Alphafox Guide to Upgrading your Safehouse

Base building, safehouse expansion, pimping the hideout. How to get the most out of the strategic layer of Cyber Knights Flashpoint.

In between running tactical heists, your team operates out of its base or hideout These terms are used interchangeably in the guide, in the game, and by players. This guide will cover the basics of building rooms, the utilities that limit you, what each room, and finally some strategic guides to the order you might want to build them in.

A lot of content was already available at the Cyber Knight's Wiki
https://cyberknightswiki.tresebrothers.com/Base_Building

and in Phreak's guide
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3322701627

Here I will streamline and focus on just the base building more.

The basics of building

First of all, breath easy. There is no irreversible mistake in base building. Buildings can be torn down and replaced. You just lose the resources you put into it and the opportunity of what you could have had.

So lets dive in to "Home, Sweet Home" for your Cyber Knight's mercenaries. This is your hideout. This is where you are going to spend a lot of time and be most familiar with in Cyber Knight's Flashpoint. Let's get started.

You start with just three rooms in your safehouse, all at level 1, and you can't destroy these rooms:

• Barracks: upgrade to increase the maximum number of mercs in the squad. This room also contains a lot of information about your team. You will spend a lot of time inside this room viewing your mercenary team.

• Command HQ: upgrade to increase the number of simultaneous upgrade tasks and the maximum power utility capacity. You can also view all available missions you can run from inside this room.

• Cold Storage: upgrade to increase the number of files that can be minted together, the number of blueprints that can be used in crafting, and the maximum cryo cooling utility level. You can view all your files and choose which ones to sell or "mint" inside this room.


You should be fine with these as they are for a little whie, but always make sure you are ready to upgrade your barracks in case you want to bring on more mercenaries. At the beginning you're going to need to focus on adding new rooms, to do that you will need to clean them.

All of your lower rooms are trashed and need to be cleaned out before ANYTHING can be built in them. This takes time and money, so go ahead and get started with clearing a couple of them out. I recommend doing this as soon as you get to the base. You're going to want new rooms very soon.

When just starting out, I recommend you pretend the lower sets of rooms don't exist. They are almost 10x more expensive to clean out and take more time. By the time you get around to them, hopefully you won't need this guide any more! But even after you clean out the rooms, you're going to have to build utilities in them for the room you want to build.

Utilities

There are three utilities that limit your ability to upgrade rooms in your safehouse. They each have a different mechanic with them. Each room and each upgrade level will require a varying amount of each utility. Cooling and power are specific to each room, while nano scrubbing is shared across the entire base.

Lets start with the most complicated utility. Power. The first thing you need to know about power is that it is route from the elevator shaft going down the center of your base. So the maximum power available to your outer rooms is set by the power already being routed to the rooms in the screenshot to the right.

So you can either plan on doing extra upgrades of power to your central rooms, or you can plan to put the rooms you will upgrade the most in the center so that hopefully you never have to encounter needing to upgrade power in that room so you can upgrade it in the outer room. Power is the most basic utility that all rooms need. So as soon as you get the room cleaned out, you might as well start building level 1 power to it.

But those inner rooms also themselves have a power maximum. Your Command HQ sets the maximum power utility for ALL rooms. So after a couple upgrades if you need more power, you are going to have to upgrade your Command HQ first. This won't happen for a while, but just remember when you get stuck being unable to upgrade the power in your central rooms that it is time to upgrade the Command HQ.

Next up is Cryo Cooling. Not every room needs Cryo Cooling, but most of them and the best ones do. You don't have to worry about what cooling the other rooms have. The Maximum cryo cooling is only set by the level of your Cold Storage room. You will want to upgrade this room sooner than your Command HQ because minting larger file sets means more money for stuff... like base expansion. Usually in the early game I am upgrading Cold Storage to mint larger files before I worry about upgrades to higher Cryo levels, but if you're not doing the minting then make sure and check here when you can't upgrade to the cryo level you need.

Finally the last utility is Nano-Scrubbing. The world of the future is highly polluted with nanobots and only nano-scrubbing makes work and life possible. Of course future work often uses a lot of nano, so you'll need even more scrubbing to keep everything running and running safe. The Nano-scrubber is a room itself you will need to upgrade, and probably upgrade more often than any other building. Hence why I have placed it in a top middle position. The room next to it will benefit from the nano scrubber's power level being higher than it needs. The nano scrubbing itself is expresed on the nano-scrubber room as a fraction. When a upgrading or building a building requires more scrubbing than you have, you will be unable to build it. Your mercs aren't suicidal after all.

The Nano Scrubber is essential for buildings, but it does nothing else directly for your team. So only build what you are going to need. One more thing about strategic nano scrubbing. The high level scrubber is expensive and you can consider instead building a second nano scrubber if you have the room free. There are more room types in the game than room spaces, so this means sacrificing a room spot... However, you can always scrap your second scrubber later in the game when you have more money. You can stick with just one scrubber and I usually do, but keep in mind there will be times where your base expansion is blocked by raising a substantial amount of funds for the next nano-scrubber upgrade level.

