Update #26 is squeaking in under the wire as a weekend update lol. This one has a lot of impactful changes to the stealth parts of the game, both new and nicely improved story elements (in prep for more new story coming next!), a pile of new playtest levels to try out your new weapon rules on and more. That includes the long needed grenade nerf and a mountain of bugs too!

Thanks for playing and sharing feedback with F10! We'll see you on the Discord private alpha channels!

Introductory Dialog

In Cyber Knights, your starting storyline is wrapped around the events leading up to the cyber-surgery to implant a Cyber Knight quantum computer in your spine and will set the conditions, tone and major goals of the first act of the storyline. Therefore, what we've added with Update #26 has no real relation to the starting stories of the game, but it is a starting story blurb that helps introduce the two main characters -- your Knight and Face -- and set some of the stage for what you should consider doing next.

In part, it replaces the dry text that used to be typed up in paragraphs in the HOME tab and translates that "next steps" advice into a Tutorial Dialog between the two characters. You can choose to skip it by unchecking the Enable Tutorial Dialog checkbox in your new game screen (which is remembered so you don't have to worry about unchecking it again).

Tag Along Story Improvements

We've dug back into the dialog and setup for the Gunrunner Tag Along story and its accompanying legwork and adding more choices in exposition dialog, added a lot more discussion about the city's lore and conditions and finally improved the results so that they are more meaningful. Ignore the request will in fact lead to a black out of Gunrunner services, and the results impact more bonuses to the involved character.

+3 new Playtest Levels

While more levels organized into full missions and storylines are coming very soon, we're still rolling out levels for immediate play through the playtesting menu in the MISSIONS tab. Every playtest gives feedback straight to our level design team and helps us tweak, balance and improve the current level set as well as adjust and improve our planning for all future missions.

There is an all-new playtest level Hover Theft that sees you breaking into a hover truck maintenance field to steal a transponder off a registered truck, which will come in handy in a later heist. There is an all-new Three Switch in which you prep a power utility field with a specialized virus that will help knock power off at an appointed time, also to help with a future heist. And finally, we've added an all-new second variant level of Sec Gauntlet a security-device focused puzzle level. The level is completely different, so chose Sec Gauntlet and then pick SVI P1 or SVI P2 at deployment.

In fixes, we fixed a bug that was preventing the matrix host in the Big Door playtest level from actually having a connection to the door. This made the level basically impossible :facepalm: and F.

Auto-Duck and Stealth Updates

Some key changes are in #26 for both your merc and enemy behavior.

First, as we work toward rolling in the new UX design, we're phasing out any need to manage your crouched state. You only really need to be thinking about it when you're moving -- am I sprinting or am I sneaking? The first big convenience that comes along with this is auto-ducking. Being crouched has no impact on combat and now it has no impact on stealth. If an enemy is about to see you but wouldn't if you were crouched, you're merc is going to hiss something like "Head down!" and automatically duck before being seen. Gone are the days of cursing and throwing keyboards if you forgot to hit C at the end of your turn :D

Second, Suspicious enemies are still counted as Surprised. This is a big win for all stealth combatants and especially for Lure. Using noises or other techniques to draw enemies to you will no longer cost your chance for that Pistol's Stealth Crit or your +25% Accuracy.

Third, we've changed two important rotation rules for enemies. When an enemy is attacked, they will rotated toward the point of attack. This may mean that they see you, depending on some factors such as the range of the weapon you used. This is generally going to help AI who survive stealth attacks take more intelligent actions on their next Turn. And the second rotation rule is around Suspicious enemies. A bug had crept into the AI thinking, that once an AI was Suspicious, they no longer needed to rotate to hear new sound events (lure, sneaking, running). This made sneaking up on Suspicious enemies silly easy. Suspicious enemies now rotate toward sounds they hear and will rotate toward footsteps up to twice (when they first hear and when the movement ends if it is in their hearing range) per movement. This also adds the nuance that multiple Lures can be used on enemies again either on the same Turn or across multiple Turns.

Grenade Nerf and Noise

It has been needed for a long time -- and we're in a mode of cleaning house on these types of things -- grenades have been nerfed. Where before they functioned as a one-dimensional get-out-of-jail-free kill the entire reinforcing enemy squad kind of thing, they are now more powerful but with a lot of room to be more interesting. Damage has gone down -- HE Grenades cause a good chunk of Pure Damage and are best for armored targets while Frag Grenades cause more Kinetic Damage in a larger radius and are better for less armored targets.

Both grenades now cause a lot more noise. Detonating a grenade is louder than any weapon and will generally wake the level up.

And a Mountain of Bugs...

A huge thanks to everyone reporting with F10s! We're sorting, organizing and fixing as fast as we can. For more generalized feedback, we're boiling down and adding to design documents for later action and further consideration.

With Update #26, we fixed a bug where Pure Damage was not being properly displayed on target's HP bar because it was being shown with armor reduction. This was most noticeable for Revolvers targeting armored enemies.

Mission payments in the Mission List were not being shown with their difficulty scale, now it is applied. The Armor Store and Armor EQ screens now show armor visualization instead of weapons.

A highly reported and longstanding bug -- that the Security Escalation SFX was way too loud -- is finally put to rest!

And for more, see the full changelog --

v0.6.43 -

- Introductory dialog added between Face & Knight to help set the scene and replace text blobs in Safehouse HOME tab
- Disable introductory dialog with new "Enable Tutorial Dialog" option in New Game which is remembered as option
- Updated Gunrunner Tag-Along storyline with new dialog choices, more lore and better results
- Added new Hover Theft playtest level - steal hover truck transponder box
- Added new Security Gauntlet playtest level (new level entirely, pick SVI P1 or SVI P2)
- Added new Three Switch playtest level - deploy a virus to 3 power substations
- Mercs will now duck into crouch automatically if it would prevent being spotted by an enemy while stealth is still in action
- Enemies who are Suspicious still count as Surprised (being heard but not see, or using Lure does not ruin surprise)
- Shooting or attacking an enemy will cause them to rotate toward their attacker and possibly spot you
- Fixed issue where Lure or other suspicious noises would prevent a guard from hearing other noises (too easy to exploit)
- Grenades are louder and cause less Damage, now more interesting choice between HE (Pure Dmg) and Frag Grenades (best vs. low armor)
- Fixed bug that underrepresented Pure Damage in attack damage estimates on targets
- Fixed mission Big Door playtest which was not allowing door to be opened via matrix RCU
- Mission Payment is now correctly scaled by difficulty during offer
- Armor visualizer now works in store / equipment lists (was showing weapons)
- Fixed overly loud Sec Level escalation SFX
- Fixed recoil for first weapon mode sometimes being incorrect in weapon hover
- Fixed issues with jumping through the side of elevators