What's new in FERROCADE

The whole vehicle fleet has new models: every hull, drive, gun and aircraft is rebuilt with real detail and new paint, and the guns move like real guns.

Features

• All 65 vehicle parts are new models: 55 ground parts (hulls, drives, guns and supply modules), 9 aircraft bodies and the VTOL rotor, each with its new livery and baked shading.
• Guns aim visibly. The turret turns, the barrel elevates and the cradle around it follows, and every shot kicks the barrel back before it returns cleanly. Muzzle flash and shells leave from the real barrel tip, for every gun on every allowed hull, walker and aircraft included.
• On aircraft, add-on modules (armour, sensors, ammunition racks) sit as small boxes on the deck, sized to the turret.
• Zooming out works as before: vehicles turn into map markers at the same distance as in the previous build.

With aircraft selected, the unit panel fits on the screen again: no scrolling at 1920×1080.

Fixes

• With your own aircraft selected, alone or together with tanks or guns, the unit panel shows everything again without scrolling at 1920×1080 and the normal HUD size: the formation buttons („Dicht“ … „Kolonne“) are fully visible, „♻ Verschrotten 50%“ and „⬆ Aufrüsten“ can be clicked, and the „▼ scrollen“ hint is gone. The same holds at 2560×1440, 1600×900 and 1280×720, and at 1920×1080 with the large HUD.
• „Ziele“ now stands on the same line as its three buttons „Boden · Luft · Beide“.
• „Gebiet schützen“ moved to the right of the „◎ Feuermission [Strg+F]“ button, on the same line. It works as before and appears only when one of your aircraft is selected. Panels without aircraft are unchanged.

Compatibility: start a new match; saves from older builds do not load; multiplayer needs the same build on every machine.

Aircraft can now guard an area of your choice without a sensor: they circle over it and attack what enters it, at the price of fuel the whole time.

Features

• With your own aircraft selected, a new button „Gebiet schützen“ sits under the „Ziele“ row. It also appears when the selection mixes aircraft and ground units.
• Pressing it changes the pointer and shows a pale-blue ring under the mouse. The ring starts at 30 tiles; the mouse wheel changes it in 5-tile steps between 12 and 100 tiles, and the hint line shows the size („◎ Linksklick: Gebiet 30 t schützen · Mausrad: Größe · Rechtsklick: Abbrechen“). Left-click sets the area. Esc, right-click or pressing the button again cancels.
• Every selected aircraft flies to the area and keeps flying small circles about 12 tiles from its centre. While a circling aircraft is selected, its area's ring stays on the map.
• The aircraft card says what it is doing: „schützt das Gebiet – kreist über dem Gebiet“ while it circles, „– im Einsatz“ while it attacks, and „– fliegt zum Landeplatz“ when it flies home low on fuel or ammunition.
• An enemy that comes inside the ring is attacked without a new click; an enemy just outside it is ignored. The „Ziele: Boden · Luft · Beide“ setting decides what they go for. Aircraft set to „Getarnt“ attack too, because the area is an order you gave (their card says „feuert nur auf Befehl“).
• Circling burns fuel the whole time. An aircraft low on fuel or ammunition flies home, refuels and rearms, and comes back to the same area by itself. Two light aircraft hold a 30-tile area about 14 minutes before the first one flies home, and keeping them up costs their pad about 15 truck loads of diesel per hour of play. The same pair guarding a sensor („Schützen“) waits on its pad and costs nothing, so a sensor stays the cheaper defence.
• Any other order (move, attack, stop and so on) ends the guard. A new area replaces a sensor assignment, and sending the same area again starts it over.

Compatibility: start a new match; saves from older builds do not load; multiplayer needs the same build on every machine.

You can now choose whether your aircraft attack ground targets, enemy aircraft or both, aircraft fight aircraft, and the scavengers' patrol vehicles now chase and fight your units instead of freezing.

