Cyber Knights: Flashpoint News

Update #11 follows in the footsteps of Update #8 to add another new mission to the game. We've heard a lot and observed from players that the Cube Run was not the best or smoothest "first mission" after the Aug-Clinic Rooftop, and so today we've remedied that by dropping Forward Op mission as its replacement. We've also added an exciting new Vanguard Talent "Refract" which lets the Vanguard help the team with stealth and injected clear rules about Glancing Hits into all of the weapon details in equipment and marketplace.

If you like the pace of new content, updates and more, please consider leaving a review and sharing the game with a friend!


[h2]New Mission: Forward Op[/h2]
We've added the Forward Op mission, a single stage raid with good variation each time it is played as the starting mission suggested as a good way to make a quick profit. It's a great mission with a lot of options about how to get your loot and get out before things get too hot.

We heard from players in Discord, on the forums and through F10s that the previous starting mission, Cube Run, was a big lift in difficulty to throw out as the second mission of the game, and we could also see that a large number of players were landing in the safehouse and immediately jumping right into Cube Run without much further prep. Our analysis matches -- Cube Run is a 2 stage mission with hard difficulty and more pressure on your team to keep it together for an extended heist.

[h2]Will my veteran team be able to play new content?[/h2]
Good question - because we're going to be adding a lot of new content. Our commitment is to, whenever possible, say "yes." In this case, we've swapped in a new mission, "Forward Op" for the first mission you're offered in the safehouse. It would be easy to say this content is new game only, but we are dedicated to making all new content available to veteran teams. So, in this case, they story system will introduce Forward Op to veteran groups as a regular story opportunity later when they are playing forward on the timeline.

So - new team or old team, you get both Cube Run and Forward Op. Good luck!

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[h2]Vanguard's New Trick: Refract[/h2]
The Vanguard's newly added Talent is Refract which projects an 8 meter long illusion, hiding the Vanguard and their team's movement to anyone on the other side of the wall. The Refract projection prevents sight - and therefore attacks - but does not prevent movement. A patrolling or charging guard will pass right through the illusion and then be able to see to the far side.

Refract gives the Vanguard new options to assist the team with stealthy operations, plugging gaps, letting them slip through enemy patrol lines and more. It's very versatile and we hope you enjoying figuring out how to make fools out of the enemy patrols using it!

This cool new capability will rely on the cybernetic Holo-Pro in the future but for now is available to all Vanguards.


[h2]Glancing Hit Rules[/h2]
Glancing Hits can occur when you fail your main Accuracy roll (you would miss!) but your Accuracy to hit your target is above a certain threshold. For most weapons, this threshold is 80% - so once you reach the 80% to hit mark, you're guaranteed to get a hit and do some damage. So, Glancing Hits ensure you are going to get some damage out of reliable attacks, based on the regular Accuracy and their special rules.

Melee weapons are guaranteed to get a Glancing Hit with every attack. If you get that up-close-and-personal, you never get a full miss. However, the damage is highly dependent on your starting Accuracy, so first you would like to get a real hit, and if you end up with a Glancing Hit you're going to do more damage if your starting Accuracy was 80% versus 50%.

Burst Fire weapons -- AR, UA and SMGs -- all have the Precise Burst Rule lowers their Glancing Hit threshold to 60%. These types of weapons have good insurance if they can lock onto a target and let out rapid burst, they're going to tag the target at least a bit. The Precise Burst rule only applies when using the Burst Fire firing mode, so switching up to Full Auto returns to the 80% threshold.

All of this is now explained in game on the weapon's screens -- enjoy!
 
[h2]Tag and Headshot Fixes[/h2]
We are working retroactively to fix some story bugs. Early games in Early Access were created without the correct Sibling Tag for Emille and her brother. Our commitment is to never lose a saved game, so we're starting a process of "healing" these games now and will continue to add more "heal checks" for other types of issues we find. Now, if you return to the safehouse with one of these teams, Emille will have the correct Sibling tag for Marcus.

We also made some rules that exempted headshots from texture downgrading so that character headshots in all parts of the game are as clean and crisp as possible regardless of your quality and texture settings.

