Inspired by the Project Reality modification for Battlefield 2, the game will place its players in a realistic environment and encourage them to work together. Doing so tends to be an excellent way to build an immersive and visceral combat atmosphere. To those familiar with PC shooters, the best way to describe this would be as a middle ground between the Battlefield and Arma series.

Built from the ground up in the Unreal Engine 4, Squad pits teams of up to 50 players against each other in white knuckle modern day combined-arms combat scenarios, with both conventional and unconventional forces. The players dictate how the scenarios unfold with base-building and interactive environments, intuitive squad command and management tools and large-scale warfare where strategy and leadership are just as important as a quick trigger finger.

The battlefield of Squad is built around organized teams using both the environment and the assets available within the ga6me to wage a tactical battle against an opposing team. From role organization to base building to vehicle mechanics, teamwork amplifies the effectiveness of the tools at your disposal. Supported by intuitive positional VOIP and navigation systems players will be able to maintain situational awareness and seamlessly interact with others. Dedicated chain of command channels and localized voice will be an effective tool for communication and organization.

In addition to upgrading to Unreal Engine 4.14, this update comes packed with a whole lot of content related additions including new vehicles, map expansions, gameplay changes and balance tweaks.

Full Changelog
Gameplay

• Added Minsk 400 Motorcycle, BRDM-2 Scout Car and MT-LB PKT APC to the Insurgent vehicle pool
• Added BTR-80 APC, BRDM-2 Scout Car, MT-LB NSVT APC and MT-LB 30mm Cannon IFV to the Militia vehicle pool
• Added BTR-82A IFV, MT-LB NSVT APC, MT-LB 30mm Cannon IFV and Ural 4320 truck to the Russian vehicle pool.
• Added Stryker ICV to the US Army vehicle pool
• FOB Radio Hub no longer creates a spawn point
• Added a new FOB Deployable, the 'HAB', which is basically a spawn point. US Army and Russian HABs cost 500 Construction Points, Insurgents cost 350 and Militia costs 400. HABs are limited to 1 per FOB.
• Added a Heavy Anti Tank for Insurgents and Militia. This kit features the PG7-VR Tandem HEAT warhead launched from the RPG-7. Youll find that this is the most effective anti vehicle weapon on the battlefield. It is similarly very front heavy, so be sure to take your time to line up your one shot. The kit is team limited as well as squad limited, similar to how the Marksman role operates. Unlocks 1 slot per team at every 20 players. Squad size must be 9 to claim. Kit comes with 1 Tandem HEAT round and one regular HEAT round as well as an AKS74U as a primary weapon.
• Temporarily disabled the open/close driver hatch functionality on the BTR-80. The feature will return soon! New experimental version of closed hatch available on the MTLB series of vehicles.
• Added a new feature where you can double tap the Walk key to stay locked in walking mode and you can toggle the shift manually to sprint. A simple tap of any Walk key will then disable it.
• Reduced the stamina regeneration rate by 33%.
• Due to the success of the test of the HMG environment penetration, we are now rolling it out for all 5.56/5.45 and 7.62 rifle caliber weapons. This practically means any primary weapon in the game, with the exception of the PPSH-41. The penetration varies depending on the caliber of the round (bigger being better) and what you are shooting at. Both damage and effective range upon exit is modified by the material. Time to consider if you are in cover or concealment from your attacker, as well as if you want to have a weapon with better environment penetration or not. G3s and 7.62 AKs are options in this case. 30mm AP projectiles are similarly able to penetrate the environment, and are particularly good at it. Beware, this is the first damage type able to penetrate the afghan tightly packed mud walls material.
• Deployable SPG-9s are now limited to 2 per FOB.
• Repair stations are now limited to 2 per FOB.
• All 5 ton transport trucks now hold up to 18 players instead of 13
• Smoothed out the overheating penalty on emplaced and vehicle mounted HMGs. The punishment period is shorter but you will overheat quickly again. More viable for sustained fire and less crippling.
• Squad Leaders are now able to set 'possible' friendly FOB locations thru the SLs map Hex Menu as a green FOB icon for the entire friendly team to see. This should help facilitate SL to SL communication when relating to FOB placement.
• SL Hex enemy spotted icons are now red to bring it more consistent with items that expand or items that are placeable.
• Due to the success of Op. First Light Conquest and at the request of the community, Conquest has now been added to Gorodok and Yehorivka.
• All layers have been updated with all new vehicle loadouts. Depending on gamemode, faction, and size will determine how many and what type of asset is used.
• Increased head turning angle limits as passengers in vehicles
• Added a ton of interior decoration to the HMMWVs and in the back of the Technicals

