A quick word before we start: this is our largest update so far, and it took us a little longer than usual. Only a little, because much of the groundwork was already in place. Without it, an update this size would have taken a lot longer.
Global Ordnance: The Iron Fist is a free mobile RTS built for your phone: tap, deploy and push the front. Update 1.25 opens a new front on the water. A harbor town joins the battlefields, and with it comes a navy: a gunboat, a cruiser, a destroyer, a submarine, a repair ship and a battleship with nine big guns. The enemy sails too. It lays mines, and when it is angry enough it sends a battleship of its own. The Hammer tank gets two new shells, one of them nuclear. The old 12-pounder learns to fight from a floating platform. The whole game now turns with your phone. And Georgian joins the languages.
A word first, the same word as always. A real-time strategy game on a touch screen is not a compromise. You have no mouse and no keyboard. You have ten fingers, a voice and a gyroscope, and the game is built around them. Three fingers down, three units moving. Say “deploy cannon D5” and it happens. Tilt the phone and the column turns. This is not a smaller version of the PC experience. It is a different one. Different, not inferior.
01 · Portrait and landscapeTurn Your Phone. Keep Fighting
Full real-time strategy in portrait and landscape. Hold your phone the way you like. Foldables too.
Turn it upright and the battlefield comes with you: the shop drops to the bottom, the panel and the HQ bar move to the top, the pause menu reshapes itself, and the game plays top-down with your thumb. Turn it back and the wide view returns. One hand on the bus, two hands on the couch.
Foldables are covered too. Open a foldable such as the Galaxy Z Fold and the screen is wide enough for the full layout, so even held upright you get the whole battlefield with the shop along the bottom. Turn it and you are in landscape, mid-battle. We play it on a Fold ourselves.
02 · New battlefieldThe Harbor
A port town that has had its share of the war. Half the houses are ruins. Chimneys still smoke. Fishing boats bob at the quay, a thin sea haze hangs over everything, and the water starts where the concrete ends. The enemy comes down the three roads in front of the houses, and from now on, across the water as well.
The harbor plays by the old rules on land and by new ones at sea. Your tanks and trucks hold the roads. Your ships hold the strait. Lose one and the other side is open.
And when a nuclear strike lands on this town, it shows. In the white flash, the houses and the dock cranes come down into piles of rubble.
03 · How it worksYour navy, your line
Ships live in the Armored tab, right after the tanks, and the Repair Ship sits with the trucks. They research and build on their own production line. A tank and a ship can be in the works at the same time, and both can be ready at once. Nothing waits on anything.
Deploying is the same move you know. Drag a ship card and the grid lights up: green on the water, red on the land. Drop it on green and the ship is there. Tanks get the same grid the other way round. On a battlefield without water the ship cards simply stay away, so the shop is as tidy as it was.
Every ship rolls with the waves. Every ship, when it goes down, goes down like a ship.
04 · The fleetSix ships
Gunboat
The Ferret of the water. Cheap, quick, armored just enough. Buy three and swarm. It is the first ship you will have and the one you will lose the most.
Specs Gunboat
The lowest naval tier: fast, cheap and thinly armoured.
- Price
- $100
- Research
- ready from the start
- Build time
- 4.5 s
- Armour protection
- -23
- Weapon
- deck gun, 8% per hit
- Fire rate
- 1.2 s
- Range
- 128 m
- HQ damage
- 10%
- Ammo use
- 1% per shot
- Speed
- 80 u/h
Upgrades
- Autoloader · $150 · reload 1.2 s → 0.8 s
- AP Shells · $250 · armour-piercing shells
Special rules
- Deploys on water only.
Cruiser
Two turrets that think for themselves. Each picks its own target, so a cruiser can shell a truck on the road and a gunboat in the strait in the same breath. It throws the heavy black shells you know from the artillery. Upgrades put an anti-air gun on deck and missiles in the racks.
Specs Cruiser
Two independent artillery turrets, each firing at its own target.
- Price
- $1,800
- Research
- 12 s
- Build time
- 7.5 s
- Armour protection
- +170
- Weapons
- 2 turrets, artillery shells, 22% each
- Fire rate
- 2.5 s
- Range
- 205 m
- HQ damage
- 15%
- Ammo use
- 0.5% per shot
- Speed
- 63 u/h
Upgrades
- AA Mount · $400 · an anti-aircraft gun rises from the deck and engages enemy aircraft on its own
- Rocket Launcher · $250 · the Wasp’s homing rockets at ground targets, 20% faster, 15% more damage
Special rules
- Each turret picks its own target.
- The reload is slow: keep faster ships in front of it.
Destroyer
The submarine hunter. One good gun forward, depth charges aft. When an enemy submarine dives under your fleet, the destroyer is the answer: park it on top, and it drops charges on its own until the water stops heaving. Upgrades add missiles and an anti-mine sweep that clears enemy mines before your other ships find them the hard way.
Careful: depth charges do not ask whose submarine it is.