[h2]v1.0.35 - 11/2/2023[/h2]
- Added new mission "Forward Op" to replace "Cube Run" as the post-rooftop mission
- Cube Run joins the regular pool of stories to be selected by proc-gen as you play forward
- New mission "Forward Op" available to veteran groups, it will appear on your timeline if you play forward
- Added Vanguard new Talent Refract can be used to create illusory wall blocking enemy sight for short time (but not movement)
- Added Glancing Hit special rules for every weapon type to the equipment screens
- Fixed Emille not having canonically correct Sibling tag for Marcus in all games upon return to Safehouse
- Improved rendering of character and enemy headshots throughout game on all quality settings

Update #10 rolls out a set of big quality of life improvements, level polishing and more UI hovers after an exciting weekend of new content. We're hard at work on the next mission to drop, but for the moment we've got a bevy of fixes driven by your F10s and requests on the Steam boards.

If you're enjoying the pace of development and improvement in the game, please remember to share the game and leave a review.


[h2]Icon Update[/h2]
We're nearly done with a full icon update across all of the classes and Talent trees, getting all of the Talents up to the new consistent and sharper style. This drop is especially helpful as it wipes out most of the places were a duplicate icon was being used that could leave some confusion. We're one update away from wrapping up this project of re-icon-ifying!

[h2]Level and Mission Fixes[/h2]
We've improved the Blue Door situation in Salvage Breakout so that it is bi-directional in the second levle, giving you even more options on how to proceed through the mission. We've fixed an area of Carnivore that was oddly unpassable and really tripping up some of your enemies as well.

[h2]Hiding Hacker Recruit[/h2]
If you went through the Salvage Breakout mission, there are some paths that could lead to the Hacker being on your team but then disappearing when they went on their first mission. If you finished that mission they would have re-appeared but we've provided a fix for this in Update #10. First - all future games that take these story choices will not have a disappearing hacker and second - if you get your team back to the Safehouse, the hacker's character record will be fixed.


[h2]Hover Drop[/h2]
We've added useful hovers to all stat entries for Weapons, Weapon Mods and Armor. These describe the rules of each stat in detail and should be helpful in helping you make informed decisions about your equipment to carry.

[h2]v1.0.33 - 10/31/2023[/h2]
- Added and updated 30 Talent icons to consistent style
- Fixed issues with story recruit from Salvage Breakout might not appear on next mission - restore to safehouse to fix
- Fixed Marker Sights and other Talent's Crit Vulnerability not being shown in accuracy/crit % breakdown top right
- Improved Salvage Breakout Level 2: Blue Door is now bi-directional
- Improved Weapon, Weapon Mod and Armor equipment/market screens - better labels, value formatting and added rule explanation hovers to all stats
- Fixed issue at end of Carnivore where corrupt cop does not appear in contact list
- Fixed impassible area in Carnivore far balcony
- Restored missing Tag titles in Legwork ("Tag.Name.109" etc)
- Fixed typos, thanks for F10s

Since you might be seeing a series of small updates to Cyber Knights: Flashpoint in Steam, we wanted to put up a new post detailing the fixes that are going along with each. This is from a series of 3 small hotfix patches that focus on fixing the hottest issues in the F10 queues.

We're very excited to see these queues really starting to normalize and now are going around and squashing the biggest bugs left one by one. We've got more to do - always more! - but with this set of hotfixes, we're closing out some of the last major sets of soft locks etc.

If you're enjoying the pace of update and seeing the game expand and improve, please consider leaving a review and telling a friend about us!


[h2]Armor Points[/h2]
We've fixed a bug that was showing that all armor had 0 Armor Points in the Safehouse UI for the market and equipment. With the Armor Points now correctly shown, the prices of these armors is suddenly justified!

Armor Points are the number of times your Armor can suffer a Shredded effect before your Armor degrades to using the lower of the two Protection Values. The Poly-78 Hardsuit shown below has Armor Points 2. While it has any Armor Points left, it will use its 70% Protection value but if it is Shredded twice on a mission, it will drop to its 40% Protection. A good reason to consider Patch Kits and Talents that can repair your armor's adaptive nano-material to keep that higher value. Taking hits with 70% is going to stay minor damage ranges but if your Armor hits 0 points, you're going to suddenly start taking much bigger hits.



[h2]Overwatch Soft Lock[/h2]
While rare, a situation in which overwatch started triggering and then target moved (during the short slow motion animation time) into a position where they were out of range or sight would cause Overwatch to simply hang in slow-mo forever. This is now fixed.

