Greetings, Cyborgs.
The previous update rebuilt QANGA on a new engine and introduced an entirely new AI system. This new AI brings that world to life. Planets are now home to wildlife and rival factions that hunt, patrol, and fight each other on their own, ships cross the skies, you can recruit cyborgs to fight alongside you, building finally costs resources, every vehicle can turn on the radio while a soundtrack adapts to what you are experiencing, and gunplay has been rebuilt from the ground up, all with an upgrade to DLSS 4.5 and a performance pass designed to keep things running smoothly when the action heats up.
🚀 Highlights
A Living World
Until now, the wilderness belonged to the Sanglines. Earth is now teeming with life. A new planetary spawning system populates the world with multiple factions that coexist, patrol, hunt, and fight according to their allegiances, a police patrol might run into the Voss, encounter Sanglines or catch a predator swooping down on its prey. Every outing becomes a living and unpredictable scene, instead of just a few Sanglines to run from.
New Faction: The Voss
An elite paramilitary unit enters the fray. Four unit types, Soldier, Sniper, Shotgun and a Commander, armed with Nash rifles (V1 for the troops, V2 for the Commander). They go after you, the police and the Sanglines.
The Sky Comes Alive
Ships now cross the sky around you, in both singleplayer and multiplayer, with a wide variety of models and altitudes, some pass high and far away, others low and close, emerging from the horizon before continuing on their way. The world feels much more alive when you explore or take to the skies.
Recruit a Squad
Need backup? Hold F on a civilian cyborg for about 3 seconds (for $500) and they will join you as an armed squadmate. They retain their appearance and colors, but receive a ranged weapon and random equipment, and fight by your side, they follow you, defend you and slowly regenerate health. They get into vehicles with you (and man the turret if one is available), get out at the same time as you, and appear in the group HUD with their own health bar and tracker. Do not worry about stray bullets: they will not turn against you if you accidentally shoot them.
Building Now Costs Resources
No more unlimited building for free. Building now consumes ore: your bases have a real cost and your mining expeditions finally matter. Deposit your ore in the Builder, it is your bank, and it pays for everything you place. Structural elements (floors, walls, foundations) remain inexpensive, decorations and advanced parts require more valuable ores. Destroy a piece and its resources return to the Builder: redesign your base without losing anything. The Builder's starting foundation remains free, so you can start building immediately.
Turn On the Radio
Music and news everywhere in the universe, behind the wheel, aboard a ship or with a portable radio. Every vehicle plays the radio while its engine is running, change stations with Page Up / Page Down and turn it off with End (rebindable in the settings). Or grab a portable radio and place it wherever you want, a base, a campsite: it broadcasts the station received at that location live, pick it back up to turn it off. Reception is realistic: the signal crackles and then fades as you move away from the transmitter, just like a real radio, and the station name appears on screen whenever you change it. In multiplayer, everyone aboard (or next to a placed radio) hears the same thing.
A Reactive Soundtrack
The game now chooses its own music to suit the moment, calm exploration, a chase, an atmospheric area, with smooth fades, no repetitive loops, and it knows when to step back when needed. The music ducks when an NPC speaks or a notification appears, then rises again, quest dialogue and the vehicle radio always take priority, and when you are wanted, the track switches to a combat theme that fades a few seconds after you shake your pursuers.
Combat, Overhauled
Bullets now leave glowing tracers that illuminate the ground and walls at night, every shot comes with subtle camera shake and reticle vibration, Nash V2 weapons receive brand-new, much more polished sounds. Under the hood, the entire firing system has been rebuilt, which also fixes enemies that did not reliably deal damage on dedicated servers.
Performance Pass
We have reworked how large groups of enemies are handled. In our tests, scenes that used to crawl now maintain a solid framerate with around a hundred active enemies around you, and the stutters from large firefights are gone. On top of that, we fixed a world streaming bug that was dragging down the framerate throughout the game, and freed roughly 1.5 GB of VRAM in the process. The game should run more smoothly than it did in the previous update, and not just during large battles.
🌎 World & Ecosystem
Wildlife: Seventeen animal species now populate Earth, deer, wolves, foxes, lions, zebras, hippos, rhinos, crows, cows, dogs and many more. Predators and prey now share the land.
The right animals in the right places: Wildlife now spawns according to each region's climate, warm-climate species in warm areas, cold-climate species in cold areas, so the planet's wildlife fits its environment, further adjustments will be made later to account for altitude as well.
Police and Voss in the wild: The IcLabs police now patrol the open world, and the Voss roam it too, alongside the Sanglines. Factions cross paths and settle their scores without waiting for you.
IcLabs guard patrols: Armed guards now patrol the route between your spawn point and the Djibouti Relay Tower in addition to the static guards already present, so that newcomers jumping in or just finishing the tutorial are not left defenseless. They move in squads led by a captain, hold their corridor and replenish their losses as battles unfold.
Balanced density: AI populations are now managed dynamically and automatically reduced on busy servers: the world remains readable and dangerous, without walls of enemies filling the screen. The outdoors is still perilous, especially at night, but you have room to breathe.
