Major Update v0.5.0 — Multiplayer for Everyone & Air-Naval Overhaul

Major Update v0.5.0 opens multiplayer to everyone with Steam friend invites, fixes doctrine milestone tooltips, overhauls air and naval warfare, hardens missile basing, and updates province demographics using real-world population data across all 221 countries.

Multiplayer is Now Available to Everyone

• Open to All Players: Multiplayer is now completely open to everyone directly from the main menu, featuring an overhauled lobby interface, direct Steam Friend Invites via the Steam Overlay, and interactive map-based country selection.
• Lobby & In-Game Chat: Communicate with peers through a dedicated text chat system featuring message timestamps, unread alert badges, and system announcements.
• In-Game Players Panel: Press Tab at any time to open the live Players Panel, displaying real-time ping latency, connection stability, and player-country assignments.
• Campaign Resumption & Reconnection: Multiplayer campaigns can now be saved and resumed directly from the lobby. Automatic drop detection, reconnect grace windows, and mid-game rejoins keep matches running smoothly.
• Country Ownership Safeguards: Enforced country ownership safeguards so players can only issue orders to their assigned nation.

Doctrine UI & Milestone Tooltip Fixes

• Milestone Tooltip Visibility: Resolved a tooltip binding issue on the Doctrine screen where milestone details failed to show properly due to parent container hover-reset interference. Milestone cards now reliably display their full stats, requirements, and effects.
• Directive Button Tooltips: Allowed individual directive buttons inside milestone panels to register and display their own dedicated action tooltips on hover.

Air Warfare & Strategic Bombing Overhaul

• Dynamic Range Visualization: Air mission range circles now dynamically follow and highlight the targeted province for intuitive planning.
• Concentrated Sorties: Aircraft sorties now concentrate damage onto targeted enemy divisions instead of dispersing weakly across entire armies.
• Strategic Bombing Suppression: Strategic bombing runs now actively suppress infrastructure recovery in targeted enemy provinces.
• Airfield Basing Capacity: Land airfields now enforce realistic basing capacity limits, mirroring naval aircraft carriers and preventing infinite air wing stacking.
• Transparent Wing Status: Air wings now explicitly report their active mission status, target locations, and mission completions.

Naval Combat & Task Force Defense

• Transit Engagements & Radius Patrols: Fleets can now intercept and engage opposing naval task forces while in transit, and patrol missions actively sweep a wider territorial radius.
• Scaled Fleet Anti-Air Defense: Ship anti-air capabilities have been re-engineered to scale with fleet density and individual warship armaments, providing more effective layered protection against hostile airstrikes.
• Automated Rally Point Pooling: Naval and air production templates now automatically pool and merge newly constructed ships and aircraft wings at designated rally ports and airfields (including carrier wings).
• Transit Line Cleanup: Resolved visual artifacts where transport fleets drew movement lines back to themselves after completing amphibious landings.

Missile Basing & Targeting Protections

• Controlled Territory Basing: Missile silos and launch batteries can now only be established in fully controlled home provinces, tracking real slot utilization.
• Targeting Safeguards: Conventional and nuclear missile strikes now validate launcher silos and target coordinates, and players can freely cancel or exit targeting mode at any time.

Real-World Demographics & Global Data

• 221-Country Population Calibration: Every province population across all 221 countries has been updated using real-world population data.
• Historical Capital Resolution: Moving capitals now prioritizes historical capital status and province ownership over simple name matches.
• Trade Bloc Founding Rules: Trade blocs now require at least two founding members and automatically dissolve if membership drops to a single nation.

Expanded Modding Tools

• Scenario National Goals: Scenarios can now define custom national goals ( nationalGoalsFile ) for both the player Agenda panel and the AI decision planner.
• Doctrine "Replace Mode": Total conversion mods can now build custom Knowledge Network branches from scratch while cleanly hiding default trees.
• Mod Builder Dropdowns: Integrated themed dropdown selectors across the Text and Goals editor tabs.

Engine & Performance Optimizations

• Accelerated Pathfinding: Substantially improved military pathfinding calculations using accelerated passable terrain fills for weighted A* calculations.
• Cache Lookups: Streamlined province graph cache queries and province snapshots across air, fleet, and intelligence systems.
• Presentation Layer Throttling: Gated military and diplomacy map overlays to eliminate unnecessary redraws during rapid camera panning.
• Globe View Clarity: Disabled unit count labels on distant markers and in full globe view to reduce visual clutter and rendering overhead.