Releases

Sending units somewhere used to mean knowing which of six screens owned that particular kind of order. Transport lived on Bases, garrisons on Alliance, your Commander on his own record, scouting and MCV deploys on the world map, and attacks somewhere else again — same idea, six front doors.

Attack / Move is now a single entry in the menu, and it opens into four sections: Attack, Move, In flight and Reports. Attack is already fully moved in. The other three name the screen that still owns each job today and take you there in one tap, and they fill in over the coming updates.

Every old link, bookmark and notification still works — they land on the right section by themselves. Each section is its own address too, so you can bookmark the one you use.

Sandstorm alerts arrive before the storm, not after it

Sandstorm proximity alerts were landing late and repeating themselves. A storm only counted as "near" your base once its centre had drifted almost on top of you — and a storm wide enough to swallow a base whole is already battering you long before that. So the danger alert arrived after the damage report, then repeated every few minutes while the storm sat overhead.

Danger is measured from the storm's leading edge now, so the alert reaches you while it is still bearing down. You get one per storm, and once a storm has already hit you it stops warning you about damage it can no longer do.

The green rings marking ground an MCV could claim only appeared once you had armed Deploy mode — so you had to enter the flow to find out whether the flow was worth entering. They are on the map now whenever you actually hold an MCV and have the room for another base. Deploy mode still exists; it just no longer decides what you are allowed to look at.

They also only ever existed on the globe. Switch to the flat grid and there was nothing — no rings, no answer to "where could I put a base". Both views draw them now, in the same green, and on the flat grid the whole square is the target rather than the ring itself, so a thumb finds it.

Traffic on the world map used to blur together. A raid, a special-forces strike and a column riding out to intercept somebody all drew as the same mark, so telling your own operations apart meant tapping them one at a time.

Each kind of force now carries its own silhouette, on the globe and on the flat grid alike:

• Raids keep the broad wedge you already know.
• Special forces take a narrower, sharper version of it.
• Intercepts point down — the one column riding out to meet something rather than travelling to a target of its own.
• Garrison convoys travel as a shield, and settle into the familiar ring once parked at their host.
• An MCV convoy is now a keep rather than a plain crate, so the most expensive thing you can put on a road no longer looks like a supply run.

Two of those were not merely hard to read — they were not drawn at all. A garrison sent to an ally vanished the moment it left your base and reappeared only on arrival, and an intercept had never had a mark of its own. Both are on the map now, for the whole journey.

Tapping bare ground on the world map used to plot a scout stop the instant you touched it — no menu, no way to ask what else you could do there. It now opens the same action ring every other target on the map got last week, and nothing is committed until you pick from it.

What the ring offers depends on what you are doing. On a quiet map it is Scout here, plus Deploy MCV when you have one ready to plant a new base. Once you are plotting a route it becomes Add stop, Launch and Undo, so a multi-stop run can be built and sent without ever leaving the map. It knows when to stop, too: at your stop limit the Add stop segment steps aside rather than quietly ignoring you.

Deploying an MCV no longer means arming a mode first — pick the ground, then pick Deploy.

On the Bases overview, every base's Titanite now counts up in front of you. The figure and its storage bar climb second by second, the same way the number in the top bar always has for the base you are standing in, and the bar turns amber as a silo approaches full.

Until now that figure sat frozen at whatever it was when the page loaded, while the construction and unit timers beside it ticked away quite happily — so a base could look poorer, or richer, than it really was until you refreshed. The overview and the top bar now agree.

Turning the globe with the action ring open used to drag the ring along with it, leaving it hovering over whatever had drifted underneath. It now closes the moment you start turning, the way it should — the world moved, so the menu no longer means anything.

The ring is also smaller on a phone now, without shrinking any of the buttons below the size a thumb needs.

Titan now fills the width of the screen. The narrow column that used to sit beside it is gone, and so is the panel that opened in it.