⚔️ Weapons & Combat
Reliable enemy fire: The firing system has been rebuilt, fixing a long-standing issue where enemies sometimes failed to deal damage reliably on dedicated servers (no damage or a one-shot to the head). They now hit correctly, headshots included, online and offline.
Tracers & impacts: Bright tracer rounds light up the ground and walls at night, with impact effects and bullet marks suited to the surface they hit. In first person, the muzzle flash now stays attached to your weapon instead of trailing behind when you move.
Gunplay feel: Shooting finally provides proper feedback, a slight camera shake, a subtle zoom kick and reticle vibration, stronger in first person, lighter in third person, tuned for each weapon.
Recoil no longer throws off your aim: The shake is purely cosmetic, your bullets go where you aim, not wherever the camera feels like pointing. The Nash V2 shotgun's recoil has been reworked to hit harder.
Armor finally protects you: Chest armor now reduces damage from body shots, and helmets reduce damage from headshots. Protection depends on the item, vests around 40-50%, helmets from 35% to 75% for the heaviest models, while purely decorative headwear provides none.
Enemy damage rebalanced: Cyborg shots now deal one-third of their previous damage to players, and armor applies on top: with 50% chest armor, a cyborg body shot deals around one-sixth of the damage it did before. Player-versus-player damage remains unchanged.
Melee combat: Armed cyborgs (guards, Voss) now draw an actual melee weapon at close range, a stun baton or crowbar, and actually use it, before switching back to their firearm at range.
Red-dot and holographic sights: Sights that appeared blurry or displayed the wrong glass while aiming have been fixed, you can see clearly through them again.
🤖 Enemies & AI
They shoot from range instead of charging: Armed enemies now open fire from a distance instead of blindly rushing into melee, and move straight toward their target instead of zigzagging.
Steadier aim: Enemies no longer shake in certain situations, aim at their feet or the sky on sloped terrain, fire over the heads of small targets at point-blank range, or frantically raise and lower their weapon when they lose sight of you. They keep their weapon lowered unless they actually intend to fire.
Clean deaths: Dead enemies no longer leave behind invisible collision, no longer stretch into strange shapes and no longer freeze before disappearing, bodies fall naturally and then fade away.
Parked vehicles are left alone: Enemies no longer randomly rush empty or parked vehicles, including yours, in the middle of combat.
Distant enemies: Distant AI no longer walk through walls, no longer get stuck in a loop targeting an enemy that is already dead, and now handle close-quarters combat correctly, drawing a melee weapon up close, or backing away to shoot if they do not have one.
Faster reactions on servers: On dedicated servers, enemies could take up to ~20 seconds to select a new target after a kill. They now react much faster.
Safe zones respected: Hostile AI can no longer spawn inside safe zones or directly below them, and any already inside will leave.
Upright on the world's curvature: Distant enemies now always orient themselves to the planet's surface instead of sometimes leaning to one side, they stand correctly upright along the planet's curvature.
No friendly fire: Enemies no longer harm their own faction, a shot that hits an ally is absorbed instead of dealing damage.
More natural patrols: Civilian cyborgs make fewer unnecessary U-turns, no longer fidget in place while idle, and turn more naturally.
Squads update correctly: When a recruit leaves, the remaining squad members now update correctly, including their size, assigned slots, state and movement.
Sand Diggers: Their attacks when emerging from the ground now deal damage at the moment of impact, and both their range and the timing of their burrowing and jumping have been fixed so they fight reliably.
Off-screen battles still count: Battles between AI far away from you continue to unfold and deal damage even when you are not looking.
Guard-post cyborgs: Static guards now shoot and deal damage reliably, keep their weapon lowered at rest, point it in the right direction and track their target with both their gaze and body.
NPCs: Several quest NPCs did not turn toward you (one only ever looked to one side), this has been fixed, and a human NPC's chest armor that floated frozen beside their body now follows their movements correctly.
🔊 Audio
A soundtrack that reacts: The game chooses its music based on the moment, peaceful exploration, police chases, ambient zones, with smooth fades, no repetitive loops, and it knows when to step back, it ducks during NPC dialogue and notifications, gives priority to quest music and vehicle radio, and switches to a combat theme when you are wanted. (We also fixed the ambient playlist being stuck looping a single track, it now progresses and shuffles without repeating.)
Music restart loops fixed: Music tracks can no longer restart immediately or enter a rapid loop after finishing.
New weapon sounds: The Nash V2 family (assault rifle, SMG, pistol, shotgun, machine gun) has received an entirely new sound set, weapons now sound different up close and at a distance, with gunshot echoes that fade with distance, and your own weapon sounds distinct from everyone else's. All AI gunfire, from cyborgs, drones and police, also uses the new sounds.
Gunshot positioning: Gunfire sounds now remain attached to the shooter instead of sliding sideways when you strafe, and the volume of distant gunfire has been rebalanced so large firefights no longer drown out everything else.
