Squad News

With the release of the 4.3 update, we will be saying goodbye to the Manic-5 map. Since joining the Squad map roster with the release of the Canadian Armed Forces faction, Manic-5 was liked by some but overall was recognized by our community as one of the least popular and weakest maps for a variety of reasons. Well we’ve heard you and undertook a mission to rework the map and raise the quality, with that we’d like to introduce you to Manicouagan.

Lore: After making a successful amphibious landing at Goose Bay in Labrador, Canada, opposition forces have pushed south along the 389 Highway into Quebec and seized the Daniel-Johnson hydroelectric dam and the surrounding area. This has crippled the power infrastructure of the northeastern United States and prompted counter-attacks from US and Canadian forces. After a lull in the fighting, US and Canadian forces are making a final attempt to retake the dam.

Manic-5 was originally an experimental map that played around the ideas of creating more linear flow within the game space, as well as experimenting with drastic changes in elevation. And although the most positive element of the map was probably the novelty at how the map felt different from other maps in the game, Manic-5 suffered from numerous design problems such as:

• Poorly flowing paths between points of interest (POIs)
  
• Linear pathing didn’t feel as good as having the freedom to choose an approach to an objective
  
• The drastic changes in elevations tied up potential gameplay area, made traversal tedious and time consuming, as well as created overly powerful overwatch positions which could control large areas of the map
  

[h2]Rework Goals[/h2]

When beginning the rework of the map, the two priorities were to retain elements of the original map and to bring the design more in line with the most enjoyed Squad maps (such as Yehorivka and Gorodok), in particular the concept of allowing players to have freedom when it comes to choosing how to approach an objective or POI.

The first major step in the rework was to clamp how drastic the changes in elevations were. Overall the elevation changes on Manicouagan are roughly 60% of what they were in the original map. This step enabled resculpting of the terrain to allow much better flow between adjacent POIs, open up more area of the map for gameplay, and limit how powerful elevated overwatch positions could be. In order to preserve some of the original spirit of the map, there are still relatively significant changes in elevations, but care has been taken to craft these more carefully to avoid or mitigate the issues we saw in the original. The Daniel-Johnson dam remains on the map but it too was shrunk to about 70% of its original size, and efforts have been made to mitigate it from being used as an overwatch position over the valley below.

Dam - Manic-5

Dam - Manicouagan

After the elevation was reduced, the density and distribution of POIs was pre-planned to improve the balance between having a good variety when random POIs are selected on a game mode like Random Advance and Secure (RAAS), while keeping the distances between points roughly fair and usable for more symmetrical game modes like Advance and Secure or Skirmish. And although lots of new POIs have been created for Manicouagan, many of the originals still exist in some form, although their position or composition may have changed. In general, most of the POIs on Manicouagan will have multiple numbers and types of approaches, these generally fall into three categories:

• Open approach - suited for vehicles or high-risk & high-reward tactics
  
• Covered approach - suited for infantry leap-frogging from cover to cover
  
• Concealed approach -  suited for a disciplined squad to have a chance at sneaking onto the objective before being noticed
  

Another large part of the Manicouagan rework was to integrate amphibious water systems into the map. The reservoir behind the dam and the rivers that cut through the map have been updated with deeper water. These will provide opportunities for amphibious-capable factions to flank and approach enemy positions from unsuspected directions. Factions that lack amphibious capabilities (such as the US Army or  Canadian Armed Forces) will be limited to making use of the bridges and shallows that form crossing points for their ground assets. In order to prevent factions without amphibious capability from being too punished or bottlenecked at crossing points, the main rivers on the map will be shallower towards the edges of the map to ensure they still retain freedom to access most parts of the map and the coloration of the water on the minimap will reflect this.

Thanks for reading, we’re excited for you to experience the new version of the map and here are a few extra shots of the before and after rework!

Antenna - Manic-5

Antenna - Manicouagan

Firebase Mississauga - Manic-5

Firebase Borris - Manicouagan

There is plenty of new content coming with Squad update 4.3 and we will reveal more as we approach the final release date, but in the meantime let’s talk about the cornerstone of this update, the rework of the Irregular Militia Forces! This is not an exhaustive list and we will communicate all the changes in the Release Notes!

The Irregular Militia Forces faction is getting an overhaul to bring them more up to par with the other factions in the game. We’ve long felt that the militia were the weakest faction compared to the rest and have been looking forward to bringing them on par with our latest factions. We’ve updated them in a way that also leans into the concept of creating more unique-feeling factions.

