Facelift Major Update - Open Beta

Update 1.2.0 "Facelift" is now available in Open Beta for ICBM: Escalation.

The AI Rework changed how the AI fights. This update changes how it talks. The world's leaders now negotiate, remember and explain themselves. Satellites fly real orbits. And the game finally has its own encyclopedia.

New Diplomacy System

Diplomacy has been rebuilt on both sides: a new screen for you, and new reasoning behind every AI faction. Each faction now has its own goals, its own memory of what you did, and something to say about it.

• Answers with reasons. An AI no longer just accepts or declines. "Too little for what you ask." "Not while we are winning." "We do not trust your promises." Offers, refusals and war declarations all tell you what is behind them.
• Mood and memory. A new relations panel shows how each faction feels about you and why, with the history behind it: gifts, kept treaties, broken promises, wars and how they ended. Spy deep enough and you can see the relations of other factions as well.
• Threats. Back any demand with a threat, from arming a faction's enemies up to total nuclear war, and expect the same from the AI. Whether a threat works depends on what you can do and how you have behaved so far. Bluff too often and they stop listening.
• Proxy wars. Support a war without firing a shot. Send a share of your production as aid, ask others to stop arming your enemy, pay a faction to keep fighting, or ask it to stop a war altogether.
• Promises that count. Deals now carry commitments. The game warns you before you break one, and a broken promise is remembered for a long time.
• Factions that plan ahead. AI factions secure their rear with treaties before a war, court the partners they want with gifts and fair trades, help allies who are in trouble and remember those who helped them. They can also form rival blocs.
• War has lessons. A faction you beat badly may fear you, or rebuild and come back for its land. "We have rebuilt. Alaska was ours, and we want it back." One you spared may remember that too.
• Alliances mean more. A partner needs a real reason to join you. Grow too powerful and your allies warn you first, then leave. Steady friendship can turn into a permanent alliance.

Realistic Satellites

Satellites now move as real ones do. The Earth turns under their orbits, so each ground track falls further west than the last, and where a satellite will be next becomes a real question for both you and your enemy.

• Choose your orbit. A new placement panel sets the direction, inclination and altitude of every satellite, showing the time of one orbit, how far the track drifts and when it repeats.
• Altitude is a trade-off. Satellites at geostationary height hold their place over the equator, drift slowly, or swing north and south in a figure eight. Height also changes what a camera can see, and the panel shows you by how much.
• Gaps in coverage. Reconnaissance now comes in passes, which leaves windows to move unseen, and a reason to build more than one satellite.
• Shooting them down. Launchers ordered to attack a satellite wait for its next pass and prepare just in time.
• The AI goes to space. AI factions now plan their orbits, hunt enemy satellites with anti-satellite weapons and field orbital weapons of their own.

Realistic orbits are a match setting and are on by default. You can turn them off for the classic behaviour, and the campaigns and DLC missions keep the classic orbits they were designed for.

Explodopedia

The new Explodopedia is available right from the main menu: everything about the game's arsenal and the history behind it, without leaving the game.

• Every unit, weapon, radar and research, with real stats, upgrades, what counters what, and what makes it obsolete.
• Nuclear explosions you can watch. Each yield has its own page, with the game's real explosion playing in a frame, in its different burst types and against a scale.
• Articles. "Lens On: Nuclear Weapons" covers ICBMs and the Space Race, spy planes and satellites, ABMs, brinkmanship, the nuclear umbrella, SSBNs, the Escalation Ladder and more.
• How the game works. Guides to controls, espionage, diplomacy, invasions, radars, interception, satellites and covert units, plus gameplay hints.

Modders can place their own content in it too.

Visual Improvements

And the facelift itself: nuclear explosions are now simulated as they develop, from the flash to the mushroom and the scorch mark. Launches start on the launcher's model and leave smoke columns, missiles burst on the spot they hit. Faction borders glow, weapon ranges of one kind merge into a single area, and orders and unit tables are cleaner and easier to read.

