2026.2.20.1 – Difficulty and Pacing Controls Now Live

Developer Update This Week

Save and Load System

This week was overwhelmingly focused on Save and Load.

A significant amount of time went into stabilizing the system, resolving reported issues from Discord and Steam, and expanding coverage across edge cases. The Operator in particular required more time than expected due to the complexity of his systems.

Operators are highly dynamic. If an Operator levels up during a run and you later load a save, the system replaces the saved instance with the most recent version of that Operator. If an Operator no longer exists, they are properly deleted and refunded.

In multiplayer, the logic mirrors this behavior. When a save is loaded:

• Operators are reassigned back to their original RTS players when possible • If a corresponding client cannot be found within a reasonable time window, the Operator is refunded

A substantial amount of R&D went into making sure this flow behaves predictably and does not create duplication, loss, or ownership issues. We continued expanding Save and Load support across systems and hardening the logic.

We are actively working through reported bugs and feel we are approaching a point where the Save and Load system can be functionally marked complete within the next few days. Once that milestone is reached, we can shift focus back to larger gameplay priorities.

Networking and Client Side Prediction

Client side prediction for vehicles of all calibers is now implemented.

In internal and external testing, including high ping scenarios between players in the United States and overseas regions such as Poland, vehicle movement is significantly smoother and more visually stable in cross region sessions.

We are continuing to monitor this closely and will iterate further over the next couple of patches. The goal is consistent responsiveness and visual fidelity regardless of geographic latency differences.

Upcoming Focus: Civilian Evac and Core Fixes

With Save and Load nearing completion, attention is shifting toward preparing for Civilian Evac.

This includes:

• Pathfinding fixes

• Performance optimizations

• General bug cleanup

• Infected Birds

• Additional quality of life improvements

One example currently being reviewed is improving building upgrade logic. Upgrading a long wall segment into a vehicle gate is one example we are looking at but also simple stuff like Operator scopes so they can zoom in and out.

We appreciate the continued patience while we push through this stabilization phase.

Patch Notes

Also in this patch

• Cleaned up description for Custom attack interval to make it more clearer what it does

• Fix for turrets failing to spawn their weapon if they were saved while still under construction, then you finish constructing them after loading the saved game

• Added Hellfire Missile to Sparrow as a T1 counter towards armor

• Added LAW as to the Engineer as a T1 counter towards armor

• Fixed a Loading issue that could duplicate Chelsey and/or her pod

• Fixed a MLRS visual sync bug where after reload sometimes they would desync

• Fixed Zone Widgets, when loading a save, not properly displaying the Infection Level % that they were at immediately after load (loading a zone that was at 100% might have caused it to never display the % again, but no more!)

• Updated handling of Unit destruction to turn on 'can be damaged' for structures that are loaded as 'invulnerable' from old saves due to rubble mode bug

• Fixed up rubble mode walls to properly load in rubble mode

• Updated structure upgrading to send out a warning when trying to upgrade a structure that's in Rubble Mode, instead of silently failing

• Updated destroyed player walls to be selectable (so you can clear them)