Hey squaddies!

It’s been a heck of a ride getting here and we certainly couldn’t have done it without the uncountable hours of testing you folks have put in to make sure we can get choppers off the ground! We’re finally ready to release the first iteration of choppers to the official Squad client! Helicopters represent one of our last milestones on the road to release and represent a big change to the flow of a match, so be sure to keep your feedback coming — there’s still work to be done.

Of course, there’s more to the patch than a few game-changing airborne vehicles, so let’s dig in for the complete list of changes:

Alpha 16 Changelog

Systems

Added Helicopters. Helicopters are an exciting new system of transport that (literally) brings about a new dimension to the battlefield. Each conventional faction will get access to medium-lift helicopters capable of transporting troops and supplies. Helicopters are piloted by special Pilot roles, similar to heavy vehicles requiring a dedicated Crewmen. Helicopters carry ammo as well as construction supplies. Additionally, all kit roles are available via choppers. (Just make sure someone’s got their wings before take-off!)

Added Helicopter Tutorial. Instead of showing your teammates how fun it is to make craters, we’ve included a brand new Helicopter Tutorial, complete with rings! (This one’s for you, SNES fans.)

Added a Soft-Boundary system for all map layers that feature helicopters. This new boundary system gives the player a warning to turn back to the battle area before they are killed by the system. Different tolerances are set depending on whether the player is on foot, in a ground vehicle, or in a helicopter. The goal is to make helicopter travel outside map boundaries less punishing.

Fixed the limitation that caused servers to be able to only run three mods at a time.

Game Modes

Territory Control: Added a HAB hex zone defense mechanic. When a team has an active HAB in a hex they control, that hex cannot be captured until the HAB is deactivated.

Territory Control: Fixed Ticket Bleed not properly replicating.

Territory Control: Fixed the “Cut off from Anchor Point” mechanic not working in many situations.

Increased Skirmish ticket counts to 150 tickets (was 100 tickets) and increased staging phase timer to 3 minutes, previously 2 minutes.

Infantry Gameplay

Decreased infantry ground friction from 5.0 to 3.0 to help reduce unnatural left/right zig-zag character movement. We’ll continue to evaluate these changes.

Updated British L110A2 LMG mesh to use its own unique iron sight and Weaver rail.

Updated British L129A1 DMR texture to a tan-colored finish.

Updated M68 CCO texture.

Updated TT33 Tokarev texture.

Improved all Hand Held Smoke grenades to develop smoke quicker with increased smoke cloud volume and duration.

Modified firing sounds for the M249, M9a1 pistol, and M110.

Fixed weapon lowering not replicating correctly to other players when exiting a vehicle.

Fixed player character offset when entering a vehicle while crouching or prone.

Fixed ADS diagonal movement not having any footstep sounds.

Fixed Recruit roles being able to change to Riflemen roles from deployables.

Fixed US Army Squad Leader’s M4 Foregrip Optics having its zero misaligned.

Fixed US Army Scoped Medic having a frag grenade; it has been removed.

Fixed one of the Desert Russian Squad Leader roles not being able to rearm their pistol.

Vehicle Gameplay

Added the MI-8 “Hip” to the Russian Ground Forces. This is a medium-lift helicopter capable of carrying up to 9 passengers. (Not including the pilot, copilot and 2 door-gunners.) It is armed with 2 door mounted PKP machine guns for self-defense and can carry up to 1500 points of supplies.

Added the UH-60M “Grouse” for the US Army and British Army Forces. This medium-lift helicopter can carry up to 9 passengers. (Not including pilot, copilot, and 2 door-gunners) It is armed with 2 window-mounted M240H machine guns suitable for some light degree of protection. It carries up to 1000 points of supplies.

Removed ability for players to turn vehicle engines on during the staging/planning phase.

Increased top speed on the Minsk to increase off-road effectiveness.

Improved visibility and artwork for the DsHK Turret Shield.

Improved visibility of vehicle health bar background being too hard to see. (Changed it from black to a shade of grey.)

Adjusted FV432 APC kit requirements to no longer require a Crewman kit for the driver.

Optimized effects on tank cannon shot and APC auto-cannon shot.

Optimized tracer effects to improve performance.

Fixed T72 autoload sound playing in other vehicles.

Fixed BRDM-2 Spandrel being able to occasionally rapid-fire its missiles more quickly than intended.

Fixed particles/vehicle glass shaders not blending properly with fog.

Fixed being able to continue loading supplies onto a logistics truck after the FOB has run out of supplies.

Fixed FV432 APC being stuck in 1st Gear all the time.

Fixed BFV driver receiving splash damage while inside the vehicle.

Fixed M1126 M240 destruction costing 10 tickets. Cost has been reduced to 5 tickets.

Fixed wrong impact FX and sounds for tank shells being played.

Deployables Gameplay

Fixed bug where shoveling down friendly FOB Radio cost your team tickets.

Fixed a bug that allowed infinite loading/unloading of supplies.

Fixed FOB Radio low health not blocking spawning when damaged by anything except destruction by shovel.

Fixed incorrect deployment requirements in the tooltips for FOB Radios for the Militia, Insurgents, and Russians.

Fixed mortars not having extreme distance incoming sounds.

Fixed DShk shielded deployable having floating ammo boxes.

User Interface

Removed Delta Fireteam and shifted colors up. (Bravo Fireteam is now dark blue and Charlie Fireteam is now cyan).

Added an indicator for when a player is bleeding inside a vehicle.

Added Show Full Servers and Sort by Ping functionality to the Server Browser.

Adjusted Vehicle Supply Radial. If your vehicle cannot carry a certain supply type, that supply type will be greyed out.