Tap anything on the map — a base, a scout, a force on the move — and a ring of actions opens right under your finger, with the name of what you tapped in the middle. Attack, Spy, 3mail, Garrison, Recall, Re-task: only the ones that apply to that target, and Cancel always in the same place at the bottom, so you never have to hunt for the way out. Anything the ring cannot say in a word is written just beneath it — including the lines you have earned by scouting, and the ones you have not, which still say so rather than quietly vanishing.

Everything you have in the air now runs full width below the map: inbound attacks first, then your own scouts, spies and convoys. Past intel sits below that, laid out as cards instead of a single narrow strip.

Both views get all of it. The globe and the flat grid are one map in two projections, and the ring works the same on either.

The queue panel at the top of the screen now shows a picture for everything you have running — research included. Research had been the odd one out, sitting there as a bare line of text while its artwork existed all along on the research page; it now carries the same blueprint you already know from there.

Pictures are also shown whole rather than trimmed to fit. A building in the construction line was having its top and bottom shaved off, so a silo looked nothing like the silo on the build page. Both now match.

Each line says where the work is happening, too. The unit rows already named the factory; the construction and research rows now name their own source the same way, so the three lanes read alike.

On a phone, a full queue no longer runs off the bottom of the screen — the panel keeps to a comfortable height and you swipe within it to see the rest.

The panels that drop from the top bar, and the base panel at the bottom, now close exactly the way they opened — folding back up instead of blinking out partway. The flicker at the end of the close is gone: it was a single frame where the panel snapped back to full size just before it disappeared.

Closing now carries the same small bounce as opening, in reverse, and takes the same time, so the two halves finally read as one movement. If your device is set to reduce motion, none of it animates.

Every building, defence, unit, research level, upgrade, achievement and commander skill in the game now has an entry in the Field Manual — costs, build times, power draw, combat stats, limits and prerequisites, all in one place.

The catalog is read straight from the game's own data rather than written by hand, so it is correct today and stays correct through every balance change. Build and research times are quoted at the speed this round actually runs at rather than the factory figure, and hidden achievements keep their secret: you get the name and what it is worth, never the answer.

The pictures in the queue panel now stand exactly as tall as the text beside them — no taller, no shorter — and every row shares one artwork column.

Units with newly drawn artwork were the ones getting it wrong. Those pictures were taking their size from the artwork's own dimensions rather than from the row, so a freshly drawn unit could tower over its own name and squeeze the timers into a sliver, while an older one looked fine. The panel decides the size itself now, so a unit reads the same whether its portrait arrived yesterday or on day one.

All six chapters of the Field Manual are written, so its front page no longer lists them as still to come — it lists what is there, and the opening chapter now points you at the reading order rather than at a promise.

The more useful half of this is invisible. The manual now checks itself: once a week the game looks at what has actually shipped since the last review and, if anything has, puts the chapters those changes could have affected in front of the engineers to be read against the game and corrected. A quiet week raises nothing. It is the difference between a manual that was true when it was written and one that is still true now.

The last of the six mechanics chapters is in the Field Manual.

It covers what an alliance actually buys you — a shared map, joint attacks, garrisons and two kinds of protection from interception — alongside the things that catch people out, including the fact that nothing stops you attacking your own alliance mates, and that the Neutral/Allied/Hostile labels do nothing at all. Then where your score really comes from and what it pointedly ignores, how your Commander earns experience and what his skill points actually do depending on where he is standing, and what the achievement list is measuring.

Two corrections ride along. Your Commander's service record was advertising a defence bonus for every fifth level that battles stopped applying when the skill tree arrived; it now shows what a milestone really grants, which is a skill point. And the rank band that limits who you may attack is currently switched off in this round — the manual says so, rather than describing a rule nobody is playing under.

The fifth chapter of the Field Manual is up: the map, fog and recon.

