Knights! We're here to wrap up the weekend and almost the year with Update #194 which includes a 9th weekly map release, major rebalance to Dead Drop Hit, a ton of improvements and critical fixes to Leverage, better UI for Contact buy and sell services, map fixes and more.

Every week the game is growing, gaining features, improving balance and progression and getting a little more QoL polish. We hope you're enjoying the Early Access process we've got going - relentless updates, never invalidate a saved game.

Please consider leaving a review - our small team needs your help to spread the word!

Here we are on our 9th week of our weekly map release goal with the new map - River Street Bridge. This new map has a central, large bridge splitting the street district. The river cutting the district, the central bridge and the other ways across it will play key roles in all of your missions.

With the River Street Bridge, we are dedicated to supporting 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 113 proc-gen combos and represents another 6% increase in map variety. River Street Bridge also includes support for the Assassinate VIP objective as well, which brings the mission maps supported for that objective type up to 9.

The storyline where you attempt to recover some E-Rifles leads you to the Dead Drop Hit job which has become a bit infamous for being unbalanced and too hard for the point in the game it appears. We've made some helpful changes to get it where it needs to be - a nasty, fun fight instead of an unexpected and crushing spike in difficulty.

The changes include upgrading the mission to allow 4 mercs to go, adjusting the starting area to give some more cover options for your defensive position and tweaking the starting spawn counts on enemies.

Finally, we've pushed the minimum Team Power Level that this story will appear at up to 3. That is exciting because that also means we've pushed the E-Rifle rewards up to Power Level 3 E-Rifles instead of Power Level 2. This is a change that will benefit all saved games - new and old - so enjoy your bumped up E-Rifles, Knights!

With Update #194, we've fixed a widespread set of issues with Leverage where they were often actually running for 1 Turn less than they promised. This hit a wide range of Leverages, including both passive and active Leverages. Now all the Leverages will run as long as they promise!

We've cleaned up the language and game terms used throughout the set to really get consistency and be sure the Leverage is using all the right terms to match the rest of the game.

In addition, we've improved Alarm Malfunction so that it simply removes an amount of Sec Tally equal to one Escalation and drops the Sec Level by 1, which means the next time the Sec AI would usually Escalate, it is skipped. This is equivalent to Spiking an APU in the Matrix, so its pretty powerful delay action.

Finally, we've fixed an issue where a Leverage that disabled security systems might also cause the sleeping security devices to wake up when the duration ended. This was a big issue in some levels using sleeping devices, so this is a critical bug to fix to push Leverages to their most useful slot.

With this update, we've split a Contact's services into two groups for clarity - what they Sell and what they are willing to Buy. This helps us cut down on repetitive words ("Buys ...") and also show the dual nature of some services (if a Contact sells any type of weapons, they always buy all used weapons back).

As the services lists are getting more in depth and starting to change with Power Play options, it is important to make sure the UI helps clarify what you've got and what you might be working on. We'll keep improving these UIs to help cut down the amount of checking and screen transitions you need to get the most important info for strategic decisions.

With this update we fixed places in Slumroad Junction where doors in exterior buildings were blocking line of sight and we fixed and tuned up the rotation and placement of a ton of spawning locations for enemies and your merc team across a wide set of maps. Every release, we're improving, tweaking and tuning the map set so a huge thanks goes out to anyone sending in F10s that help us improve!
 
- Added new proc-gen map "River Street Bridge": a street region straddling a bridge soaked in blood of the last centuries battles that supports +8 new proc-gen combos (Heist a CPU, Steal 3 Files, Scavenger, Kill 3 Captains, Bodyguard, Assassinate, Siege and Battle Striker)
- Improved Contact list and hover to separate Buys and Sells services more clearly
- "Dead Drop Hit" mission now allows 4 mercs instead of 3 (it came from a simpler time...)
- Improved cover positions and reduce enemy starting spawn counts in "Dead Drop Hit" to even its difficulty
- Adjusted requirements for "Dead Drop Hit" (fetch E-Rifles) mission to not proc before Power Level 3
- Improved rewards - E-Rifles from "Dead Drop Hit" upgraded to Power Level 3 (all games, new and forever)
- Further improved progression of maps via proc-gen to avoid harder maps on earlier Power Levels
- Fixed Alarm Malfunction so that it correctly reduces Sec Level by 1 and prevents next Escalation
- Fixed Leverage bug with disabling security devices that could result in sleeping devices being woken
- Fixed duplicate dialogs at the end of Siege missions
- Fixed tagging issue in Roster where damaged Cyberdeck ("Cyberdeck 90%") would cause "Loadout" to be shown as well
- Fixed map issues in Slumroad Junction with doors blocking lines of sight from rooftops
- Fixed typos in Hacking Tutorial

