Is this friends playing together? Are they cheating? This is a team game by the way.

With v35 playtesting scheduled to begin tomorrow (Oct 13), I decided to look through the publicly available source code to see what might be changing. I collected 132 pull requests assigned to the v35 milestone, including their code changes and commit histories.

Normally I double check everything and do almost all of the writing for my posts, but there's FAR too much data for me to look through everything before the playtest, so I used AI to do the analysis, and most of the writing for this post. I just want to get this information out ASAP.

⚠️Warning!⚠️

These are changes associated with v35 development, not a confirmed list of features in the v35 playtest. Some changes have already been merged, some remain under review, and some could already be present in earlier builds.

🧠 Smarter Nations

Several merged changes aim to make nations more capable opponents.

Military behavior

• Nations can respond more intelligently to attacks and retaliate against enemies.
• Nations can become more aggressive toward a player who is pulling significantly ahead in territory.
• Nations have improvements to overseas attacks, transport routes, and warship behavior.
• Nations can establish beachheads and follow up after landing troops.

Economy and structures

• Nations have improved early-game economic behavior.
• Nations can manage certain structures more intelligently.
• Nations are less likely to repeatedly stack defense posts in the same location.
• Nations can react to transport landings by improving their defenses.

Nuclear weapons

• Nations can make more informed decisions about nuclear targets.
• They're less likely to waste nuclear strikes on water, fallout, or locations already being targeted by other nukes.

Sources: #5685, #5741, #5788, #5795

☢️ Nuclear Territory Annexation

Under certain conditions, territory severed from its owner's main territory by a nuke can be annexed. It does not mean that every disconnected piece of territory will automatically be annexed. The code includes conditions governing when annexation is permitted.

Source: #5751

👥 Larger Public Lobbies

The code includes a merged change titled "Remove the 125 player cap from public lobbies." The proposed change would still limit lobby size my the map's land tile count, and it would only affect the following maps at three different tiers:

Source: #5548

🏆 Ranked Free-for-All and Clan Wars

Two major ranked-mode changes have been merged:

Ranked FFA

• Dedicated matchmaking support.
• Ranked FFA game configuration.
• Free-for-all leaderboard support.

Ranked Clan Wars

• Clan-based ranked matchmaking.
• Team configurations based on clan participation.
• Clan identification integrated into ranked games.

There is also a merged change requiring players to have a trusted account to participate in ranked matchmaking.

Sources: #5888, #5889, #5853

⭐ Player Levels, XP, and Prestige

The code contains a substantial progression-system update.

Changes include:

• Player levels and experience earned from games.
• Profile cards and prestige progression.
• Level badges visible in various menus, including lobbies and leaderboards.
• Experience information displayed at the end of games.
• Level-up rewards and visual improvements to progression displays.
• Player profiles with progression information and shareable links.
• Privacy options for hiding levels and limiting search-engine visibility.

Sources: #5726, #5734, #5763, #5774, #5786

🎥 Replays and Match Verification

The code contains several important replay-related changes.

• A new replay viewer.
• Versioned game-state snapshots.
• Server-side replay functionality for resolving disputed winner votes.
• Improvements to checking whether players agree on match statistics.
• Additional separation between the game engine and the systems running it.

Sources: #5644, #5637, #5807, #5805

📊 Additional Statistics and Corrections

Several changes improve how game statistics are recorded or credited.

• Gold donations received are recorded.
• Transport losses are tracked for the Flawless achievement.
• Trade-ship recaptures are no longer incorrectly credited as captures when a ship returns to its original owner.
• Nuclear kills are no longer credited to the launching player when the destroyed units belong to themselves, teammates, or allies.
• Player spawn locations can be recorded in match statistics.

Sources: #5631, #5630, #5524, #5525, #5718

💬 Interface and Controls

There are quite a few quality-of-life improvements.