Eventually we want each faction to have a unique feel, strengths, and weaknesses, leaning into asymmetrical design. For militia our changes have focused around making them more ambush and entrenchment/defensive focused, as well as improving the quality of their infantry since their vehicle line-up still leaves a lot to be desired when compared to conventional factions.

Faction strengths: The faction will excel at rapid mobility, ambushing, entrenchment (ie. defensive positions), and mobile artillery. These strengths will be emphasized by teams who use higher degrees of coordination and communication.

Faction weaknesses: The faction suffers from a weaker line-up of vehicles, especially having no helicopters and older-generation infantry fighting vehicles and main battle tanks. In addition to this they also have weaker command strike abilities compared to conventional factions.



[h2]Ambusher[/h2]



The ambusher is a special role that only the irregular militia forces will have access to. As their name implies, they are expected to lay ambush positions enabling their squad to launch surprise attacks on passing enemy infantry or vehicles, or to provide concealed camouflage positions as part of a larger defensive effort. Having only weapons with iron sights and limited ammunition will mean that they will need to rely on the rest of their squad to help them clean up targets that aren’t taken out in the initial ambush.

You will find them in the ‘direct combat’ roles category. They will make use of a deployable personal camouflage net that will conceal one soldier lying prone on even ground. You will have access to two loadout variants available, one with fragmentation rifle grenades, and one with short-range anti-vehicle hand grenades. These weapons are more difficult to use than their conventional equivalents.

• Ambusher 01
  
  
  
  • FAL
    
  • 5x Fragmentation Rifle Grenades
    
  • 1x Personal Camouflage Net
    
• Ambusher 02
  
  
  
  • M4
    
  • 2x RGD-5 Frag Grenades
    
  • 2x RKG-3 Anti-Tank Grenade
    
  • 1x Personal Camouflage Net
    

[h2]Infiltrator[/h2]



The infiltrator is a close-quarters focused role versatile against infantry and vehicle that will best serve their squad by being present during the opening moments of a close-range ambush or by maneuvering under cover fire to enemies hunkered down in hardpoint positions such as buildings or bunkers, letting their grenades loose and being on point for clearing them out.

They are available in the ‘fire support’ role category and will be of limited use at long range. Similar to the ‘raider’ role of the insurgents faction, they make use of a high-capacity, short-range primary weapon (AKS-74U with 45-round magazines) and fragmentation grenades. In addition to this they also carry a machine pistol as a secondary weapon, and RKG-3 anti-tank grenades.

• Infiltrator
  
  
  
  • AKS-74U + 45-round magazines
    
  • Vz 61 Skorpion
    
  • 2x RGD-5 Frag Grenades
    
  • 4x RKG-3 Anti-Tank Grenade
    

[h2]BM-21 “Grad” Rocket Artillery Truck[/h2]



The BM-21 “Grad” is the first MLRS (multiple launcher rocket system) to be added to the game, and arguably the first true self-propelled artillery vehicle that we have added. It fires powerful 122mm rockets with a minimum arming distance of 100 meters, has a minimum firing distance of 900 meters, a maximum firing distance of 1500 meters on even ground, and will only be present on larger maps within the game.

Due to its limited effectiveness at shorter ranges, getting the most bang for your buck out of this weapon system will involve closely communicating and coordinating with spotters to ensure that you are hitting an area populated with relevant targets, and that your rockets are landing on target. It will be used most effectively against mass concentrations of infantry in the open, enemy FOBs, or static light to medium vehicles.

[h2]Armored Ural & Technical [/h2]



The militia will be receiving several variants of an improvised, up-armored Ural 375, as well as the modern pickup truck. The idea behind these vehicles was to offer a bit more protection to the light vehicles of militia since their overall vehicle line-up is lacking compared to more conventional factions. Hastily-welded steel sheets will protect some of the vehicle’s occupants from small-arms fire although larger caliber ammunition will still pass through.

