[previewyoutube=TC23PlW6CSU;full][/previewyoutube] Were shooting out an update tonight just shy of the Animation Expansion stretch goal. By the looks of it, we will cross it overnight. Lets pet some dogs! Thanks to everyone supporting the campaign and getting the word out. Weve crossed the halfway point and are careening toward a big finish ... Pledge for a pre-order copy or more on Kickstarter now!

Pre-Mission Advantages

Tonight, we wanted to share with you a stylized story capturing the life of a Cyber Knight over a month. The safehouse strategic layer of Cyber Knights will be another aspect that sets it apart from other games in its genre. From your safehouse, youll be managing contacts, cutting deals, finding resources and shilling out bribes. Youre managing a team of mercs who are constantly burning through cash, looking for their next hit and trying to keep each other alive. The prose retelling of the events leading up to Operation Blackpool give both a look into the type of experience you can expect from playing Cyber Knights as well as the types of strategic actions youll be weighing with a special focus on pre-mission advantages. Pre-mission advantages will be available for every big mission. Youll be able to source them from your network of contacts or even meet new contacts who can help fulfill them. They will all have a price -- which you might not be able to pay in cash. While you gather these in advance of a mission, they will come into play while you are on your mission. Some will allow you to approach a mission differently, skip a specifically dangerous stage of a mission, gain special bonuses against the security system or even delay the ability for the enemy to call in reinforcement squads. While a lot of missions will not require this upfront investment, the big ones will warrant it. Of course, you can try operations without pre-mission advantages to increase your profit margins but youll be fighting uphill against tougher challenges.

A Month in the Life

I hope you enjoy the teams story as they prep to line everything up just right to take on an Operation that is going to test their limits. The timestamps show a realistic timeline of events for your team, and we focused on including events that you will find in the game -- like downtime between missions, bi-directional comms with contacts, purchasing armaments and gear, running side missions, getting laid up by wounds or cyber surgery and stewing in your safehouse. I really enjoyed writing this one, please let me know what you think in the comments below! To make the reading of the timestamped story a little easier, weve typed up a list of names that are mentioned below here -- Your Team

• Mirage, Stalker
• Pillz, Warmachine
• Rocket, Gunslinger
• Augma the Kid, Sniper
• Classic 20, Hacker

Contacts

• Miss Siren, Fixer
• Skeet, Hacker
• Lt. Mark Kesimir, BraveStar

Factions

• McKellan Heavy Industries, corp
• Jupiter Group, megacorp
• Arotech Corp, megacorp
• BraveStar, milsec corp
• Los V, gang
• Fennians, gang