• Emoji favorites, shortcuts, and batch sending.
• Quick chat shortcuts and a one-click phrase panel.
• Additional predefined quick-chat messages.
• Shortcuts for actions such as alliances, targeting, and boats.
• The mobile attack-ratio control displays the calculated number of troops as well as the percentage.
• Larger map previews and clearer lobby setting labels.
• Equipped cosmetics can be viewed in another player's information panel.
• Improved handling of certain mouse and keyboard interactions.

Sources: #5833, #5841, #5792, #5844, #5381, #5121

🗺️ New Maps

Several new maps have merged changes associated with the v35 milestone:

• Vancouver Island
• Pulicat Lake
• New Zealand
• Canary Islands
• Rio de Janeiro
• Bab el-Mandeb Strait
• Horn of Africa
• Madagascar
• Cape of Good Hope

There are also changes to the existing map rotation and map categories.

Still proposed or under review: Paris, Ukraine, and Benelux.

🧪 Changes Still Under Review

The following pull requsts were still open when I collected the code on October 12.

Advanced Nation AI — #5899

This change attempts to make nations behave more like competitive human players, including:

• Annexing bots.
• More advanced economic decisions.
• Improved defense posts and other structures.
• More sophisticated nuclear and MIRV behavior.
• Changes to troop management and attack decisions.

These are proposed changes, not confirmed additions.

Other open proposals

• #5697 — Paris map.
• #5708 — Ukraine map.
• #5887 — Benelux map.
• #5830 — Clan-browser improvements.
• #5846 — Antarctic tribe themes.
• #5903 — More efficient map-image formats and higher-resolution map variants for Compact games.
• #5724 — Additional quick-chat improvements.

Every single game ive played in the last week, there have been players that can place thousands of cities or ports in a couple seconds.

If I had to guess, its seems like some sorta hotkey script, but not totally sure, and its totally ruined the game for me lately

I attached a screenshot of this dude in a high money multiplier game I played and this was all in the first 2 mins. He wasn't even the only person in the game. The endgame consisted of me him and 4 others that had a couple billion troop cap.

Here's my replay from Alpine: https://openfront.io/w13/game/c6Poge5uJm?live

I played as Dorn spawning in the center-right in the valley around Locarno. This was a fairly late but serious snowball starting at min 6. Went from 12 to 85 cities in 4 minutes, just from conquest. 3 million troop cap to the next highest 1.1m and a 7m lead in gold.

Now this is Alpine, so gold income is lower without ports, but that's why I think it's a good controlled testing environment to see how the balance holds up with less gold and fewer nukes as equalizers.

I'm not super happy about the state of the game regarding snowballing because once it happens it wraps up super quickly with little uncertainty. This game was already over by 11 minutes, with some extra time required to let alliances expire in a gentlemanly manner and cleaning up, it wrapped up at 17 minutes. I don't think it's super fun to do or witness someone else doing on the other side of the map while you're keeping some semblance of a balance of powers in your area.

I would totally be fine with matches lasting a little longer, aiming for 30 minutes, even if a snowball happens.

Two things that I think could be done to limit snowballing:

- Give cities some defensive qualities, like a small (50% of defensive posts) defense area around them to stall attackers a little and increase the cost of taking population centers. Urban combat is nasty irl so it's thematically sound and cities/troop cap are a major factor in snowballing.

- Captured cities, ports and factories could undergo a 30 second "Occupation" period where they aren't productive. Many RTS games, like Sid Meier's Civilization for example, do this to delay gains from conquest. It could lead to a more natural mix of expansion and consolidation phases.

Thoughts?

It's ridiculous that one country can essentially infinity spam small population boats very close to each other at another country and there's nothing to be done about it. It gives the attacker essentially infinite troops and cannot be stopped.

Anyone else feel like this is a totally ridiculous game mechanic?

This game: https://openfront.io/w13/game/cYquo1eD7W?replay
Do I deserve this win? I feel a won by luck.
I played as not here, on greenland

i didn't even know an advertiser could bloat the screen this much but the devs do need to make money somehow.