Updated Infantry Tutorial to include “Regional Training Center” on the Map Name.

Fixed commander chat saying DIRECT when using ALL.

Fixed scroll bar being too dark on the Command Map’s Vehicle List.

Fixed player notifications when a player is kicked from a squad. It will no longer show the notification for the player both leaving squad AND getting kicked from squad.

Fixed Call Medic button not being initially disabled on subsequent incapacitations.

Maps

Added new map: Mutaha! Although this region seems idyllic and pastoral at first glance, it has become a contested area between Syria and Iraq due to its highway access and naturally irrigated farmland. The locals have long abandoned their houses and shops, but the war-town streets are anything but quiet as ground forces push to secure this crossroads in the desert. Mutaha map layers include AAS, Invasion, RAAS, Territory Control and Skirmish. (And maybe an old favorite building or two.)

Added Helicopters to Gorodok, Kohat Toi, Tallil Outskirts, and Yehorivka map layers.

Added Helipads at main bases that can repair and resupply helicopters on all map layers that have helicopters.

Increased Skirmish ticket counts to 150 tickets (increased from 100 tickets), and increased staging phase timer to 3 minutes (previously 2 minutes).

Adjusted Territory Control ticket values to 400/400 on Logar Valley, Chora, and Skorpo TC v2.

Adjusted starting Hexes for Kokan TCv1: Insurgents start with 9, US Army starts with 6.

Adjusted US Main for Al Basrah TC v2, moving it closer to the Territory Hexes for balancing.

Updated minimaps for Gorodok, Belaya, and Yehorivka.

Al Basrah: Added AAS v1, bringing back the classic CP layout with US vs Insurgents.

Fools Road: Fixed RAAS v2 Hilltop Encampment flag having an incorrect collision.

Fools Road: Fixed being able to prone underneath a landscape mesh near the northeastern map border on Fools Road.

Kamdesh: Added TC v2, an alternate layer featuring a battle of unconventional forces: Insurgents vs Militia.

Kokan: Fixed Logi Trucks that were Transport Trucks on AAS v1.

Logar Valley: Added AAS v2, with an alternate route featuring US vs Insurgents.

Narva: Added AAS v2, a new and improved Narva with classic layout.

Narva: Optimized with new landscape materials, trees, grass, crops, and water.

Narva: Optimized buildings in an initial optimization pass and gave more color variety.

Skorpo: Improved and optimized rain weather effects.

Tallil Outskirts: Fixed spawn point being outside the staging zone on Tallil Skirmish v1.

Yehorivka: Additional optimizations. (See previous patches for more information.)

Yehorivka: Improved detailing on “Overpass” POI and re-designed it for improved infantry gameplay.

Fixed (Finally!) the landscape renderer bug on several maps that gave players strange discolored grass, foliage, rocks, and roads.

Fixed some effects piercing through fog on certain maps.

Fixed various foliage types that prevented leaning and construction.

Fixed collision issues on various buildings and assets, including certain bridges on Yehorivka and Belaya that were uncrossable.

Fixed staging zone pain volumes on Logar Valley and Sumari.

Fixed distant snow effects turning on/off depending on your zoom resolution.

Fixed some floating objects and minor visual bugs on several maps.

Known Issues

Helicopter Tail Rotor component currently can only take damage from collisions with ground, statics and other vehicles. Projectile damage to tail rotors will come in a future update.

Helicopters have various handling tweaks, damage values and small bugs that will be addressed in a future update.

Localization for most language translations is currently out of date. Our plan is to push a full localization pass when we are much closer to full release and are locking down all the text that will need to be translated for the game.

Clients frequently crash at the end of a round, upon map switch due to a (particle) bug. Actively investigating the cause for this crash.

Occasional client crashes in various circumstances. Detailed crash reports help us fix things faster and we truly appreciate those that have filled out and sent crash reports.

Players will occasionally spawn without full ammo on their first spawn on a server. This occurs if a player was in the match during map switch but did not spawn in during the staging phase. Actively investigating a fix for this bug.

Occasionally a player will not spawn at a Rally Point, this often happens when numerous players are spawning in at the exact same time. Actively investigating a fix for this bug.

Server performance may periodically dip when a server has a high population and high load. We are continuously working to improve server performance and optimization.

Occasionally Self-bandaging fails. Actively investigating this issue.

The CP Icon (Capture Point / Flag) will occasionally not show up on a client’s HUD. Investigating this issue.

ATGM projectiles desync for other players that are not the gunner, however, what the gunner sees should be the true synced projectile. This is an inherent problem, and the solution will be in the long term.

Local/Offline Bug with Vehicles: When playing offline on Jensen’s Range, Tracks, Wheels, and other components are not destructible while on the Jensen’s Range in Local play.

Local/Offline Bug with Weapon damages: When playing offline on Jensen’s Range, Weapon damages with both Infantry and Vehicle weapons are not accurately replicated.

Special Thanks

As mentioned in the introduction, we wanted to give a special mention to all the squaddies that have come together to beat the heck out of this patch in testing:

A special thanks to all those that took the time to write-up Bug Reports and detailed feedback posts! You all played an important role in getting one of the major releases of Squad off the ground, literally. THANK YOU! And a request to keep it coming! Thank you so much for your passion and support, it really keeps us motivated to continue making this game come to life!

Sign Off

You heard ’em, squaddies: we want to hear what you think. Be sure to drop by Discord, the official forums, reddit, or just keep an eye out for the next feedback survey in-game! If you’re REALLY feeling it, head over to the Squad store and get some new duds — you’ve earned ’em!

Offworld out.