Global Ordnance v1.24: Your War, Your Language

Global Ordnance: The Iron Fist is a free mobile RTS built for your phone: tap, deploy and push the front. Update 1.24 speaks eight languages, with Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi and Ukrainian joining English. The big guns now throw real shells you can watch fly, and stationary guns get live crews. A new long-range mortar, the Meteor, joins the defence line. A Sandbox lets you play any way you like. Thrown Wasp riders run for their lives, and tanks can run them over. Weaker phones get a lighter setting.

A word before the new toys. We keep hearing that a real-time strategy game on a touch screen is a compromise. We do not buy it. You have no mouse and no keyboard, true. You have ten fingers, a voice and a gyroscope, and the game is built around them. It is not a smaller version of the PC experience. It is a different one, and we mean to make it just as sharp. Different, not inferior.

01 · LanguagesEight languages, one war

Global Ordnance now speaks Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Hindi and Ukrainian, on top of English. Menus, briefings, unit cards, tips: nearly all of it, in your language. A handful of lines are still English; they go next.

Pick yours in the new Language row in Settings. Or do nothing. The game looks at your phone’s language and picks for you on its own. Change your mind any time.

The voices and the intro film speak your language too. That part comes as a small download, and the next section tells you how it works.

02 · Voice packsYour language, a small download

Unit voices and the intro film are big files. Put eight languages of them inside the game and the install would balloon. So we did it the other way. The game you download from the store stays about the same size. The voices and the intro film for your language come as a voice pack of roughly 35 MB.

Pick Spanish and the game offers the Spanish pack on the loading screen, before the intro. It shows the size first. Say yes, the pack downloads in seconds, the game restarts once, and from then on you watch the Spanish intro and hear Spanish unit voices on the field. Say later, and nothing is lost: the offer waits for you in Settings.

• It is optional. Skip it and the game still works. The text stays in your language.
• English voices are the fallback. No pack, no problem: you hear English, offline too.
• It shows the size and the connection before it starts, so mobile data never surprises you.

03 · SandboxYour war, your rules

Some days you do not want a fight. You want to play with the toys. The Sandbox is for those days. Switch it on in Settings and start a match. A $ button sits at the top of the screen: tap it and money never runs out. Build every unit. Try every upgrade. Test a crazy idea with ten Tsars and see what happens.

Next to it, a dial makes the enemy lazier or meaner, whenever you like, mid-match. Want a lazy afternoon? Turn it down. Want to be punished? Turn it up. Your call, your pace.

Sandbox matches do not count toward your record, and the Adaptive AI, which reads how you play in real time, stays out of them. Nothing here is graded. It is just you and the war.

04 · ArtilleryShells you can watch

Artillery used to fire a yellow streak. Not anymore. Now the gun throws a black shell you can follow all the way to the target. Artillery and the stationary guns in your defence line fire it in a flat, fast arc straight down the barrel. The Hammer and the new Meteor lob theirs high. You see who is shooting at what, and you see it land.

Every shell explodes on arrival: a flash of fire and flying dirt. Armour-piercing shells burst red, so you can tell them from the rest. Enemy guns throw the same shells.

05 · Stray soldiersRun, rider, run

When a Wasp goes down, the rider gets back up and runs. In this update the battlefield notices. Enemy guns that have nothing better to shoot at will turn on a stray soldier. A tank that rolls over one flattens him, yours or theirs. Pick your moment.

Step on a mine or a booby trap and a rider goes sky-high. You will want to see it.

• Shooting a rider is always the last choice. A real target in range wins.
• Artillery, the Hammer, the Cremator, rocket launchers and anti-aircraft guns leave the little guys alone.
• A hit rider falls, lies still for a moment, then sinks out of sight.

