Iron Rebellion News

[h3]Cockpit Additions[/h3][p]New Scout-Class Cockpit[/p]

• [p]The Scout Cockpit is for pilots who move fast, hit hard, and vanish before the dust settles.[/p]
• [p]200° Bubble Screen HUD Near-panoramic vision for maximum situational awareness. See all evade all.[/p]
• [p]Stripped Down to the Brass. Minimal armor, zero excess weight. You’ll feel like you're flying a jet engine with joysticks. Agile, Fast, Exposed Accelerates harder, corners tighter, but takes hits like a paper kite. Ideal for scouting, flanking, or fast-cap missions.[/p]

[p]Best For:[/p]

• [p]Solo strikes, scout roles, and pilots who don’t miss.[/p]

[hr][/hr][p]New Heavy-Class Cockpit[/p]

• [p]Built like a bank vault with a trigger, the Heavy Cockpit is designed for dominance and long-haul engagements with reinforced plating-designed for front‑line durability.[/p]
• [p]Reinforced Slit-style Screen Offers narrow but ultra-protected visibility-less screen, more survival. Perfect for holding lines under fire and absorbing splash damage.[/p]
• [p]Built-In Living Quarters Integrated coffee maker, rations locker, and fold-down bunk.
  Because when you're the last mech standing, comfort matters.[/p]

[p]Best For:[/p]

• [p]Siege ops, objective holds, and last-mech-standing scenarios.[/p]
• [p]Taking hits so your squad doesn’t have to.[/p]

[p][/p][hr][/hr][h3]Massive Visual Overhaul – Lighting Reforged[/h3][p]This update also brings a total overhaul to how light behaves across the battlefield and inside the cockpit.[/p][p]Real-Time Reflections[/p]

• [p]Cockpit interior surfaces now reflect the world around you—gunfire, muzzle flashes, and objects from outside now alter the lighting on your mech.[/p]

[p]World-Driven Interior Lighting[/p][p]Your cockpit now feels connected to the battlefield. As ambient lighting floods your cabin and interacts with the space around you dramatically raising emersion.[/p]

[h2]Customization and Camo system[/h2]
Deep mech customization lets pilots arm, tweak, and style their mechs exactly the way they want. This microtransaction-free, fully featured camo editor blends 25 base textures with 33 colors for limitless variation and expression, saving up to eight designs that can be applied to any unlocked mech.

[h2]Camera Toolkit[/h2]
Improved Smooth Camera
The streaming camera receives major upgrades to better capture cockpit interactions and mech dynamics, such as shaking from damage or movement. Enhanced motion and action tracking brings flat-screen footage far closer to the true VR experience, with recordings now showing the authentic movement shake and stomping.

All New Camcorder
A placeable camera that lets you frame shots exactly how you want. Perfect for cinematic angles, gameplay highlights, and custom scenes with full control over position and rotation. This also benefits from a lot of tech we built for smooth camera improvements!

Custom FOV
FOV settings let you control how wide or narrow the view is for each shot. Easily switch between portrait and landscape mode to suit different platforms and styles.

[h2]Gameplay & Balance[/h2]
Increased Pulse Rails accuracy and damage, adjusted spread.
Increased Intimidators damage.
Reduced Spitfire damage slightly.
Gave LR-FOS BEAM a damage increase as well.
Artillery and airstrikes now hit shields and other blocking objects.
Cloaking: Halved cost.
Heavy Shield: Doubled health.
Healing drones are now networked and appear to other players as well.

[h2]UI & UX[/h2]
Improved disconnecting and reconnecting logic and information conveyed, no more black screens without a reason!
All new sound and visual effects for picking mechs, weapons, augments and camo.
Force headphones option for Standalone Quest players

[h2]Maps & Environments[/h2]
Echus: Ammo increased from 8 → 12
Redland: Major update- New layout and visual improvements
Abandoned Sector: Major update- Visual improvements
Sentinel: New map- Mountaintop facility environment with tight corridors and large rooms, mid size
Canyons: New map- Desert canyon environment, mid size
Magma Fields: Minor fixes and improvements, lava plane textures fixed for standalone
Badlands: Ammo increased from 8 → 16, added spawn cover.
Bulletheim: Ammo increased from 8 → 16

V1.033 Summary
Introducing New Zone Taurus Station 3—an off-world mining outpost rich in resources essential for planetary expansion. This mid sized map is great for flanking scenarios and demands top situational awareness of your 9 and 3 o-clock. Also on the list are weapon improvements and balancing, an improved custom mod level loader, and much more. For a deeper dive into this update, check out the previous event announcement for the full list of changes!

