Status report 2026-08-20: a second arena, and the stake stays with the winner

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

Headline

There is a second arena now, and it is free. The LIVE panel has an ARENAS section listing every run that is going, with what each one costs and what it pays. Enter the Newcomer Arena and everything follows you there: the fight you watch, the mechs you deploy, your abilities, Tug of War and betting. It takes mechs at or under a combat rating cap, so a new pilot is not dropped in front of a built-out veteran.

Free means the house pays, not that the price is zero. Your deploy fee, your ability pours and your Tug of War bids are charged to the house account instead of yours, at the real price. Pools still fill, auctions still resolve to a winning faction and a real Aimer, and every screen behaves exactly as it does in the Open Arena. You are learning the real machine, not a toy version of it. The trade is that the Newcomer Arena pays nothing back: no Spoils, and no daily challenge rewards. Come here to find out what a pour does without spending anything to learn it, then go to the Open Arena to earn.

In the Open Arena, backing a loser now costs you. A battle’s pot pays in two slices. The NXR players poured in goes to contributors on the winning faction only, while the house seed still pays a share to anyone who contributed at all, so the free climb is untouched. When nobody on the winning side is there to claim the poured stake it goes to the house reserve instead of back to the people who backed the losers. Losing is not inert either: your faction losing earns you REGROUP, which pays nothing today and rides into your next battle as extra weight.

New

• Added the spoils multiplier to the arena page, visible without a click.
• Added an unread dot to the arena chat bar.
• Added a DESTRUCTION RECORD history list to Tours, showing every return rather than only the last.
• Added inline TOUR and ROTATE actions to each mech in the gantry.
• Added sort and filter controls to every mech list.
• Added faction team-chat rooms in Discord, and each desk’s status line now carries its faction’s deploy queue depth.

Changes

• Restricted daily challenge rewards to the Open Arena, so a free run cannot pay out through them.
• Changed the arena camera to ease into targeting view instead of cutting to it.
• Changed the hangar power controls to explain what they do, and stopped the lean readout quoting a brownout number it does not set.
• Changed auction durations so end times rotate around the clock instead of landing at the same hours every day.
• Changed blocking a player to ask first and offer UNDO, and to leave a visible marker in the feed.
• Changed arena chat and rail-section layout to persist across reloads.

Fixes

• Fixed armed abilities refusing to fire from the spectator panel, and the free release tap being offered to players who never poured into the pool.
• Fixed a squad press landing in the Open Arena instead of the run you picked.
• Fixed battles that finished but never settled, looping silently instead of completing.
• Fixed a battle being charged under one arena’s rules and settled under another’s.
• Fixed Battle Spoils crediting a destroyed mech with holding the line.
• Fixed the repair rate ceiling being exceeded when credits ran in parallel.
• Fixed the first quick bid on an auction with no bids being impossible to place.
• Fixed chat lines showing a 1970 timestamp instead of the real clock.
• Fixed the over-canvas arena chat feed showing no messages.
• Fixed toasts rendering undersized and sitting on top of the header.
• Fixed slow squad assignment and fleet loading for owners with large Tour stations.
• Fixed slow loading on the public build detail panel.

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