Update #293 follows on after Update #300 (what madness is this, it's April Fools!) with a major quality of life upgrade for combat captains, a powerful balance improvement for mission runners, new content for the crew barks system and fixes for Blade Dancer and the Templar storyline. We're hard at work again, knocking off the major quality of life and rebalance requests from the community. If you are enjoying the improvements, please take a moment to leave a review, post some feedback or share our game with a friend.

What’s the latest on Cyber Knights?

Earlier this year, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint’s private alpha test went live for our Kickstarter backers, following the same tried-and-true process we used for Star Traders: Frontiers. With a thousand players in the game now, development pace has picked up and we’re on the long march to release on Steam, so make sure you’ve wishlisted (and followed!), or join us for behind-the-scenes discussion and development snapshots in our Discord.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210/Cyber_Knights_Flashpoint/

Auto-Battle!

When it comes time for the rapid takedown, we've made a lot of improvements over the last year to help combat captains play faster. An upgraded suite of keyboard shortcuts and the high speed combat option to skip animation and SFX have both helped. But compared to the newest Auto Battle option, these previous improvements are tepid spice beer compared to a heaping spice plate.

Auto Battle –

• Uses the same AI controlling the enemy to control your team
• Uses all your Talents, healing and attacks automatically
• Resolves combats very quickly, especially when combined with Fast Combat option
• Can win easily if you are in a commanding position – if you outclass the enemy or you've already cleared half the enemy team, Auto Battle will help you mop up. If the enemy is a lineup of E-Techs and Navigators, Auto Battle can give you that rapid takedown experience.
• Should be used carefully in evenly matched combats where every decision counts. In closely balanced battles, Auto Battle will duke it out but will not be able to use your team's combat builds as optimally as you could.
• Can be quickly turned off - click the toggle to get control again
• Will never Surrender and always fight to the death
• Is not responsible for deaths to your team members – Use at your own risk!
• Starts disabled with each new combat. To a void mistakes where Auto Battle runs the first few (woops!) turns of a xeno combat, it always starts disabled

Auto Battle always starts disabled and as soon as you engage it your team will take care of the rest. We recommend trying out Auto Battle option in a few safe situations – when the enemy is down to 2 crew, when the enemy is far lower level than you, when your fighting mostly enemy ship crew boarding – to see how it feels with your combat crew. The Auto Battle AI uses basically the same AI as the enemy, so it may not be able to use your combat crews optimally, may not buff in the order you like or may heal less than you'd chose to – etc.

We're excited to hear your feedback – especially from boarding-heavy captains – to see how this helps and what we could do to further tune the Auto Battle AI.

Red Badge Priority Drop

With Update #293, Reputation mitigation Talents like the Diplomat's "Adept Mediation" or Spy's "Stealth Op" will activate before the Bounty Hunter's more generalist "Red Badge". This is a boon to captains who specialize in these skill-focused Talents, enabling you to save your Red Badge for a later mission step that might not have Stealth or Negotiation options.

The Bounty Hunter bearing an Edict has always been able to use Red Badge to reduce Reputation loss on any type of mission step in urban zones (not Exploring). Historically, it always went first. Many captains found this to be a disadvantage to the newer Rep mitigation Talents and we've finally caught up with the change that activates Red Badge always as a last resort.

Clarified Ritualized Retreat

We have fixed the description of the Blade Dancer's "Ritualized Retreat" Talent to be much clearer about what Black Market cards it can protect against – that is, only cards that include "Cargo Lost" in their title specifically. It does not protect against encountering hostile security squads.

New Barks – Thanks Twitch!

In a recent Twitch stream on our Twitch channel, Cory hung out and chatted and gathered awesome suggestions from the community to improve and add to the already huge set of barks in the game. Another 20 entries were added for specific Traits.

v3.2.37 - Rapid Takedowns

- Enabled hotkey and button to toggle auto-combat in Crew Combat (AI will resolve for you)
- Added button to toggle fast combat in crew combat
- Added 20 new barks for crew Traits
- Adjusted order of Mission Rep Loss mitigation Talents – Blood Badge will run AFTER other specific Skill (Stealth, etc) Talents
- Corrected description of Blade Dancer's "Ritualized Retreat" Talent to only cover Cargo Lost cards
- Fixed bug allowing reclaiming (and then using) Templar gear