2026.7.27 CERC OPS Arrives on Experimental Plus Major Fixes

The virus is loose across the Bay Area. Flashpoints are erupting across the peninsula as entire districts fall into chaos and infected swarms push deeper into civilian zones.

CERC forces are already in the field.

Embedded military reporters and frontline operators are transmitting battlefield coverage directly from active operations. The images you are about to see were captured during recent combat deployments across the region.

These transmissions come directly from the front.

The battle for the Bay Area has begun.

2026.7.27 Change List on Experimental

This Experimental update includes another substantial round of performance work, combat improvements, balance adjustments, crash fixes, interface updates, and visual polish. The larger Fog of War overhaul remains under active development and is not included as a completed feature in this update.

CERC Ops is now live and in the wild!

Thousands of players have loaded into CERC Ops since its release, with many already using it throughout full gameplay sessions. The response across Steam, Discord, YouTube, and private messages has been genuinely inspiring. Access it here

I have dreamed about building a companion tool like this for years, so seeing players immediately understand its value has been incredible. Some of you are using it to coordinate serious operations, while others are recruiting friends, assigning them commander roles, and shouting instructions across the room. We have even heard from people whose friends purchased Cepheus Protocol specifically so they could join these coordinated sessions.

Thank you to everyone who gave CERC Ops a chance, shared feedback, reported issues, or suggested ways to improve it. That feedback has already led to another quiet round of improvements over the weekend.

CERC Ops can now display more critical information while an operation is underway, including current deployment windows, total population, DNA cache data, time of day, news updates, the activity log, and chat history.

Development and support will continue during weekends for CERC Ops as we evaluate how players are using the tool. There may not be a massive amount left to add to the website itself beyond further interface improvements, but we will continue listening closely and expanding it wherever the community identifies real value.

Some players also did not realize that Cepheus Protocol must currently be running on the Experimental branch for CERC Ops to work during the early testing phases its in right now. If you encounter unusual technical issues or need help getting connected, please join our Discord and let us know. Once we merge the patch over to public in the next week or so everyone will benefit from the tool!

Thank you again for the incredible response, the actionable feedback, and the sheer enthusiasm surrounding CERC Ops. We are excited to see how you continue using it throughout the coming weeks.

Performance

• Reworked several structure, infection, health, weapon, and unit systems to reduce individual timers and repeated updates to improve performance in large scale games.

• Added new world subsystems to batch recurring simulation work and improve performance during larger sessions.

• Optimized structure and world building dormancy to reduce unnecessary network activity reducing the stain in mid-late game

• Fixed an issue where visibility updates could unnecessarily wake dormant structures causing network spikes.

• Improved build progress replication for clients so the build progress bar appears more reliably and Skycrane network relevancy during structure delivery so they dont desync for clients

• Reduced processing costs associated with projectiles, weapons, turrets, ragdolls, corpses, and temporary actors.

• Improved weapon reset logic and melee cooldown handling that was causing performance spikes in large sessions.

• Reworked Animation Quality settings to provide better scalability across Low through Epic presets.

• Updated Infected LOD settings to improve performance at higher unit counts.

• Optimized the update frequency of several weapon muzzle effects to improve performance.

Combat and Infected AI

• Improved Infected melee behavior so attackers resume attacking more quickly after their cooldown completes.

• Reduced unnecessary delays between repeated melee attacks against stationary targets.

• Infected can now perform opportunistic melee attacks when a valid target enters range while moving.

• Improved melee targeting against walls and other large structures.

• Fixed host melee animations sometimes playing twice.

• Fixed the Spine Thrower applying the wrong damage type and dealing excessive damage to certain unit types.

• Improved the reliability of projectiles that detonate near aerial targets.

• Fixed projectile collision and friendly fire issues involving gate structures.

• Fixed a projectile regression that could incorrectly cause friendly fire.

CERC Balance

• Increased damage across a broad selection of CERC infantry weapons.

• Corrected the SCAR L and HK416A7 after they were missed during the initial infantry weapon update.

• Increased the effectiveness of several CERC weapons against Infected structures.

• Increased the effectiveness of the Shawnee and Behemoth against structures.

• Adjusted Sparrow M260 and Hellfire weapon balance.

• Corrected the Sparrow Hellfire doctrine unlock.

• Reduced the population cost of the Charon and Shawnee.

• Adjusted the population requirements of the Abrams and Cerberus 105mm.

• Reduced the construction cost of the Evacuation Site.

• Reduced the construction cost of the Ammunition Tent.

• Increased the starting money and SOC income provided by the Director's Cut preset.

• Reduced the Juggernaut respawn rate.

• Corrected the Security unit to use the intended MP5 configuration.

Vehicles, Aircraft, and Weapons

• Temporarily disabled Wheel/Tire physics when a ground vehicle dies because of instability within the Chaos physics system. They just "self destroy now" while we investigate this

• Updated vehicle explosion audio and several affected vehicle configurations.

• Improved Sparrow, Charon, Blackhawk, Apache, and related minigun behavior.

• Updated M134 muzzle effects and firing audio.

• Improved TOW missile visuals, audio, backblast effects, cable presentation, and unfolding animation.