06 · DefenceMeet the Meteor

The defence line was short on long-range guns, so we added one. The Meteor is a heavy mortar: a German infantry gun look, bolted to a fixed turntable, barrel pointed high at the sky. It shoots farther than anything else in your defence line. The shell flies slow and takes its time, so a quick enemy can step out of the way, and the blast hurts everything near it. Close to the gun it is blind, so keep a friend beside it. You will hear it fire, and you will hear the shell whistle in before it lands. Its shop icon now matches the other defence units, and it has its own animated info card.

07 · CrewsTwo soldiers, one gun

Your stationary artillery now has real crews. Two soldiers work each gun. One tosses the shell. The other catches it, loads it and fires. The Meteor has a crew too, and so does the enemy’s.

Take a beating and the crew pays for it. When the gun drops below half health, one soldier falls. The survivor loads and fires alone, and the gun reloads slower. Repair it, and the second soldier comes back.

08 · Weaker phonesA free mobile RTS for more phones

A player told us the game ran at 5 frames a second. Their phone was a really weak one, far below what the game was built for. Still, 5 frames is not a game, that is a slideshow. So there is a new graphics choice: Ultra Low. It trims the effects and lets the picture draw smaller, so the game moves on phones that used to choke. Weaker phones switch to it on their own. Everyone else can pick it in Settings.

An honest word about phones. Global Ordnance runs on Unreal Engine, the same engine behind big console and PC games. That power has a price: it asks a lot from a phone. Ultra Low is about as low as the engine lets us go. Below that, it is not a setting any more, it is the engine’s limit. So Ultra Low opens the door for weaker phones, but do not expect miracles from a phone that is already struggling. A whole battlefield of tanks, planes and shells is a lot of physics for a small chip.

Good news for those phones: we are already building Global Ordnance Light on a different engine, Godot. Same war, same units, same rules. Fewer effects, and the battlefield is drawn in a lighter way, but that means almost any phone can run it. Yes, even a potato. More on it in a future update.

Bombing runs are lighter everywhere. A big carpet of bombs used to drag the frame rate down. The blasts look the same and cost far less now.

09 · SoundThe enemy has a voice now

Enemy tanks, guns and trucks used to roll in near silence. Now they fire with a bang, grunt when they are hit and rumble when they drive. Put on headphones and listen to a column coming down the road. The Wasp’s engine got quieter, because a scooter should not drown a tank.

Lose a Hammer or a Sniper tank and Sabrina now says so. Both used to be missing or mislabelled on the radio.

10 · BalanceA fairer fight

Two players told us the same thing: guns reached too far, and planes hit the ground too hard. So we pulled both back. Every gun, on both sides, now reaches a bit less. Aircraft hit ground targets a bit softer. The anti-aircraft guns keep their full reach, so planes still have something to fear. Veteran tanks hit harder, too: veteran critical hits were not doing what they promised, and now they do.

11 · World statsYour battles on the world scoreboard

New in 1.24, and fully optional. After a finished battle, a card asks you once. Tick I’m 16 or older, then choose two switches: Share my battle stats with the world and Help train the Adaptive AI. Both start off. Change your mind any time: the Privacy row in Settings reopens this card.

Every shared battle adds to the worldwide totals: shells fired, enemy units destroyed, Mammoths destroyed, money earned and matches won. The totals will show on awngames.com, so you can see what the whole world has done. The second switch is how you help train the Adaptive AI, which reads how you play in real time.

• No name, no account. Your battles are tied to a random ID, never to who you are.
• We never store your IP address.
• Off means off. Leave both switches off and nothing is shared.

