Cyber Knights: Flashpoint News

Knights, we have a late Sunday night update here to get us ready for the new week. This one includes some progression adjustments on higher difficulties (Matrix challenge), clear marking when mission is from a hand-written storyline vs. proc-gen, 4 new visuals for weapon mods, improved balance of UAR, SMG and AR, fixed a ton of small mistakes in Weapon Mods and Intrinsic Mod Blueprints. We've also made a set of control scheme improvements in the Roster for Steam Deck and controllers and added a ton of new debugging to your F10s in case you hit one of the 2 rare cases that can still cause an enemy's turn to lock up in game (hit F10, we will fix!)

Thanks to everyone playing, posting, and sharing the game with a review. Our tiny team couldn't do it without your support!

[h2]Continued Progression Tuning[/h2]
There has been a lot of chatter and feedback on our channels recently about progression, optimal styles of play, how to squeeze the most of our your money or base, loot tables and more -- all good healthy feedback showing that the game is really delivering the experience and helping us to highlight places we can tune that experience.

With this update, we've kept pulling the thread from the last couple updates about Power Level progression and high difficulties. We found some inconsistencies in how loot tables were rolled for higher difficulties as well as a clear bug where Mission Power Level boost and then Matrix Power Level boost were both being applied to Matrix hosts. This pushed Matrix hosts upwards in difficulty rapid on higher difficulties, faster than they should have climbed.

The process is continual to improve the game's progression and to round on the key systems missing (Power Play, Compromised, more storylines, dying Contacts, etc). Thanks for joining us on this wild Early Access ride to help us tune it better and better!

[h2]Marked High-Stakes Story Missions[/h2]

We've addressed a question about proc-gen vs. narrative missions we receive from some players with this update. Missions that are from one-off, non-repeating storylines are now marked in the timeline as High-Stakes with a yellow icon and a helpful hover. This can help you spot missions that are linked to a one-time storyline and spot those that lack the icon as proc-gen or repeatable elements.

[h2]New Weapon Mod Visuals[/h2]

We're always excited to expand the look and feel of the game's weapons and this update drops 3 new scope graphics from our kit as well as a new high-level suppressor. We'll be working on finalizing the art processing on these elements to keep pushing more variation in the team's armaments, including new looks for weapons and all new mod visuals.

[h2]UAR and Weapon Balances[/h2]

With Update #178, we've made some definitive upgrades to the class of UAR weapons to ensure they clearly fill the role of Kings and Queens of Full Auto. All UAR at Power Level 1+ have increased their Full Auto shot, making them more capable of unloading a full burst into more than one target or handing out more damage to a set of 4 targets at once.

Higher Power Level UARs have also gained 2-5m in maximum range and ticked up optimal range to reduce their range restrictions as the weapons become more powerful. On the flip side of that, Kaza Raildarts (and those that will follow in the Raildart template) have had their range trimmed by 2-3m.

We've also tweaked the angles for Overwatch and Full Auto cones for all UAR, SMG and AR to ensure you've got a nicer progression here as these weapons are capable of covering a wider arc.

[h2]Improved Weapon Mod Progressions[/h2]
We've fixed a heap of weapon mod issues! A ton of these were simply higher Rarity or Power Level mods that were not connected correctly with their bonuses and so mimicked the stats of a lower level mod of the same type. We've fixed 3 Shotgun body mods, 3 Pistol body mods, multiple higher Power Level intrinsic mods and

We've also finished the rename for melee weapons from IO-Batt to Ion Batt by fixing a number of mods that still had the old name, going from IO-Booster to Ion Boosters.

[h2]Continued Steam Deck / Controller Improvements[/h2]
We've been verified on the Steam Deck, but our work is not done. We've completed a round of improvements in the roster around how the game maintains your current selection when diving into a sub-screen. This is most notable around changing equipment - previously if you selected a character, and then changed their primary weapon, when you returned to the Roster your selection would be in the left hand list of mercs, not at the primary weapon. Now the game maintains that selection whenever possible.

Second, we've fixed issues with some of the floating hover elements on Steam Deck, like weapons and weapon mods, where the hover was aligned on the wrong side of the element and just dove off screen.

