The battle goes 3D

Sites

• Everything fights in 3D. Enemies, weapons, effects, the guns and the array all play on the site's live landscape, in the same field as before.
• An opening flyover. A run opens high above the battlefield and swoops down into position. When a rocket stands on the pad, the camera slows beside it first. Tap to skip.
• Solar farms. Each gun stands in a field of panels on the ground. Damage still sweeps in from the right.
• A new launch vehicle. Launch runs stand a two-stage rocket with strap-on boosters and a payload fairing on the pad, against the gantry's service arms, with a clear view of it across the farm.
• Antigua's volcano. Its lava runs in crusted flows that creep downhill and fork, glowing on the slopes, and the crater's light sits on the rim.
• Neo-Osaka by night. The rooftop is lit, paved concrete with its plant, a water tank and a helipad, and lamps line the parapet. The city stands close all the way to the haze with lit roads below, more billboards and neon signs hang on the towers, and the lights hold and glow instead of blinking.

Weapons

• A building for every weapon. Each weapon fires from its own building on the line: a control tower for the Supply Drop, a satellite dish for the Orbital Designator, a hill generator for the Tesla Coil, and so on, with the 40mm keeping its turret. Every gun aims on its own, so no turret whips between targets.
• Place your weapons. Your first weapon stands at the centre. Each time you draft another, you choose where it stands on the line and can move the rest: tap a slot to move the selected weapon there, or drag any weapon. Each weapon reaches from its own building, so a short-range gun belongs where the enemies come down. Auto-pick places them for you.
• Rebuilt buildings. Every building on the line, the 40mm's turret included, has armoured, bevelled plating that catches the light, with the weapon's colour lit round its turret ring and its own kit alongside: sandbags round the Flak Battery, fuel tanks beside the Flamethrower, capacitor banks beside the Railgun.
• Every building is alive. Barrels jump back on each shot and the muzzle flashes in the round's colour, buildings without a turret thump as they fire, and the flamethrower's pilot flame roars while it sprays. Between shots, turrets scan their sector and each building keeps its own glow, steam, mist, crackle or blinking beacon.
• Shots leave the barrel. Every weapon fires from its muzzle, lens or emitter instead of from inside its building, so rounds, shells and rockets reach their targets a moment sooner.
• Sharper shots and salvage. Rockets carry a lit seeker and a glowing band, darts and shells burn brighter, vapor seeds leak light, scrap sparks from a torn wire, and flux cells glow at their electrodes.
• A new supply jet. The Supply Drop arrives in a banking strike jet with twin tails, glowing engines and a cargo pod, and its crates come down under panelled chutes.
• The Railgun goes through everything. The slug hits every enemy on its line from the first card. The first takes the full hit and everything behind it 55%, and each level adds 5% until nothing is lost at level 10.
• Gravity Well pulls from closer. Its reach starts at 55 px, down from 85, and it fires less often.
• Balloon Mines lean toward the middle. Wherever their building stands, the minefield covers the centre.

Specializations

• 40mm shells carry on where you can see them. Ricochet and Sabot Rounds streak from one target to the next.
• Blaster: Spread Shot replaces Homing Bolts. The whole volley and one extra shot fire at once in a fan of red rounds that rakes a crowd.
• Tesla Coil: Arc Lock replaces Thunderhead. The bolt locks onto its target and holds, burning hotter the longer it holds, until the target dies. Made for bosses. It carries the whole chain the coil would throw, all on one target, so it grows with every level the chain does.
• Ball Lightning looks like lightning. The orb forks out in jagged bolts like the Tesla Coil's chain, zaps its targets with them, and crackles out when it burns down instead of blinking away.
• RPG Launcher: Rocket Swarm replaces Cluster Warhead. Three light rockets burst from the tube, each picking its own target and weaving wildly onto it along a smoke trail, then bursting on a small warhead. They commit to their target: steering onto a mark is the Seeker Warhead's job.
• Implosion Charge pulls where you can see it. The charge drags everything nearby into the impact point, then detonates on the pile.
• Kinetic Slug throws. Everything the rail pierces flies back up the rail and staggers.
• Heavy Slug bursts. Its hit on the toughest target in reach sets off a blast that catches whatever crowds it.
• Fire Whirl crushes a crowd into a line. The vortex drags what the flame burns onto the cone's center line, one burning file.
• Blue Flame is a lance. A thin blue jet that reaches twice as far as the flamethrower's cone.
• Napalm sticks. Anything the fire touches splashes fire where it falls when it dies, whichever weapon finishes it.
• Salvo lands on the mark. The first column hits the target, then two more fall around it one after another, at uneven spots and beats, for extra splash.
• Nanite Swarm: Volatile Swarm replaces Pyrophoric Swarm. Every bite of the swarm pops in a small blast that hits whatever crowds its host.
• Frag Balloons chain. A fragment that hits another balloon sets it off too, so a packed minefield goes up together.
• Thermal Lance: Horizon Sweep replaces Ring of Fire. The sweep runs from horizon to horizon over the battery instead of a full circle, half of which was underground.
• Thermal Drill holds one beam. It could burn two or three targets at once when a new beam started before the last one ended. Now each lance keeps a single beam on the toughest target, and that beam hits harder.
• Rainfall rains. A bank darkens and pours over its last moments, and the repair lands where the rain does.
• Express Delivery's chute bursts open when the crate brakes. The crate falls with its chute packed and the canopy snaps open just above the ground.
• Strafing Run fires rockets. The supply jet looses pairs of homing rockets at whatever is ahead of it instead of its laser.