Features

• With your own aircraft selected, the unit panel shows a new row „Ziele: Boden · Luft · Beide“. It sets what the aircraft attack on their own: ground targets (units and buildings), only enemy aircraft, or the nearest of either. One press sets every selected aircraft. When the selected aircraft disagree, the title reads „Ziele – gemischt“. „Luft“ is greyed out with the line „Waffe trifft keine Luftziele“ when no selected aircraft has a weapon that can hit aircraft. The group screen has the same row.
• New and refitted aircraft start with a setting that fits their weapon: a Flak aircraft starts on „Luft“ and no longer attacks ground targets on its own, an Autocannon aircraft starts on „Beide“, and every other weapon starts on „Boden“, as before. A refit resets the setting to the new weapon's default.
• Aircraft with anti-air weapons now shoot enemy aircraft, at the same strength as ground anti-air: Flak triple damage, Autocannon normal, Machine Gun a third. An attack order you give on an enemy aircraft works whatever the setting, as long as the weapon can hit aircraft.
• Guarding aircraft („Schützen“) follow the setting: they now also take off against enemy aircraft that enter the sensor's area, when the setting and the weapon allow it. A Flak aircraft on „Luft“ stays on its pad when a ground unit comes in.
• Scavenger vehicles fight like vehicles: they drive at the nearest ground unit within about 42 tiles, fire from machine-gun range, and never go farther than 70 tiles from their camp; then they drive back and resume their patrol. They never chase aircraft or drive at buildings.
• What you see is what it is: the small scavenger vehicle is a Recon Frame and the bigger one a Line Chassis, both on wheels with a machine gun, with exactly those parts' values. Machine guns only chip the Line Chassis, so bring heavier anti-vehicle weapons or more units to clear a camp.
• You see a scavenger vehicle the way you see an enemy unit: when your units see it, for a second after it fired at you, or while it stands at a camp you know.
• Changed: aircraft no longer shoot down incoming shells and missiles. Ground Flak and APS still do.
• Changed: scavenger vehicles wear a neutral paint instead of the second player's colour.
• Changed: a scavenger vehicle that dies out of your sight makes no explosion and no sound, and discovering its camp later does not replay it.

Fixes

• A guarding aircraft's card says where it really is: „bereit am Landeplatz“, „fliegt zum Landeplatz“ or „kein Landeplatz – wartet am Sensor“.
• When a sensor vehicle that aircraft were guarding is refitted, the alert says „Sensor umgerüstet“ instead of „Sensor zerstört“.

Battle sound now depends on where you look: what happens on screen is loud, what happens far away fades out, and zooming out makes everything quieter.

Features

• Battle sounds are heard from the centre of the screen and reach a fixed distance on the map. At the normal zoom, machine guns fade out at about 1.5 screen widths from the centre, cannons and rockets at about 2.3, and artillery, big explosions and collapsing buildings at about 3.8. A fight on the other side of the map is silent.
• Zooming out takes all battle sound down to about a fifth at full zoom-out, and it sounds more distant: you hear the muffled variants, and no metal pings, shell whistles or ground thuds.
• Stereo follows the screen: a sound comes from the side of the screen where it happens.
• Your vehicles' engine hum comes from around the centre of the screen and fades when you zoom out; at the start view it is slightly louder than before. Bird and cricket calls get quieter when you zoom out. The wind is unchanged.
• Unchanged wherever the camera is: music, EVA announcements, UI clicks, the build and research chimes, and the victory and defeat stings.
• Testers can compare with the old behaviour by starting the game with the environment variable WZ_AUDIO_LAW=legacy: battle sounds and the engine and welding hums then use the old loudness and stereo, with no zoom fade. Deaths still sound where they happen, and the phantom explosions stay gone.

Fixes

• A unit's death explosion is heard where the unit died, no longer from the middle of the screen or from a nearby shot.
• No more phantom explosions: recycled, traded-in, torn-down and retired units, works that change owner, buildings recycled at full health and a defeated side's buildings make no explosion or crunch. Deaths you could not see (in unexplored fog and not a known contact) are silent.
• The engine hum no longer clicks when vehicles drive past each other.

Compatibility: start a new match; saves from older builds do not load; multiplayer needs the same build on every machine.

