Aug 17, 2022

Cyber Knights: Flashpoint Playtest - Trese Brothers

Ok - we are trying something new! Update #19 (v0.6.27) is where we are going to pick up the pace to updates nearly once a week or faster. With the types and volume of changes we’re making, it is time to include some longform text along with the release notes bullets. There is *so* much changing in the game right now we can’t wait for you to check it out and it deserves more than just a huge, bulleted list.

Story and Progression

We’re 8 months into the alpha and our current goal is to expand and release more of the game’s strategy layer, story and character progression and difficulty systems to you as fast as possible.

This will be coming through multiple angles:

Increasing incentives to continue to play a single squad for longer (and avoiding save wipes)
Increasing ability to level up, equip and improve single squad
Adding more stories and missions to play
Allowing enemy and map challenge level to ramp up for harder missions

With Update #19, we’ve opened up character progression a bit more, increasing the max level to 14 and doubling the maximum turns you can play a single squad from 50 to 100 days.

A big part of progression is going to be finishing the release of all character equipment and cybernetic implants. The first step is to roll out more options for armor, which you can now purchase from Origami Joe, your starting Gun Runner Contact.

To help with item shopping, we’ve changed how purchasing works so that you are always buying a pack of items (5 First Aid Kits for $3K) instead of buying one by one. This keep the pricing from smaller items reasonable and also reduces the overall purchase activations you need to complete.

We goofed with the last update and mistakenly added an unfinished short story about an E-Rifle. This update, we’ve fixed that and added instead a short Legwork tutorial story that explains the game’s Legwork concept as you do some work for a Gun Runner and allows you to see the resulting relationships start to form in the game. Legwork is a key part of the game's story system and your ability to complete risky tasks and activities that aren't represented on the main mission stealth-combat and hacking map, so we're excited to see more of these options showing up.

Purchase multiple levels of armor from Origami Joe
Purchasing items now purchases a pack (5 HE Grenades for $3K)
Update character detail page with better focus on loadout
Added Story: legwork tutorial from a local Gun Runner
Maximum level increased to 14
Doubled maximum turns of single game to 100 days (400 Turns)

Merc Pay Rates & Conditional Bonuses

Here’s another big change for you - mercs now take their own cut of every mission based on their individual pay rate, which defaults to 3%. Even those mercs who stay home on a mission - and even your Face - still get a cut of your heist payouts. In the future, a merc’s pay rate may also evolve throughout the game, going up or down based on story, loyalty, stress and Traits.

This update adds conditional bonuses from your contact on a mission offer, if the contact wants a mission done quietly (below a certain Security Level) or quickly (below a certain Turn). These conditions can add both extra payments (see Street Striker playtest mission) and XP (see Leverage Drop mission). These will be very useful in stories where contacts have certain stipulations that they want met but we want to avoid writing in a hard fail to the mission, instead you might just lose half the mission pay.

All mercs now use their Pay Rate (default 3%) and take this cut of every mission payout whether or not they leave the Safehouse - pay rate may change over time due to loyalty, stress, Traits
Improved Mission Victory screen to better group and display results (XP, Payment, Loot)
Mission Offers can now include conditional bonuses on speed and low Security Level
Street Striker and Undercutter Missions gain $10K bonus from contact if completed in under 8 Turns
Leverage Drop Mission gains a 20 XP bonus if completed with Security Level 4 or less

New Playtest Levels

We’ve added 2 new playtest levels with this update - “Hover Escape” and “Office Closer”. For all of the levels under the playtest menu, we would love as detailed feedback as you can provide us to help us improve any aspect of the level - size, flow, patrol paths, prop placement, difficulty, visual theme etc. Any feedback you can provide will be tremendously helpful to us and our 2 Level Designers! We would also just love to know how did you think about and tackle the challenges in the level? Where did you go, who did you fight, how did you escape?

We are gathering feedback in the #level_playtest channel of our Discord and we’d love you to post after-action reports, screenshots, text or even video recordings (the best!!!) as long as they are shared on an unlisted link somewhere (Dropbox, Google Drive, unlisted YouTube). These can help a great deal as we are working to refine levels and our level design process.