[h2]Blue Box in Talent Bar[/h2]
If you were having a game that got stuck due to a blue box appearing in the Talent bar, we've fixed it. The suspicious is that you may have Respec'd a lot or used a lot of items. There was an unexpected bug in the game when you reached your 99th Talent as it conflicted with the default Take Cover Talent. Woops, fixed.

[h2]Pushy Cybernetics Sales[/h2]
We fixed the issue that whenever you entered the cybernetics surgery market, it automatically tried to sell you one of the Plastic Bone Grafts. Hit ESC to cancel of course, but no need to be so push, Doctor. We've had some real Doctor issues around here.
 

[h2]Cyberdecks and Hackers[/h2]
If you had any issue with newly multi-classed Hackers not getting a cyberdeck, get that team back to the safehouse and it will resolve -- all Hackers will have a cyberdeck automatically now. Also, fixed for any future multi-class training.

[h2]Everasting Stun[/h2]
Shock Mines and any "Stunned!" effect were lasting forever. That is now resolved.

v1.0.31 - 10/30/2023
- Correctly prevent any character/cybernetic/equipment/appearance changes to inactive/dead/recruitable characters
- Fixed all display of Armors in Safehouse, Market, Equipment that always incorrectly showed 0 Armor Points
- Fixed Overwatch issue that could leave the game stuck in slow motion state
- Fixed bug in cyberware implant screen that would immediately attempt to install Bone Grafts on open
- Fixed issue with implanting Matrix Link not always granting a cyberdeck
- Fixed issues with Stun effect (shock mines, etc) lasting forever

Update #8 brings the first of many new missions to the game. Salvage Breakout is a multi-stage mission but we won't share much more than that to avoid spoilers. We've also fixed some Talent displays, improved the Accuracy breakdown in the top right, and rebalanced the Attribute spread for Knight backstories. Plus a pile of minor bugs and typos!

More missions are coming, and coming soon. And we will be delivering the proc-gen mission system in November per our new roadmap.

If you're enjoying the pace of updates and improvements, please remember to leave a review and share the game with a friend.

[h2]First New Mission![/h2]
We're very excited to roll out the first new mission after the Early Access launch. Salvage Breakout is another team-driven mission and helps fill in the stories and history of your mercs. Our unique proc-gen story engine and the Casting Director are starting to do their work here, and you'll find that this story can attach to different characters based on their history and may have different characters - based on their history and personal relationships - jumping in to make their opinions known about team business.

It is very excited to see this start - and as more and more missions and stories come online, we can't wait to see what the Casting Director help you create.


[h2]High Ground Bonuses[/h2]
The rules for Accuracy bonuses on high ground are now better displayed in the top right corner. If you're 2m above your target you gain +10% Accuracy and 4m above the target gains 15% Accuracy.  Use these to your advantages when you can - your enemies certainly are!


[h2]Blast Radius Display[/h2]
The Blast Radius display for Soldiers was missing some text - this is now fixed along with clarification for rules that these bonuses apply to any thrown object like H.E. Grenades, Concussion Grenades and Shock Mines as well. The extra range can help you get even more effective bounces and the extra AOE blast of your customized grenades can get even bigger enemy clust wipeouts.


[h2]Attribute Spread[/h2]
There were some incorrect numbers floating around in the spread of Attributes for the Knight's new game backstories. We've resolved those -- all backstories generate +10 Attribute points and a small themey buff.

[h2]v1.0.25 - 10/28/2023[/h2]
- Added new storyline "Salvage Breakout" with new 2 part mission
- Added chance to recruit new hacker character
- Improved Accuracy % of all Sniper Rifles
- Improved Height Bonus label in Accuracy Breakdown (+10% for 2m+ / +15% for 4m+)
- Fixed text and bonus display in Soldier's "Blast Radius" passive
- New "Digital Rush 1" Trait for Dade in new games
- Improved Attribute spread for Knight starting backstories, fixed imbalances (9 vs 10 pts)

Update #7 is a beast! It was intended to include the next storyline and mission, but as it's change log, feature additions and bug fixes started to run off the edge of the table and onto the floor, we decided we better get it out to the community rather than wait one more day. Update #8 will be hot on its heels with new mission content, but its better to separate these two.

There is way too much to highlight everything in the Steam update text (character limits!), so we will aim to hit the high points and let you pursue the change log if you want to know the sheer volume of work that went into this one.