You can now order an attack on the enemy headquarters with a right-click, and units without a weapon simply move again when you right-click an enemy building.

Features

• Right-clicking the enemy headquarters with a selection that can shoot now orders an attack on it: the pointer shows the crosshair, and the units drive or fly to firing distance and fire on the HQ until it falls. Aircraft in „Getarnt“ and ground units in „Verteidigen“ fire on it too. Once the HQ is in reach they shoot only at it, even with enemy units closer; on the way there an aircraft in „Getarnt“ holds its fire, and everything else fights what it meets. When the HQ is destroyed the order ends, and an aircraft in „Getarnt“ holds its fire again.

Fixes

• Construction rigs, supply trucks and other units without a weapon that right-click an enemy building, derrick, depot, landing pad or HQ move there again, and the pointer shows the move cursor instead of the crosshair. In a mixed selection the armed units attack and the unarmed ones move to the clicked spot; Shift, Alt and P make no difference to the unarmed ones.
• „Schützen“ no longer swaps a wing whose aircraft guard different sensors. Right-clicking a sensor adds only the aircraft that do not guard it yet; those already guarding it stay, and aircraft guarding another sensor move to this one. Only when every selected aircraft already guards this sensor does the click end the post, and the label beside the pointer then reads „Schützen beenden: …“ with the sensor's name, in all seven languages.
• With only aircraft selected, hovering your own ELINT vehicle or jammer vehicle now shows the crossed-out pointer with the reason („Kein Schutzgebiet – eine ELINT-Station ortet nur Sender“ or „… ein Störsender ist kein Sensor“), and the click stays a plain move. Such a vehicle standing in front of a sensor building now takes the click, so point at the building itself.

Compatibility: start a new match; saves from older builds do not load; multiplayer needs the same build on every machine.

Aircraft can now guard an area: select only aircraft and right-click one of your own sensor buildings or a sensor vehicle.

Features

• Select only aircraft and right-click one of your own sensor buildings (Sensor Tower, Search Radar, Thermal or Fire-Control tower) or a vehicle with a Sensor Array: the aircraft now guard that sensor's area. While you hover, the pointer reads „Schützen: …“ with the sensor's name, and a ring shows the area. The area is the sensor's reach; for the Sensor Tower and the Search Radar it is capped at the Thermal tower's reach, so that a strike stays short. A selection that also contains ground units still just moves.
• Guarding aircraft land on the Rearm Pad closest to the sensor, wait there and get topped up.
• When an enemy ground unit inside the ring is clearly seen, by the sensor or by any of your other units, the ready aircraft take off by themselves and attack it, the one closest to the sensor first. They follow it only a little past the ring, then break off and land again. After rearming they go on guarding without a new order.
• If the sensor is switched dark, the aircraft break off and wait on the ground; when it is lit again, they carry on. If the sensor is destroyed, the post ends: the aircraft land and wait, and an alert names the sensor and how many aircraft now have no orders.
• Any other order ends the post. Right-clicking the same sensor again ends it too; right-clicking another sensor moves the post there.
• Guarding aircraft also take off in „Getarnt“; their card then reads „feuert nur auf Befehl oder Sensor“. The aircraft card says which sensor's area it guards and whether it is ready on the pad („bereit am Landeplatz“), out on a mission („im Einsatz“) or waiting for a dark sensor. The sensor's card and building window count its aircraft and warn when no pad is connected or the sensor is off. The group screen shows „Schützt“. All of this is in all seven languages.

Fixes

• An aircraft in „Getarnt“ on Patrol or Guard now fires at the enemies it meets, as the b1321 notes promised. Like an attack-move, it also fires at enemy buildings within its reach. With no order at all it still fires at nothing.

Compatibility: start a new match; saves from older builds do not load; multiplayer needs the same build on every machine.

A right-click on an enemy building now attacks it, with any units you have selected, aircraft included.

