WHAT'S NEW

Replay controls fixed.

• The buttons on the replay bar did nothing when clicked. The speed buttons (1×, 2×, 4×, 8×), pause, restart and VIEW (switch whose eyes you watch through) now all work, including while paused.

Campaign and replays.

Campaign

• A new CAMPAIGN on the title screen. Pick your army and work through the missions in order; each one unlocks the next, and progress is saved per callsign.
• Basic Training — four guided missions: selecting and moving, building an economy, defending against raids, and a first real match. Each has an objective list, hints, and a marker on the ground (or an arrow at the screen edge) showing where to go.
• Operations — seven missions that get steadily harder: hold every relay, fight on two fronts, a four-way free-for-all, a tidal lake against a capable opponent, a twelve-minute siege, two against two with a computer ally, and three commanders allied against you.

Replays

• Every match you finish is recorded: skirmish, campaign and network games. WATCH REPLAY on the results screen plays it straight away.
• REPLAYS on the title screen keeps your last ten. Watch at up to 8× speed, pause, restart, and switch whose eyes and fog of war you watch through.
• Export a replay to a file to keep it or send it to someone, and import one back.

Computer players

• In free-for-all, computers next to player 1 always came for player 1 when two enemies were equally near. Each computer now settles such ties its own way, so nobody is everyone's first target.

Shifting ground.

Hazards that move

• Tides — every sludge lake now rises and falls. After the opening minutes it floods a marked shore band every couple of minutes, then drains. The band flashes and you are warned ten seconds before each rise, and nothing can be built on it.
• Fallout clouds — radiation that drifts: clouds swing back and forth across the roads and burn whatever they roll over. Their track is drawn on the ground, and they never reach a base.

Capture sites

• Data relays pay whoever holds them a steady trickle of credits. Watchtowers show your whole side everything round them.
• Stand units on a pad with no enemy there to take it. A held site has to be worn down before anyone else can take it, and two sides on one freeze it.
• Sites sit between seats, so neighbours have to fight for them. On six-player maps they go exactly between each pair of neighbours.
• Computer players send squads to take sites and to win back any being taken off them.

Six new maps

• Relay Run (2) — relays on the roads between you, a watchtower in the middle.
• High Tide (2) — a sludge lake with a big tide.
• Signal Cross (4) — relays and towers between neighbours, a relay in the centre.
• Drift Zone (4) — fallout clouds swinging across flooded lots.
• Hex Relay (6) — a relay between every pair of neighbours.
• Broadcast (8) — relays, towers and drifting fallout.
• The lake maps (Acid Bath, The Sump, Spillway, Cesspool) are now tidal, and the random maps have a relay to fight over (except Random Six, whose canal leaves no fair spot).
• The setup preview and the lobby show each map's sites, tide band and cloud tracks.

Teams button fix.

• With three players, the TEAMS button got stuck on free-for-all. It now cycles 2 v 1, free-for-all, 2 v 1… and with five or seven players it offers 3 v 2, 2 v 2 v 1, 4 v 3 and so on.
• From a split you set by hand with the side buttons, TEAMS starts again at two sides and always cycles round.

Pick your corner.

Map preview and start spots

• The setup screen shows the map as it will be played: terrain, shard fields, water and hazards, with everyone's start marked in their colour. Random maps show an example layout.
• Pick where you start — click a spot on the preview to take it, click again to let it go. Everyone else, computers included, is placed round the picks, next to an ally where they have one.
• In a network game each person picks their own spot; the host makes sure nobody takes a spot someone else already has.

Teams in one click

• A new TEAMS button sets up a team game in one go: free-for-all, 2 v 2, 3 v 3, 2 v 2 v 2, 4 v 4 and so on. Each side gets neighbouring seats, so allies share a flank. The side buttons still allow any split.
• Computer allies now join each other's attacks on the same target, as well as answering calls for help.

Computers that finish the job

• Two computer players could grind on for an hour without a winner. In test matches they now finish, typically in 10–20 minutes.
• They plan their power ahead. Long games used to leave them in a permanent blackout, with production at a crawl and their guns switched off.
• A big bank goes into more production instead of sitting unspent.
• Attack waves march in formation and arrive together, and an attack that breaks into a base gets reinforcements sent after it.
• A long stand-off makes them bolder: a thinner home guard, more attacks, and their ultimate gets built even without the money banked.
• The hard computer is noticeably tougher as a result.

Tidier map list.

• The map picker now runs two-, four-, six- then eight-player maps, so the six-player maps come before the eight-player ones instead of after them.

Six-player maps.

• Twin Shores — three districts either side of a wide canal.
• Six Sprawl — a dry, dense city seated in a ring.
• Spillway — six districts round a sludge lake, with fire vents on the roads in.
• Reactor Row — flooded lots, radiation zones and storm pylons.
• Random Six — a fresh six-way city every match.
• Six seats can't all be identical on a square map, so these are mirrored both ways: four corner seats and two edge seats, set on the points of a hexagon. Everyone has exactly two nearest neighbours at the same distance, and every seat gets the same shards at the same distance from its base.
• Like any map, they can be played part-full: two players start in opposite corners.

The ground fights back.

Sludge with teeth

• Sludge used to tickle a tank. Now part of the burn scales with the unit's hull and it bites harder the longer a unit wades, so a rifleman lasts about three seconds and even a heavy tank dies in under ten.
• Wading is slow: ground units move at about half speed in sludge. Hover craft still float over untouched.