The up-armored vehicles will provide limited survivability to occupants when inadvertently running into enemy infantry. The up-armored technicals will still be served best by ambushing enemies or used in defensive positions that offer maximum protection. The armored Urals will provide slightly more reliable transport and logistical support for the militia, as they will rely on supplies for their defensive specialization, and doubly-so as they continue to lack helicopter support



[h2]ZIS-3 Field Gun[/h2]



The ZIS-3 field gun is the first of its kind to be added to the game. It is a weapon emplacement, with up to two being able to be constructed within Irregular Militia Forces FOBs. It will have fragmentation, HEAT, and smoke ammunition types available so will be effective against both infantry and vehicles at long range but be cautious as prolonged use will sap a FOB of ammunition supply.

The ZIS-3 will best be employed in ambush positions, covering choke points or used in positions with long lines of sight where the threat of return fire will reduce the likelihood of quickly incapacitating the operator. This weapon is a relic of world war 2 and as such its HEAT ammunition lacks the armor penetration capabilities of modern weapons but will still need to be taken advantage of in order to offset the Irregular Militia Forces’ lack of conventional heavy vehicles.



[h2]Camouflage Netting[/h2]



As part of the update, the Irregular Militia Forces will get access to several new camouflage net fortifications. The lean-to, wall, and canopy will provide multiple opportunities for concealing not only infantry fighting positions but the canopy in particular is large enough to conceal vehicles, HABs, hull-down positions, or can just be used as a decoy position to confuse enemy UAVs.

The camouflage netting fortifications will help the militia both set up ambush positions at critical choke points or simply enhance a larger defensive position.

[h2]Hull-down Position[/h2]

The hull-down position is a fortification whose primary intent is to offer additional frontal and side armor protection for armored vehicles such as the BMP-1 or T-62 on even ground. Up to two can be built per FOB and will allow the militia’s older-generation armored vehicles to contend against their better conventional counterparts.

Attention Squaddies,

Update Squad 4.3 will be here soon on the 15th of March!

It will bring with it a massive rework for the Irregular Militia Forces, the Manicouagan new map (a complete remake of Manic-5), a new Quick Play feature and many more bug fixes, improvements, and optimizations to the game. Keep an eye out for more details coming soon!

Next week we will publish the complete Release Notes for you to check and learn all the latest additions that made it to the game in 4.3.

At ease,

Attention Squaddies,

Squad 4.2 is now live and ready to be downloaded! For all the details about the new content and fixes, head to our Release Notes.

We would love to hear your thoughts on the update and get feedback on any new issues you might encounter, so please share with us directly in our Technical Issues Report thread in the forums. 

At ease,

Hey Squaddies! 

In addition to bug fixes and cool new content that will be part of this week’s release, update 4.2 also includes an Engine Upgrade. This update is a technical back-end improvement that may not add flashy content to the in-game experience, but is an integral part of us continuing to upgrade Squad and ensure that it has a lot of longevity to come. It will also help to better support us in all of the exciting content plans we have for 2023. 

We’ll be keeping a close eye on how this engine upgrade impacts performance, and thank you all in advance for any bug reports you send our way. We will add a dedicated forum thread for reporting issues directly related to the engine upgrade.

For those of you that are interested in all of the technical nitty-gritty, we’ve got a great breakdown of the engine upgrade below! For those of you that are less inclined to keep reading, just be on the lookout for anything you wish to report - performance edge cases or new bugs, we want to be aware of all of it. Thank you for partnering with us in the continued quest to make Squad better!

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[h2]What is an engine upgrade?[/h2]

Squad is built using Epic’s Unreal Engine. In this blog we’ll use the term Unreal Engine or UE here to refer to both UE4 and UE5. UE5 is an evolution of the development line of UE4, not a separate development started from scratch.

Squad’s origins are closely tied to UE4. Squad started development on one of the first versions in 2014, and released on Steam with version 4.10 in 2015.

Since then Epic has released 20 major updates to the Engine, and Squad has been following. Often multiple engine releases were combined in one update, leading to a total of 6 engine upgrades since launch. Engine upgrades are often a major effort, especially for a large game like Squad, since existing game functionality will need to be adapted to changed engine functionality.

[h2]Why upgrade the engine?[/h2]

It is possible to get engine improvements into the game without updating the engine. We can bring individual fixes from new engine versions into an older version (merging), which we frequently do for crash fixes for example, or we can even start developing the engine independently from Epic. The former becomes harder the further behind we are in engine versions, as changes pile up on top of each other. The latter would prevent us from benefiting from the work all the talented people at Epic do.

