improved the skip enemy turn system and made a huge bundle of small but important updates to mission maps to be sure they play as expected.

If you enjoy the updates, improvements and expanding content - please take a minute to leave a review. The small team here appreciates every one!


[h2]All New Meta-Visualizations Sticks to Geometry[/h2]
All of the range and sight widgets or meta-visuals in the game have received a big update with Update #161. Before these were shown as 2D colored and semi-transparent objects that floated in the level at the plane where they originated. This leads to a lot of difficulties, making it hard to understand where boundaries are, making it hard to understand happens once elevation changes are involved and can paint a lot of meta-visuals onto the game that are not necessarily real (as these 2D objects mostly just ignored geometry).

A big thanks to the team who worked hard on rewriting this - it has been some of the steepest work and definitely the hardest shader work we've done for Cyber Knights.


But we are excited to share the results which are a big step forward. We're not 100% done (are we ever?) but everything included here is an upgrade on what we had before.

The changes are vast - so we'll try to list the most important ones were with demonstrative screenshots.


[h3]Security Devices and Walls[/h3]
In the old system, security devices were not using intelligent visualizations that knew about walls. Therefore, the old widgets just clipped right through walls and showed up on the other size. This didn't make any sense and was ugly! Security device meta-visuals now respect walls correctly. To test other areas where they might not see you due to high or lower cover, you'll want to rely on movement alerts.


[h3]Talent Range Circles[/h3]
All Talent ranging circles were also just 2D. They had the advantage of showing through geometry but they were still stuck at a specific plane where the character was making it really hard to tell sometimes if another character or enemy was going to be in range. This could be especially painful when trying to pick a movement destination and not being sure if a target for the Talent you would use would be close enough.

Now all Talent ranges draw directly over the geometry. This makes it so much easier to tell if a target is inside our outside of the range. This has always required a chance in how Talent range is calculated, which makes the range (marginally longer). Instead of using a true distance including vertical (which would create a sphere around the character and be very hard to visualize) we measure Talent range only in the X,Z plane without any vertical distance calculation. Therefore, the Talent visualization is a giant cone not a circle that is overlaid on the geometry. This gives some advantage to the Talent user but it also ensures the visualizations are always correct.


[h3]Improvements for Elevation[/h3]
Sight cones, Overwatch and Full Auto cones were especially bad with elevation in the previous versions. If they were pointed at higher elevation, they disappeared as they just went under the floor. if they were pointed at lower elevation, they ran out into the sky and were very hard to understand against the lower level geometry.

This is an area where we can still improve, but these new meta-visuals are already much better. If these sight cones are pointed at lower geometry, the result is really nice. In the case of pointing at higher geometry, you can see the edge lines effectively but lose a lot of the exact visualization of what can be see / Overwatched / shot and need to rely on movement alerts at that point.


[h3]Low Cover vs. Sight Lines[/h3]
In the old system for stealth, if an enemy's sight lines hit something like a barricade that provided low cover then the entire sight line on the far side would allow a sneaking character to move through it. That created silly situations like this where a guard standing at a low wall was very, very bind.

We've now updated this sight system with some new rules where the sight line will return to full visibility after 5 meters roughly, unless it is farther than 60% down the enemy's sight distance. So, if an enemy is standing far away from a barricade, they will lose full sight on the other side of it, but an enemy standing close to a barricade only has a limited blind spot.

This still lets you create long a barricade right in front of the enemy - if you can move quietly enough! - but adds a new complexity a lot of stealth situations that used to be (silly but) easier.


[h3]Prop Updates[/h3]
We did some work with this update to focus on certain sets of props, like the shelving units shown above, that were not about what height they were. Now the shelves are clearly "crouch to sneak behind" height except where there are items up top where they block sight. Helpful improvement in the first area of the game as well as across many other levels!


[h2]Prox-Mines Warning[/h2]
Oddly, Prox-Mines were missing a proper movement alert. These alerts now appear, warning that you're going to be damaged on this movement path. Very nice!