Changelog 1.2.0

• Fixed the problem with incorrect city-to-region assignment on rehosting the MP game/reconnecting to the game
• Fixed a number of crashes (including the AI crash reported in 1.1.5 and crashes on exit), freezes, sync check failures and multiplayer desyncs
• Fixed the game not recovering after a remote desktop disconnect
• Fixed the selection rectangle getting stuck, unreliable double clicks on the unit name and map clicks ignored after the selected unit is gone
• Fixed allies shooting at each other's divisions and starting a war over a region one of them has just taken
• Fixed wars being started by missiles aimed at a third faction's units on someone's land
• Fixed aircraft being launched from a base without the required technology
• Fixed a loaded settings preset's tech era not reaching the points distribution in the lobby
• Fixed the final standing not saying the player surrendered
• Fixed many smaller issues with the AI, diplomacy, saves and event scripts
• Performance improvements (unit orders, unit tables and names, many selected ranges, AI and server threads)
• Region borders - new design
• Unit orders and paths in a common style - new design
• Overlapping range rings merge into one area
• Unit tables are readable when zoomed out
• Nuclear and other explosions redrawn. air and space bursts look different from ground ones
• Added the "Simplify Explosions When FPS Drops" option
• Missile trails by weapon and altitude, launch plumes, MIRV split effects, lighter gas clouds
• Laser beams redesigned
• Direct-fire guns and railguns now fire straight at their target, missed shots carry on past it
• Ships turn onto a new course on a curve instead of sliding sideways
• Realistic satellite orbits with a placement panel
• Added Explodopedia
• Diplomacy: threats can back a deal
• Diplomacy: aid and proxy wars, promises to keep fighting, requests to stop contributions, aid or a war
• Diplomacy: the AI gives a reason for its answers and for refused votes
• Diplomacy: relations panel with the faction's mood and its causes, sliders for treaty lengths and amounts
• Diplomacy: a warning before breaking a commitment or attacking a partner, stacked pop-ups, results kept in the Journal
• Permanent alliances are now opened by mood (configurable)
• Espionage: new Reveal Diplomatic Relations and Identify Covert Units topics
• Added the Shadow order for ships, submarines and army units
• Added Steam invites to the lobby, restored the MP replay recording
• Added Interface, Ambient and Notification volume, List Scroll Speed, Auto FPS cap and auto pause on detected covert units
• Options to show ranges for followers and units of the same type, trajectory brightness, highlighting nukes in flight
• AI: personalities and a nuclear/chemical/biological restraint in Conquest
• AI: now runs covert operations
• AI: now fights in space
• AI: remembers how its past wars went, prepares its wars, forms alliances for a reason and takes undefended land
• Geneva votes: the AI no longer bans weapons a human player holds and starts votes less often
• An attack order now keeps the patrol, which is taken up again after the attack
• Units do not occupy a region's cities for 5 game minutes after it changes hands unless at war with the new owner
• Covert units are no longer identified by their attacks, only by their destruction, and are auto-attacked only on friendly or enemy land
• Mods made for older versions are switched off if they change the game data (can be switched on at your own risk)
• Added maritime patrol aircraft and SLCMs for SSGNs (land attack, anti-ship, nuclear, fusion)
• Added jamming of weapon precision by the Missile Jammer aura, with counter research
• Rebalanced satellites: shorter spy satellite ranges, sensor range now depends on the orbit height
• Weapons now use hit models (deviation, guaranteed hit, interception, chance); wire-guided torpedoes are lost with their launcher
• Gun rounds can only be shot down by close-in guns and lasers, railgun slugs only by lasers
• DEFCON levels now reduce the civilian casualties of nuclear strikes instead of their damage
• Orbital Kinetic Bombs can now be banned
• Structures icons resized
• Increased the accuracy of helicopter ATGMs, adjusted nuclear depth charges and ASATs
• Adjusted the tutorials

How to Join the Open Beta

Anyone who owns the game can join by selecting the "facelift-beta" branch in the game's properties on Steam. Multiplayer games need everyone on the same build.

Please tell us how the new diplomacy feels in your games on the Open Beta Discord channel. If something goes wrong, make a save and share it there, and keep sending your Fatal.txt and crash dumps from Documents > My Games > ICBM-Escalation.