We decide, whether to update the engine, based on a number of factors

• How meaningful the improvements of the new engine version are for Squad
  
• The time we have to invest into upgrading the engine
  
• How much complexity we remove by reducing the number changes we have back-ported from newer engine versions
  
• What benefits are we getting from 3rd party plugins, which are only available for the latest engine versions
  

Improvements in the engine could be better performance, better visuals, supporting new features, as well as new tools and workflows to support the development.

[h2]Does it give better performance?[/h2]

In the early days of the engine, there weren’t any large-scale multiplayer games like Squad on UE, and the requirements of this type of game weren’t well supported. Squad launched with a maximum player count of 40 per server. Successive updates to the engine, especially during the “Fortnite period”, enabled a much larger scale for the game, but in turn usually required us to remove some of our own optimizations, in favor of using the engine’s way of making the game run better. That’s why an initial release of Squad on a new engine version often didn’t significantly increase performance, but the following updates did, as we were able to gather more information on shifting bottlenecks and used the new tools to their full potential. Engine upgrades enable us to make the game run better, or to maintain performance while we’re increasing the scale and features available.

[h2]DirectX 12[/h2]

From a technical perspective the most impactful change we made in this update is in the graphics API. While UE4 has supported Direct3D 12 (the graphics API part of DirectX 12) for years, in the past the disadvantages outweigh the benefits of using the low level API in Squad. With UE 4.27 we found that DirectX 12 is now ready for Squad and enabled it as the default graphics API. Direct3D 12 brings huge gains in rendering scenes with lots of objects, as it allows the necessary CPU work to be better distributed. This has the potential to create new bottlenecks, with buffers getting flooded with the sheer amount of data available and the frame rate potentially being less stable.

In the past months we spent a lot of time on overcoming issues like this. We expect that DirectX 12 will be the best choice for almost all Squad players, but since there are countless possible system configurations we can’t know for sure and included the option to switch back to DirectX11 in the main menu. If you experience issues, please give it a try and send us feedback. DirectX 12 also allows support for advanced temporal upsampling algorithms.

[h2]AMD FSR 2[/h2]

We have integrated AMD FSR version 2.1.2, which is the latest version available for Unreal Engine. FSR 2 is an open-source temporal upsampler. Based on information in the current and previous frame, as well as information passed in from the game, like how the camera is moving, it can calculate more detail into images than has been rendered. This allows to render games in a lower resolution than the native monitor resolution and then upsample the image to the native resolution, without a significant loss in image quality.

This upsampling process takes far less time and memory on the GPU, then rendering the image natively at that resolution would take. In short, using FSR gives better performance in scenarios where you are GPU-bottlenecked. There are also temporal upsampling solutions from Nvidia and Intel, which we’re evaluating. For this release we decided to ship with FSR 2 only, as it is supported on all GPUs and as an open-source solution was easy to integrate.

[h2]What else can we expect from UE 4.27?[/h2]

The focus of the engine upgrade has been performance. Depending on your individual system, it is possible to get double the frame rate, or more, in some scenes compared to previous versions. The gains will be more limited or non-existing when there are lots of moving objects, like other players, vehicles and projectiles around you. That is because all the necessary updates your client computes and you receive from the server will start taking up more time than the rendering of the scene. Squad is making heavy use of distance and visibility based optimizations, to reduce how many times objects are updated. The engine comes with advanced methods to help determine what information is most relevant to you at any given time and focus on updating what really matters to you. We are now working on transitioning some of our optimizations to these advanced methods, to unlock better performance in situations, which are full of action.

A difference that will be immediately visible is the new water, which was possible to create thanks to better support by the engine for the features required to render it. The new engine version also comes with many bug and crash fixes, as well as tools and workflow improvements. Over time these will enable us to rework existing features and content in Squad for better performance or visuals. In total there are tens of thousands of engine changes between UE 4.23 and 4.27. Some of these changes will bring new bugs, many of which we have found and fixed, but there will be others which we haven’t. As always, please report any new bugs you encounter in discord.

[h2]Why not upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 instead?[/h2]

Unreal Engine 4.27 is generally considered a very stable and mature release, as many of the more ambitious and experimental changes to the engine were developed for UE5. Taking this intermediate step allows us to gather information on the state of the game with this version, making it easier to pinpoint the root cause of any issues we may face in a future engine upgrade. If an issue doesn’t appear on UE4.27, but it does on UE5, we can look at the changes between those versions. If we try to jump a lot of engine versions at the same time, this becomes much harder due to the accumulation and stacking of changes.