[h2]3/4 Steam Deck Verification Update[/h2]
We've made some nice progress toward final Steam Deck verification with this update, moving from 1/4 items in the checklist as green to 3/4 items as green. We have now exposed 100% functionality available through your controller, improved the consistency of display of controller widgets instead of sometimes letting the keyboard and mouse appear.

This comes along with an updated F10 system that allows you to pop the feedback form in game with a left stick press and then use virtual keyboards to input any text you'd like to send along all from a controller the steam deck.

The last standing knock against the game's verification status is the small text size, so we have pivoted and are starting to work on that project.

[h2]Better Skip Enemy Turn[/h2]
We have made some major improvements to Skip Enemy Turn, expanding the number of cases that you can simply skip massively. In the previous version, once real fighting started the amount of enemy turns you could skip began to drop pretty rapidly as the system simulates their move and anticipates things that might interrupt them. An enemy turn can only be skipped (for now) if they are determined to have no interruptions.

With this update, we've fixed issues with mis-detection of interruption sources like dead bodies, which were being counted even if the enemy was Alerted and was going to run over the body without comment or stopping. This new level of awareness in the detection system is letting us skip a lot more turns and makes the game faster and more fun to play.


[h2]Map Improvements[/h2]
In addition to the big meta-visual upgrade, we also took some time to rip through the list of F10s reporting on minor issues with maps and fixed about 50% of all report issues. This resolves issues with odd pathing, barricades that aren't really there, places you can't squeeze through that look like you should be able to, lootboxes not provide cover, and different types of props that you could simply walk in to.


[h2]v1.8.137 - 10/20/2024[/h2]
- Rebuilt visualization of all geometry shown on the map - sight cones, Talent ranges, Full Auto, Overwatch, security devices
- Visualizations stick to the geometry instead of floating over it, making it easy to track areas of effect
- Visualizations handle up and down elevation more gracefully (down is still better than up)
- Piece of low cover in enemy sight cone does not set rest of sight cone to yellow (blocked by cover), resets after 5m
- Security devices visualization now stops correctly at walls instead of bleeding through
- Prox-Mines now give a movement alert when your movement will cause damage
- Improved Steam Deck verification report - only text size legibility prevents verification
- Fixed confusing shelving unit prefabs that were never clear if they were sneaking (crouch) or sprinting (standing) cover
- Vastly improved skip enemy Turn, once combat starts 50%+ more turns will be skippable
- Fixed many small issues in level geometry (squeezing through small areas), cover (lootboxes!), walking into things (small gray tables)
- Can now squeeze between 3 barrel fuel tanks, issues with props placed making it look like you could squeeze through but couldn't

This Update #161 is dedicated to doing things faster. Everything in your Inventory, Market, NanoFab and Cold Storage is now fasterrrrr. You can submit F10s faster because we remembers you Discord username and you can make new games faster because we remember your Attribute selections from the last time. We've added a new appearance option to tweak lip color and we've also adjusted the default Screen Move to wide screen to help players on larger, wider screens like 4K who are encounter the game feeling like it is just too small to play. And finally we've fixed another set of issues with the Scourge and the UNA Hacker recruits. These two - so much trouble!


[h2]Performance for All Item Grids[/h2]
We've enhanced the scrolling and pooling solution for our big data tables in the safehouse - Cold Storage, Inventory, Market and NanoFab. One some of these screens, players were seeing 500-1000 items piling up and the load times were tanking. This new update should make those screens as snappy as they ever were, regardless of the size of the lists.

Of course, the next thing needed here is a lovely Bulk Sell tool that will help you filter these huge lists and then sell things rapidly in large packages to your Contacts instead of being asked to sell them one at a time (madness I tell you!). Stay tuned for that - now that the performance is ironed out, that's next.


[h2]Lip Color[/h2]
You can now set (and reset) the lip color of your characters. Go bold, go dark, go smokey and if you want use the cancel button to drop back to the default skin tone. This feels like a nice add to have some more color controls for your characters - enjoy playing with it. Some of the contacts are due an upgrade after all these new appearance options.


