Battle Command Uplink Initializing… Communications re-established. Hello again, Commanders! We know it’s been a while since our last update, and we have much to cover. First, we’d like to thank you for your patience while we were radio silent. Since our announcement in December, we’ve been very hard at work on Tempest Rising, and we are so excited to share everything we’ve been working on with you. From here on out, we will share updates regularly again. In December, we initiated a comprehensive overhaul of our working processes to ensure we are as efficient as possible with our production schedule and developer time. This was not a trivial effort, but we are happy with the results across our teams. This included a detailed overview of what we will be able to deliver at a high quality by our launch. While, for the most part, this will result in higher quality content, we had to make the hard choice not to have our 3rd faction playable at launch. Mechanically, we are very far along with their implementation and plan to showcase them in the coming months. Still, we want to be sure that what we deliver to our community is the highest quality possible. While this was a difficult decision to make, we determined it will be for the best in terms of launch quality for the game as a whole. We plan to add them in a future update to ensure the best results in balance and polish both for the GDF and Dynasty at launch and for the 3rd faction once added to the game. Now, let’s take a look at what this choice is enabling us to focus on for the rest of development. We would like to thank our community for their feedback on our demo, as it has helped us prioritize our development efforts: many of the improvements we are currently working on are based on your feedback. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42794230/34ed7970cefed0e8a26dcbba12cc12c12ddd9fbb.gif[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42794230/b9ca148a23b30d0b2c535b816ce662ee8b932d02.gif[/img] First and foremost, we’ve comprehensively rebuilt the navigation and movement dynamics for units in the game. Players were rightly frustrated by some of the rough edges of our movement system in the demo, and we are so pleased to be able to show off our new system. At a fundamental level, we think the game feels much better to control now, and we are very eager for players to get a taste of this in action. We are also reviewing the game’s UI to improve readability, menu flow, and in-game usability. We’re not quite ready to show the results yet, so stay tuned for future updates! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42794230/a9a9504d70ace264b53c8cf1fa5e676e27402e83.gif[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42794230/d6526038c995b247477981b5c5ef2e2e11aa5d57.gif[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42794230/9d17f304347b6e0ac481ed6d844fcc79f4fd48db.gif[/img] Over the past four months, one of our major areas of focus has been ensuring that our campaign is fun, deep, beautiful, and compelling. We’ve optimized our Advisor segments in terms of quality and smoothness. Our set-dressing and level design teams are iterating on our campaign missions with an eye for pacing, environmental storytelling, challenge and computer player behavior to ensure that our missions are beautiful, memorable, and, most of all, just plain damn RTS fun. Our systems and AI teams are likewise working hard to improve the behavior of enemies in the campaign. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42794230/cc663f3136cc0bf2724ce7620a7e709456587286.png[/img] We are also happy to officially reveal the inclusion of neutral garrisons that players can use in campaign, skirmish and multiplayer to keep their infantry safe from vehicles. Players will also find neutral buildings on the map to capture to gain tactical advantages. We will share a more in-depth look at these in a future update. And we are finalizing the addition of building rotation into the game, which was another much-requested feature! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42794230/b94bd4107fc7f659c46c7a735b73e5465374daf4.gif[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42794230/3e215679b7ddff141924d086654c501f14c88c5c.gif[/img] And of course, we aren’t overlooking multiplayer or skirmish! We have a dedicated team working on improving our Skirmish Computer Player behaviors, and we've come a long way since December. We have Glicko-2 matchmaking and unranked matchmaking in testing, too, so we can provide these as part of a full-featured launch. In addition, we have a team working on creating new skirmish and multiplayer maps to ensure we have a good selection ready for release. We look forward to bringing you map overviews of several of our favorites as we get closer to beta and launch. So, where does this leave us? We’re still not ready to reveal our release date. We do have a target date in mind and will share the date closer to that time. We are also gearing up to remove the existing demo from the Steam page as it doesn’t represent the game’s current level of visual or gameplay quality. It will remain there for a couple more days for those who want to give it a last try. On the horizon for us are upcoming beta tests; more gameplay videos, including more multiplayer matches and Unit Showcases; deep dives into previously unexplored systems like the Combat Loadout from the campaign and our Doctrines system; an increased focus on our unique gameplay systems such as Specialists, Dynasty Plans, GDF Intel; sneak peeks at campaign missions; and skirmish AI. And did we mention beta testing? We’re excited to be back and to have you on this journey with us. Let’s kick some ass together and forge a future in the world of Tempest Rising. Back to work.