• Improved Dragon Gunship tracer visibility.

• Fixed the Dragon Gunship area indicator using the wrong center icon.

• Slightly stiffened the Springbok suspension.

• Fixed incorrect mesh configurations on the Merlin and Evacuation Helicopter.

• Improved helicopter weapon focus behavior when only secondary or tertiary weapons are equipped.

Civilian Administration

• Holding Cells can now indicate when a scanned infected civilian is inside.

• Infection scan status is now saved and replicated more reliably.

• Fixed the Euthanization Tent popup failing to identify civilians who were infected but had not fully converted before death.

• Improved several civilian administration and evacuation edge cases.

• Improved multiplayer reliability for civilian administration systems.

User Interface and Companion Support

• Added the CERC OPS interface to the pause menu.

• Added support for copying local connection information without permanently revealing the address.

• Connection information is hidden again when leaving the relevant menu.

• Improved CERC OPS layout, text, link sizing, and menu presentation.

• Fixed spacing and padding within the pause menu options.

• Added Day, DNA, Money, Next Call In, total map population, and logging support to the Companion App.

• Fixed DNA visuals remaining visible on clients when cinematic mode or the DNA visibility option disabled them.

• Fixed the numeric garrison display appearing in incorrect contexts.

• Restricted startup options in Custom Game Options to the main menu.

• Improved RTS camera zoom behavior across different camera angles.

• Fixed formation completion behavior that could incorrectly rotate units after reaching their destination.

Crash and Stability Fixes

• Fixed multiple crashes involving queued Attack Move orders.

• Fixed a crash involving gate structures.

• Fixed a crash involving Infected biomass currency data.

• Fixed a ragdoll subsystem timing issue that could conflict with corpse limit management.

• Fixed vehicle parachutes occasionally falling beneath the map without being cleaned up.

• Fixed a Juggernaut vehicle throw issue introduced by projectile initialization changes.

• Improved build progress replication for clients.

• Improved network relevancy and dormancy handling for structures and delivered buildings.

Maps, Visuals, and Audio

• Continued environment detail work across North San Francisco.

• Updated Oak Bay Bridge meshes, ramps, and surrounding Treasure Island roads.

• Updated navigation and collision across Iron Wake and other affected maps.

• Added missing damage volumes in Iron Wake.

• Updated several vehicle materials and environmental assets.

• Improved vehicle engine audio attenuation.

• Updated the Alcatraz roof material as part of ongoing environment work.

Thank you to everyone continuing to report issues and provide detailed feedback. We are continuing to prioritize late game performance, simulation stability, combat reliability, and the larger Fog of War overhaul.

Current Development Focus

With Civilian Evacuation now live on the public branch, our focus has shifted toward improving performance, stability, and quality of life before moving into the next major roadmap milestone. Current work includes structure blueprints, reusable unit composition presets for combinations such as Assault, Heavy, and Spec Ops squads, improved unit selection, RTS camera fixes, interface polish, multiplayer stability, save/load reliability, and general optimization based on community feedback.

Performance is our number-one concern right now. One of the largest engineering projects underway is converting Fog of War visuals to run on the GPU. Testing in larger simulations showed that the previous CPU-based implementation was not viable at the scale we are targeting, so the system has been rebuilt and is continuing to receive patches and optimization work. This conversion provides a much stronger foundation for larger battles and future gameplay systems. The goal is to release it sometime this week check out the 100th episode below for details on how it works!

Looking Ahead: Escalation

Once the current quality-of-life, bug-fixing, and performance pass reaches its goals, development will transition into the Escalation roadmap phase. The current estimate is to begin pushing heavily into this work in early August, starting with Chelsey and then moving into the standard infected AI overhaul.

This phase will focus on improving infected intelligence, movement, expansion, combat behavior, and progression. From there, development will continue into new infected variants, mutations, Lieutenants, sub-zone control, and the broader late-game threat represented by the Leviathan. Operator improvements, RTS polish, and continued work on San Francisco North will also continue alongside this effort.

The goal is not simply to add more infected. The goal is to create an enemy that expands intelligently, responds to the player, evolves throughout the match, and creates stronger pressure from the early game through the late game.

You can catch up on the latest CERC HQ below to see the full breakdown for yourself:

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Episode 100 covers the new GPU-powered Fog of War system, the first look at CERC OPS, ongoing performance work, vehicle destruction improvements, networking updates, balance changes, interface work, and what the team is preparing to tackle next.

🎙️ Join Us This Saturday for CERC HQ

🕔 When: Weekly Saturdays at 7:00 PM EST

💬 What is CERC HQ?

CERC HQ is our weekly development podcast covering the latest progress, current technical challenges, upcoming roadmap work, and community questions. This Saturday, we will be discussing the performance push, continued Fog of War optimization, quality-of-life improvements, and the transition into the infected overhaul planned for the next roadmap phase.

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📺 Where to Watch:

YouTube Livestream

Discord Server

Steam Page

🎤 Join the Live Q&A! We will be answering questions from the community during the stream, so bring your questions about performance, CERC OPS, Fog of War, quality-of-life improvements, and the upcoming infected work.

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