Welcome to the Winter Sale and the drop of our latest weekly map release! We're excited to keep the streak of new maps for 8 weeks in a row, and this week hits hard with Gate Enclave, adding new Leverage that can allow you to purchase a Red Key in advance of a mission, continued rebalancing for Matrix hosts (by Power Level, rewards, faction and Q-Sec Tally thresholds) and finally fixing the new Contact to the Underworld Hub offering, the High-Risk Transporter.
We'll aiming to have another big update for you on Monday, ready for some great playtime over the holidays. If you enjoy all the work we're putting into the game, there's no better present you could give us this holiday season than leaving a Steam review!
Steam Winter Sale's here and it's our last big Early Access discount!
With the game entering it's home stretch of EA on our road to a spring 2025 release, we thought we should give wishlisters a heads up that this will be our last sale at 34%-off for quite a while.
The game has grown tremendously throughout EA and has an incredibly packed pipeline of content, final features, and launch polish coming in the new year. With over a hundred hours of playtime already available today, we think it's well worth the full price we've set for the game. Of course we all love a good Steam sale, so that's not to say you won't find be able to find Cyber Knights on sale any more; but after this sale we intend to keep it to a more modest discount up to and for some time after launch.
I know the EA journey is not for everyone, and while I do think that we offer one of the best versions of it 😄 (with a ton of opportunities for your feedback to directly shape the game), I wanted to at least make sure that those of you who have been waiting eagerly for the game to be fully ready -- but are also on a budget -- know that this is the last, best discount for a while.
But regardless of when you purchase or at what discount, please know my brother and I truly appreciate your support. Happy holidays!
New Weekly Map: Gated Enclave
We are now on week 8 of a streak for new weekly map releases and it has been so good for the variation and map count in the game. This week, we've got another new style of map challenge coming online with the Gated Enclave. This interior map straddles a Red Key Door that splits the map in two. While trying to hit your regularly scheduled objective, you'll also be hunting for the Red Key in security lockers, hacking terminals to open the door or considering a bribe in advance of the mission to remove that obstacle from your heist.
With the Gated Enclave, we are continuing to support every single proc-gen objective (all 8) with absolute maximum variation inside each option (there are 32!! ways to play this level). The new 8 proc-gen combos offered with this map brings the total to 105 proc-gen combos and represents another 7% increase in map variety. Gated Enclave includes support for the Assassinate VIP objective as well, which has gone from having an underwhelming list of mission maps a few weeks ago to have a bevy of options.
As usual, working on a new map comes along with fixing issues in the recently released maps. We've reconfigured a number of Siege combat missions, fixed issues in the Flooded Tunnels with enemies starting inside the walls (!?!) and issues in Sector 01 Interchange where you might start with your team entirely spotted by a camera.
Matrix Host Balancing
We're continuing the all angle press on Matrix host balancing. After the updates a few weeks ago to bring Matrix host Power Level scaling online, Matrix hacking got significantly more challenge and we've been working our way back to where it needs to be with a series of rapid-fire improvements.
This week, we're getting into more of the nitty-gritty of the progression. But its the detals that really matter here! Here is a list of things that we have improved:
- We've adjusted the faction limits on Matrix host color - for example, Street Gangs should never rightly be deploying Red Hosts, it doesn't make sense they would have such powerful Q-Sec defenses
- For Hack-only missions of any type, we've better improved the bonuses to your Turn Limit and mission pay based on the Matrix Host color. Previously you were getting a +12% pay bonus for going up against a Red host over a Blue ... which is not in any way reasonable.
- We've improved the curve for host colors, ensuring that Red and Ultra don't accidentally roll in the 5-7 Power Level band.
- The Q-Sec Tally thresholds for Escalations on Red Hosts and other really high-powere hosts were crazy low. If it only takes 10 Q-Sec Tally to cause an Escalation, you may be Escalating every single action.
A huge thanks goes out to all of our Hackers who are sharing feedback and encouraging changes, suggesting cool vectors on which to make the changes. Hack the planet!
v1.9.61 - #190: Weekly Map Release "Gated Enclave" - 12/19/2024
- Added new proc-gen map "Gated Enclave": an interior map split across two areas where the action often requires breaching a Red Door that supports +8 new proc-gen combos (Heist a CPU, Steal 3 Files, Scavenger, Kill 3 Captains, Bodyguard, Assassinate, Siege and Battle Striker)
- Fixed bug preventing High-Risk Transporter from being available in Underworld Hub (if you had already met Dr. Knife)
- Price and Turn Limit increases more reasonably for high power hosts, such as Red Matrix Hosts
- Matrix host color rating better balanced - Reds appear more rarely and later in Power Level progression
- Matrix host color rating is adjusted by target faction - street gangs cannot get access to Red level hosts
- Adjusted Q-Sec Tally for Escalation for all host colors, more than doubling
- Fixed map issues with enemies spawning in walls, starting in camera field of view and more
- Fixed mentions of Stress as 1%, fixed tons of typos