[h2]Final Freezes - Debugging to Isolate[/h2]

There are 2 reported freezes left in the game -- both are intermittent and very hard to reproduce. Either one of your mercs goes into a T-position when about to take an Overwatch reaction shot, or an enemy starts moving and then doesn't move and stays stuck in place while looping the running animation.

We're on the hunt and can't wait to fix the pair of these. With Update #178, we've added a huge heap of additional debugging information to your F10 reports that should help us track down the root causes of these two remaining freezes. If you see them, please hit F10 in the latest update!

[h2]v1.9.27 - 11/24/2024[/h2]
- Marked high-stakes story missions in the timeline vs. proc-gen missions to help make the difference clear
- Added new visual variety for weapon mods: 3 new scopes and 1 new suppressor
- Reduced range of Kaza Raildarts by 2-3m, increased range of higher PL UAR by 2-5m
- Increased/Rebalanced Full Shot count for all UAR above PL 1, ensuring UAR claim best FA slot
- Tweaked and increased Overwatch cone and Full Auto cone angles for UAR, SMG and AR throughout Power Level progression
- Improved Shotgun Body Mods: Harrier Grip, Thunderbolt Grip, Nightshade Grip
- Improved Pistol Body Mods: APEX Ammo, Klinger-Floki Reloader, Malkuur Advanced Ammo
- Improved some high Power Level Intrinsic Mods: Vapor Optics and Quantum Rifled Barrel
- Reclassified Shotgun Barrel mod Showstopper D-Rail correctly as Legendary Mod
- Fixed some duplicate Weapon Mods like DesMoines Tactical and Quicksilver Mechastock for Sniper Rifles
- Fixed some weapon mods still using name IO-Booster instead of Ion Booster for melee weapons
- Fixed Matrix Power Level scaling bug where power level adjustments include Mission Power Level and Matrix Power Level (together)
- Improved controller input for Roster, now remembers last selected button when returning from subscreen (faster to change out EQ)
- Fixed bugs on different screen resolutions where larger hovers (like weapon) could end up completely off screen
- Added a heap of new debug to F10s to isolate and fix final 2 game freezes - AI stuck running in place, T-position at Overwatch attack

Another week, another 3 updates, another new map released! Resupply Station is the 4th map of the new weekly map releases (is it still new!?) and is a wide-open and exciting map that forces some new styles of play, and rewards long range weapons, speed and daring strategies. We've also addressed the raging bug that was trapping Knights in the Urban HQ Assassinate missions, addressed issues with Team Power Level not going up correctly for any difficulty when the Team Power Level was 0 and more.

If you like new maps and think we should do more, please take a moment to consider reviewing the game! Help us spread the word about this improving and expanding game and the hard work that our small team is putting in.

[h2]New Weekly Map: Resupply Station![/h2]

It is now Week 4 of our Weekly Map Release schedule and we're here to deliver once again. With the Resupply Station, we're looking at a sprawling outdoor environment with a lot of open sight lines, wide open movement lanes and lots of empty open space. This map can be challenging in a lot of ways, with some of your extraction points secured behind a forcefield, and the large spaces and broken up cover making it tough both on stealth teams and teams in a gunfight needing to find the next scrap of cover. We're excited as it brings a strong dose of variety to the map design and sets you up for some new and harrowing heists.

The Resupply Station offers 5 new the proc-gen combos (map X objective) and brings the grand total of proc-gen objectives to the total to 72 proc-gen combos and represents another 7% increase in map variety (this is dropping with every new map, it's so good!). With a new map next week, the planned increase in variety for the Assassinate VIP map set and a new objective type coming - we should blow past the original goal of 80 proc-gen combos easily.

Every since we announced the Weekly New Map challenge we've been hard at work to deliver. We've hit 4 weeks in a row now and it is really helping the game grow rapidly. We certainly are going to have some misses, especially around the holidays, but it is rapidly expanding the mission map set and combo options (going from 48 to 72 in 4 weeks!).

[h2]Fixed Assassination at Urban HQ[/h2]
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The fix that we made yesterday for "Unknown" VIP in Urban HQ assassination missions had some unexpected consequences in missions made after the fact. Our focus was a bit too much on fixing the existing set of missions that were in play already and we missed on future missions.

