Patch Notes — February 28, 2026

General

Custom Games

• You can now create a custom game on a map of your choosing and invite players with a unique invite code

Custom Games have two slots for spectators on each team

• Spectators can observe the game via the standard follow camera or a free camera
• Spectators can also swap perspectives between teams
• Alongside the standard pool of maps, you will also be able to select some prototype WIP maps, two of which are brand new.
• Ruins is a new experimental map where you battle amidst ancient ruins on a narrow island with sheer drops all around

IkarusOnly is…well…for Ikarus players only. This map is a fun, experimental mode where everyone is meant to pick Ikarus. There are some rule tweaks

• Infinite energy
• Reduced Ability Cooldown
• Longer boost time for Ikarus’ flight
• Shooting is disabled while on the ground
• Developer Note: As a heads-up, Custom Games will be available during playtest hours alongside matchmaking, but not between playtests. We’re a client-server-based game, which has the advantages of limiting hack vectors (for example, map hacks, since the player’s client simply doesn’t have the information to cheat) and providing a better, more consistent latency experience. But one downside is that players can’t self-host games, so hosting Custom Games isn’t free for us (in fact, it’s more expensive per player due to one-person matches where people experiment).

UI

• We’ve heard your feedback about caring more about the tanks, and we’ve shifted our UI to be more tank-centric. This means that rather than pilots, you see and interact primarily with the tanks themselves.
• In connection with that, we now show the tank names instead of pilot names, so there will unfortunately be some re-learning from the old names. Please pardon our dust; we know it’s annoying to have core communication elements like that change.
• Class icons have been updated to be more visually distinct
• The in-game HUD elements have been centralized to the bottom middle of the screen
• The team portraits at the top of the in-game HUD can now be seen above the scoreboard when you press tab. There is a new setting you can turn on to keep them up full-time (“Always Show Team Tank Status HUD Element” in the Game section).
• The team portraits now show an icon to indicate whether a player is spotted currently or has ever been spotted in the match, so you can track who has not been spotted yet

Tank Styles

• We’ve added a system for unlocking and changing cosmetic styles for your tanks
• This update includes styles for three tanks: Aster/Tempest, Nova/Rook, Lyra/Valor
• We’ve also added an alternate kill explosion VFX cosmetic and a charm
• These have all been added to the Territory Scan drop table; however, as a heads up, they are intended to be a very rare drop, and the main way to get them in the future will be direct purchase with gold (which is paid currency but will also have a chance of dropping in Territory Scans)
• You can check out the cosmetics in the style viewer even if you don’t own them if you want a preview

Controller

• We’ve added controller support, so you should now be able to play with a gamepad
• We’re interested in hearing feedback on this, so if you play with a controller, let us know how it feels to you

Components

• Momentum Imparter effect reduced to 35 from 40
• Catalytic Reservoir effect reduced to 3 from 4

Gargantuan Shells

• Damage coefficient reduced to 20% from 25%
• Aiming penalties reduced to 50% from 60%
• Reduced dispersion reduction speed penalty to 50% from 70%

Design Note: These changes are meant to bring Gargantuan shells back to viability for more tanks while reducing the top end of specific scenarios that didn’t care about accuracy, the accuracy penalties, and leveraged the high damage for big alpha.

Spotting Shells

• Detection radius increased by 50%

Design Note: This change is aimed at making spotting shells a more effective tool for sniffing out and potentially even spotting sneaky lights and snipers in strong bush positions. The radius around the impact spot that detects enemies (paints them with a ping) is much larger, while a direct hit (pen or bounce) is still needed for a full spot.

High Explosive

• The armor viewer and shell selection description now correctly show that this shell type has a fixed 45mm penetration (rather than a lower percentage of a tank’s standard penetration)

Design Note: I know these have been considered trash tier for a while because ‘how does reducing a tank’s penetration from 50mm to 25mm ever make sense?’ Well, the answer is that they’ve actually been giving you a fixed 45mm penetration the whole time, but our UI just hasn’t properly supported showing that before. We’re fixing that now, and you can see that going from 50mm to 45mm is a much better deal.

Vision

• You can now "see through" bushes from slightly further away. This should give you slightly more freedom in how you can position yourself when using bushes to spot enemies.
• Previously, bushes would provide equal cover for you and an enemy unless you were physically in them. Now, you only have to be near them (within 15m) for you to “see through” the bush, having it provide cover for you but not the enemy you’re attempting to spot.
• This is still represented by bushes going transparent, which you should notice happens from further away.
• The detection circle info on the minimap continues to shrink/expand only when you are physically in the bush.