Features

• A right-click on a visible enemy building, oil derrick, supply depot or landing pad now attacks it with your selection: tanks, infantry, artillery and aircraft alike. Before, this click was only a move order. The pointer turns into the attack crosshair over such a target, and the group screen shows „Greift an“.
• Aircraft in their default „Getarnt“ stance fly to the building and fire at it, without changing stance and without shooting at other enemies on the way. If they run out of ammunition on this order, they fly home to their landing pad, rearm, and come back to the same building.
• Ground units drive until the building is in range, stop and fire, and they keep firing at it even when an enemy unit is closer. Rocket and artillery units send their rounds at the building too. Units in „Getarnt“ on the ground do not fire on this order.
• When the building is destroyed, the order ends. Any other order replaces it. Clicking an enemy unit that stands next to a building still attacks the unit.

Compatibility: start a new match; saves from older builds do not load; multiplayer needs the same build on every machine.

Aircraft no longer forget their orders when they go home to rearm: they land, top up and carry on with what they were doing.

Features

• An aircraft that runs out of ammunition, or whose diesel drops low, flies to its Rearm Pad, lands and stays until it has full ammunition, at least 90 % diesel and at least half its health. Then it goes back to the same order: the same attack target, patrol, guard charge, move destination or waypoint chain, attack-move or fire mission. Before, it dropped every order at the pad and sat there until you sent it out again.
• While it flies home and sits on the pad, its card reads „lädt nach – setzt Auftrag fort“, and the group screen shows „Lädt nach“ instead of „Greift an“, in all seven languages.
• If the pad cannot give the aircraft what it is missing (no rounds or diesel left there or in your stock, or the pad is destroyed or cut off) and the aircraft still has ammunition and diesel above the low mark, it leaves early and carries on. Below the low mark it stays on the ground.
• If the target died while the aircraft was away, the order simply ends.

Compatibility: start a new match; saves from older builds do not load; multiplayer needs the same build on every machine.

Every start base now stands on a much larger level area with room to build, and in our checks no base started inside a mountain range.

Features

• The level area around every start base now has a radius of about 67 tiles instead of 26, about 6.6 times as much flat ground. That is room for the HQ plus eight more buildings at their real sizes (vehicle factory, ammo factory, repair facility, refinery, research lab, power generator, silo, command relay) and a ring for roads and trucks. In our checks all eight fit at every base: 1,200 bases on 360 maps, all five map sizes, with 2, 4, 6 and 8 players.
• The level area sits at the height of the ground around it instead of being pressed down to a fixed low height, so the HQ no longer stands in a pit with a rock wall around it. Its edge is a slope that vehicles can drive up and down, cut into hills and filled up from hollows.
• The map generator now looks for open, gentle ground for each base and, where needed, searches further from the usual spot (up to 256 tiles on „Winzig“, up to 512 on „Groß“ and „Riesig“). On the same 360 maps no base started inside a mountain range.
• On the same map seed, bases often sit somewhere else than before, and the ground, the oil fields and the roads near them moved with them.
• A one-against-one map stays an exact mirror image: both bases and both first oil fields sit at mirrored spots (240 of 240 checked two-player maps).
• With 4, 6 or 8 players, some bases are nudged off their exact spot on the ring to get out of mountains or water, so those starts are slightly less symmetric than before. In our checks this happened to about 3 in 10 bases with 4 players and about half with 6 or 8, usually by less than 60 tiles, in a few cases by more than 200.
• Every base's first oil field lies next to its HQ, about 22 tiles away, inside the ring where crude flows to the HQ without a truck.

Compatibility: start a new match; saves from older builds do not load; multiplayer needs the same build on every machine.

The opening camera now finds your own base on every map size, „Erste Operation“ has its own row in the title menu, destroyed scavenger vehicles explode, and aircraft fight on your orders.