That is it. That is all three utilities. Next we get into the real value. What rooms to build and what they give you.

Rooms and why you might want them

These are the basic three rooms. You have to have them, you just weigh upgrades versus new rooms:. Some benefit from specific Face talents that maximize the benefit of building them.

• Barracks: Living space for new mercs. Always make sure you have space available for your next hire.
• Command HQ: Upgrade this when you need a new maximum power utility. Also improves the number of simultaneous base upgrades that can happen at once.
• Cold Storage: The maxmimum number of files you can combine into a set. The maximum number of blueprints you can combine into a craft, and the maximum amount of cryo utiility.

These rooms are not optional in any campaign. You choose when, not if you will build them:

• Nano-Scrubber: The third utility. You have to build and upgrade this room for better rooms. You will build this room and keep it upgraded as needed.
• Underworld Hub: Token based room. use the tokens to improve Legwork. At level 2 use them to hire new mercenaries. At level 3 use them to find new contacts. Higher levels improve token generation rate and the bonus it gives to legwork. This should be a high priority to build and upgrade in any campaign.

Face synergy.


+ Hand-Picked Talent. The only "room" talent on the right side of the face tree. Hand-picked significantly increases the starting level of any UHUB recruits, as well as any other recruits. If you don't take this talent anyways, you will get incredible synergy when recruiting new mercs from the UHUB.

Personally, I build UHUB fairly early despite its cost and it is always the first room I upgrade.

The optional rooms. You can't build all of these in any campaign. So here are your choices and the tradeoffs.

• Field Ops Center: Token based room. You can buy great leverages here for physical missions, and most importantly you can delay a mission and give yourself more time to complete it. Also, you can use tokens to increase physical loot and credit loot in a mission.

Face Synergy


+ The Field Coordination talent allows you to get a lot more out of your Field Ops tokens. Boosting existing leverages and adding new ones. This can give you huge advantages on key missions.

• Hacking Station: Token based room. Use tokens for great hacking leverages. Inject more files into the matrix for looting. Good for creating more profitable Matrix runs.

Face Synergy

+ The Digital Coordiantion Talent does for Hacking Station what Field Coordination does for Field Ops Center. Just as powerful, but in my personal opinion not as crucial. Certainly if you are struggling with Matrix runs, this can give you a big boost.


• Counter-Intel Pod: Token based room. use the tokens to reduce heat and Head Hunters, or to generate new hacking Missions. Critical to keep the HH off your stealth based mission teams and for reducing heat that has gotten too high from your combat teams.

Face Synergy

+ Insider Hustle Talent is different from the rest. It adds completely different functionality to the Counter-Intel Pod. It allows you to use tokens on the Counter-Intel room for favors with contacts. In turn you can use those favors to steer the contact's development when they get a limit break. A subtle, but powerful talent for the strategic aspect of the game.

• Simstream Detox: Put a merc in a destressing tank for an extended virtual vacation to reduce their stress. Currently the ONLY way to reduce stress.
• Simstream Trainer: Token based room. Put a merc into a trainer pod to undergo an extended training session. They gain experience when your other mercs run missions. Tokens can be used to reset all skill points on a mercenary and reselect them. A great room for new players, it is the first one I don't use in later campaigns.
• Triage Clinic: Automatically reduces Injury recovery time and grants Wound Res bonuses against Wounds for all mercs returning from a Mission. At lower difficulty levels up to hard I don't build this room. On difficulties Brutal+ it is the first room I build, but I don't upgrade until convenient. If you are taking many wounds, this building can pay for itself quickly and keep your mercs available for the next mission.
• NanoFab: Craft new Weapons, Weapon Mods, Armor, and Items from Nano-Bearing Substrate Cubes and Blueprints. In CKF Crafting is EXPENSIVE. This is a major money sink. However, it is also how you get the best gear in the game. Each level of the fab allows you to build one workbench to craft a specific type of equipment (Mods, Weapons, Armor, or Items). This one room deserves its own strategy guide. Should you build it? Well first do you have any good blueprints to build with it? Blueprint drops are random and from a large pool of blueprints. If you are setting on a pile of credits and you have several good blueprint drops of a similar type that you want to use.. then you should build it.

I'll also advise you of a way to hack the nanofab. Each thing you make requires a bench. Benches can be removed and a different one installed for a delay and a cost. Much cheaper than higher levels of Nano-fab. So if you made all of what you want with one blueprint type and can't afford a full nanofab level upgrade. Uninstall a bench and install a different one.

What will you choose? Are you a game veteran? Post your build and upgrade order for new players in the comments.

[Dakkarst]

Thanks for the guide! It's very helpful for me!

[Cyber Psience]

@Zappazane. Done. I took your advice and added the Face talents to the guide. Thank you for the response!

[zappyzane]

It'd be nice to add a section (or in-line) best synergy with Face class skills.
eg: "if going hard into Field Ops room, then take Face skill X and Y"

As they directly complement. It is possible to take face skills with no use, given how one has built their base, at least early on.