[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36740530/adf9f027baaa2e24422d73acf06df14897c0c0c8.jpg[/img] Happy New Year, Knights! Things have run a bit slowly here at the start of 2025 with a third of our team on holiday, a third of our team sick and a third working away. But we're getting things moving again with Update #196, celebrating with new outfit options, new hairstyles, +15 new matrix host templates, improved Matrix host progression that includes the size of the host, boosted mission pay, tweaks to the balance of Truck Job and fixes for old F10s and reported bugs. A huge welcome and thanks to everyone who is playing and joined up during the WInter Sale! We've had an amazing influx of input, feedback and reviews and we appreciate every bit, scrap and ːsteamthumbsupː This will be a big year for Cyber Knights getting all grown up and launching on Steam, so let's go ːsteamhappyː!! [h2]New Cosmetic Options[/h2] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36740530/b55b63ffd23aba8f9b71a6058bff06db8fbce655.jpg[/img] To ring in the New Year, we've added 2 new outfit options for your characters as well as 4 more hairstyles. It's always exciting to see this catalog grow - and it will keep growing - so a few more of the looks shown in the game's concept art have stepped out into the game world. Look sharp, mercs! [h2]+15 Matrix Hosts and Host Size Progression[/h2] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36740530/bf38044fc9059729f267f8de16be2edd37209334.png[/img] There have been a lot of ways that Matrix Hosts scale along with the Power Level of the challenges you are facing - upgrading their Color and their Q-Sec AI until they are Red Pit Vipers or worse. Also, the IC that spawn into matrix hosts increase in threat and toughness as the challenge level goes up and the Escalations that the Q-Sec AI get more and more threatening as well. One area that has not been affected by the current challenge level (which your Team Power Level modified by all difficulty and mission specific settings) is the matrix terminal map itself. These maps could be generated large or small regardless of your point in the game, which has been a weak spot for the Hacking subsystem and the game. After a deep analysis and talking to a lot of players, we've realized that some of the players who have hit the Matrix and skid to a full stop did so because their first hack was a 25-node sprawling monstrosity of a system. With Update #196, we've connected another set of systems - plugging the Matrix Host's Power Level into the matrix map generator to ensure that we are getting hosts that make sense in size as well as power for your point in the game's progression. We are looking forward to hearing your feedback on this big change! [h2]Mission Pay Bump[/h2] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36740530/e0269506bd4aaa6843af3cb61e21cddaf569e724.png[/img] As a gift for the holidays (j/k, because of balancing) we've bumped the pay for Missions from Power Level 1-5 again by a slight margin, from 8% to 15%. These pay raises in missions can help fund a little extra EQ for your mercs, help you squeak out a safehouse room or save up for that Cyberdeck with a ribbon on top -- but all in all, they help the cash flow in the early game and make it a little less depending on looting. Happy heisting! [h2]Truck Job Balancing[/h2] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36740530/0a8c184d2bb4e175313ccfce2569286f275a1b27.png[/img] With a big influx of new players, we've heard a lot of great feedback about balancing, progression and difficulty spikes. With the last update, we made some adjustments to the Dead Drop Hit job that was an unexpected spike and have made some (more minor) changes to the Truck Job with Update #196. We'll follow up with update to starting enemy layout and counts with some additional changes to the introductory dialog to make your options and the timing pressure more clearly emphasized by your Face at the start. [h2]Weapon Crafting Bugfix[/h2] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36740530/a29073a20bb54ce246430966f1ea3d1b62788d3c.png[/img] There was an old and odd bug in crafting weapons with the NanoFab where the exact placement of your weapon mod blueprints could reduce the number of Intrinsic rolls that were made. Specifically, if you locked in 2 blueprints for weapon mods in the first 2 spots of the craft, you wouldn't get a 3rd intrinsc. This oddity has been resolved for future crafts! [h2]Other Bugs and F10s![/h2] No saved game is left behind and no F10 is forgotten. Thanks to everyone for sending in F10s, last week fixed bugs and made improvements off F10s that were submitted in March and July of 2024 to improve the game. So keep sending that feedback, thank you! [h2]v1.9.73 - #196: Happy New Year - 1/5/2024[/h2] - Added 2 new outfits options for characters - street and corp style - Added 4 new hairstyle options - Adjusted rules for generating matrix hosts to take size into account in comparison to challenge Power Level (lower level hosts are smaller) - Added 15 new matrix templates for hosts across a variety of size and complexity - Bumped Mission Payment for Power Level 1-5 by 8%-15% roughly - Improved balance of Truck Job with better starting enemy layout and counts - Minor tweak to Nuke II (HOT), reduced Connection Dmg to -6% - Fixed old bug causing some Weapon crafting configurations to not roll Intrinsics due to placement of mod blueprints - Fixed rare old issue with possible dead character in legwork - Fixed misleading program files in Code Compilation Files sets that create Nuke II (HOT)