Systems

• Vehicle Handling has been dramatically improved. Force is now applied at the contact point between the wheel and the ground, rather than the center of the vehicle.
• Added N-Wheeled and Tracked Vehicle physics. N-Wheeled vehicles allow us to simulate any number of wheels, and Tracked vehicles allow us to simulate vehicles with tracks. The BTR has been moved over to N-Wheeled physics.
• Added the ability to climb obstacles by engaging Off Road mode (Default Key: Left Shift), which is useful in situations where you need maximum torque.
• The Last player to damage a Vehicle is now cached for 30 seconds. Any unknown or burn damage that is dealt to this vehicle will be attributed to the last damager until the timer expires. Any new damage will become the owner and reset the timer.
• Flipped Vehicles now attribute their damage to the driver. If there is no driver, it's attributed to the last damager. This means that any passengers that die due to a flipped vehicle will be counted as team-kills for the driver.
• Added an admin-only notification for when a developer or privileged QA member joins a server
• Added a Crash Reporter. Now, if your game crashes or generates a crash dump, a crash reporter will appear, asking you to send the crash to us. Please do, as this helps us find and fix crashes.
• Redid the way steering wheel hand animations are handled, resulting is a much better and more natural way to steer
• Added some physics to the vehicle as it transitions into its wrecked state after being destroyed
• Reduced height impact normal to try and reduce the amount of situations where players were being killed behind low cover.
• Content is now packaged into PAK files. This should reduce loading time and increase the security of the game.
• Tweaked player movement when going up and down stairs to be a little more deliberate
• Updated the Easy Anticheat SDK.

UI

• Replaced the Scoreboard with a new design and added many new points of data to track your performance during the round.
• Added new Kit Role icons, replacing the old set
• Ammunition UI has been updated to conform to newer design standards
• Tightening some style elements regarding font sizes
• Restyled and reworked the backend on how Text Chat is rendered on the screen
• Added a new more realistic reticle for the BTR-80 KPVT Turret
• Added new icons distinguishing APCs vs IFVs (IFVs have a 30mm Cannon or greater)
• Added new icons distinguishing Tracked and Wheeled armoured vehicles
• Added new loading Splash image
• Updated loading QuickStart guide
• Tweaked radial menu button sensitivity to feel a better in terms of hovering over with your mouse (outer widgets were being selected too early when moving the mouse from the middle to the outer widgets)
• Removed old Ticket Counter and Round timer as they are now integrated into the new Scoreboard
• Optimised code for the Stamina and Jump bar, also adjusted the visual styling
• Updated Credits

Audio

• New vehicle engine sounds for all new vehicles and also modified the existing vehicles
• Improved some bullethit impact sounds and flyby bullet crack sounds
• Modified distance sounds for some explosions
• Modified M4, AKs, SKS, KPVT fire sounds.
• Added burning vehicle sounds
• Added UI sounds
• Added music tracks 'Downtime' and 'Faith' to the Main Menu music playlist

Maps

• Gorodok has been expanded greatly, with the addition of more towns, industrial complexes and points of interest.
• Yehorivka has had additional towns, map detailing and points of interest added.
• Adjusted map terrain lod levels to minimize distance warping especially on Kohat. Should reduce occurrence of floating players and vehicles.
• Added an array of additional compounds and ruined areas to Chora as well as fixing general bugs and issues. Optimization pass to reduce draw call overhead.
• Kohat and OPFL have been completely merged down to hardened maps (some minor final steps) should see increased GPU performance especially on low end machines. Allowed us to push foliage and grass draw distance out to more acceptable levels.
• Added Minsk Motorcycles on the Jensen's Range Racetrack, along with additional spawn points
• Improved behaviour of map borders on Sumari, Logar, Kohat and Chora.
• Adjusted scale of the Bridge on Kohat and improved its collision mesh to prevent players from falling through
• Removed all static Minsk 400 bikes from maps
• Updated Kokan lighting on PAAS V1
• Added a number of additional compounds to Kokan
• Fixed a lot of doubled up static geometry occurring on some maps
• Fixed ammo crates on Sumari ITC from being in the ground.