Hover Escape is a high-octane escape level where you've reached the top of a building and your escape ride is coming to pick you up. With security descending on you from every angle, you've got to reach your extraction hover pad in time.

Office Closer is a raid in the mold of Req Site Raid -- a self-directed mission where you can choose to loot as much or as little as you can before its time to go.

Added new playtest levels “Hover Escape” and “Office Closer”
Still asking for more playtest feedback on "Big Door" and "Street Striker"

Enemy Variety & Rules

With this update, the previously generic enemy spawns have started to form up into noticeable squads. This new squad composition mostly focuses on tactical groups with a captain or a commander but will be expanding and bringing more clear variety to the enemy squads.

As of last update, enemies are using Talents to help themselves and debuff your mercs, so we’ve added SFX and VFX with this update to make that clearer. Remember, for now, just bring up your merc’s status screen to see the exact effects.

A few updates ago, enemies went deaf to their own team and we’ve fixed that now - they hear each other’s gunfire again and you’ll see enemy squads being a lot more responsive.

New enemy squad composition including tactical groups with captains / commanders
Enemy Talents now fire SFX and VFX to make target and timing clear
Fixed regression where enemies where not hearing their team’s gunfire or reacting to seeing their team getting attacked
Reduced chattiness of enemy response to gunfire, grenades and being attacked

Outfits & Colors

On the cosmetic front, we’re pushing forward by adding 2 new hats and 2 new glasses as well as giving you the option to change the coloration on all of the pieces of your outfit including hats and glasses separately. More of these types and options will be coming soon.

Re-added missing legwork tutorial story from Gun Runner
Added 4 new cosmetics: noir hat, beret, deco glasses and aviators
Split out color panel from main design panel for easier color adjustments
Can now adjust colors for hats & glasses separately

Auto-Hunker

If you end your turn (not just delay) with at least 1 AP, your merc will now automatically use the Hunker Talent. You can still use Hunker during your turn for 1 AP and then delay if you need that early defensive bonus, just don’t move or it will cancel. the benefit.

Hunker Talent automatically executes if End Turn with 1+ AP
Removed confusing display of charges/recharge from Hunker Talent - like default Attack it is always available

Security Disable Talents

A rebalance of the security Talent disable set has been needed and this update rolls it out. The Knights, Vanguard and the Hacker now each a clearer theme to their Talent, for example the Vanguard has shorter range, the greatest number of charges and with investment in a high cost (and new) node in their class tree, can use their Talent for 0 AP cost.

Knight’s Security Dampen is themed “longer disable with fewer charges and longer range” now starts with 18m range, disables until end of next Turn and starts with 1 charge (until you train more nodes)
Vanguard’s Jamkit is themed “short-term disable with lots of charges and short range” now starts with 12m range, disables until end of Turn and starts with 2 charges (until you train more nodes)
Added new class node for Vanguard that reduces AP cost of Jamkit to 0 which costs 2 training points
Hacker’s Packet Loss is themed “short-term disable with mid-range charges and long range” now 25m starting range, disables until end of Turn (until you train more nodes)
Echo Jammer Item now only requires 1 AP, disables for 3 Turns and has a range of 24m

Beginnings of the Weapon Rebalance

There is a big package of weapon rebalance coming very soon based on all of your feedback, but we started a few smaller ones with this update.

All melee weapons noise is reduced to 0m instead of 2m - ultimate stealth kills
Rapid Fire rule (fire with last 1 AP) now correctly applies only to SS/SA/BF firing modes and not to Full Auto. This specifically effects SMGs.
Shotgun max range reduced to 10m, added Apollo M-Driver barrel mod option that increases max range by +2m

Bugs and Prop Fixes

This update fixes a lot of bugs, but here is a nice list from the tickets you submitted with F10!