This update fixes both - resolving the issue for anyone who is stuck in the middle of an Urban HQ Assassinate VIP mission without an exit (or not yet having killed the VIP).

This clears the road for new maps to come to the Assassinate VIP proc-gen objective, which is going to be a big boon.

[h2]Higher Difficulties and Team Power Level[/h2]

Over the last two updates, we've made changes to how Team Power Level increases are calculated. Thanks to @Phreak, we caught on to a mistake in the math as to who Team Power Level bonuses were calculated for higher difficulty games - in where the Mission Power Level was higher which results in a slower gain in Team Power Level (because you need to beat more missions to move from Team Power Level 3 to 4 than Team Power Level 1 to 2).

It was a chain of multiplications that resulted in unexpected result - higher difficulty games increase in difficulty scale slower than lower difficulty games and therefore "level off" or are "easier" than they should be.

We addressed most of this issue in the last update, and Update #177 catches up on one thing we missed, that while your team is below Power Level 1, everyone was getting extremely slow Team Power Level gain!

[h2]Fixed Missing Recharge Turns[/h2]

If you were using Font Scale above 0%, the recharge rate for Talents was disappearing in the class tree. This one took a little while to find but now we're going to be more attuned to watching the font scale on incoming F10s, so we can quickly identify issues that are simply bugs because of scaling.

[h2]v1.9.25 - #177: New Weekly Map "Resupply Station" - 11/21/2024[/h2]
- Added new proc-gen map "Resupply Station": a wide open transport hub that will push your team for speed, stealth or battle and supports +5 new proc-gen combos (Heist a CPU, Steal 3 Files, Scavenger, Kill 3 Captains, Bodyguard!)
- Fixed bug with getting stuck in Assassinate VIP mission with Unknown - reload game to continue / escape
- Fixed issue with Chrome / high difficulties gaining very low Power Level while Team Power Level was 0
- Fixed issue with Recharge Turns not appearing in class tree once Font Scaling was above 0%

Knights and mercs - we're excited to drop Update #176 with a roadmap milestone being knocked off the list with Steam Deck Verifcation, some new visual accessories and a big set of really important F10 fixes from your reports, prioritizing what is most important and most reported by the community right now. This Update #176 helps clear the decks for another weekly map release, maybe as soon as tomorrow.

We're working hard to constantly improve the game based on your feedback, so please send it in and you'll see the game improving weekly. If you're enjoying the insanity of our Early Access phase and the constant pace of updates, please take a moment to leave a review!

[h2]Steam Deck Verified![/h2]

It's official, with our latest round of improvements we are now Steam Deck verified! ✅

Many thanks to the players in the forums, on reddit and in our Discord who have been giving us feedback on both our default controls and the Steam Deck experience. We're continuing to work on improvements here and there (e.g. the filtering in cold storage, squashing any bugs reported through the in-game click left stick system), but the overall playability is feeling great. Verification signifies we've now checked off the final few details with text size (adjustable in the Options menu as well) and every keybinding in the game properly showing controller prompts (all fully rebindable). And Cyber Knights provides a native Linux build, so great performance with no need for Proton.

As most of you know, we're on a hot streak with...

• a new map being added each week
  
• the new Gunslinger class (bringing us to 44 total possible character class combinations!)
  
• last season's big push of major feature additions
  
• being right on the threshold of Overwhelmingly Positive reviews
  

...so Steam Deck Verification (and our ongoing rollout of new content) feels like a great way to wrap up the fall season. If you know any Deck players, please do tell them about our game!

[h2]New Aviators and Backpack[/h2]

With Update #176, we've added 2 new cosmetic options to the game, working to round out the glasses and backpack categories with specific player requests. Some of our Knights were asking for classic aviators, so we've delivered those as well as updating the tinting and material properties of the existing aviator-like glasses we have the game.