Bug Fixes & Optimizations

• Fixed super dark shading on the Militia faction soldier models
• Fixed odd player camera rotations while as a passenger in a vehicle
• Fixed a bug where the logistics driver wasn't getting points for dropping supplies off
• Merged a lot of deployable statics together, improving performance
• Heavily optimised the Weapon Cache mesh
• Fixed engine sounds playing the incorrect sounds on low settings
• Increased shovel detection zone size on repair stations.
• Fixed attachment of burning and destruction effects on vehicles
• Tweaked rocket trails and backblast effects
• Optimized footstep dirt effect
• Fixed a couple of issues involving shooting your own vehicle unintentionally with the turret gun on some vehicles
• Adjusted and optimised a number of vehicle wrecks
• Fixed chain-link fences, razor wire and regular wire fences to be penetrable
• Fixed collisions on a number of stone-wall statics
• Changed minimum required mipmap LOD bias to prevent .ini changes from making the minimap unusable
• Fixed collisions issue with destroyed vehicles bouncing around like crazy and colliding with players
• Fixed giving radial menu access depending on your deploy role instead of your current role
• Prevented unnecessary overlap events from firing on all vehicles to improve performance on vehicles
• Fixed an issue where dying due to bleed damage shortly after revive would incorrectly send you to wounded rather than dead.
• Fixed a bug where 'Use Inventory Switch Timer' config setting didn't persist across game restarts
• Started hardening passes on many of the older maps, dramatically decreasing draw calls. Will continue into A10 on newer maps as they become complete.
• Audited physmats to ensure penetration was enabled on all appropriate material types.

Modding

• Exposed the following functions to Blueprint.
  • SQVehicle
  • bool IsValidSeat(int32 Seat) const
  • bool IsSeatHeldByClaimingSquad(int32 Seat) const
  • void EjectAllPlayers()
  • TArray GetSeats() const
  • USQVehicleSeatComponent* GetDriverSeat() const;
  • void GetExitPoints(TArray& OutTransforms);
  • AController* LastDamageInstigator
  • void EjectPlayerFromSeat(int32 Seat)
  • void RequestChangeSeat(class ASQPlayerController* Player, int32 RequestedSeat)
  • SQGroundVehicle
  • void SetEngineActiveInput(bool bNewEngineActive)
  • void SetEngineBoostPressed(bool bInHasEngineBoostBeenPressed)
  • bool CanToggleEngine()
• Fixed an issue where the OnSeat Events weren't being called in SQVehicle (Thanks SgtStryker)
• Added a 4-param event in SQSoldier, OnSeatChange(Soldier, Vehicle, FromSeat, ToSeat) for when seat switching happens on the client. The client only receives this event when a seat change event happens, not why. A player has entered a vehicle when FromSeat is null and ToSeat is valid, a player has exited the vehicle when FromSeat is valid and ToSeat is null. A player has switched seats when both FromSeat and ToSeat are both valid. FromSeat and ToSeat both being null is an invalid operation, and will never happen.
• Exposed "Wound" and "Die" to Blueprint. Note: These functions may fail in certain situations and the player may not be wounded or die. Check the return value to be sure if the call succeeded!

Squad is currently available on Steam Early Access.

Squad seeks to establish a culture of camaraderie that is unparalleled in competitive multiplayer shooters. This is a game where you can work together and coordinate with your team: players from around the world, often that you just met.

Squad will support up to 100 players in competitive multiplayer. This broad scope serves to immerse the player into a rich battle environment filled with challenges and opportunities. With teams of sufficient size, some players can perform supporting roles while leaving enough front-line combatants to provide fun and challenging gameplay across the full expanse of the battlefield.

A wide variety of support vehicles and aircraft will be included. Tanks and close support helicopters will spearhead a team’s assault into enemy lines while transport helicopters and APCs will provide much needed logistics and transportation support.

Commanders and squad leaders will be given the ability to shape the battlefield through construction of defensive and offensive fortifications as well as control of battlefield planning and supplemental combined arms assets. Coupled with this, spawn dynamics will be affected by occupation of territories and level of supply each objective is receiving. Organized control of the battlefield will ensure a properly supported supply structure and pave the way for a strategic victory.

It’s all about teamwork.

Key Features:

• Massive Online 50 vs 50 Squad-Based Combined Arms Warfare
• Large scale maps up to 8km^2. (currently working with 2km and 4km maps)
• Organic and Emergent Gameplay, this won’t be a linear shooter
• Maps based on Geographic Information System satellite data of real world locales
• True First Person (aka ‘body awareness’) character models, there won’t be walking gunheads here. High quality models and complex animations systems.
• Built in Voice Over IP using the best codecs available, with attenuated localized, intra-squad radio, and inter-squad command radio communications.
• Simulated damage models and simulated ballistics
• NO grinding rewards system and no dress up dolls
• Showcase Deployables and Base Building which no other military FPS has.
• Real world current time period armaments using highly accurate modelling
• Teamwork oriented gameplay that doesn't require a clan or private server to fully realize the potential of the gameplay.
• The creation, defense, destruction and resupply of chained spawn positions in an overlapping and always fluid emergent chessboard designed in our maps.
• A very open development team with excellent community communication, and preparations in progress for mod support near retail release.
• Essentially an "everything" game. Infantry/Logistics/Air Combat/CAS/Armor Warfare