Tonight, it is a Winter Sale Bug Smash! With 34% off, we should kill 34 bugs, right? Well, we focused on some of the most popular F10s in the last month and went on a bug smashing spree! It's not quite 34, but we're hard at work polishing up the game and cleaning up small bugs so your play is smoother, faster and always fun.

A huge welcome to all the new Cyber Knights pouring into New Boston during this Winter Sale! Thanks for checking out the game, for your support, for your posts and for your reviews!

We have a wonderful in-game bug and feedback reporting tool, just hit F10 (or left stick click on controller) to send in your reports. These come with so much context, log data and an immediate screenshot that it greatly reduces the time we need to spend to resolve the issue and get it back to you in update.

So, thank you - especially during Early Access - for helping feed our fire of improvements. You'll see we are a constant update machine here, always improving. So help us do that with an F10 today!

So - what big bugs got smashed?

 
There was a bug that the movement of map areas of effect like Tox-Cloud, White Noise, Line Crawler and more was lost if you exited the game and reloaded it. Sometimes the areas wouldn't move or sometimes they would move but not like they did before you left the game.
This is now all resolved, with the movement being made at the end of a Turn and being committed to the saved game at that time. Now, reloading the game will restore these flawlessly.

We've fixed a highly reported bug that Leverages were widely misreporting their duration. Leverages would claim to do something until the end of next Turn and then expire promptly at the end of the current Turn. We've resolved this with all of the Leverages correctly adjusting their duration to run for the right amount of time - now, if it says until the end of next Turn, that's what you'll get!

We've also cleaned up a ton of non-standardized language in the Leverage descriptions and ensured that the descriptions shown during the mission and in the Field Ops Center are always synchronized and don't have the opportunity to drift apart.

We fixed a bug that was causing some cameras to actually have range to spot your mercs that exceeded the visual meta display. Just in that last meter beyond their red display, you'd still get spotted. Now fixed!

There was a class of issues for the kill count goal where "secondary" kills were not counted toward the goal. Secondary kills could be caused by Poison, any damage-over-time, corpse Detonation, Grenades, and anything else that wasn't a direct attack. These all now count toward kill goals.

We've compressed the color picker and fixed issues within it for controllers scrolling through the picks. This reduces all the scrolling that was needed to use this UI and helps ensure controllers can use the picker correctly.

We've improved the dialog prompt on the timeline for the proc-gen Legwork storylines, which were saying "I need a Favor" but now will say "I need a merc on a Legwork" to be really clear what they are asking about.

If you decided not to take on a recruit - such as someone rescued from a prison break - and they had a Wound, this Wound would show forever on your Barracks as a red tag. Now fixed!

We also fixed a huge host of map issues. The door that was stuck in Gated Enclave with "move closer" can now be reached. We fixed a ton of spawn locations, VIP locations, starting rotations, and issues to see over doorways from rooftops on Interchange H.

- Fixed issues with Tox-Cloud, White Noise, Line Crawler not correctly restoring their movement from last Turn when game is reloaded
- Fixed all Leverage duration mismatches - where buggy, the Leverage lasted 1 Turn too short, now fixed to last correct number of Turns
- Improved consistency of terms and rule descriptions in all Leverages
- Leverages offered in Field Ops center area now sorted by Power Level
- Fixed issues with secondary kills (poison, damage over time, Detonation, etc) not being counted toward final kill secondary objectives
- Fixed bugs with some Camera and Long-Range Camera overlays on map being shorter than the actual range of the camera's detection
- Shrunk size of color box for appearance color customization, more colors visible at once and improved controller/keyboard support
- Timeline prompts for proc-gen Legwork are now clearer (stating need for Legwork, not a Favor)
- Fixed issue where Wounded tag could appear on Barracks if you ignored a recruit who was wounded (usually a recruit from a rescue mission)
- Fixed enemy reinforcement and VIP spawn locations, inoperable door, starting rotations and more in Gated Enclave
- Fixed issues with inability to see over doors from rooftop on Interchange H mission map