Melee weapon whooshes: With every swing, a different whoosh depending on the weapon used.
No more firing on empty: An empty magazine no longer fires a ghost bullet or tracer, and the low-ammo click now warns you during the final rounds instead of waiting until zero.
Cleaner organic impacts: Striking organic residue used to trigger a burst of splatter sounds with every hit, it now produces a single, clean impact.
Healing sound reworked.
🖼️ Graphics & Display
DLSS 4.5: Upgraded to the latest version, new super-resolution presets (transformer model) for a cleaner image, Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation (up to x5/x6 on compatible hardware).
Upscaler selection fixed: Switching between FSR, DLSS and XeSS now ensures that only the selected upscaler remains active.
Frame generation defaults: DLSS Frame Generation and FSR Frame Interpolation now start disabled.
MegaLights scalability: MegaLights is now disabled on Low and Medium settings, and enabled on High, Epic and Cinematic settings.
Stable indirect lighting: Fixed certain indirect lighting artifacts (Lumen). Very rapid lighting changes may take about one second to stabilize.
Drone light fixed: No more black blotches in the beam or "streetlight" effect, the drone was casting shadows into its own light. It now projects a proper, clean flashlight cone.
⚡ Optimizations & Performance
Framerate optimizations: A world streaming bug caused every queued enemy spawn to load the world around it as though a player were there, and a second bug kept reloading the same sector. Both have been fixed.
Around 1.5 GB of VRAM freed: A large reservation that was never used has been removed, a real improvement for graphics cards with less VRAM, with less pressure on texture streaming and fewer hitches.
Large groups of enemies: The game now handles large groups of enemies far more efficiently. In our tests, scenes that previously crawled now maintain at least 60 FPS with 100 active enemies around you, and a solid framerate with hundreds more nearby.
No more firefight stutters: Stutters during very large battles are gone, and hitching in heavy combat has been greatly reduced.
No more gradual degradation: Framerate no longer gradually drops over the course of very long fights.
Fixed several crashes that could occur during large battles.
🚗 Vehicles
Ship ejection issue fixed: Players and their ships were launched into the air when leaving the cockpit. Vehicle movement is now checked to prevent uncontrolled collisions, and exiting a seat now works cleanly.
🖥️ Interface & HUD
Healing feedback: Now separated into a subtle green tint around the edges of the screen for slow regeneration, and a more visible animated effect (rings expanding outward) for manual healing, with its own sound. The health bar no longer remains frozen after healing, and the value no longer jumps straight to the maximum, the bar and value rise smoothly together (damage remains instant, only recovery is smoothed).
AI health bars: Enemy health bars now display their actual health as soon as you aim at them instead of being normalized to 100.
UI at the right speed: UI animations, scrolling text, fades, notifications, dialogue popups, quest effects, now run in real time rather than by frame count: they play at the same speed at 30 or 120 FPS and no longer speed up after a framerate drop.
Report bugs from inside the game: The built-in reporting tool is now available to everyone, Numpad 4, the /report chat command, or the System menu button. A report captures a screenshot and useful logs (with a clear consent prompt) and even works offline: play solo without a connection, your report is saved and then sent automatically the next time you connect. A short anti-spam cooldown applies, with categories to describe the issue.
🌐 Multiplayer & Dedicated Servers
See where others are aiming: Other players' weapon and head tilt is now visible on dedicated servers, you can see where a teammate is looking.
Stable distant enemies: On dedicated servers, distant enemies no longer flicker between their levels of detail, a distant enemy killed now always leaves a real, visible body (no more persistent invisible wall where they died).
Spawning when the world is ready: Enemies and air traffic now wait until the surrounding area has finished loading before gradually spawning. Failed spawns are now retried after streamed areas finish loading, improving spawn reliability.
Police on the ground: Ground police now spawn correctly on dedicated servers (only their drones appeared previously), and the police Lavrik ships that had stopped spawning altogether are back.
🛠 Bug Fixes & Stability
Missing visual effects restored: After the engine upgrade, a whole range of effects could be invisible in the released build, fire, sparks, explosions, smoke, shattered glass impacts, birds. They are all back.
Recoil no longer affects bullet trajectories.
Fixed a crash that could occur when connecting to a server or transitioning between the tutorial and the universe.
Fixed a crash that could occur when starting a singleplayer universe.
Fixed a crash when hundreds of enemies spawned at the same time.
Fixed equipment slots briefly appearing empty while loading.
Fixed several destructible props (streetlights and similar objects) behaving erratically once destroyed.
🧩 In Development: Modules
A quick look at what is next: a complete progression overhaul is in the works. Without giving everything away:
Phase items to loot throughout the world, to install in modules for your cyborg, your weapons and your vehicles, a freely configurable "Wall", where everyone builds their own progression, dozens of modules in development, ranging from practical to exotic...
This update turns QANGA's world into a place that lives and reacts around you, gives building and survival real stakes, and lays the groundwork for what comes next. We cannot wait to see how you handle the skies, the wildlife and the Voss in the field.
As always, join our Discord to share your feedback!
