21 August 2026: The Crossfire Update — no armour is absolute
Critical hits pierce any armour · Weapon range tracks your target · Fleets arrive in formation · New Wall formation
Critical hits — every gun has a chance now
- The maximum roll always draws blood. Each shot rolls an attack value from half your attack rating up to the full rating. Roll the exact maximum and the shot punches straight through the target's defence and applies the weapon's rated damage — no matter how heavily armoured the target is.
- Nothing is untouchable any more. A super-heavy that small guns simply bounced off can now be worn down by weight of numbers. It is a slim chance — a 35-attack corvette crits about one shot in nineteen — so it takes a real swarm to grind a capital ship down, and a stand-up fight between matched fleets plays out exactly as before. But "invulnerable" is gone.
- It applies everywhere combat resolves, including manual fire from the bridge. Line up the shot yourself and your crits land the same way.
Positioning sharpens up
- Weapon range now tracks your target. The initiative bonus for fighting inside your weapon range applies against the ship you are actually engaging, not just any hostile that happens to drift nearby. Pick your fight and the range advantage follows it.
Fleets arrive with intent
- Reinforcements land as formations. In the solar view, a wave that jumps in together now arrives as tidy same-type groups instead of scattering across the system — a fleet reads as a fleet the moment it drops in.
- Raiders come for your holdings. Hostile arrivals break from their entry point and make straight for your ships and structures, rather than drifting into an idle orbit. When something jumps into your space, it means business.
New formation orders
- Wall. Box-select your ships and form a Wall — up to five ranks high, widening into columns as the group grows. A broadside presented face-on.
- A proper V. The V formation now opens into a real arrowhead for larger squads, instead of collapsing into two parallel columns behind the leader.
More hulls in 3D
- The modelled fleet keeps growing: the Knosson Orka and Draconis join the roster alongside the Viken, each lit by the star it flies under.