Cyber Knights: Flashpoint News

Another day, another push of new content. Today in the New Boston zone we're further raising the bar for enemy variety with 4 new enemies paired with all new capabilities to throw buffing and healing (for now) grenades. This also starts to push the street factions into more distinct directions and improves enemy and enemy Talent scaling throughout the set. Maybe you're just settling in to how Wildfire and FireCOM mixed up the battlefield - well now welcome F-Duster, Patchmax, Bulwark and the E-Medic!

If you're enjoying the pace of updates and the way we are keeping Early Access interactive and exciting, please take a moment to leave a review. There is no better way that you could thank us for our work.


[h2]New Enemy Abilities[/h2]
So enemies can now throw grenades! This is exciting upgrade for them and giving them a lot more future potential to do cool, dangerous and just awful things. We've opted to start with nice things! Enemies can now toss grenades that target and heal everyone (mercs or enemies) near the impact point, just like your own Medi-Cloud items. In addition, enemies might also throw a buffing grenade full of noxious combat stimulants that can power you up good for the fight at hand.

We'll let friendly grenades fly for a bit before we let them throw the boom-boom kind. Time to adjust your team to new realities of warfare in the depths of New Boston, 2231.


[h2]3 Enemies for 3 Street Gangs[/h2]
The release of 3 new enemy types - the Fenian F-Duster ("Fairie Duster"), the Los Zagales Patchmax and the Blue Ox Bulwark - buffs the ranks of the street gangs with exciting new street chemists who mix and match their designer stims to push their soldiers to the limit.

The Los Zagales Patchmax delivers a powerful stimulant that raises Action Points, Move Speed and Initiative (while reducing Evasion) giving these street warriors the edge they need to get the jump on you or your crew.

The Fenian F-Duster delivers a bear-style stim which raises Accuracy and Critical Rate. This Redmist drives the Fenian fighters into a frenzy and makes the much more dangerous. If you see one of those F-Duster bombs go out, make sure you neutralize its targets before they start unloading on you.

The Blue Ox Bulwalk hurls defensive stims, keeping their paramilitary forces on their feet in the fight even if they are taking a massive beating. The Hardmist seeps into their brains and bodies, helping them soak up to 40% more Damage, increasing their Cover Bonus but reducing their Move Speed.

We're excited to see the factions stepping out in separate directions with this update and this came along with some adjustments to the underlying data model and code supporting enemy selection which is going to make it easier for us to make more faction variations in the future with less cost.


[h2]New Corp Enemy Type[/h2]
Within the corporate tiers, we've added a new E-Medic enemy type who is tasked with trying to buff and healing their corporate soldiers. Their medium-ranged N-Stim can heal targets with 5m of its naon-cloud release point. From the backlines, firing a heavy Revolver, these E-Medics can be dangerous in their own right but

We've also upgraded the KEMCO corp's KEM Doc enemy who carries a shotgun and a medkit that could be used at 2m. This upgrade allows the KEM Doc to also throw a more limited set of N-Stim healing grenades.

[h2]KEMCO Scaling[/h2]
Speaking of KEMCO, we've completed another pass of pushing different enemy sets to have better scaling properties. Now KEMCO's forces have joined the fun and are able to effectively scale like most of the other factions with new weapon and armor upgrades, upgraded Talents and more.

[h2]Overwatch Tuning[/h2]
Exactly what mix of enemies have the Overwatch Talent is a pretty important balance factor within the game, so we will keep improving and tweaking this. The addition of these 4 new enemies who don't Overwatch will help as well and we've made some other minor tweaks to the exact charge counts and recharge rates for enemies' Overwatch Talents throughout the list.

[h2]Corporate Captains Heal[/h2]
Some corporate captains have been granted a medkit carry and can now heal themselves if they aren't taken out fast enough.

[h2]v1.8.71 - #134: Drifting Hype Clouds - 8/29/2024[/h2]
- Added new friendly grenade enemy abilities - healing clouds and buffing combat drug clouds
- Added F-Duster (Fenian), Bulwark (Blue Ox) and Patchmax (Los Zagales) enemies who each buff in different way
- Upgraded corporate combat medics in multiple factions to throw short range healing cloud grenades
- Improved scaling for all KEMCO corporate personnel and guards, added healing abilities to KEM Doc enemy type
- Further improved balance of Overwatch availability in enemy Talent mix
- Some corporate captains gain ability to use a medkit during combat
- Fixed bug where camera would stop following AI after using Skip Enemy Turn a few times
- Fixed some causes of the freeze on during map missions

It's late in the New Boston zone and the game is on sale but that doesn't mean we can't drop a new update with new content, right? Update #133 comes with a new recruit option in your Underworld Hub, new unique Utility Program service for a Wireghost you might know, tuned the balance of the new enemy Talents, even better rules for Skip Enemy Turns and fixed a ton of UI related F10s. Let's see what we've got tonight!