12 · Small thingsPolish and fixes

• Your own splash no longer hits you. Cremator, Katyusha and Scorcher rockets stopped damaging the unit that fired them.
• Plane upgrades refund what you paid. Take back an upgrade and the money comes back in full, not a made-up number.
• Interceptor gets a fifth upgrade: Armor. More metal between your pilot and the flak.
• B-17 bombs always land. Some bombs from the heavy bomber fell outside the blast lane and never exploded. Now every bomb counts.
• Cheaper research is cheaper everywhere. The Interceptor and the Zero used to cost more to research with the card on. Fixed.
• Redheads hit as hard as the card says. The upgrade promised 45 percent and did not deliver it.
• Timed matches end fair. The 10-minute mode now starts, and all timed modes end in a tie when both bases stand equal.
• Artillery stops chasing targets it cannot reach. No more aiming back and forth at an enemy just out of range.
• Planes no longer get lost when two come home at the same moment. Fast Twin Bombers were hit most.
• Home is home. A Strike Jet that had already made it back could still be shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Not anymore.
• Enemy flags fixed. The red mark on the enemy Wasp sat on the bazooka and the Trident’s hung off its body. Both sit where they belong, smaller.
• The Hammer stopped wasting shells. A few of its shots did nothing. Now every one counts.
• Ferret limps for real. A badly damaged Ferret used to speed away. Now it drags, like the others.
• Only what matters, Commander. On a fresh install, a short card comes before Android’s notification question: we’ll never spam you or bother you. Notifications are only for things that really matter.
• Not now? Tap “Later”. The start-up notification card now has a Later button. It asks again in a few days, not right away.
• Google Play Games on Android, if you want it. Sign in from Settings, and 11 achievements unlock from what you already earned, even before you signed in. Turn on Cloud save to keep your progress across Android devices. Skip it all and the game plays exactly the same.
• A badge shows your Play Games status. On Android, a small “Play Games” badge sits at the top right of the main menu. Green dot: signed in. Grey dot: not signed in. Tap it to sign in.
• Words fit their boxes. Menus, the pause menu, the Settings rows at the bottom, info cards and tutorial cards now fit in every language.
• Close the game mid-battle, lose the battle. A match you close while your base is badly hurt now counts as a loss.
• No selling at the front. A unit too far up the field cannot be sold. Pull it back before you sell.

Technical details

Languages

Eight cultures: en plus es, de, fr, ja, zh-Hans, hi, uk. All game text is in the base build (one locres per culture), with fonts and ICU data. A Language row in Settings; first launch follows the phone language. Text coverage is about 96.5 percent of the words; a few ids stay empty on purpose because the logic compares them as text.

Voice packs

Per-language pack: unit voices (1,129 lines per language) and the localized intro film with its voice-over. The pack is a separate chunk kept out of the install, hosted on a content network, downloaded in resumable pieces and checked by hash before use. Offline, or a failed download, falls back to English voices with no error. A pack downloaded in a session is used from the next start.

Sandbox

Settings row Sandbox mode On/Off, no tutorial gate. In a Sandbox match: a $ toggle (default on: unlimited credits with top-up) and an enemy-strength dial with word captions. The Adaptive AI is off, stored stats and Won/Lost/Tie are untouched, the rating prompt is skipped, and a “Sandbox matches” counter is added to stats.

Artillery shells

One reusable shell actor with a launch pitch input. Artillery and stationary artillery (player and enemy): the muzzle sits at the barrel tip, pitched to the barrel, so the arc is flat (at 1300 units it peaks about 3 units above the muzzle). Hammer and Meteor keep a high lob. Damage lands on arrival. Hammer shell size cut 20 percent on 28 Oct. Impact: a Niagara flash with dirt, a crater on High only, tiered by graphics setting (Ultra Low gets a small puff), capped by live shells (8 full effects, 16 total). Armour-piercing shells tint the burst red. Tracer ribbons removed from Artillery, Hammer and stationary artillery on both sides.

Stray soldiers

Rule	Value
Shooters	Idle gun units of the other side with no target, in range and within +-60 degrees, aim 0.5 s. Not artillery, Hammer, rockets, AA, aircraft.
Trample	Any unit above 50 cm/s whose select box holds the rider, either side.
Death	Ragdoll 1.5 s, sink 20 cm/s for 3 s, destroy.