New hazards

• Radiation zones — yellow, dash-edged patches that burn everything inside, hover included. Infantry take two and a half times the dose.
• Fire vents — grates in the street that erupt every 13 seconds, burning everything within about two tiles. The grate glows with a countdown before each burst; cross between them.
• Sludge lakes — a whole lake of sludge filling the middle of the map. Hover cuts straight across; walkers go round the rim.

Five new maps

• Acid Bath (2 players) — a city around a sludge lake.
• Vent Works (2) — foundry streets over live gas mains.
• The Sump (4) — four districts on the shore of one vast sludge lake.
• Hot Zone (4) — a fallout district of radiation and vents.
• Cesspool (8) — every hazard at once around a central lake.

Formations.

• L · B · W · C — line, block, wedge or column. The group forms up where it stands and keeps the shape on every move after, facing the way it is going and marching at the pace of its slowest unit so nobody runs ahead. Armour takes the front; Spider Mechs, artillery and medics stay at the back. Press the same key again to break formation.
• X — scatter: the group spreads out from its middle, so one rocket salvo or shell can't catch them all.
• K — hold ground: units fire on anything in range but never chase. A small marker shows which selected units are holding.
• Q — select your whole army in one press (Siphons and Core Rigs left out).
• All of them can be rebound in Settings → Controls, and are listed on the F1 screen.

The computer reads your army.

• Normal and Hard opponents now notice when you field mostly heavy armour and answer it: more of their own heavy vehicles, a second foundry, anti-armour infantry instead of riflemen, and cannons and missile batteries instead of chaingun nests.
• They judge an attack on their base by what it is worth, not how many units are in it, so a tank push now pulls their army home.
• Hard opponents expand to five refineries; Easy stops at three.

Eight commanders, hazardous ground.

Eight-player battles

• Matches now hold up to eight players: any mix of people and computer opponents, split into up to eight sides.
• Four new player colours: Mint, Lemon, Ember and White.
• Eight-player maps are folded into identical eighths, so every district gets exactly the same ground.
• Maps no longer need to be full. Close the seats you don't need, and the remaining players are spread evenly around the map: two players on an eight-player map start opposite each other, and a one-on-one on a four-player map now starts in opposite corners.
• LAN and direct-IP games take up to seven guests.

Hazards

• Toxic sludge — green pools that eat through anything on legs or wheels, at 12 hp/s. Hover units float straight over. Ground units steer around them, and nothing can be built on one.
• Arc storm pylons — every 30 seconds they discharge into everything within about three tiles, from both sides, and briefly stun it. The strike zone lights up with a four-second countdown first. Nothing can be built in a pylon's reach.
• Every copy of a pylon fires at the same moment, so no player gets luckier timing than another.

Eight new maps

• Toxic Docks · 2P · a poisoned harbour full of sludge
• Arc Alley · 2P · dry downtown wired with storm pylons
• Meltdown · 4P · a reactor district with sludge and pylons
• Harbour Lights · 4P · four piers around a flooded harbour
• Megablock · 8P · eight districts around a canal cross
• The Octagon · 8P · an open ring city with lakes between districts
• Fallout Ring · 8P · a ruined ring with sludge and pylons on the roads between
• Random Megacity · 8P · a fresh eight-way city every match

Also

• The map picker shows a map's hazards before you start.
• Your units warn you when they wander into sludge.

Polish.

• Unit badges now show the control group you last assigned or recalled, instead of always the lowest-numbered group a unit belongs to.
• Fixed garbled text in the update download window.

Tidier menus.

• The separate Controls button is gone from the title screen and pause menu. Key bindings live under Settings → Controls, and F1 still shows the full list in-game.

Waypoints, group badges and Linux.

• Waypoint routes: Shift + right-click queues up to 24 moves, and units run them in order. Hold Shift with attack-move to queue attack legs too.
• Your units' queued routes are drawn on the map, with attack legs in magenta.
• Units in a control group show its number in a small badge.
• Linux build (64-bit .tar.gz). It checks for new versions at launch and offers to open the download page.
• In the multiplayer lobby, settings you can't change are shown read-only instead of as buttons.

The game updates itself.

• The game checks for a new version a few seconds after launch and offers to install it, with a download progress window.
• Installed copies update in place. The portable .exe downloads the new version next to itself, verifies it, and swaps it in when you close the game.

Three factions, eight maps, four commanders.

Factions

• Three armies with their own five combat units and their own ultimate: Ghostline Collective (Orbital Lance), Obsidian Dynamics (Tectonic Warhead) and Rustline Scavengers (Scrap Swarm).
• Each player picks their own army; the host picks for computer players.

Maps and players

• Six fixed maps (Canal Split, Grid Lock, Undertow, Four Quarters, Neon Basin, The Stack) plus random two- and four-player cities. Every map is built symmetrically, so all players get identical ground.
• Up to four players, each a person or a computer at any difficulty. Players on the same side share vision and fight together, for co-op, 2v2 or free-for-all.

Also in this build

• Barricade lines, sentry guns, arc turrets, plasma cannons and missile batteries, in their own Defence build tab.
• Nanite Bay repairs, structure repairs, and the Core Rig to rebuild a lost HQ.
• The shard regrowth slider, help flares (G) and taunts (Shift+1–9).
• A callsign with service records, and an after-action report with army, income and base graphs.
• Synthesized music with a battle theme, separate volume sliders, and rebindable keys.

Where it started.

• One army for both sides, on one 80×80 canal city generated fresh each match.
• Two-player LAN multiplayer with deterministic lockstep, and skirmish against the computer.
• Build a base, mine data shards, and wipe out every enemy structure.