Aaron is styling with the new shades and the new pack

[h2]Juice that Blue![/h2]
We've fixed a bug with Blue Juice that was prevent it from being used multiple times in a single round. You can now juice it harder and get up to +60 AP in a single round. Use your charges wisely though, as you don't want to end up with a ton of wasted AP and not enough IO to drive your actions. It can help to have surge Turns with the Blue Juice, but there is still a lot of value in taking the Blue when you need it to wrap a turn up right.

[h2]Enemies Skipping through Overwatch[/h2]

We've fixed a bug where enemies who were far away at the start of their turn could feasibly skip through Overwatch. In some cases, they were failing to run the movement checks to see if they were going to encounter something and just ended their turn with a high-speed (and confusing and annoying) teleport.

In a similar area, we've improved the log message in the case where one of your characters has their Overwatch canceled by an enemy debuff. We'll be working on making this clearer with some animation and camera time to focus on the debuffs the enemies are dishing out, but some of the captains have a Marked Target debuff that can knock down Overwatch and reduce your Evasion - a painful counter to your own Marker Sights. In this case, the log will now list "Mochi's Overwatch canceled by Marked Target debuff" to be as clear as possible.

[h2]Sight Lines and Hearing Alerts[/h2]

Introduced in the last update, we lost all the overhead alerts about which enemies would hear your attacks if you swapped weapons. This is now resolved as well as fixing some other issues with the sightlines that are drawn to enemies when swapping weapons. If you had a Some of them would appear from you

[h2]Unknown Assassin Target[/h2]

If you were hitting an assassination mission in Urban HQ where the target was "Unknown" you were not the only one. The entire map was bugged and none of the VIPs ever arrived properly identified. We've resolved this issue for future runs of that mission. And now with that final big Assassinate VIP bug down, we're turning some more attention to adding more maps to the queue for that objective type, as it is the least represented in the map set today. So, look forward to more Assassinate VIP fun!

[h2]Tightened up Cameras[/h2]
We've fixed camera issues that were similar to proximity mines - in that if you moved short distances or only grazed the cameras arc of vision, you might be able to squeeze through without being seen. This small window of error has now been removed.

[h2]v1.9.23 - #176: Omnibus Underworld - 11/20/2024[/h2]
- Steam Deck Verified (but the improvements will continue!)
- Fixed bug with Blue Juice not giving AP bonus second time in the Turn, updated description to be clearer that it can be used multiple times
- Fixed bug where enemy alerts about who will hear your weapon attack were not showing
- Fixed bug where swapping weapons while planning a movement could result in incorrect sight lines draw to enemies
- Fixed bug where enemy might suddenly teleport or move a distance through an Overwatch cone incorrectly
- Improved log entry when enemy uses a debuff to break your Overwatch
- Fixed bug with higher difficulty giving lower Team Power Level adjustments which makes the game progress slower (and easier)
- Fixed widespread issue with "Unknown" target in Assassinate VIP in Urban HQ mission map
- Added new slim backpack option for the lightweight heister or the heister who wants to carry water ;)
- Added new classic aviators glasses for appearance customization
- Improving tinting and reflective properties of existing aviator style glasses
- Improved a number of mask options to avoid clipping and sit correctly on masculine faces
- Fixed bug where camera might not see mercs moving a short distance or crossing the camera arc only slightly
- Fixed bug with Scourge recruit showing up too early in your roster during storyline
- Fixed bug where enemy status pop up was not showing an enemy's weapon
- Improved display of safehouse room building errors so that they display nicer over bright background 3D
- Fixed many minor map issues with new maps and proc-gen maps

Knights and mercs - welcome to the weekend Update #175 which mixes performance boosts with doors-go-boom and a really big pile of fixes for your community F10s, including a lot of key map updates. This update includes some new ways to change the environment with explosions, map updates for a number of the new maps and objective crosses, improvements to the rules on secondary objectives, improved timeline clarity and better tattoo rendering.

If you're enjoying the updates - please take a moment to help us share the game with a review.

[h2]Doors can go Boom![/h2]

On our quest to get the game fully ready for drones, we needed drones to explode. And we thought, if we're making drones explode ... we should make doors explode (and a few other things, like bridges, but more on that later...). So, with this update we're excited to roll out a (most cinematic) update where doors can now be blown open. The first place this is landing in the game is in the Carnivore mission, and I won't say much more than that for spoiler purposes. The ruined doors are less wide open, so they can be better used for cover and are more restricted for cover but make a lot more sense in situations like these. We're excited to get past this initial integration and then get this into the game and storylines in other interesting ways.

