Combat Controls/Sandbox

UI Improvements

There are a bunch of UI improvements that will give you greater control on the battlefield:

• Command Card : Bottom right of the screen in battle. Houses all the new commands and shows their hotkeys. Also shows which commands are active for the selected units. Hover over the new buttons for details on how they work! You’ll also notice we moved the R.U.B.I. button to the bottom right of the screen to group it with the other commands.

• Target and Selection Highlighting : Hover over anything you control and it will glow white. Hover over any enemy target and it will glow red, indicating what you will hit if you click on it. Note that this might highlight units you cannot actually fire at. If you have anti-ground units selected, it will still show enemy aircraft as red.

• R.U.B.I. Selection Rings : Dotted rings indicate that R.U.B.I. is controlling a unit. You never need to wonder if a unit is going somewhere because you told it to, or because R.U.B.I. is in charge. Issue a command on a R.U.B.I. controlled unit to temporarily gain control. Once the command is complete,R.U.B.I. will take back over again!

• Aircraft Grounding Drop-down : Ever wonder exactly where your aircraft’s range starts? Now selected aircraft will have a line drop down that shows where exactly on the ground they are located. Use this to stay out of range of enemy fire!

• Improved Cursors and Click Confirmations for All Commands!

R.U.B.I. Control

• Stationary Units will now have some idle AI. - For example, in a Platoon battle, ever notice your pack of Gatling Trucks stand still as their fellow Gatling Trucks just watch?
• Attack Radius - Troops now have a small radius that they are willing to move in to fire at enemies.
• Suspend Attack Radius - You can avoid the effects of the Attack Radius by commanding them to “Hold Position”.
• Increase Attack Radius - Want that chase and attack radius to be bigger? Set the units to “Fire at Will”.

Improved Pathfinding

• The pathfinder has been updated to support navigation around solid obstacles and handle varied terrain.

• It also now performs path straightening, allowing units to navigate to their destination more directly than before.

• In addition, we've added a new path planner for aircraft to allow them to make sweeping arcs to their target that we can better synchronize between the client and server.

• Initially only the Spectre will use this planner, but we plan to expand it to other aircraft in the future.

Solid Buildings

• Part of improving pathfinding is that buildings are now solid.

• No longer can you simply walk through a War Factory as if it weren’t there.

• It’s going to feel different at first, but now you can incorporate blocking buildings into your strategy.

• You can still walk through your own walls, but every other building will block friendly and enemy pathing.

Future Enhancements

• All of this work puts the War Commander team in a place where we can add tons of fun new gameplay and usability improvements, while staying true to the spirit of War Commander.

• Going forward, we're evaluating a number of features that can build on the new technology included in this release, such as command queueing, unit formations, additional unit commands, unit-specific commands (abilities), strategic terrain, and more!

Additional Facts

• There are no stat changes at all in this update. Kixeye only changes some control improvements and enhanced AI.
• There's no way range was impacted at all by this update. All the updates and changes can be found in the patch notes here .
• The controls have only been like for 20min. Try them out a little before you decide you hate them. They're a little different than you're used to and will take a little more time to adapt to =)
• Units executing Fire at Will will now correctly return to their starting location when all nearby targets have been destroyed.
• When rejoining a battle in progress, units with a persistent command (Hold Position and Fire at Will) will now correctly show the corresponding command icon.
• The Defensive Stance UI has been replaced with a new UI for commands.
• Hotkeys have been added for all commands.
• Command confirmation icons now appear on the ground both when issuing a Move or Attack Move command.
• A new command system has been added.
• Initial commands that can be issued to units are Move, Attack Move, Stop, Hold Position, and Fire at Will.
• Commands can be issued either via the command buttons in the lower-right corner of the screen, or by pressing the corresponding hotkey.
• Clicking on the battlefield without selecting a specific command will issue a context-sensitive smart command (Move or Attack).
• Collision detection has been added to support future feature development.
• Pathfinding has been rewritten to support obstacles and apply basic path straightening.
• Fire At Will button F with the R.U.B.I. in off mode will set your units to attack the turrets and bunkers first before other building and your units will attack nearby building if you on the R.U.B.I. button.