Fixed sight lines not going through wire mesh fence
Fixed sight lines around being too close around security pillars
Fixed bug where equipping weapons caused the weapon order to swap

Here is the full list without the explanations --

v0.6.27 - 8/17/2022

- Purchase multiple levels of armor from Origami Joe
- Purchasing items now purchases a pack (5 HE Grenades for $3K)
- Update character detail page with better focus on loadout
- Added Story: legwork tutorial from a local Gun Runner
- Maximum level increased to 14
- Doubled maximum turns of single game to 100 days (400 Turns)
- Added new playtest levels “Hover Escape” and “Office Closer”
- New enemy squad composition including tactical groups with captains / commanders
- Enemy Talents now fire SFX and VFX to make target and timing clear
- Fixed regression where enemies where not hearing their team’s gunfire or reacting to seeing their team getting attacked
- Reduced chattiness of enemy response to gunfire, grenades and being attacked
- Re-added missing legwork tutorial story from Gun Runner
- Added 4 new cosmetics: noir hat, beret, deco glasses and aviators
- Split out color panel from main design panel for easier color adjustments
- Can now adjust colors for hats & glasses separately
- Hunker Talent automatically executes if End Turn with 1+ AP
- Removed confusing display of charges/recharge from Hunker Talent - like default Attack it is always available
- All mercs now use their Pay Rate (default 3%) and take this cut of every mission payout whether or not they leave the Safehouse - pay rate may change over time due to loyalty, stress, Traits
- Improved Mission Victory screen to better group and display results (XP, Payment, Loot)
- Mission Offers can now include conditional bonuses on speed and low Security Level
- Street Striker and Undercutter Missions gain $10K bonus from contact if completed in under 8 Turns
- Leverage Drop Mission gains a 20 XP bonus if completed with Security Level 4 or less
- Knight’s Security Dampen is themed “longer disable with fewer charges and longer range” now starts with 18m range, disables until end of next Turn and starts with 1 charge (until you train more nodes)
- Vanguard’s Jamkit is themed “short-term disable with lots of charges and short range” now starts with 12m range, disables until end of Turn and starts with 2 charges (until you train more nodes)
- Added new class node for Vanguard that reduces AP cost of Jamkit to 0 which costs 2 training points
- Hacker’s Packet Loss is themed “short-term disable with mid-range charges and long range” now 25m starting range, disables until end of Turn (until you train more nodes)
- Echo Jammer Item now only requires 1 AP, disables for 3 Turns and has a range of 24m
- All melee weapons noise is reduced to 0m instead of 2m - ultimate stealth kills
- Rapid Fire rule (fire with last 1 AP) now correctly applies only to SS/SA/BF firing modes and not to Full Auto. This specifically effects SMGs.
- Shotgun max range reduced to 10m, added Apollo M-Driver barrel mod option that increases max range by +2m
- Fixed sight lines not going through wire mesh fence
- Fixed sight lines around being too close around security pillars
- Fixed bug where equipping weapons caused the weapon order to swap

Aug 17, 2022

1.3 Beta 8 is now available!

BallisticNG - Vonsnake

Maceno Island
We've got the store page for Maceno Island up, be sure to go wishlist it and check out the new Maceno Island liveries!

The DLC will be coming shortly after 1.3s release and it will be a paid expansion. We haven't set a price yet.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1596120/BallisticNG__Maceno_Island/

1.3 Beta 8
1.3 Beta 8 is now available! We've still got a bunch of content to finish over the next few months before 1.3 is finished, but we've got plenty of new features to test beforehand.

This update doesn't include all of the new bike tracks. We're saving those for the full release.

Joining the beta

Right click BallisticNG in your steam library and go to Properties
Go to the betas tab on the window that opens
From the dropdown select Beta. If the update doesn't automatically queue for download, restart Steam

What is the beta?
For 1.3 we're developing and implementing new modding tools and features, some of which will be part of the upcoming Switch version of the game. We're releasing beta builds for each new feature we add so the community gets to play around with them early.

Unity Tools Notice
While these beta builds ship with Unity 2020.3.5 ready builds of the Unity Tools, they are intended for our internal testing group only. If you want to import the Unity Tools, please make sure you're using Unity 2018.3.8 and import them from the public branch running version 1.2.5 of the game.

Mods built with the 1.3 Beta Unity Tools are not compatible with previous versions of the game and documentation will not be available until the final release of 1.3.

What's new?

New Ships
Mako and the Aster KA10 are now playable!