If you're wondering what's up next or what major updates are in the works, we've just posted our public and ambitious roadmap for Early Access -
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1021210/view/3747617344190975453

If you're enjoying the continuous updates, improvements and QoL fixes based directly on your F10s, please tell a friend and leave a review!


[h2]Matrix Zoom, ESC, More[/h2]
The Matrix has received a ton of good improvements based on things you have specifically asked for. Now, you can zoom in and out with the same keybinding you use to zoom the main mission map. You can also open the game ESC menu while hacking with the ESC or B key (defaults). If you get transported by a Blackhole IC we now pop up a warning.

We fixed a bug that was making the Haven Smokeout host a bit broken. We've adjusted the level bulid in Cube Run to fix bugs with the Matrix host there but also to correctly connect more security devices to the host's SCU and even connect the Blue Key door to the RCU. So, another path through the lab just opened if that pesky Blue Key is proving hard to find.

[h2]Soldier's Blast Radius[/h2]
The Soldier's Blast Radius ability has been expanded to have upgrades now, allowing them to spend more points on becoming a grenade and demolitions expert. These bonuses are applied to any type of Grenade from Shock Mines to Concussion or H.E. Grenades. The offerings include increasing throwing distance, pumping up grenade damage or increasing the duration of debuffing grenades. So, if your Soldiers are packing boom then this one's for you!

[h2]Market Filters[/h2]
The market has received the needed filters for subtype - allowing you to drill into only shotguns, or only weapon mods for blades, or only healing items, etc. In addition, in any case where we automatically apply a filter you can now clearly see what filters have been added to the screen. This is most helpful for context-driven shopping, where you've picked a merc, their Blade, clicked to Attach a Blade Grip and then from that screen click the Market icon - you end up shopping for Weapon Mods with the Blade Grip filter applied automatically for you.

[h2]Improved Enemies[/h2]
With over 20 types of factions in the the game and the ability for enemies to carry any type of weapon, armor and take Talents with full charges and cooldown rules ... we're excited just how far we can take the enemy variety in Cyber Knights: Flashpoint. We're really just getting started on this one, so its nice to get the Chopshop enemies upgraded to do their thing -- now with weaker armor but the ability to drop a nano-shielding cloud that fully soaks up to 2 attacks, these shotgun wielders are dangerous on a rush when buffed. Take them out quickly or before they become alerted if you can.

[h2]New Game Rename[/h2]
You can now fully rename your characters from the New Game > Customize > Appearance screen. For your Knight and Face, you can change first, last and code names while the rest of the characters can adjust their first and last only and still need to earn codenames.

[h2]Mission Deploy Polish[/h2]
If you were trying to deploy, often the mission map would overlap the button and cause click issues. The button now wins all fights ;) If no mercs could go along on a mission, we've fixed the formatting issue there. And finally, we've upgraded the speed and snappiness of that UI to prevent it from lagging a little as it waited for the character's 3D model.

[h2]v1.0.23 - 10/26/2023[/h2]
- Added Zoom In / Zoom Out on Matrix
- Open ESC menu from within Matrix
- Added warning confirmation for Hacker when teleported by a Blackhole IC
- Expanded Soldier Blast Radius ability with its upgrades to further focus on grenade damage, range and debuffs
- Improved HUD objective listing to always show the full text
- Added subtype filters to Market screen for weapon types, mod types, armor types, item types
- Subtype filters automatically selected when going from Equip Weapon Mod > Market
- Fully rename all of your characters in New Game now from Merc Detail > Appearance tab
- Improved Chopshop monster talent, now Chop Shield blocks 2 attacks, improved their decision tree, added description
- Added icons to Appearance tab for all hair types
- More hotkeys listing added to the in-game ESC menu including LMB (mouse) or Right Stick Click (controller) defaults to set move destination
- Fixed Matrix Host issues in Cube Run level 2, SCU now have devices connected and RCU can open Blue Door to escape level
- Fixed issue with Deploy button overlapping with mission node map
- Fixed issue with Matrix Host on Haven Smokeout level
- Fixed issues with some combat drugs causing lock up
- Fixed issue with using multiple items of the same type
- Fixed wrapping Power Level value in Contacts screen
- Fixed issue allowing for too many items to be equipped, odd behaviors while buying new items
- Improved UI responsiveness of mission deploy screen to avoid any lag when changing characters
- Improved mission deploy screen if no mercs are available