[h2]Remembering Choices[/h2]
In the F10 form, we are now nicely remember anything you enter into the Discord field. If you are Discord, it is extremely helpful for us to be able to reach out to you with more questions about a ticket or to follow up afterwards, so we appreciate you adding your details. And of course, for typing it so many types (madness I tell you!) Now, type it on last time please and we remember forever :D


Also, to help smooth out new Knight creation, once you've created a Knight once we remember your Attribute choices and just use them again next time through.


[h2]TV Screen Mode by Default[/h2]
We've upgraded to TV screen mode by default which assumes that you'd like the elements on your screen to stay about the same relative size as they would in a 1920x1080p resolution. This indicates that the elements will grown physically larger as your screen gets larger. In the PC screen mode, the elements will stay exactly the same physical size as they would on a 1080p, which means they become smaller relative to your screen size. Blah blah, whatever - we need a better name but this a better default for Steam Deck, 1080p screens and large and wide screen as well. You can always swap to back PC mode -- let us know how this change feels (if you see any difference).

[h2]More Recruit Fixes[/h2]
There have never been a more troublesome set of recruits than the Treaty '31 Scourge and Hacker. Upon their release, there were a few bugs, which we fixed in a few days. But the fall out and need to keep cleaning up from those bugs has been ... annoying constant. A big thanks to everyone sending in F10s, we hope these are the last 2 fixes for characters who got stuck in one way or another.

[h2]v1.8.135 - #161: Rip Roar - 10/17/2024[/h2]
- Major performance boost for all Inventory, Cold Storage, Market and NanoFab screens with lists of things
- Added appearance option to adjust lip color and new option for some colors to revert back to default
- Swapped default "Screen Mode" to "TV" (where the UI keeps its proportions as screen gets bigger) vs. "PC" (where the elements stay same size on larger screens, feels smaller)
- New Game now remembers the Attributes you set for your last Knight so you can start more quickly
- Feedback form (F10) remembers the Discord username so you don't have re-add it
- Fixed bug with Scourge recruit sometimes appearing directly into roster as if already on the team
- Fixed issue with delaying choice for UNA Hacker recruit could leave hacker stuck on roster

Knights of New Boston - this one is a patch to catch up on some bugs that snuck in about prisoner handling. We're working on some new and exciting story levels with cool happenings, but this caused an issue where prisoners were appearing out of their cell or not at all. We've also further pushed the Sells Cyberdeck service out to levels 5 and 6 and correctly aligned all the Power Level decks out to that point. And finally, we fixed a few lingering issues that could occur with Legwork and the new recruits from Era '31.


[h2]Prisoners Escaped![/h2]
If you started a level with a goal to save a prisoner but discovered that prisoner was either (1) not visible at all or (2) standing right in the middle of your crew ... this is the bug. In all the F10 cases we've seen, fixed and tested this is unfortunate, silly look but you can still play out the entire level. Just be aware, if you free the prisoner by opening their cell, they will become active right where they are standing, they will not move to the cell.

If you do have a hung game or you can't restart the mission after this patch, please reach out to us and we can help.

[h2]Sells Cyberdeck[/h2]
First up, we made a mistake in the service name for Sells Cyberdeck last update. Suddenly a "Sells Milspec Cyberdeck (4)" appeared on your Ghostwire contacts, and that has now been corrected to "Sells Cyberdecks (4)".

In addition to that, we've slotted the Jupiter Victus and the UltraTek Galaxy decks into their respective - and new - service levels at 5 and 6. Your Ghostwire contacts and anyone else willing to sell you a cracked deck now have one of the longest service ladders in the game, so keep the happy, feed them Favors and accounts and see if you can get your way up to those high level decks.

[h2]Era '31 Fixes[/h2]
When Era '31 came out there were a few bugs we missed - that you could put assign a Potential Recruit to a Legwork, and that 2 of the same proc-gen Legworks could end up running at the same time. Both of these happened to players and while we closed the bugs allowing them to happen, there was possible downstream data corruption that we've cleaned up in this update.

1. If you assigned a Potential Recruit to a Legwork, when that Legwork finished it would get stuck at 0h. Fixed!
   
2. It was possible to end up with a character who had run one of the doubled Legworks who is permanently stuck "On Legwork" even though there is no Legwork anymore. Fixed!
   