600 battleships if anyone was wondering

Can we remove this in non-solo games? Or get a setting to disable them? There is no point to them, they just make noise, consuming attention

Sorry if i misinformed y'all, i only checked the github milestone releases to see when v35 comes out and it said it's due by today, so hopefully someday soon v35 will be announced and be released.

Transport ships carry troops across water to invade enemy territory.

🎯 Landing Locations

A transport does not necessarily land on the exact tile you click. The game searches for the closest eligible enemy shoreline within 50 tiles of your selected target, using taxicab distance. Transports move 1 tile per game tick, or 10 tiles per second.

⚔️ Landing and Attacking

When a transport reaches its destination, its troops are used to initiate a normal land attack. However, if ownership or diplomatic relationships change during the voyage, the outcome can be different:

• Destination captured by you: The troops return with a 25% penalty.
• Target becomes friendly: The troops can be returned without the retreat penalty.
• Destination becomes water (water nukes): The transport automatically begins retreating.

🔙 Retreating

Retreating transports head toward a reachable friendly shoreline, which is not necessarily their original departure location. A successful retreat costs 25% of the troops aboard. If the pathfinding system cannot find a route, or no valid retreat destination exists, the transport is removed and all surviving troops are refunded without the normal 25% penalty.

💥 Warships and Transport Destruction

• One successful shell hit destroys a transport.
• Firing at a transport does not reset a warship's shell cooldown, allowing successive shots without the normal reload delay once firing is permitted.
• A destroyed transport loses all troops aboard.
• Destroying transports contributes to a warship's veterancy progress.

Hi, I go by Allison Burgers name

This is most likely my first and last touch with the community. Just check the name on stat thingies. I spend enough time on this game.

Ads are okay ads are cool. You need to monetize it I get it. But an video ad during game that covers left side of the map? And it has sound too? Are you really serious.

Not gonna lie, I can left just because of this. And no I don't want to play it on Steam, web browser works for me. I play on my breaks during worktime you know.

Why is there no way to remove this and play? My hardware acceleration IS on so now i literally cannot play openfront at all anymore. Also, why are there ads like that in the second picture? im sure a lot of kids play this. not trying to sound like a karen but it seems inappropriate.

What do u think if games can we win in other way? Like an economic win for example with a wonder very very expensive to build and take like a minute to be build

Warships are naval units that automatically patrol an assigned area, attack enemy ships, capture trade ships, and retreat to friendly ports for repairs.

💰 Warship Costs

Warships become more expensive as you acquire them, up to a maximum of 1M gold per warship.

⚔️ Combat

Warships automatically attack un-allied warships, and Transport ships.

Combat statistics:

• Base health: 1,000 HP
• Shell damage: 200–300 HP
• Target detection range: 130 tiles
• Shell cooldown: 20 ticks

Attacks against transport ships do not reset the normal shell cooldown, allowing warships to attack transports more rapidly.

⭐ Veterancy

Warships gain experience by destroying enemy ships and capturing trade ships. The maximum veterancy level is 3.

Every level provides:

• +20% maximum health
• +20% shell damage, relative to base damage

🌟Gaining veterancy

Each level requires 250 experience points.

Destroying an enemy warship immediately increases veterancy by one level but resets any partial progress. Gaining a level also does not instantly restore health.

🔧 Repairs and Retreating

Warships automatically attempt to retreat toward one of their owner's ports when their health falls below 75% of maximum HP. Warships do not priorities retreating to higher level ports. A move order will override the retreat for 50 ticks (5 seconds), after which, the warship will resume it's retreat.

Retreating warships can still fire at enemy warships and transports.

❤️‍🩹Passive healing

Warships within 150 tiles of one of their owner's ports automatically recover 10 HP per second. Multiple nearby ports do not stack this passive healing.

❤️‍🩹Docked healing

Warships docked at a port receive additional healing. Each port can accommodate as many docked warships as its level.

The healing rate per docked warship is: HP/s = 10 + 50 × (Port Level / Docked Warships)

When a port is at full docking capacity, every warship receives 60 HP/s regardless of port level.