Features

• The title menu has a new row „Erste Operation“ directly under „Tutorial“. You can play it at any time; you no longer have to finish all 42 building lessons in one sitting to reach it. Like the other rows still in development, it carries the „IN ENTWICKLUNG“ badge.
• The „Tutorial“ row has chapter buttons „Kapitel 1 2 3 4“. Choosing 2, 3 or 4 starts the building course at that chapter, with the buildings of the earlier chapters already standing, and „Neu starten“ in the course restarts at the chapter you picked. A chapter start takes a moment longer to load while those buildings go up.
• The card of an armed aircraft in „Getarnt“ now ends with „feuert nur auf Befehl“, in all seven languages.

Fixes

• When a skirmish starts, the camera now flies down onto your own headquarters in every setup: any map size, more than two players, teams, and a base the map generator moved. Before, this only worked in the default one-against-one setup; otherwise the camera came down on empty ground, and on large maps your base was nowhere in view. The default one-against-one opening looks as before.
• A destroyed scavenger patrol vehicle now explodes like any other vehicle and leaves a burning wreck that later sinks into the ground. Before, it just stopped and stayed on the field. A destroyed watchtower or storehouse collapses into rubble like a building, these deaths make the same sounds as unit and building deaths, and damaged scavenger vehicles smoke at low health.
• A new VTOL starts in „Getarnt“ and now shoots when you order it to: a right-click attack on an enemy unit, an attack-move, or attack ground. Before, it flew there and hovered without firing. In „Getarnt“ an aircraft fires on explicit orders only, so a patrolling or guarding VTOL does not shoot by itself.
• A right-click on an enemy building is still a move order for an aircraft, and attack ground does not damage buildings either: its rounds hit only units at the spot. An earlier version of these notes said attack ground works on buildings; that was wrong. A fix is planned.
• Patrol and Guard now work for aircraft: a patrolling VTOL flies back and forth between its two points, and a guarding VTOL follows its unit. Before, both orders sent it home to its pad.
• The Rearm Pad now serves only an aircraft that has landed on it, and only one at a time, so several aircraft on one pad are served one after another and the turnaround is slower. Aircraft fighting near their pad are no longer refilled and repaired in the air. Repair at the pad stays free.
• An aircraft that runs out of ammunition, or low on diesel, now drops its order, flies home, lands on its pad and is rearmed, refuelled and repaired. There is no resume yet: it stays on the pad until you send it out again.

FERROCADE can now be played in Simplified Chinese and Japanese: choose your language under Settings, General, Language.

Features

• Simplified Chinese: every text is translated, from the menus, the match screens, the workshop, research and the campaign to EVA's messages, the tutorial, the update window and the end screen. The language row reads "简体中文 (Beta)". Numbers are written as in English (315,000, 100k, 1.2M), key names stay as printed on the keyboard (Shift, Ctrl, Esc; the space bar is 空格), and place and person names keep their Latin letters.
• Japanese: every text is translated, with labels in noun style and full sentences in the polite です・ます form. The language row reads "日本語 (Beta)". Numbers are written as in English (1,234, 1.5k, 45%, 1.2M), and a Japanese keyboard needs no setting of its own.
• Both are marked "(Beta)": we translated them ourselves, and a professional review is still to come. Long texts wrap between characters, and the two factions keep their English names on every screen (Northern Pact, Southern Coalition). The text is drawn with the Noto Sans CJK font that came with b1317, loaded only when it is needed.
• Only a first start picks the language by itself: a computer set to Simplified Chinese (zh-CN, zh-Hans, zh-SG) starts in Simplified Chinese, a computer set to Japanese (ja-JP, ja) starts in Japanese, and Traditional Chinese (zh-TW, zh-HK, zh-Hant) starts in English.
• If you have already played on a computer set to Chinese or Japanese, the game stays in English, because b1315 and the builds after it stored English for you (German if you first started before b1295). Switch under Settings, General, Language (in Chinese 设置, 通用, 语言; in Japanese 設定, 一般, 言語). Only a game that stored the language at its first start (b1295 to b1314) and has not saved its settings since b1315 starts in it by itself; starting a match or changing a setting, for example, saves them.
• The loading screen before the game now speaks your language: in Chinese and Japanese its lines are drawn with the CJK font instead of empty boxes.
• The labels along the range rings show Chinese and Japanese characters side by side, without overlap.