Sneak Peek
Looking beyond our first major update, we’re thrilled to share some details about what’s coming next. We’re excited to announce new cockpits for each mech weight class, a mech camo paint job creator, and a brand new handheld camera to record all that sweet, sweet destruction.

Thank you to everyone who has believed in our small team and helped us reach every milestone along the way.

— Iron Rebellion Team

[h3]V1.033 Update

02/24/2025

Taurus Station 3 [/h3]

Our newest addition to the official map pool. Thanks to Kforce for helping us bring it to the finish line.

This zone became an important mining colony and logistical point in material processing after a discovery of an exotic underground structure



[h3]Weapon improvements and tuning:[/h3]

Airstrike and artillery now get blocked by shields

FOS, Gauss and Intimidators time to kill sped up



[h3]Misc & General balancing:[/h3]

We fully reworked ammo distribution throughout all maps (official and community maps)

I.e. Badlands got its ammo / mass pickups reduced from 112 down to just 8

Apparently we also had a massive issue where ammo pickups wouldn’t disappear if picked up by non host players (letting one ammo pickup be picked up by up to 8 players) that’s now fixed

Ammo pickup respawn duration increased from 30 s to 60s

Hoping that with this iteration ammo will become a relevant mechanic again and abilities will require some planning and resource management

Added a EFFECTS audio setting to give you guys the option to turn down game SFX so you can hear teammates better and what not

Improved hand interaction with the repair lever

Tuned repair lever retract time

Improved the weight of dead mechs

Adjusted mech death FX, how mechs break after death

Rewrote augment descriptions to provide actual stats

Excluded AI out of stats. KILLING AI NO LONGER COUNTS TOWARDS STATS

Still grants XP but will not give you bragging rights

Lunar Crawler Community map by Mithril Headset


[h3]Fixes:[/h3]

Datacap gamemode breaking bug turned out to be a large under the hood issue, now fixed

Moved gif button away from safe mode

Optimized airstrike FX

Adjusted fallback fade method

Fixed custom level button not doing anything

Fully reworked our tracer spawning, these are now used significantly more efficiently, in turn rockets trails should almost never disappear and performance should be better

Adjusted most tracer visuals, made trails cool-er

Fixed weapons not cloaking on cloaked mechs



[h3]Custom level loader receives a large rework:[/h3]

For all map makers we're switching custom level format over to .glb

that allows you guys to use empty objects, have a hierarchy of things with their own locations and transforms, texture packing and materials should come across waaaay easier now

We implemented a bunch of options for you guys to define in the .glb files that lets you test maps with ammo, health pickups, functioning AI and more.

More info and documentation on level loader in our discord FAQ channel



And more minor changes!!

Buckle up and get ready to experience piloting a 40 ton war machine like never before. After almost 8 years of development Iron Rebellion is officially out of Early Access! and into 1.0!

We spent the last 5 months ironing out any and all bugs and issues, so that every switch you flip and lever you pull has a tangible impact, making the whole experience feel more connected and responsive than ever before.


[h2][h3]Major pillars of the game that we’ve addressed in the update:[/h3][/h2]

Leaderboards
We’ve implemented multiple player stats such as your kills, favorite weapons, maps and more. This addition lets you put yourself directly against other pilots and compare achievements.

Matchmaking
Reworked from the ground up, making for smoother match to match transitions, letting people choose new maps, swap teams easily and automatically join quick matches.
A new match slot system lets you configure matches however you like—whether 1v4 bots, 2v4 players, or classic 1v1.

A.I. Overhaul
AI was massively improved with added difficulty options. Bots now manage multiple targets and predict your movements making it challenging to play against at high difficulties. We’ve had very positive feedback from early testers.

Game feel
We refined multiple small details, reworked and unified callouts, mechs now break into chunks on death, besides that we’ve improved audio mastering, completely redesigned most UI and screens to look and feel better.

Communications
Systems reworked to indicate all the relevant information to players in both lobby and in matches, You’ll now immediately see who’s talking and easily mute others - no more guesswork or searching through menus.

Unlock system
A new unlock / progression system designed to reward you for your achievements and gradually onboard players without being overwhelming.

Performance improvements
Tons of systems were optimized, simplified and updated to be more efficient and cleaner, as well as various graphical fixes, boosting frame rates and reducing headset battery drain.

Balance
Almost every weapon and game element received varying adjustments, making loadout combinations and your mech’s design’s choices even more important than before.

Map improvements
We spent a good amount of time improving visuals in multiple maps, tuning and adjusting pickups for better balancing, optimizing for smoother gameplay.

And as always if you have any feedback or just simply want to join our community https://discord.gg/WJKSETT