If you're enjoying the pace of updates and new content - we've got more coming for you. And please take a moment to leave a review, our very small team appreciates every single one and it help us keep this train moving.

[h2]New Underworld Hub Recruit[/h2]
A new Vanguard option has joined the Underworld Hub, which gives you the basic set of Soldier, Vanguard and Cybersword. Clearly, we'll be building out from here, and Sniper and Scourge are on the next list. This one includes a completely new and unique Trait, new backstory, new contact connections and more. Dial up a token and take a look at your new potential team mate.
 
As we continue to expand the game's content in Early Access, one critical area is the recruiting pool. With the addition of a new Vanguard recruit option to the Underworld Hub, the possible recruits have now reached 6 including:

• 2 street recruits that are brought forward by other mercs
  
• 3 recruits from the Underworld Hub
  
• 1 storyline recruit from Salvage Job
  

We are working to continue to expand this list to the point where (1) you'll be picking which recruits to take over just recruiting everyone and (2) you will not have concerns about being unable to refill your ranks in the case of merc death.

At this point in Early Access, our focus is on high quality and hand-crafted recruits, because everyone is helping us further push the game in very good ways. The last two recruits have multiple completely new Trait type and effects between them that open up a lot of interesting angles for the next round of Traits. They also have new backstory tagging, new Contact connections who offer up different services and story angles for future updates. We will get to a point where recruits can be created by proc-gen, but doing so without taking time to further expand the Traits, Tags, Backstory and Connection options will lead to some pretty dry results. So, for now we're using recruiting adds as a roadmap to expand certain parts of the game and will keep after that.


Watch this recruit count - it's going to go UP.


[h2]Carnivore Wireghost: New Utility Programs[/h2]
We don't want to spoil anything, so we'll keep this brief. If your time with the Carnivore mission resulted in your scoring a new Wireghost Contact, that Contact now has a unique service selling some new Utility programs that are not available via regular Wireghost. Every Contact's slate of services is given a baseline by their Contact Type but then can gain or lose services based on story events or backstory and each one upgrades a differently compared to the next based on Hype and Exposure Limit Breaks. So, this gives this specific Wireghost a unique twist - and one that can be upgraded twice with Limit Breaks as well.

[h2]Update Size[/h2]
The last couple updates have all been delightfully small, weighing in from 200-400 MB. In order to possibly further trim that, or just ensure that it stays that low, we made another round of changes to the asset organization to break up a few of the remaining large groups. This has resulted in a trickle down effect and another big update size - 3.3-ish GB. All for a better future!


[h2]Overwatch Tuning[/h2]
After the latest update with the FireCOM and Wildfire, some enemy factions start using Overwatch a bit too much like a blanket on the field of battle. We've tuned their options to get this Talent a bit - hopefully achieving a better balance. We're looking forward to hearing your feedback.

[h2]Trait Balance[/h2]
We've improved the merc Below the Level Trait to give better XP bonuses, it was starting to low and never getting high enough. We've also down-balanced the Contact Trait Eager Buyer by a small amount, slowing down its progression through levels 2 and 3.


[h2]Confirm Overwrite and Load Save Slots[/h2]
With Update #133, we've ensured that the overwrite and load buttons for all save slots always pop up a confirmation. This is a big action, can results in loss of something you're trying to play and deserves a confirmation. Previously, only one of the two buttons had confirmation - odd but now fixed!

We've also adjusted the hotkeys used for overwrite and load so that they are consistent between the pause menu in the safehouse and the main mission map. To get the keys sync'd, you might have to adjust your defaults, so the results here will depend on how many customized keybindings you've done.


[h2]Timeline Pause Button[/h2]
We've fixed a hotly reported F10 that sometimes the timeline pause button could end up disabled even as the timeline was playing, leaving you no way to pause the timeline! The state management there has been cleaned up.

We also had to put out a hotfix last night that had some really nice things in it - so we will include its details here -

[h2]Wreckspire Fix[/h2]
There was a bug that could cause your team to appear multiple times at the start of a Wreckspire Siege level. This should not happen again. If you are unable to continue a level due to this bug, please just reload the saved game.

[h2]Better Skip Turns[/h2]
We've improved skipping enemy turns. Siege and Battle Strikers were driving the playtest team insane so we bet you feel similar. Now you can skip enemy movement even when they are repositioning for combat.