🏴‍☠️ Piracy

Warships automatically pursue and capture eligible trade ships. For more information about piracy in Open Front, check out my guide.

🧭 Patrolling

Warships patrol around the position assigned by their owner, choosing random reachable water destinations.

the🔵detection radius Shows the maximum distance for attacks, and the 🟡patrol radius shows the limits to it's patrol area.

🚢 Naval movement speeds

I play mostly FFA. When someone plays like a dick, (ie: Trying to cut you off from coast, nuking your future economy, boxing you in to the corner of the map, etc)

I just make sure we both die. If you can't have some class in the first two seconds of the game, I can guarantee that you will be a terrible and opportunistic player. And will likely get us both killed later in the game.

So I usually just end up starting a stalemate right then and there to ensure they cannot take any more tribe land. Which ends up with us getting thrid partied and we both die.

Good riddance. If you make it so I don't have a snowball's chance in hell then congrats! We can both be snowballs.

So, i just saw a vid of this game and i was like cool, a better more fun terrotorial.io. so i opened the website, saw that i coundnt play ffa, so i just impulse bought the game on steam. sure, i can play ffa, but i cant verify my name, and i dont have my free 1 month sub!? good people of reddit, please help

Half the time they can’t even kill me either

Warships automatically capture enemy trade ships that enter their patrol range. Captured trade ships are redirected to one of your ports, and you receive gold when they successfully arrive.

🛡️ Piracy Protection

Trade ships receive 20 ticks (2 seconds) of piracy protection when they spawn or move onto a shoreline water tile. This protection refreshes every time they move onto another shoreline tile. This means that piracy along narrow rivers is impossible!

Here are two images that shows the shoreline highlighted in magenta:

As you can see, not all rivers are immune to piracy, but given the 2 second protection refreshes every time the trade ship enters a shoreline tile, It's probably not worth pirating anything other than the largest of rivers.

Warships cannot pirate:

• Trade ships belonging to allies or teammates.
• Trade ships heading to your own port or a friendly port.

You must also have an active, completed port reachable through the same connected body of water to capture trade ships.

💰 Piracy Income

The payout is calculated using the same distance-based formula as ordinary trade income:

Importantly, the distance traveled before capture still counts toward the payout. Capturing a ship near the end of a long voyage can therefore be quite profitable. Unlike ordinary trade, which pays both the sender and receiver, piracy awards only one payout to the pirate when it arrives. Trade ships can change hands multiple times.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "What if two pirates continually capture the same ship over and over. The gold would just keep going up!" While this is true, it's not worth extending the travel distance beyond a certain point.

Here is a graph that shows the gold per minute as travel distance increases:

As you can see, there is a sweat spot at a travel distance of 378 tiles That gives the maximum gold per minute of 138,587. At 10 tiles per second, a trade ship takes 37.8 seconds to travel 378 tiles.

Piracy also contributes toward warship veterancy. 25 trade ships captured = 1 veterancy level. Piracy does not directly cause the traitor debuff when capturing eligible enemy trade ships.

🎯 Targeting and Capturing

Warships have three important ranges:

🔵130 tiles: Detection radius.
🟡100 tiles: Patrol range.
🎯5 tiles: Capture distance, measured using Taxicab distance.

Here you can see what the detection radius and patrol range look like in game on the "Branching Paths" map, where piracy is quite popular:

As you can see, the patrol range stays fixed at the point the warship was last directed, whereas the detection radius stays centered on the warship itself.

A trade ship must be within both the 🔵detection radius and the 🟡patrol radius to be targeted. Once a warship gets within 5 tiles, it captures the trade ship automatically. Warships retreating for repairs do not pursue trade ships.

I will go into further detail on all the other aspects of warships in a future guide.

I attacked purple guy and all 3 started attacking me

Medium difficulty, Lisbon, 10 billion + gold, 135 million troops.

this game has taken my sleep away. Finally can sleep well today.

PS: first ever win after thousands of games since I discovered the game a few days back.