Operation Blackpool

21:00, 4/15/2231: Our contact, Miss Siren, has turned up a big one. She proved she can deliver the big payouts when we kidnapped that Arotech scientist from the North Eiser Tower about 3 months ago. Shes been quiet for a while, but this is probably why. The cash on the table offer is $215,000 but there is definitely a barb between those bills. Were going to need a lot money to even make a run at this or its a suicide mission. Unfortunately, the tank is pretty low on cash flow. Were going to have to get creative, there is no way we walk away from this one. 11:00, 4/17/2231: Weve looked over the specs together. We can make the hit for Miss Siren. Weve got a lot of work to do to crack the security on the McKellan lab, but Siren is willing to wait to get it done right. Shes given us two months. Were calling this one Operation Blackpool. 18:00, 4/17/2231: Our warmachine, Pillz, is going under the knife again. Were going to need him at full speed and strength for the Blackpool. A new layer of subdermal and MuscleHype nanomuscle grafts will make sure he can survive running point on this one. Hes going to be out for almost three weeks. 15:30, 4/19/2231: Finally got that Hacker Skeet pinned down about the security on Blackpool. He says he can get the worm we need for the network for Blackpool. But, the McKellan security system is running Sigma 11. The price for the worm is out of the question, but Skeet offered another option. He wants us to pick up some gear from a crypt-locker below street level, Los V territory. He admitted someone is probably watching it and that we should expect trouble. 23:30, 4/20/2231: We are back, mostly in one piece. We needed Pillz on this one. They waited until after we had unloaded the crate. Their sniper thought hed take us out one by one, starting with our Stalker, Mirage. He didnt realize just how fast she is. We were doing well until their big guy came in too fast, cyber claws out. Our Gunslinger, Rocket, had to draw blade and meet him head on. Rocket put him down and Rocket is mostly in one piece. Wish Pillz had been there, he would have can-opened their muscle boy. 02:15, 4/21/2231: Rocket is pretty bad. Weve bundled him up and shipped him out to Dr. Fixits clinic, we need him back faster than we can handle here. The good Dr. says he will make it. 08:00, 4/21/2231: For once, the Hacker Skeet was prompt. Hes picked up the storage brick we nearly died to get last night. He says the Sigma 11 worm will take a week to finish. Blackpool just got a lot more likely. 11:30, 4/24/2231: Talked to our guy on the payroll in BraveStar, Lt. Mark Kesimir. His prices keep going up, probably because he knows we need him. The McKellan lab is in the BraveStar district and theyd be all over us if the on-site security AI raises an alert. Hard to argue with a lawman though. He says it will be $50,000, which we dont have -- Pillz and Rocket set us back a bit. 20:00, 4/24/2231: Its been three months since our Sniper, Augma the Kid, told me about this side job. I guess when he used to work for Arotech he had some security clearance. He stole a few things as they were kicking him out the door. I wonder if that has anything to do with why he lost his job there? Doesnt matter -- I havent had a reason to follow up before but his offer has just been waiting. I dont like hitting Arotech before Blackpool, but its a quick smash and grab. The fence money off it should easily pay for Lt. Kesimirs bribe and cover any other gear expenses before we go. 22:00, 4/27/2231: That was too easy -- I dont like it. Augmas intel was still good and we slipped past security like the thieves we are. Still wish we had Pillz with us, hes a big comforting hulk. Our Hacker, Classic 20, cut the security on their data-bank pretty easily. Augma has the tip on that too. Its some kind of research lab -- even Augma doesnt know much -- so the data will go to Hacker Skeet for a decent price. 22:00, 4/28/2231: Ratchet gave me a call today. The weapons smuggler is my best friend whenever he has a hot deal. This time it is red hot -- hes gotten a hold of a few Crane Tech Vanguard DragonRail and hes offered me the right of first refusal. The best I could do is promise to buy one. Put it on ice, Ratchet. If we survive Operation Blackpool, I hope he still has one of those monsters. Punch a hole in the side of a drone the size of your cybercat. 11:00, 4/29/2231: Good on his word, Hacker Skeet has delivered the Sigma 11 worm. All we have to do is reach an unsecured terminal and our Hacker, Classic 20, can deploy the virus. Its a hot looking sploit kit. Skeet has never let us down before -- were going to have to trust this will work fast. 20:00, 5/1/2231: Miss Siren called to check in -- she wants to know when we will be ready for Blackpool. I lied and said soon. 18:00, 5/8/2231: Pillz is back on his feet. Hes ready to rip. Between the new subdermal and the MuscleHype, hes massive. Hes heard enough about how we needed him when Rocket got sliced -- hes looking for something to crush. 13:30, 5/9/2231: Rocket is back from Dr. Fixit. Hes got a bit more chrome in him than the last time I saw him but he also has a lot more blood in him than the last time I saw him. Ill take it as a win. The team is back to full strength. Blackpool is coming. 18:30, 5/9/2231: The Jupiter Corp security officer Kolstrad called with a new job offer tonight. Once again, hes gunning to make a name for himself at any cost. This time he wants us to track down some Fennian gangers who attacked a Jupiter transport coming off the 182 lifts. He wants us to take them out, kind of make an example of them. The money is good: $65,000 for one night of bloody work. I told him well get to it and to send over the specs. But nothing can get in the way of Blackpool now. 18:30, 5/11/2231: The bribe is in for Lt. Mark Kesimir. Hell be managing the district the McKellan site is in on the 15th, so thats our night. He will flag the first alert warning as a spoof. Weve bought a few minutes after the first alarms go off before BraveStar boots are hitting the concrete. With the size of this facility, its only a matter of time before something goes boom and the security system wakes up angry. 04:30, 5/14/2231: Rocket went missing for the last twenty-four hours. Hes twitchy as hell and not in the mood to talk. Neither am I, so lets chalk this one up to needing to blow some steam off after a few weeks in the clinic. 14:30, 5/15/2231: Tonights the night ... Operation Blackpool.

With that, well leave you to dream of the hard fought battle, friends wounded or lost and the rich reward for taking on Operation Blackpool. Certainly, they worked hard to get to the starting line, but the real test is just ahead! It was a great deal of fun for me to write this up and I hope you will share your thoughts about the story and how the gameplay is portrayed in a comment! Pledge for a pre-order copy or more on Kickstarter now!

Twitch Schedule

We stream every Tuesday and Thursday at 4 PM EST on the TreseBrothers Twitch channel. Hop on and follow or watch some previous videos! As we are on our way to PAX East next week, our last pre-PAX stream will be Tuesday at 4 PM EST. Hope to see you there!

PAX East

As a reminder, we will be at PAX East in Boston, Massachusetts from February 27th to March 1st. We will be in the Kickstarter room right above the main convention floor from 10 AM EST to noon EST every day of the con. If youre there, please take a detour up to the Kickstarter room to say hello!

"Savage 700" Update

The Savage 700 keeps growing with more backers upgrading and pledging to join the alpha team. Since we rolled it out, weve had 70 new joiners to the alpha and we are creeping up on the goal of 700 with 571 alpha players on the team! Let's get to that goal of 700 and the double-sized Omega Style Collection!
Pledge for a pre-order copy or more on Kickstarter now!