[h2]Fixed Wildfire Talents[/h2]
Sometimes the Wildfire were taking healing Talents instead of Full Auto. Fixed!

[h2]Hack Tutorial: No more Heat[/h2]
The hack tutorial was accidentally generating Heat. No more!

[h2]v1.8.69 - #133: Recruit Pool - 8/28/2024[/h2]
- New Underworld Hub Recruit - Vanguard!
- New type of Traits that react to going on missions or not
- Added 2 new Contact Types along with recruit offering
- If you get a Wireghost Contact coming out of Carnivore mission, they now have special Utility Program offerings (with 2 limit breaks)
- Added 3 new Utility Programs (Data Filter II and III, Trace Vector III, Decoy III)
- Minor down-balance to Contact Trait "Eager Buyer" -3-4% resale boost to levels 2 and 3
- Improved Trait Below the Level XP bonus
- Tweaked starting charges and recharge rate for Corp/Milsec enemy Overwatch Talent - less blanketing of the field
- Fixed bug where timeline Pause button could become disabled even when playing
- Fixed inventory issue where some equipment counts could be wrong
- Added confirmations to all Overwrite/Load save slot buttons, hotkeys now consistent
- Fixed issue displaying "Remove Mods" button even if all mods were locked by crafting

[h2]v1.8.67 - Hotfix - 8/27/2024[/h2]
Fixed issue with Wreckspire where you could end up with multiple copies of your team
Skip significantly more enemy turns
Fixed issues with Wildfire's Talents
Preventing Hacking tutorial from causing Heat
Fixed odd reinforcement spawn point in Street Palisade

Following up with the MAGNITUDE v2 update yesterday, we've got a big burst of new and dangerous enemies, better enemy progression and better enemy variety across the game. We've also further boosted the Field Ops Delay Mission token, evened out the balance in the Siege missions and fixed bugs from reported F10s.

Welcome to the new Knights piling into the New Boston zone! Get ready for updates and improvements. Be sure to hit F10 if you see something that is broken or could be improved.

And, if you're enjoying how we approach Early Access, please drop a review!


[h2]Enemies using Full Auto: Wildfire and FireCOM[/h2]
We've added a number of new enemy types across factions - FireCOM variations for the different corporate groups and WIldfire for the Street and Syndicate. These heavier troops carry a variety of Full Auto capable Assault Rifles and Urban Assaults and are equipped to take the Full Auto shot to hit multiple mercs on your team.

These new enemies are a good start - watch your firing angles, be more careful clumping your mercs and consider who the highest priority target is in the enemy squad.


[h2]More Abilities Coming[/h2]
We are at the bottom of a big climb, preparing to add tons of new abilities and enemy types to the game. Full Auto is the first through the gate and grenades will be piling through next (flash bang, explosive, Molotov, and healing for more effective enemy combat medics). Then we'll be moving on to persistent on map effects like traps and more.

Then it will be the season of the drone.


[h2]Further Enemy Progression Balance[/h2]
This update improves the sweep of progression available to many enemy types and factions within the game. A number of enemies were still stranded somewhere between Power Level 1 to 6 and unable to scale above that point. This update adds a ton of scaling range for Street, Syndicate, Warner-Braun and megacorporate enemies. Some enemies now also receive key armor upgrades at high (7+) Power Levels, such as Street Shotgunners picking up 1 Protection Point to help them survive closing.


[h2]Field Ops Delaying with Tokens[/h2]
We've heard from players the need for even more flexibility to delay missions some times, and the limit of 1-delay-per-mission can sometimes feel very limiting, especially when it comes down to the Cyber Knight in recovery, treatment or needing to go under for cyber surgery.

With Update #132, we've extended the ruling to allow 2 tokens maximum to be used to delay a mission. We've also tuned the delay bonus for different room levels, flattening it out so that it's basically +1 day per level and ends at +8 days.

[h2]Siege Balance[/h2]
To help the Siege objective play better and fit into the kind of timing that other missions require, we've cut back on the waves a bit. These are still some of the more difficulty missions in the game at the moment, especially if you draw the wrong faction like Brave Star. Maybe this time just let them have that chunk of Los Z turf?