It covers the world itself — how the four quadrants and the ground beneath them fit together, what each kind of terrain costs you to cross, and why the size of the rock patch you settled on decides how much you can ever build there. Then the rules about what you are allowed to know: revealed ground stays revealed for the whole round, but a base founded on ground you already explored is not discovered until someone goes back and looks. Those are two different facts, and confusing them is how people lose scouts.

The second half is scouting and spying end to end — what a scout run reveals along its route as against at each stop, what it risks every time it crosses someone's perimeter, exactly which fields a spy report does and does not contain, how Espionage sharpens the numbers, and what Counter-Intelligence lets you learn about whoever has been looking at you.

One correction rode along with it: the recon panel on the world map had been quoting the old 200 ISC spy fee. Spying costs 500, as it has for a while, and the page says so now.

The fourth chapter of the Field Manual is up: missions, movement and interception — the companion to the combat chapter.

It covers the eight orders you can give a force and what each does when it lands, then the thing every one of them shares: how long it takes to get there. The travel formula is set out in full, including the two terms that decide most of it — the order you chose, and the speed of the slowest unit you sent. There is a complete speed table for every mobile unit in the game, so you can see exactly what one Harvester costs a wing of Eagles.

Then the parts that catch people out: the way home always takes as long as the way out, a recall costs you however long you have already been flying, and Titanite delivered above a base's storage limit is simply gone.

The chapter closes on riding out — what you can chase down, why the catch is worked out before you commit rather than rolled on arrival, why stopping a raider weakens an attack without turning it back, and why loot you recover goes home to the Commander it was taken from rather than to you.

The third chapter of the Field Manual is open: combat and armour.

It explains what actually happens when a force arrives at your base — why your turrets stay silent until the last soldier falls, how the six rounds are fought, and why a draw pays an attacker nothing at all. At the heart of it is the armour table: every weapon type against every kind of hull, with the real numbers. That includes the one rule that decides more battles than any other — only missiles can touch aircraft, and everything else deals literally zero.

It then covers what a breach costs you: how much can be plundered, why the safe never can be, what enemy engineers do to your buildings, and when a secondary base can be lost outright. Plus who is allowed to attack whom, and exactly what a defender is told before the shooting starts.

Wide tables in the manual now show a soft shadow at the edge when there is more to see off to the side.

You no longer have to wait behind your walls. Tap a rival force crossing your ground — an attack on its way in, or a raider heading home — and ride out to meet it.

Win the clash and the raid is bled, not stopped: whatever survives presses on and still has your garrison to get through. Turning a raid back takes enough force to destroy it outright, not merely enough to bloody it. You may ride out against any force you can see, including an attack aimed at someone else — rescuing a stranger is allowed, and so is standing aside while two rivals wear each other down.

Catch a raider carrying stolen Titanite and destroy it, and that Titanite goes home to the Commander it was taken from, even when you were not the one robbed. The rescuer's reward is the kill and the experience, never the haul.

And the attacker is never warned you are coming. Your interceptors ride the map like any other force, so a watchful opponent may spot them — but the game will not tell him.

Until now almost everything crossing the map drew as the same amber dot. A raiding party, a spy run, a supply convoy and a garrison standing watch at a friend's base were indistinguishable at a glance — you had to tap each one to find out what it was.

Each kind of force now carries its own silhouette. Raids ride under a wedge, spies under a narrow lens, supply convoys under a cargo box, scouts keep the familiar dot, and a garrison shows as a hollow ring rather than pretending to be on the move. Your commander keeps his gold chevron.

The same shape means the same thing whoever owns it: a rival's raid and your own now share a silhouette and differ only in colour, so you can read a crowded map without counting colours first. Your own raids and convoys were plain dots on the globe too — they wear their proper markings there as well, so both views tell the same story.

This is the groundwork for riding out to meet an incoming attack: you cannot intercept what you cannot pick out of the traffic.

The flat map can now be used to pick out forces, not just to watch them. Tap a rival or allied force crossing your territory to open its details, and tap an enemy convoy to line up an interception — the same moves the globe already allowed, now available in whichever view you prefer.