What this means for you

• If you are using bushes, there should be slightly more cases where you are able to spot an enemy without them being able to spot you
• If you are using bushes, there should be fewer cases where an enemy is able to sneak up on you from the open unexpectedly

Vehicles now lose a variable amount of camo on firing

• This amount is equal to 5 + (60% of their current camo). It was previously a flat -30 across all vehicles.

Design Note: This primarily affects the high levels of camo lights that could get to while firing with very minimal investment. Lights can still be very hidden while firing non-silenced shells, but less so than before, and doing so will require investing in camo components.

Design Note: Mediums benefit from this change, making them slightly easier to stay hidden while firing as compared to before, especially with some investment in camo.

Design Note: Heavies technically benefit quite a lot from this change compared to before, but they’re still not good at staying hidden behind bushes. If you can do it…I’m proud of you.

Camo is now lost for 0.1s instead of a full second

Design Note: The 1s behavior was leftover tuning from a previous iteration of the vision system that is no longer needed and produced some unintuitive behavior at times.

• Added a startup sound for every tank

Performance

• A number of new performance improvements have been made as we continue to optimize
• Added the ability to show performance stats (this can be turned on in the settings menu)

Graphics

• Enabled DX12 PSO Disk Caching to reduce PSO compiling between gameplay sessions

Platform

• Fixed graphic issues when using Vulkan graphics on Linux
• Removed Console from shipping builds

Loadouts

• IMPORTANT NOTE: We had to make a change to the way we store loadout data, so we unfortunately had to wipe saved loadouts. Make sure to set up a new loadout for your tanks before hopping in the queue. You can do that as soon as the build is up, which we'll quietly announce here on Discord.

Maps

General

• Grass now gets depressed when driven on
• We no longer persist your selection of vehicle when playing in the Sandbox game mode

Divide

• This map has received a visual overhaul and gameplay adjustments, and has been added to the standard map pool

Ravine

• Smoothed out some of the small bumps on the 0-9 line path from the north side

Core (Custom Game Only Prototype)

• This map has received a significant gameplay overhaul focused on creating more interesting engagements near the center

Ruins (Custom Game Only Prototype)

• A new experimental map where you battle amidst ancient ruins on a narrow island with sheer drops all around

IkarusOnly (Custom Game Only Prototype)

• This is a quirky map that serves as an alternate game mode, meant to be played with only Ikarus tanks.

The rule tweaks are

• Infinite energy
• Reduced Ability Cooldown
• Longer boost time for Ikarus’ flight
• Shooting is disabled while on the ground

Vehicles

General

• Most heavies and mediums have had their armor tuned more closely with the philosophy of “angling is more rewarded, but also more expected.”
• What this means is that fewer plates are overmatchable, but also fewer plates are auto-bounced from all angles. Angling should help you in more cases, but failing to do so will make you easier to pen.
• These changes also allow for an easier time penning most vehicles when having a notable elevation advantage on them.
• As an example, Sentinel/Tricera has had its hull armor generally increased, and the armor on the sides of its turret decreased. The hull remains a weakness and is not reliable, but angling the hull up should now produce some bounce angles on the upper glacis and sidescraping should produce some bounce angles on the side plates.
• This rebalance is not intended to change the power level of the vehicles it affects, except where noted. Instead, it is intended to allow for more skill expression (both playing as and against armor).
• Because these changes encompass a lot of small tweaks to individual faces, we’ve opted to qualitatively describe their intent, rather than listing each number, to help better read the intent behind the change.
• All vehicles have had their movement and hull traverse dispersion penalties increased by 20%

Design Note: This is meant to directionally make pushing to aggressive positions less “free.” Ideally, aggressing should be a matter of trading health for more favorable positioning, and this takes a step towards that.

Aster/Tempest (Recall)

Adjusted armor to match new philosophy

• Thickened side armor to allow for some unreliable sidescraping
• Thickened upper glacis to allow for some bounces when using gun depression

Brawler/Fortis (Mine)

• Armor rebalance such that sidescraping is stronger, and the lower front plate is no longer an overmatch for most vehicles. In return, the sides of the turret and turret ring thickness are notably reduced.

Cooper/Phantom (Stealth)

• New ability VFX added
• Ability Cost increased to 40 from 33
• Base Shell Damage increased to 280 from 275
• Hover Damping tech node replaced with Precision Aiming tech node
• Stealth Sneak keystone reworked - it now refunds 10 energy instead of 40% of the Ability Cost

Design Note: We think Cooper’s power level was in roughly the right place, but there were specific late-game scenarios where it was just too easy to chain stealth. These changes are aimed at pushing that specific scenario to be earned more via solid damage dealing and bringing components that improve energy flow.