[h2]v1.8.65 - Update #2: Wildfire X FireCOM[/h2]
- Certain enemy types now use Full Auto attacks to hit multiple mercs
- Added 3 new Full Auto enemy types (names, description, visuals): FireCOM enemies from corporate, Warner-Braun FireCOM and Street Wildfire
- Syndicate Whistlers also can use Full Auto attacks now (and cause multiple bleeds in the act)
- AR carrying Head Hunters will now use Full Auto
- Syndicate Whistler's far more likely to appear when facing Syndicates
- Improved scaling for enemies - high-end enemies from Street, Syndicate, Corporate, Warner-Braun all have more room to scale
- Improved variety of enemy spawn combinations significantly for all factions
- Field Ops Center tokens can now be used to delay a mission twice
- Improved balance of Siege proc-gen objective and size of spawn waves
- Fixed issue with roster sometimes getting locked only showing 3 mercs
- Fixed issues with decks sometimes not repairing properly

Big day here Knights. In the previous MAGNITUDE update back in March, a burst of proc-gen content pushed us over the top to hit a milestone of 2X the amount of content since launch. We've blazed down the features list of our roadmap since then, delivering new systems left and right, but also adding in a steady trickle of new level content and new proc-gen objectives as we went.

Today we've got a much bigger burst for you, with 2 new maps, 2 new objective types, and a total of 10 new map/objective combinations. This means we have once again doubled the amount of content in the game - x2 since update #60, x4 since launch! 🎉

With proc-gen variety greatly increased, we'll be pushing to expand the pool of hand-crafted missions over the next couple of months. Our Casting Directory story engine and the proc-gen system work hand-in-hand to give you opportunities to mold your mercs, influence your underworld network, and build your rep as a Cyber Knight. By launch your playthroughs will cover the full arc of a Knight's career from origin to retirement. For now, enjoy growing your gains from all these heists; those credits will fund a lot of safehouse construction and/or crafting.


[h2]New Map: Dusted Hover-Evac[/h2]
An old and abandoned ruin of a building leans over a road junction that might have once been bustling but now is just part of the network of under-the-level illegal commerce. Still a valuable spot and a commanding vantage point, the old Dusted Hover-Evac is a good place for a VIP to head for a hover extraction or a good place to defend if you want to own this stretch.


[h2]New Map: Wreckspire[/h2]
The junction is a crossing point between two larger towers - D07 and D08 - and if it wasn't owned by gangs and Syndicates might have hosted shops, food stalls or even a rooftop club. Maybe it did so long ago that no one can remember. A long stretch with a commanding high point in the center and many possible ways in and out makes for a deadly rooftop heister's playground.

[h2]New Objective Type: Siege[/h2]
The new Siege objective is in the inverse of the Battle Striker where you are attempting to storm a defended location, either by drawing the enemies out to you or taking the fight to them. In the Siege objective, you've holding a stretch of territory for your Contact, trying to crush an enemy assault team before they can get a foothold. You are the one in the defensive position or key stretch of territory, often surrounded or exposed from multiple angles. You've got to fight and hold the territory against enemy waves.

These are hard missions which pay well and have extra XP boosts - so be sure you take your combat A-team on the first one you try.

[h2]New Objective Type: Lootbox Hunt[/h2]
The new Lootbox Hunt sends you into a facility on a mission to find specific Files that have been hidden among the lootboxes there. You're the "last-mile pickup" system for the bribed insider who couldn't get the secrets out of the building but was able to surreptitiously hide the 3 pieces of the formula outside the highest security areas. There will be lots of ways to go about this one, if you stay quiet throughout or go loud and fast to find the loot you need.

And once you have at least 1/3 pieces of the paydata you came to get, the option to extract opens up.


[h2]More proc-gen combos[/h2]
Proc-gen missions grow in variety from a number of factors that affect them both in-level (objective, entrance & exit positions, Matrix connections) and at the strategy layer (e.g. faction origin and target).



Every new element - especially the biggest ones like maps and objectives -that we are able to add to the system continues to increase the multiplier effect.

We've got work to do to double this content set again but we're climbing a mountain and that takes time, but there are still some major new multipliers to add to the equation like mission structure, which will allow some proc-gen missions to be offered that have more than one single map and are built more like Sibling Job or Carnivore where you have to pass through an outer map to reach the true objective map.

[h2]v1.8.63 - #131: Magnitude x2 - 8/26/2024[/h2]
- Added new proc-gen map "Dusted Hover-Evac": dilapidated clinic with rooftop hoverpad rules a junction
- Added new proc-gen map "Wreckspire": ruined rooftop junction between Districts 08 and 07
- Added new proc-gen objective "Siege": hold defensive position against enemy waves
- Added new proc-gen objective "Lootbox Hunt": search lootboxes for 3 paydata files
- Added 10 new proc-gen Map X Objective combinations (4 Siege, 4 Lootbox Hunt, 2 Assassinate)
- Improved payment and XP reward for proc-gen Battle Striker missions