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Free To Play

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Global Ordnance: The Iron Fist — Update 1.14 Devblog

We Said One Week. It Took Two.

Yeah, we know. We promised this update in a week, and it took two. No excuses — we just wanted to get it right instead of getting it out fast. And once you see what’s in it, we think you’ll agree it needed the extra time.

This is a big one: a new level with a new terrain mechanic, a full aircraft upgrade system, a new deployment option for aircraft, faster load times, better performance, and a balance tweak. Here’s everything.

New Level: Experimental Snow Biome

We’ve been saying it since the last devblog — we didn’t want a new battlefield to be a reskin. New terrain, same rules, isn’t good enough for us. So the snow biome comes with its own mechanic baked into the ground itself.

Introducing: Thin Ice

Scattered across the new level are ice plots — and they’re not just scenery. Heavy units crossing them will start to sink.

Here’s how it works:

• The heavier the unit, the faster it sinks.
• It’s not instant. Ice holds for a varying number of seconds before it shatters and the unit goes under — giving you a real window to reposition or commit.
• Exceptions: the Trident and the Mammoth Tank. Bring either of those onto thin ice and it’s going down fast.
• All other units — mobile and immobile alike — get some grace period before the ice gives way.

This wasn’t a cosmetic patch. Every single unit in the game needed a new layer of logic to handle how it interacts with ice, and Adaptive AI got substantial updates so it actually respects the terrain — reading where the ice is, judging whether a push across it is worth the risk, and adjusting its own unit placement accordingly.

We’re not going to break down every edge case here. Half the fun is finding out where the ice breaks under you.

A note on “experimental”: this played well with our small internal test group, but a small group is a small group. Once it’s in more hands, across more devices and playstyles, things can surface that we didn’t see — that’s exactly why we’re calling it experimental instead of final. If you notice anything off — a unit sinking (or not sinking) when it shouldn’t, a balance issue, a bug, anything — email us directly at alex@awngames.com. We read everything, and this mechanic will get tuned based on what you tell us.

Level Select Is Here

Skirmish mode is no longer one battlefield. Tap into Skirmish from the main menu and you’ll now see two levels to choose from — the original battlefield, and the new snow biome. Pick your fight.

Aircraft Upgrades Are Here

We also spent a lot of time on something that’s been a long time coming: single-use upgrades for your aircraft.

Here’s how it works:

• Select an airplane from the bottom-left corner like you normally would. You’ll notice two new interaction buttons on the right edge of the screen.
• One of them is Upgrades (gear icon). Tap it to see the upgrades available for that aircraft before it takes off — usually 4 to choose from.
• Upgrades install instantly, and the cost is deducted instantly the moment you select one.
• Change your mind before deployment? If you decide not to send that aircraft out, every credit you spent on upgrades is refunded.

What You Can Install

You’ll find the usual suspects in the upgrade list — armor-piercing ammo, upgraded defense, higher bomb damage. Solid, reliable, does what it says.

But we also built a handful of unique upgrades that can genuinely shift how a battle plays out:

• Chaff. Exactly what it sounds like — a cloud of debris your aircraft drops to confuse enemy anti-air targeting. It’s a cheap upgrade, and honestly, it looks great in motion, so don’t be shy about using it often.
• Flash Bombs. Detonate on impact and knock out every unit caught within their operational radius. A knocked-out unit can’t move or fire. (We’re already looking ahead here — a future update may let your saboteur, deployed from the Recon SUV, hijack enemy vehicles that get caught in a flash. Not in this patch, but on the agenda.)
• Radar Scrambler. Install this one on your Strike Jet. It’s an expensive upgrade, but it disrupts enemy air interception missions — as long as the enemy only has a single radar truck in the field.
• Long Range Missile. Another one for the Strike Jet — lets it deal heavy damage before it even gets to drop its bomb.
• Rocket Upgrade. Built for the Interceptor. Pair it with the armor-piercing upgrade and the Interceptor turns into a genuinely prominent pick for the early-to-mid game.

The Other New Button: Fly-By

Remember those two new interaction buttons we mentioned above? Upgrades was one. The other is Fly-By.

Fly-By lets you deploy an aircraft into a row you choose, with no specific target assigned. Instead of locking onto something, the aircraft flies straight down that row and engages whatever it encounters along the way — everything, that is, except Zero Airplanes.

This isn’t just an air-combat tool, either. It changes how you can use your heavy bombers. Send one out on Fly-By and it’ll cruise its assigned row unloading its smaller-caliber guns on anything in range — no target lock required. Upgrade it with armor-piercing ammo first, and it’ll tear through whatever’s there.

Just keep an eye out for enemy Anti-Air guns and Interceptor Aircraft — a bomber committed to a Fly-By run isn’t dodging anything.

Loading Times: Fixed

This one’s been on your radar as much as ours. Load times have been one of the most consistent pieces of feedback we’ve gotten, and in this patch we brought them down to near-instant.

A couple of notes on where things stand:

• The Unreal Engine logo screen is still unskippable in this patch. We know — we’re planning to make it skippable in a future update.
• Looking further ahead, we’re considering a settings toggle that would let you skip everything on boot and drop straight into the main menu. We think it’s a good idea, but we want to hear from you first — let us know what you think, especially if you’d want that as the default or as an opt-in.

Performance: Another Step Forward

We also went back into the shaders and cut down their complexity to squeeze out better performance across the board. The game still needs a reasonably capable device to run well — that hasn’t changed overnight — but we’re chipping away at those requirements with every update, and this one moved the needle significantly.

Balance Change

• Heavy Bomber construction time reduced to 16 seconds. Have fun!

What’s Next

We’re still thinking hard about how you interact with your units. Drag-box selection is on the way, but honestly, that’s the simple stuff. We want to go deeper — giving you ways to shape how your units think, through targeting patterns like prioritizing enemy units with low health, prioritizing units near your HQ threshold, or prioritizing the most expensive enemy units on the field. The idea is to let you tailor the “mind” of each unit to how you want to play. It’s on our agenda, and those options are coming soon.

Get out there, watch your footing, and let us know what breaks (the ice, hopefully — not the balance).

Peace!

— The AWN Games team