Ultra Low graphics

Low tier plus a bool. Android render scale 0.7, emitter spawn rate 0.25, static mesh LOD distance x2. Auto-on once per install on Mali-G31, G51, G52, G57 and Adreno 610 to 613 via the device profile name. Menu cycle: Ultra Low, Low, Medium, High. Bomb effects: full effect while fewer than 6 are alive, medium effect up to 14, sound only beyond that; Ultra Low budget is 6. In the editor test run at 8 live explosions, translucency cost fell from 0.603 to 0.398 ms.

Portraits

CRT portrait 1.5 s, then a 0.5 s fade. 70 percent Sabrina, 30 percent Hawk. Used on map pick, tutorial start and the end screens.

Sound

Shot sound added to 6 enemy units (Artillery, Ferret, Heavy, Light, Medium Tank, Radar Truck). Got-hit sound on 8 enemies, volume 0.65. Engine loop on 16 enemies, mirroring the player units. Wasp engine volume halved for player and enemy. New “Hammer tank lost” and “Sniper tank lost” radio lines. Meteor has its own fire sound and an incoming whistle that plays at the landing point 1.25 s before impact.

Balance

Change	Value
Range, all units and buildings, both sides	-25% (69 range values, 17 minimum, 12 upgrade). AA keeps full range.
Aircraft air-to-ground damage	-15% (50 values), air-to-air unchanged
Veteran critical multiplier	1.2 to 2.1; armor-piercing 1.3 to 2.3. 23 units.
Ferret, damaged	Speed 160 to 69, acceleration 150 to 87
Interceptor armored damage	divided by 1.25
Strike Jet bounty popup	900 to 650 (payout unchanged)
Aircraft refund	Now the price the card charged (was a fixed value; Interceptor AP charged 50, refunded 150)
Redheads upgrade III, AP missile	Damage multiplier 1.0 to 1.125
Cheaper research on Interceptor and Zero	Research price no longer rises: Interceptor 800 to 650, Zero 1000 to 800

Other fixes

B-17 bomb: a fuse explodes the bomb when it drops below z 100, so bombs outside the explosion-plane lane no longer fall forever. Timed modes: the 10-minute mode never started (it compared against the 5-minute value); 3, 5 and 10-minute modes now end in a tie on equal base health. Artillery auto-fire skips enemies outside attack range, as the stationary artillery already did.

Sell rule

Player units can be sold only in the back part of the field, never at the front line.

Meteor and crews

Meteor: price 350 (stationary artillery plus 50), research 550, range about 15 percent beyond the stationary artillery, minimum range 750, high slow lob (2.6 to 3.8 s) that lands where the target stood at launch, splash 180 units, fire interval 4 s. Sits right after the stationary artillery in the Defence tab. Minimum range of the stationary artillery went from 675 to 350. Crews: two soldiers; below 50 percent health the loader dies and reload is 30 percent slower; repair back above 50 percent brings him back. Selling or losing the gun removes the crew. Crew depends only on health.

13 · NextA new era. You pick.

Last update we asked a big question. The vote stays open until the next update, and we publish the result there. Global Ordnance has lived in one war since day one. The next step is a whole new time. Modern warfare: drones, main battle tanks, guided missiles. Or World War I: trenches, the earliest tanks, biplanes, mud and wire. Which one would you fight in?

Tell us. Write to support@awngames.com, leave a line in your store review, or use the Report a bug button in the game and start your message with “era:”. Every answer counts. The winner is where we go next. Read how we asked in the Update 1.23 devlog.

14 · Honest wordsHelp us polish it

Something broke, looked wrong or felt off? The Report a bug button is in Settings and in the pause menu. Two taps, tell us what happened, and it lands on our desk. You help us make a game everybody loves.

A word on the translations. Seven languages are brand new in this update, and some lines will read wrong or odd. If one does, send it through the same Report a bug button, with the language and the wrong line. We would love to hear it, and we fix it in the next update.

Global Ordnance is made by a two-person studio on the road. It stays free to play. Supporters keep the lights on and the next units and stories coming. Thank you.

▸ A new update hits every 7–14 days

Catch up on the last one: Update 1.23: talk to your army. Or browse every upgrade and every unit.