Commanders!
Welcome to v1.6 – The Creators’ Update, a release focused on empowering map authors, improving content discovery, and continuing to refine the core Warside experience.
Whether you’re building or battling, this update makes it all smoother and more accessible.
Skirmish Updates
We've overhauled Skirmish mode to make it easier to play maps made by our community members.
Any missions you currently have in progress will now appear at the top of the Skirmish browser, allowing you to quickly resume where you left off. No more digging through the Community Browser to find that map again.
Community missions now also track and display your highest achieved rank, just like official missions. You’ll see these rankings directly in the Community Browser, making it easier to track your performance across different maps.
We’ve also improved how in-progress missions are managed:
You can now delete progress on any mission, removing it from your active list without restarting it.
Missions will only be marked as “in progress” if you actually play them. Jumping in and immediately leaving won’t clutter your list.
We've added a new filter to search for missions by name.
To help highlight the best content from the community, we’ve introduced a mission rating system. This will allow us to surface the missions players enjoy most and let our map authors know what is and isn't working.
You can rate missions at any time, and we’ll occasionally prompt for feedback to help us gather more data.
The Skirmish browser now also features the Top 5 Trending Maps, based on the highest-rated missions over the past month. This creates a constantly refreshing selection of standout community content for you to explore.
Editor Updates
Our Mission Editor has been due for an upgrade for a long time. The old interface was clunky, difficult to navigate, and left many important options hidden or inaccessible. Some of our most dedicated creators even resorted to editing map files by hand… which is definitely not how it should be!
That changes with v1.6.
The editor now features a completely refreshed interface, designed to be more intuitive and fully compatible with controllers and Steam Deck.
Managing missions is now far more streamlined:
A new Players window makes it easy to configure players and commanders. No more scrolling through awkward lists that don't quite fit on the screen.
Teams can be set up directly in the editor, simplifying multiplayer and scenario design.
Fog-of-war options are now accessible via Mission Settings.
You can now choose whether a player should face left or right when idle.
When removing players, you’ll now get clear options for handling their existing structures.
A new interface allows you to configure available units per player (currently for Story missions, with broader support planned for 2.0).
We’ve also expanded core functionality:
Undo/Redo now applies to all actions, including player setup and settings — not just terrain and object placement.
We've added extra confirmation prompts for destructive actions to help prevent accidental mistakes.
It should be much harder to accidentally lose changes to your missions.
Skirmish missions no longer support placing campaign-specific structures and units (e.g., the Lab, Radar Dome, Scientist). These were confusing to players, especially players who only played Skirmish and not Campaign. We have made the same choice to restrict some commanders that were intended to be campaign-only as well.
In the future, they will be available again for your Story mode missions - just like our campaign missions. Existing published missions have not been changed, and will continue to function as they do now.
We didn't quite have time to squeeze in our new UI for managing files, but expect that to arrive in v1.6.1 very shortly.
Rendering Changes for CJK Fonts
Around 20% of our players are from China, Japan, or Korea. While we launched with translations in those languages, our font support wasn’t good enough, especially for Chinese,
[p align="start"]Our retro pixel style works well for Latin-based languages, but it doesn’t scale cleanly to CJK glyphs. At smaller sizes, readability suffered, especially on smaller screens like the Steam Deck.
To fix this, we’ve moved away from pixel fonts for these languages and now render them at full resolution. The UI layout stays the same, but text is now much clearer across TV screens and handheld devices.
The same system is now also used to render larger, smooth fonts for players using our Accessibility options.
Additional Changes
Players can now select their team color for multiplayer games. After selecting a commander during the pre-game countdown, an additional button is now available to select a custom color.
Automated matchmaking can now place players into open lobbies. More players use lobbies than matchmaking, so this should help reduce wait times (although organising a game via our Discord is still usually the fastest method).
We're running an updated renderer with a new shader compilation process. This should decrease startup times on most systems, reducing the time spent looking at the Lavabird splash screen.
The on-screen keyboard for Steam Deck has been integrated and will now automatically display when editing text fields.
Balance Changelog
We're continuing to collect gameplay data and making some additional adjustments to our game stats to move them closer to our intended design.
General
Repair costs increased to 65% of the original unit cost. Up from 50%.
Medic
Heal increased from 40% to 50%.
Blightguard
Regeneration increased from 20 to 40.
Flame Tank
Move distance increased from 5 to 6.
Cost decreased from 6500 to 6000.
Campaign Changes
Special Forces
Added 1 extra Infantry for Decker due to Medic buff.
Desert Warfare
Removed 1 Buggy from Blaze (Brutal only).
Now Boarding
Removed 1 Buggy from Scourge.
Three's a Crowd
Demetria now only starts with an Artillery on Hard or above.
Moved one of Sourge's Tanks to Hard or above.
The Blight
Scourge's SAM moved to Hard and above.
Removed an Artillery from Scourge.
The New World
One of Scourge's Blightguard has been removed to delay the capture of the Airport.
One of Scourge's Flak Cannons has been moved to Hard and above.
Spy By Nature
Decker starts with an additional property on Hard.
Decker starts with a forward Infantry on Brutal.
Desert Storm
Expanded the lower choke point between Flint and Medusa to have more room to maneuver.
Removed one sniper from Flint, but added a Buggy.
End Game
Demetria starts with an extra Sniper.
One each of the southern and northern Tanks has been moved to Hard and above.
Bug Fixes
The multiplayer pre-game screen now correctly shows its background.
The multiplayer pre-game screen correctly updates a player's selected commander portrait after a selection is forced due to a timeout (where the player doesn't pick a commander in the allotted time).
Fixed long mission names sometimes overflowing in Skirmish and Community mission browsers.
Fixed a bug where an AI player with a unit affected by Mordred's Neural Overload would sometimes either fail to take their turn or crash.
Removed ammo counter from unit info since we decided against having ammo restrictions a long time ago.
Fixed an issue where a player could not interact with the Main Menu when switching from mouse to controller input in the middle of a game, and then returning to the Main Menu.
Fixed cutscene spawn animation in "A Frosty Reception" mission.
The Linux and Steam Deck versions no longer include some extra binaries used only on Windows, slightly reducing file size on those platforms.