Deadeye (Elevate)

• Armor rebalanced such that the hull is no longer an overmatch for most vehicles, allowing for some bounce angles.

Design Note: This is a slight increase in power for this vehicle, as the turret was not changed. This armor is not super reliable, but it will still allow for the odd bounce here and there.

• Adjusted physics during the ability such that the vehicle should stick to the ground a little better and be less negatively affected by bumpy terrain. Reckless use will still result in flips or unpredictable movement (I don’t recommend ramming straight up a ramp, or directly into rocks…unless?), but using the ability up a slight incline or over a small bump should no longer put you at risk of flying over your target.

Adjusted armor to match new philosophy

• Thickenened some exceptionally weak side armor plates
• Thickened the side of the track and front wheel armor to allow for some unreliable sidescraping
• Thinned some upper hull plates so the vehicle is more reasonably penetrable from elevation
• Ram driver hatch weak spot thickness increased from 60mm to 80mm

Design Note: This should make the Ram less of an auto-pen when facehugging, which should be a reasonable power position for a vehicle that wants to play super close range.

Ikarus (VTOL)

• There is now a 3s gun re-arming time after the flight ability ends before the vehicle can fire again.
• Ability cancel behavior adjusted; the thrust phase can now be cancelled to go directly to the glide phase. The glide phase now maintains momentum when cancelled, rather than applying a heavy airbrake.

Design Note: While useful, the heavy airbrake when canceling the ability never quite felt right, and we also weren’t super happy with how easily it let you drop in directly behind an enemy and start blasting. This change should give you a bit more control over the thrust portion and let skill expression in flying and landing earn the sneaky drop-ins.

Kwame/Helio (Repulsor)

Adjust armor to match new philosophy

• Turret side armor significantly reduced (including the ear weak spot).
• Upper glacis armor reduced to allow for easier penning against elevation.
• Inner track armor weak spot size reduced slightly

Penetration reduced to 80mm from 90mm

Design Note: Both Nova/Rook and Kwame/Helio had 90mm pen, which felt excessively high for things that were often fighting heavies head-on at shorter ranges. Playing an armored vehicle in general should now feel more expected as these two outliers have been reined in slightly.

Repulsor Ebb keystone reworked

• Repulsor Galvanization - Increases Energy gain from all sources by 50% while the Repulsor Bubble is active

Langston/Atlas (Sonar)

Some targeted armor rebalances

• The inner bevel of the lower front plate is now significantly thicker and no longer a weak spot when the vehicle is angled
• Increased the side of turret armor to 55mm from 45mm, to match hull armor

Design Note: Alongside the Nova/Rook and Kwame/Helio pen reductions, we feel these slight tweaks should make the experience of playing Langston/Atlas align closer with the expectation of “big armor.”

Adjust armor to match new philosophy

• Thinned the top of hull armor so the vehicle is reasonably penetrable when seen from elevation or facehugging
• Turret armor now gradients to the back and top of the turret, becoming notably weaker from the sides to the back
• This adds up to a slight reduction in power for the vehicle, as it will be more penetrable in common cases.
• Replaced Healing Power tech node with Damage Dealt Energy tech node

Nova/Rook (Wall)

• Armor rebalanced such that sidescraping is more doable, but the sides of the turret and roof armor are notably more penetrable.

Penetration reduced to 80mm from 90mm

Design Note: Both Nova/Rook and Kwame/Helio had 90mm pen, which felt excessively high for things that were often fighting heavies head-on at shorter ranges. Playing an armored vehicle in general should now feel more expected, as these two outliers have been reined in slightly.

Sentinel/Tricera (Smokewall)

Adjust armor to match new philosophy

• Upper glacis armor increased to be usable when using gun depression
• Side armor increased so some sidescraping is possible
• Turret sides and roof armor notably decreased
• 30mm weak spot added under gun mantlet, only visible when using gun elevation

Vexa/Ark (Bush)

Armor model updated to match new visual model

• This changes the shape of the armor and some of the module spots slightly, but we expect it to play the same as the previous model

Bug Fixes

• The issue where vehicles would suddenly lose all forward momentum on uneven terrain or sharp grade changes has been fixed
• Note: Any instances of this particular issue or other odd movement behaviors (no matter how small) is still of great interest to us! Your reports are very helpful.
• Atros/Arbalest should no longer experience any jittering or oscillation when using the siege ability on a slope or uneven terrain
• Gameplay Settings should now be more consistent and no longer out of sync with what you are seeing while playing the game

Known Issues

• Sentinel/Tricera's Smoke Wall Haste keystone speed buff does not work
• Brawler's modules for the turret and engine have their effects reversed (turret contains the engine module)