Scanline effects now disabled in VR
We've had reports that people were getting motion sick in the menu and in survival mode because of the scanline effect. It's now disabled in VR.

New ship asset mangement system
All internal ships are now built into their own asset bundle files. This allows us to manage internals ships exactly like we have been with custom ships. There's now a slight loading time, but we no longer need to have all of the ships resources loaded into memory, which gives us much more room to cram in more ships and liveries for those ships without worrying about making the game eat more of your system resources.

Redesigned campaign details panel
We have a new campaign details panel! All of the events information is now displayed so you can see exactly what you're about to play.

More options
Custom race and multiplayer now have more options!

For both custom racea and multiplayer you can set custom speed multipliers to go as painstakingly slow or as blisteringly fast as you want. Multiplayer now also has options to control the end of race and return to lobby timers.

We've also added a new graphics option to set the displays refreshrate when using exclusive fullscreen and a new gameplay option that allows Orbitronix and Mako to be part of the game's standard ship roster when spawning AIs.

Game state added for speed runners
We've added an enumeration that speed runners creating LiveSplit Auto Splitter scripts can hook into. NgData.Player.PlayerState is the enumeration and it holds the following states:

Menu (player is on the main menu)
Pre Race (player is watching the race overview or the countdown hasn't finished yet)
Racing (player is currently racing)
Post Race (the race is finished, the player is looking at the results screen)

Bling Pack is now Steamless
Thanks to big changes we've made to our DLC system recently, we finally have a much better solution for the bling pack. The bling pack is now it's own DLC file to validate that you've bought it. As with all other DLC, once you have that file you no longer need to run the game through Steam for any reason.

Stunt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShARRHlbngg

We've added a new high score game mode. In Stunt your goal is to perform as many barrel rolls as you can before completing all laps. The closer you barrel roll to the floor, the higher the score.

Our approach to this mode was to take barrel rolls and turn it into somewhat of a rhythm game, with the timing of the roll playing an important part in a positive feedback loop to sustain long roll chains.

In this mode barrel rolls are bound to a single button press, however you can still perform them normally if you really hate your controller ;)

The mode works as follows:

Land a barrel roll to earn points and start a chain. Depending on when you barrel roll you'll earn points for regular rolls, good rolls and perfect rolls. Timing is key!
When starting a chain you'll get 10 points for the 2nd roll, then each subsequent roll multiplies the score by the number of rolls in the chain. A chain is ended by letting the timer run out, failing a roll or hitting the track walls.
Your ships shield energy can be exchanged for an uplift boost. An uplift boost accelerates your ship upwards to let you get airtime, while also freezing your chain and adding some additional time to it. This can be used as a tool to gain air where you would otherwise not get it, be timed on big jumps to keep a chain going through falling or just be used as a way to panic extend a chain.

Straight away you have three uplift boosts in your reserve. Your energy recharges slowly over time, but landing good and perfect rolls give large amounts of the energy back immediately.
If you finish the event while in a chain you enter overtime and keep going. As long as your chain is still going you can go indefinitely to rack up huge scores. Regular rolls however do not count towards resetting your chain in overtime.

Sticking as close to the track as possible is key as spending too long in the air is wasted chain time. Maintaining close proximity to the track is done by pitching down and braking over crests when going at high speeds. The mode is also playable on all speed classes and supports splitscreen!

Stunt will have leaderboards when 1.3 releases. They're currently disabled in the beta.

1.3 Beta 8 Full Changelog

Ships

Added Mako
Added Aster KA10
Added more chase camera sensitivity stats (coming to Unity Tools later)
Added Idle Sway stat (coming to Unity Tools later)
Barrel roll success threshold reduced to 180 degrees (from 200) to match with what's happening visually
Reduced various sensitivity settings of the small vehicle chase cameras to improve their feel
Fixed the Barracuda Model B not having an illum map setup

Music

Added Vonsnake - Mako
Added Vonsnake - Smooth Gliding

DLC

Bling pack ownership is now verified using a content pack data file instead of a past Steam login validation check