The bigger fix is for anything actually on the move. A force in flight is drawn by the map's live animation layer, and that layer carried no tap targets at all, so your own scouts and attacking forces could only be selected while standing still. They stay tappable the whole way now, with a target area sized for a fingertip rather than for a mouse pointer.

One sharp edge went with it: tapping an enemy commander riding between their own bases could open an interception panel aimed at an unrelated force elsewhere on the map. Commanders are not interception targets, and the map no longer pretends otherwise.

Forces on their way home were drawn setting out for their target all over again — the blip crept from your base toward the target instead of tracking back to you. It showed up most clearly after an interception, but it affected every force with a journey home: attacks, raids, convoys, spies and scouts alike, on the globe and on the flat map both.

A returning force now walks back down the route it came by, and its trike points the way it is actually driving. Where your units appear on the map is once again where they are.

The Field Manual's second chapter is live: building, research and upgrades.

It covers what a build order really costs and the moment you are charged, how the game works out the timer you are given — including why a damaged Construction Yard slows down everything that base builds — and the order your orders are checked in, so a refusal tells you something useful. It then walks the research ladders and what each one actually does, explains how upgrades differ from research, and sets out exactly what you get back when you cancel.

Manual tables also read properly on a phone now, in this chapter and in the older reference pages.

A request in the Dev Channel now carries a small tag showing which engineer has it right now, and the tag clears the moment they park, finish or hand it over. "In progress" used to be the whole story; with two engineers working the channel at once it was not.

Behind it, a claim on a request now expires when the engineer holding it goes offline, so a request can no longer end up quietly reserved by someone who is not coming back — and a request you reopen stays with whoever was already finishing it, rather than being picked up twice.

The panels that drop from the top bar no longer appear and vanish in one piece. They unfold: the top edge stays welded to the bar and the bottom edge travels down, so the panel stretches slightly past its resting height before settling instead of detaching from the bar on the bounce. Closing folds it back the same way. That is the end of the flicker on opening, and the bounce you liked is still there.

The queue panel itself now tells the whole truth about your production. Your factories have always built in parallel — a Barracks batch and a War Factory order advance at the same time — but the panel only ever showed whichever one finished first. It now lists a row for every factory that is working, naming the factory above what it is making, soonest to arrive at the top. A factory standing idle simply is not listed, and tapping a row takes you straight to that kind of unit.

The picture on each row squares up against all of the copy beside it, the "batch done" line included — so a row with several lines no longer leaves the artwork stopping short halfway down.

If your device is set to reduce motion, none of it animates.

The panels that drop from the top bar no longer appear and vanish in one piece. They unfold: the top edge stays welded to the bar and the bottom edge travels down, so the panel stretches slightly past its resting height before settling instead of detaching from the bar on the bounce. Closing folds it back the same way. That is the end of the flicker on opening, and the bounce you liked is still there.

In the queue panel, the picture of whatever is being made now squares up against all of the copy beside it, the "batch done" line included — so a lane with three lines no longer leaves the artwork stopping short halfway down.

If your device is set to reduce motion, none of it animates.

The Field Manual has its first mechanics chapter: the economy and the tick. It sets out where Titanite actually comes from, why a Harvester without a free Refinery slot earns you nothing, what each bonus and penalty multiplies, and what your storage cap does once it fills up.

It also answers the question the game has never written down anywhere: what happens while you are logged out. Offline time earns exactly what online time earns — your resources are worked out to the second the moment you open a page — and your storage cap is the only thing that ever costs you for being away.

The rest of the chapter follows the money: the bank's floating rate and its cut, the safe and its interest, what a raid can take, and what you get back when you cancel a queue. Longer manual pages now open with a contents list you can jump from.

One correction came out of writing it — the Imperial Bank's help text still described a House Ophion perk that was retired a while ago. Ophion's real edge is that they pay half the bank's cut, and the page says so now.