[h2]v1.8.133 - 10/16/2024 [/h2]
- Fixed critical bug where prisoners were not appearing in their cells - reach out if you have a hung game and can't restart mission
- Adjusted power Levels of Cyberdecks Jupiter Victus and UltraTek Galaxy to 5 and 6
- Expanded Sells Cyberdecks for Contacts up to level 6, allowing sale of Victus and Galaxy decks
- Fixed bug where Ghostwire service for selling Cyberdecks appeared twice as "Sells Cyberdecks" and "Sells Milspec Cyberdecks"
- Fixed aftermath bugs of legwork bugs that existed right after ERA '31 story release - 2 bugs that could hang legwork or character on invisible legwork

Tonight's update is a quick one, so I will keep this quick as well. We've made some important updates to the feedback form for Steam Deck and controller support, added a 4th service level for Program Sellers with new program options, reduced IO Size for Deception II and Disarm II and fixed Decoy (HOT) not coming out fully hot.

Let's dive right into this small update -

[h2]F10s from Steam Deck[/h2]
Forever, we've lovingly called the in-game feedback and bug reporting system "F10s". We've got a bug moji on our Discord and everything. But that has left a key feature off Steam Deck (as you couldn't submit or get the keyboard up in the form) or if you're playing with a controller.

With Update #159, we've finished rebinding the default Steam deck / controller config to let you submit Feedback (aka F10!) with the left stick click. This can now be seen from all the HUDs and main menu as well, so fire away with info about how we can make your experience better.

This has also required us to rewrite the feedback form using the game's widgets and styles, which may have impacts on keyboard players as well. Please let us know if there are issues or where we can further improve.

Finally, for big picture mode or Steam Deck, you'll get the nice on-screen virtual keyboard which is one of the key requirements we had to hit on our road to Steam Deck Verified. We've got one last big item to tackle - which is UI scale and font size! Let's go!


[h2]Decoy (HOT)[/h2]
Last update missed a step to finalize the link of the new HOT effect to the new Decoy (HOT) programs. now you'll really get your bonus IO.


[h2]Sells Programs 4 + Attack IV[/h2]
We've also expanded the Sells Programs services from Contacts to have a 4th level you can reach via Limit Break. This level is rare air and offers Decoy III (not HOT) and a new program Attack IV. This massive attack program is very one-hit-kills with the amount of Damage it is dealing, and combined with a higher charge count makes a powerful tool to smash IC in a node when the time comes.
 
[h2]v1.8.131 - 10/14/2024[/h2]
- Upgraded Contact Sells Program service to have a 4th level, now selling Attack IV (one-hit-kill) and Decoy III (not HOT)
- Reduced IO size for Deception II and Disarm II to 100 qb
- Relinked Decoy (HOT) to the correct bonuses, now grant +IO Speed qbps
- Updated F10 feedback form so it can be used by controllers and Steam Deck
- Updated default keybindings for controllers and Steam Deck so that left stick click brings up feedback form

Welcome to the dusk of the weekend in New Boston! We're continuing the tour of second-round balance and improvements and tonight are hitting on pricing in the weapons, mods and armor categories. We've also added a sick new map - the burnt out floor of a flophouse in a street habstack - for proc-gen rotation, improved coherence for Cyberdeck sales, upgraded some Decoy programs to Decoy (HOT) and improved the Hype, Stress (etc!) affects of boosting and burning merc and contact relationships.

We always love rolling out something new and this is a key balance patch for the game's early economy. More will be following! if you are enjoy the game and our dedication to continued adds and improvements during Early Access, please take a minute to leave us a review. Remember, you can always edit it later!


[h2]Major Power Level 1-4 Price Drops[/h2]
With this update, we're catching up on some much needed price rebalancing for Power Level 1 to 4 weapons, weapon mods and armor. The old pricing baselines came from a time in the game when there were few other things to spend money on and so the prices fit better. But now with the competition for safehouse upgrades, cyberdecks, programs, more cybernetic implants and more - these prices were due a big drop.