Engine

Added option to set the monitor refresh rate when using exclusive fullscreen
Added Terrain Advanced Max shader, expanding Terrain Advanced Plus with illumination and reflection maps. This will be available in a future Unity Tools update
Added gameplay option to allow AI to use the post release ships, disabled by default. Game -> General -> Ai Expanded Roster
Player ship selections are now stored as a reference to a content manager entry instead of separate standalone data
Removed a legacy custom ship load time notice message on track load transitions
Small vehicles now have their own camera setting, set to rear chase by default.
Exposed character input speeds to the F1 stats menu (now has a scroll bar)
Implemented lens flare passthrough. Objects with collisions can now be flagged out with a script to not occlude lens flares for cases such as invisible walls and holographics. This will be available to mods in a future Unity Tools update. Some internal tracks will be updated to support this feature at a later time.
Internal ships are now split into individual files and use the ship bundle manager, originally used for CSF custom ships. This adds a noticeable selection load time but reduces memory overhead as all ship resources are no longer loaded at all times.
Fixed the airbrakes for the other splitscreen player rendering when in the internal view if the mesh renderer isn't attached to the transform object
Ship airbrakes can now be configured to render in the cockpit view (coming to Unity Tools later)
Ship characters can now be configured to use their own material and be rendered in the cockpit view
Fixed soft locks that could occur when alt tabed while a track is loading
Fixed survival continuing to think that a custom ship is being used in survival if using the change ship and track option on the pause menu and changing to the Barracuda Model S
Fixed softlocks when alt tabbing on vanilla track loading
Fixed splitscreen pushing a cheats enabled notification
Fixed weather systems not being setup for player 2 in splitscreen
Disabled log events for flare culling

The scanline effect on virtual skies is now disabled

User Interface

Added a load overlay which pops up when a ship is being loaded
Fixed menu ships disappearing when changing liveries after every 2nd switch

Tracks

Fixed transparency orders on Omega Harbours underwater tunnel
Various tracks given water material tweaks to adjust for UV scrolling fixes
Fixed the survival anti-cheat erroneously kicking in on Hydrome Bed
(Neon Nights) Fixed Metro Reverse using the night texture maps
(Outer Reaches) The Project 9 suspension vehicles now use a double sided material

User Interface

Redesigned the campaign event details panel
- The interface is now laid out in a 2x2 grid
- Event settings are now displayed in the same format that multiplayer lobby settings are. More settings are now listed.
- If a tournament is selected, the track overview title now shows the track number as it cycles through the tracks
Fixed softlock issue that could sometimes occur when backing out of the game options menu after switching mod tabs
Fixed custom race sliders having their start value being set before the rounding mode is applied
Selector elements now have their arrows faded when there's only a single option
Custom race tournaments no longer have a track limit
The tournament listing scroll view no longer has navigation and can scrolled with the menu scroll input bindings or the mouse
Increased granularity of the audio mixing sliders
The leaderboards menu now cancels previous leaderboard fetch requests before starting new ones
Reorganised the Game -> Camera menu

Gamemode

Added Stunt
Drastically reduced airbrake slip falloff in Survival (1000 to 25). The intention is to make the airbrake response predictable and in-line with the Model S handling outside of the mode. Please let me know if it makes it too difficult to fly in the higher zones.

Weapons

Reduced turbo drop chance weighting by 70%

Multiplayer

Added speed multiplier setting. This stacks with hyper and drag mode
Added setting to control the results screen time
Added setting to control the event finish time
Fixed the speed modifier not being saved into lobby presets
Host handshake packets now pull the hosts ship selection directly from the new content manager reference value instead of running a database search. This should drastically improve host performance when new clients join and lots of custom ships are installed.

Campaign

Fixed spelling mistakes in the base game time trial custom descriptions
(Outer Reaches) Fixed finale drift and drag events allowing small vehicles
Added support for the drag speed modifier

Custom Race

Fixed spelling mistakes in the ai roster preset action dialogs
Added a button to reset cheats
Added speed multiplier setting. This stacks with hyper and drag mode

Modding

Added Mako livery template PSD
Added Aster KA10 livery template PSD
uplift.wav and overtime.wav added for custom soundpacks
The Aster LB221 livery template has been re-exported with no color profile setup. The note txt file explains a better workflow for gimp converted PSDs.