Status report 2026-08-19: the shells learn to fall

The registry has been asked to summarise the machine. Filed as follows.

Headline

Missiles and artillery fly for real now. A missile leaves the tube climbing, speeds up as it goes, cruises above the rooftops and dives onto the ground it was aimed at. A shell heaves up steeply, hangs at the top and drops hard on the far side. Cover no longer stops either one, and the arc you watch is the arc the sim flew, so a shell that looks like it clears a wall clears it. Missiles commit to a patch of ground and detonate a couple of seconds later: keep moving and they miss you.

Your repair bill is set by the fight, not by what you are wearing. A mech now carries a damage debt from the moment the battle ends, worked out from the armour it went in with against the HP it walked out with. Swapping to a weaker defense mid-repair will not shrink the bill or the clock any more, and fitting a bigger one no longer invents damage nobody dealt you. A mech carrying more damage than its current defense can hold sits at 0 HP and cannot deploy; that is not a wreck, and bolting on a bigger defense hands the HP straight back.

New

• Added every mech’s name over its hull while you aim, so you can pick out your own mid battle.
• Added each mech’s health to the deploy screen, so you can send the healthiest.
• Added your clanmates’ tags to touring mechs on the arena roster.
• Added a warning beside a mech’s combat rating when its power core cannot feed its guns.
• Added an unequip control to the Combiner, so a blocked part comes off without hunting down the mech wearing it.
• Added a SCRAP control to your own open squad, behind a confirmation naming how many mechs it releases.
• Added skin rarity to mechs listed on the market.
• Added permanent serial titles to desk auction lots.
• Added Codex reading and early unlocks to your activity feed.

Changes

• Changed your cut of a battle’s Spoils to be decided by your Multiplier weight alone, was weight multiplied by what you spent. Spending still builds the pool and still wins you the contribution bands.
• Unlocked Spoils payouts for the loyalist band, which carried a 0.5 weight and paid nothing.
• Restricted squads to your own faction, one open at a time.
• Raised desk clearance lot floors to at least the Factory’s demand price for the part, was as low as 1 NXR.
• Changed the repair bay to lead with the mechs actually in the bay.
• Changed the equip picker to remember whether you left it on IN STORAGE or WHOLE FLEET.

Fixes

• Fixed pouring past an ability’s trigger cost erasing the overage instead of carrying it into the next firing.
• Fixed a repair crate freezing the mech it landed beside.
• Fixed the repair crate’s heal burst going off in the middle of the arena instead of on the crate.
• Fixed a Tug of War round accepting your bid for a battle that had already ended.
• Fixed a cancelled battle holding up everyone’s ability refunds over one legacy stake.
• Fixed the repair bay refusing a mech without saying why.
• Fixed the parts list becoming unreadable while fitting a mech.
• Fixed one brand new part blanking the whole SUBSYSTEMS panel.
• Fixed the sold alert not naming what sold, and mech and part sellers never getting one at all.
• Fixed outbid and won alerts not naming the lot you were bidding on.
• Fixed the wallet page rebuilding your accounts on every refresh.
• Fixed desk letters that were quietly owed forever never arriving.
• Plus 7 smaller fixes across the hangar, auctions, chat and the desks.

Spotted something off? Drop it in Discord, playtest feedback is shaping every one of these.