Weapons dropped the most, ranging from 25% to 50% drop for some early game upgrades. Weapon Mods were already modestly price and dropped a bit, mostly around Power Level 2 and 3. Armors also had some modest reductions in the earlier Power Levels to help make those first upgrades easier to afford.

Items on the other hand got modest gains, where the baseline prices for a Power Level 2 and 3 Item jumped by 10-20%. Item prices of course are small potatoes ($8K became $10K) and these price adjustments also boost the sale value for Item Blueprints on the far side, so this has its benefits as well.

We are still working on a package of upgrades for weapons to help reinforce and boost the stat differences between the levels to further justify the expense to upgrade, but this price drop should help.


[h2]New Proc-Gen Map: Blown Out Flat[/h2]
We've added a new map to the proc-gen rotation for the Battle Strike objective and anticipate adding it to other objective types throughout next week. This Blown Out Flat is a destroyed floor of a cheap habstack, utterly abandoned and dilapidated. The best kind of place for criminal dealings, gang warfare and hiding valuable illegal loot. The Blown Out Flat is on the smaller, more compact side of missions, so it is lovely to roll out additional variety in map types.


[h2]Cyberdeck Service to Power Levels[/h2]
We've made some adjustments Contact services for selling Cyberdecks. We've extended the service ladder to having 4 levels and adjusted the placement of the Cyberdecks sold within those levels so that their is a clear and consistent match of Service Level to Power Level. This has moved one deck between levels and also another deck that was previously rated as Power Level 5 has been downgraded to Power Level 4.

Get those limit breaks with your deck sellers and get back up to the latest!


[h2]Decoy Utilities go HOT[/h2]
HOT is one of the designations for program variations. All HOT programs include IO buffer bonuses. With Update #158, we've upgraded the Decoy programs available from any Contact who offers the special Utility Program service to be Decoy I to III with the HOT designation. So, in addition to volunteering to be the first unloaded, these programs can now buff your IO. Some of you will find - depending on where you bought your Decoy programs before - that you now have these upgraded programs in your Inventory or already installed on your decks.

[h2]Improved Hype / Stress or Influence / Exposure Changes[/h2]
We are prepare for the relationship flows of Hype, Stress, Loyalty, Discontent and for Contacts Influence and Exposure. This coming upgrade will cause relationships from merc to merc or Contact to merc to be more powerful, as big changes maybe ripple outward. If a merc likes a Contact and you treat that Contact badly, the merc may Stress over it.

But that's all coming soon, in the next few updates. For now, the change in Update #158 is to further reinforce the changes to all of these values for your story actions. If you Burn or Boost a merc or contact by a story choice, the hit is going to be stronger. You'll get over all more Hype or Stress, or suffer more Discontent, Exposure etc, where some of these story choices were not feeling so impactful (+10% Exposure or +10% Stress was just not ... enough).

Going along with this, we fixed a bug where helping the UNA hacker could result in a Burn with your Face's relationship instead of a Boost (as queued by the dialog).

And, on that subject as well, we fixed Hype and Stress sorts for Roster, as they were backwards. If you sort by Stress, you probably want the high Stress characters at the top, right?

[h2]v1.8.129 - #158: Markdown Flat - 10/13/2024[/h2]
- Major price reduction for Weapons, Mods, Armor for Power Level 1-4, from 10% to 50% reduction
- Added new proc-gen map "Blown Out Flat": destroyed floor of street habstack with starting Objective Battle Striker
- Aligned Cyberdeck Power Levels with Sells Cyberdeck service levels, new Service Level 4 now added to sell most powerful decks
- Upgraded Decoy programs sold by Utility Program service to Decoy (HOT) with bonus IO
- Improved Stress/Hype/Loyalty/Discontent and Influence/Exposure changes for Burning / Boosting relationships with story actions
- Fixed bug where refusing to hire the UNA Hacker could cause Loyalty loss with your Face instead of (correct) gain
- Fixed issue where Haven Smokeout Wireghost could be invisible, not spawn or refuse to flee
- Fixed ERA story bug where Scourge recruit oddly started at level 1
- Fixed sort in Roster for Hype and Stress so that highest Hype or Stress is at the top