Update #55 rolls out the Stress and Hype system upgrade we've been working towards, putting agency of your character's Trait mutations (and more) into your hands so you can have an active roll in driving their development from Hype cycles. We've also rebalanced a number of Talents, improved IC spawning in the Matrix and completed some nice UI tweaks for everyone playing from your F10s.

If you're enjoying the pace of new features, updates and content (another mission and mission map are coming) we hope you'll take a minute to post up a review!

Upgraded Stress/Hype Mutations

There are still many systems in Cyber Knights: Flashpoint that are a skeleton of the design, but as we travel the Early Access path, we're turning the lights on and bringing them up to full power as fast as we can. With Update #55, we're excited to launch the upgrade of the Stress / Hype system to where it has longed to be.

While the system has been running throughout all of your games, the mutations that your mercs received if their Stress of Hype reach the upper registers (80-100% with increasing chance of mutating) were driven by RNG and somewhat quietly logged only the the timeline's event history. We're now handing what was RNG background developments directly to you the player to choose what specific upgrades you want for your characters throughout this Hype cycle. The possible upgrades include:

• Raising your Loyalty, reducing Discontent or wiping your Stress
• Raising positive Traits and lower negative Traits
• Gaining permanent bonuses to your Attributes
• Gaining 30 day temporary bonuses of different kinds, including XP or AP boosts

The Stress system continues to run on the same concept but now has more options as to what it can do when Stress peaks - including increasing Wound levels and increasing Discontent.

We've also added Stress and Hype generation at more places throughout the game, pushing it more in legwork, mission results, secondary objectives, taking Wounds and more. The system will continue to expand with character relationships and other factors coming in to play as well.

A merc's upgrade appears on the timeline as an "Excessive Hype" event and you can delay the upgrade as many times as you like while reviewing stats and making the right decision for your merc's advancement. However, while the upgrade is waiting, their Hype bar is frozen and they will gain no additional Hype, so it is to your benefit to make a decision without extended delay (such as get Hype mutation, chose to delay, check stats, return to hype offer, chose to delay, recheck stats**, return to hype over, make selection).

** Repeat as many times as needed.

Talent Tweaks

With this update, we've rebalanced the Scourge's Dissolve Talent to have a 6 Turn recharge rate, up from 4. There is still easy access to additional charges to offset the waiting time, so be sure to upgrade Dissolve more thoroughly if you plan to use it.

Along with this, we've adjusted the Scourge's starting training package so that they have an extra Dissolve charge and their Bio-Mimic Talent right out of the gate and don't have 3 lingering training points when they first arrive in the safehouse. This helps them be more fun and uniquely useful in the starting mission as well.

We've also fixed a bug with Sniper's Weak Spot that was not showing the additional Damage scored by the Talent in the damage preview.

Finally, Soldier's Entrench has had 5% of its Built-In Armor bonus shaved off the top. We've also fixed a bug with the ordering of how Built-In Armor was applied, which caused it to be additive with your Armor's Ballistic or Kinetic Protection, easily allowing 100% Protection. Built In Armor's power is that it applies across the board to Ballistic, Kinetic and *even* Pure Dmg to further reduce Damage after regular armor has been applied. If you take 100 Dmg, Armor reduces it to 50 Dmg, then Entrench's 20% reduces that to 40 Dmg.

UI and Roster Improvements

Clicking on a weapon, weapon mod, armor or item will now take you directly into the equipment screen instead of requiring a second click for confirmation or a keypress. Whew, that's nicer!

We've fixed sorting for high and low gear level to make sure it takes all weapons, weapon mods, armor and items into account by Power Level.

With this update we've increased the fidelity of movement warnings as there were too many edge cases where they were so close to either trigger or not triggering a warning and the wrong fact could be reported. So, the granularity of the checks is now lower, which should get us closer to perfect.

Matrix Improvements

We've completed a pass of improvements the IC spawner rules that place IC into matrix hosts based on their Security and Response Levels, Power Levels, enemy faction and other factors. This has resulted in some positive improvements to the chances of running into high level Traps as well as a better mix of Active and Passive IC through many hosts. Some types of traps like Slapfish specifically have now bee pushed to only appear on hosts of Orange or higher.

v1.4.13 - 3/2/2024

- Major upgrade to Hype/Stress system - more sources of both, choose your own Hype upgrades
- Hype upgrades include Trait mutation (positive or negative), Attribute bonuses, 30 day bonuses, changing Loyalty/Stress/Discontents
- Improved new game training for Scourge, added +1 charge of Dissolve and trained Bio-Mimic
- Fixed Sniper's Weak Spot not previewing Talent damage correctly when targeting enemy
- Click weapon/armor/mod/item in roster immediately takes you to equipment screen, no more second click
- Improved smoke cloud rules with line of sight not working near the boundary edge
- Increased fidelity of movement warnings - more precise checks, less edge case mis-reports
- Added +2 more Turns to Scourge's Dissolve Talent recharge rate - get more upgrades!
- Fixed sort by gear level in roster to correctly sum weapons+armor+items for sorting
- Improved IC balancing in Matrix, including pushing some difficult IC types up to Orange+
- Fixed bug sometimes causing an additional program to be unloadable in matrix
- Fixing hotkey tip for +/- Targets in Full Auto stacking on itself first time it appears
- Improved injury time text formatting in victory screens
- Reduced Soldier's Entrench starting Built-In Armor bonus from 25% to 20%
- Fixed issue with Built-In Armor incorrectly applying
- Added helpful hovers to timeline buttons