Draft

• Boons are always on offer. Every level-up after your first weapon shows Flux Cache, Field Repair and Calibration as a row of small cards under the dealt ones, always in that order. They can't be banished.

Enemies

• Enemies roll as they fall. Drones, gnats, bricks, tumblers, javelins and gunships bank from side to side on the way down. The Warden's ring turns over around its core and spins a full turn whenever it casts a shield.
• Rams drill. The Battering Ram spins about its nose like a drill, flat out when it dives.
• Enemies rebuilt. Every enemy keeps its shape and its signature light, with cleaner edges, deeper shading and new lights in its own colour: lit blade edges, thrusters, vents and running lights.
• Enemies stand out at night. A pale rim of light traces every enemy's edges, strongest on the night sites, so dark hulls read against a dark sky.

Bosses

• Bosses rebuilt. Every boss keeps its shape and its signature light, with new detail: the Hive Carrier grows spines and wing engines, the Dreadnought deck turrets, masts and a row of lit ports, the Revolver glowing spokes, and the alien gun veins glowing under its skin.
• The Revolver spins up as it is hurt. Its drum turns faster the more damage it has taken, up to twice its pace near the end, so its guns come round quicker as the fight goes on.

Prestige

• Prestige adds weapon slots. You start with 3 slots, and the first four ranks each add one, up to 7, instead of another cannon. Every rank adds 10% weapon damage. The Weapon Slots perk is gone.

Orbit

• Rebuilt orbital hardware. Satellites, lasers and platforms in the gallery, the hangar and on the globe have bevelled plating that catches the light, and solar wings with a lit cell grid.

Interface

• Options in groups. Audio, video, gameplay and your save each have their own section, and the video choices sit under their labels on a phone.
• Shadows. Off by default. Max, High and Low add shadows across the landscape for computers with graphics power to spare, and a change shows at once, mid-battle included. Phones should leave them off.
• The gallery and the test range go 3D. Both play on the 3D battlefield, and every gallery card on screen plays at once.
• One page per weapon. A weapon's specializations sit on its own Databank page under its demo, each with its live demo. The list at the top jumps to them.
• Specializations in numbers. Every specialization card shows how it works at the demo's level: its damage, reach, timings and limits.
• A test bench on every weapon demo. Set the targets' formation, whether they hold still, sway or dive, and how high they hold, and read the weapon's damage per second. Copy the setup to share it, or paste one in.
• Gallery demos that show the trick. Implosion Charge, Kinetic Slug, Fire Whirl, Seeker Warhead and Tethered Mines get moving drones to pull, throw, chase and trip instead of fixed targets. The Supply Drop's demos get a row of targets for Strafing Run to rake and Express Delivery to crush. Every weapon's targets stand inside its reach, and the guns lead their shots as if the Targeting Computer were maxed.

Fixes

• The right site name after a reload. A resumed run shows its own site and offer instead of Mojave Mesa.
• Signing in keeps your account's save whole. Signing in from a guest game on a new device loads your account exactly as you left it. It used to swap your flux, scrap and perks for the guest game's.
• No spoilers. Other worlds, and the weapons they hold, stay out of the gallery and the Arsenal until your survey finds a world of that kind.
• No stale numbers while loading. Screens wait for your save before showing balances and unlocks, instead of flashing starting values first.
• Auto-pick no longer re-deals the hand. Switching it on used to replay the cards' deal, which looked like a free reroll.
• The Orbital Designator's reach stays put. Levels quicken the paint and no longer stretch its range.
• The flyover holds together. Solar panels keep to open ground instead of standing inside mesas or floating past Neo-Osaka's roof, and hills hide what stands behind them.
• The supply jet's exhaust leaves its engines. Both nozzles trail blue-white exhaust from where they are on the jet.
• Cleaner skies. The faint streaks and straight-edged haze around clouds are gone, and the Himalayan summits no longer trail smoke.