If you happen to be in the way of an exploding door, expect to take some Pure Damage!

[h2]FPS Performance Boost + FreeSync / G-Sync[/h2]

With Update #175, we've improved our rendering pipeline, enabling uncapped frames and supporting modern solutions like AMD FreeSync and NVIDIA G-Sync. With this change, we expect that most hardware (in which the CPU and GPU are reasonably aligned in power) will see a performance boost and sometimes a very significant FPS boost as well. To get the very best performance from FreeSync and G-Sync set V-Sync to disabled and set screen mode to "Fullscreen".

We hope this update sees the game running even more buttery smooth for you!

[h2]Secondary Objective Improvements[/h2]

With Update #176, we've hit a number of bugs and needed improvements to the secondary objectives.

We fixed an issue where Lockbox count (Looted X/Y) was not always updating on time and would lag behind by a lootbox or two until you changed character turns.

We also fixed an issue with the Send a Message objective would fail to print the actual kill count into the victory screen and instead give nonesense code text.

Finally, we've adjusted the objective generator to be more strict about avoiding objectives that are simply too close to each other. This will be especially good as the list of possible secondary objectives keeps increasing but for now - even with 3 types - it is important to avoid situations where you basically bag 2 objectives by doing one of them (kill 10 ... kill 12).

[h2]Map Updates[/h2]

There has been a lot of map activity recently with big waves of new proc-gen combos (all the Bodyguard combos) and new maps every week. We're catching up on issues with maps, objectives, pathing and more in this release.

• We fixed a bug in the new Decommissioned Core where some of the terminals were just backwards and inaccessible.
  
• We fixed a bug in Sewers map X Bodyguard objective where the exits were laughably close to the start point.
  
• We fixed a bug in Wreckspire where one of the 2 extraction objectives would not appear or activate.
  
• We tweaked a number of starting and spawning locations to improve the 4 new maps.
  

[h2]Load Game Performance[/h2]
On the performance topic, we've made some tweaks to load game performance to speed up the loading of the table in the case that you have more than 10 saved games. For those players out there with 100+ saved games in your list (we see you!) this should help you get the UI open fast as ever.

Also, we fixed a rare bug that could be caused by input jamming (clicking and hitting spacebar alot) that could cause a game to load twice and have extra performance drag on the way into the mission.

[h2]Tattoo Rendering[/h2]
Finally, in preparation for upcoming additions to the face detail texture appearance option set (currently offering smooth or freckled), we've improved how tattoos are rendered over the face. Previously, they became basically "hard matte" and ignored a lot of the texture detail from anything below them. This update allows them to basically keep the texture detail - roughness and extra surface details - of what is below them while still painting in a single tattoo color. This makes tattoos look a little more natural but will be especially important to allow tattoos and scars to cross correctly.

[h2]v1.9.21 - #175: - 11/17/2024[/h2]
- New exploding door capability, debut in Carnivore missions
- Performance boost for frame rate in almost all configurations, enabling Free Sync / G-Sync solutions instead of V-Sync
- Fixed secondary objective for "Looted X/Y lockboxes" not always updating
- Fixed typos in Send a Message secondary objective (kill goal) not showing kill count
- Fixed bugs with timeline where character might be finished with treatment / recovery but still locked
- Enhanced performance for Load Game list especially if you have a lot of games
- Fixed bugs with blank keybindings sometimes appearing when using Alt-Tab
- Fixed bug where you could accidentally double load a game, causing performance drop when loading
- Fixed impossible to reach backwards terminal in Decommissioned Core mission map
- Fixed issue with Sewers map when bodyguarding a VIP - cleaned up too many exits, too close
- Fixed issues with Wreckspire map sometimes having an extraction point listed in objectives but not active
- Improved secondary objectives to avoid overlapping objectives that are too close to each other
- Balanced and improved recently added maps
- Improved tattoo roughness rendering (less "hard matte") in prep for additional facial detail options