Specs Destroyer
A fast escort with one twin-barrel gun, and the only ship that drops depth charges.
- Price
- $800
- Research
- 10 s
- Build time
- 6 s
- Armour protection
- +73
- Weapon
- twin-barrel gun, 11% per hit
- Fire rate
- 1.2 s
- Range
- 147 m
- HQ damage
- 12%
- Ammo use
- 1% per shot
- Speed
- 80 u/h
Upgrades
- Anti-Mine · $50 · sweeps enemy naval mines around the ship and leaves yours alone
- Rocket Launcher · $200 · the Recon Vehicle’s homing rockets at ground targets, 10% more damage
Special rules
- Drops depth charges on submarines below it.
- Depth charges hit any submarine, yours included.
Submarine
A U-boat. It fires torpedoes from under the water at enemy ships, and only at ships. It dives on its own when it is shot at or when it spots an enemy, and surfaces when the coast is clear. Submerged, nothing above the water can touch it, and it slips under any ship, yours or theirs. But it breathes: an air bar runs down while it is under, and when it is empty, up it comes. You can order the dive yourself with the DIVE button, and you can see your own boat under the waves.
Listen for it. A submarine on the move pings, and nothing else in the game sounds like that. When an enemy torpedo finds one of your ships, Sabrina tells you so.
One upgrade, and the only one it needs: Improved Sonar, so its torpedoes find ships from further away.
Submerged, only depth charges can reach it. On the surface it is a ship like any other, so pick your moment to come up for air.
Specs Submarine
A U-boat that hunts enemy ships with homing torpedoes.
- Price
- $1,300
- Research
- 10 s
- Build time
- 6 s
- Armour protection
- -3
- Weapon
- torpedoes, 30% per hit
- Fire rate
- 7 s
- Range
- 213 m
- HQ damage
- 5%
- Air underwater
- 60 s
- Speed
- 50 u/h, 25 submerged
Upgrades
- Improved Sonar · $300 · finds torpedo targets 40% further away
Special rules
- Attacks ships only.
- Dives when enemies come near or a shell hits.
- Submerged, only depth charges can reach it.
- After a minute below it has to surface.
Repair Ship
A tug with a crane. It mends your ships and refills their magazines, the way the Supply Truck does for the ground forces. Ships fix ships, trucks fix trucks; the truck ignores the water and the tug ignores the road. And it has a mean streak: tap Drop Mine and it leaves a naval mine astern. The mine floats for a moment, then sinks out of sight and waits. Enemy ships that cross it do not cross anything else. Your own ships pass over it safely.
Upgrades give the tug a machine gun, an anti-air mount and an anti-mine sweep of its own.
Specs Repair Ship
A sturdy harbour tug that repairs and restocks your ships and lays naval mines.
- Price
- $500
- Research
- 10 s
- Build time
- 6 s
- Armour protection
- -23
- Weapon
- none until upgraded
- Repair
- 5% per second
- Restock
- 15% per second
- Repair range
- 64 m
- Speed
- 55 u/h
Upgrades
- Machine Gun · $150 · fires at enemy ground units and ships, never aircraft
- AA Mount · $400 · an anti-aircraft gun rises from the deck
- Anti-Mine · $50 · sweeps enemy naval mines around the ship
Special rules
- Fixes ships only.
- Drop Mine lays a naval mine astern; your own ships pass over it safely.
Battleship
The strongest thing in the game. Three turrets, three guns each. Every turret fires its three shells one after another, then reloads while the other two keep shooting, and each turret hunts its own target. It is slow, it is the most expensive card in the shop, and when it arrives the strait belongs to you.
Upgrades: a Reinforced Hull that shrugs off hits, an Autoloader that cuts the reload, AP Shells that punch through armor, and a Mortar on the rear deck that lobs shells over the fight while the big guns keep firing. Fit the mortar and a second option appears behind it: Grape Shot, the same scatter burst the Hammer gets below.
Specs Battleship
The strongest ship in the fleet: three triple turrets, each with its own target and its own reload.
- Price
- $3,500
- Research
- 20 s
- Build time
- 10 s
- Armour protection
- +555
- Weapons
- 9 guns, artillery shells, 22% each
- Fire rate
- 1 s, 6 s reload per turret
- Range
- 205 m
- HQ damage
- 30%
- Ammo use
- 0.33% per shot
- Speed
- 40 u/h
Upgrades
- Reinforced Hull · $900 · armour 555 → 722
- Autoloader · $300 · each turret reloads in 4 s instead of 6 s
- AP Shells · $200 · armour-piercing shells
- Mortar · $400 · rear-deck mortar, fires every 2 s at the nearest target in main-gun range
- Grape Shot · $200, needs the Mortar · every mortar round bursts: other enemy units within 4 squares take 30% damage before armour
Special rules
- Very slow and the most expensive ship you can build.
Searchlight New
Not a ship, but it was born for the Harbor. Night falls over the strait and the planes come in low. Meet the Searchlight: a big wartime lamp on four wheels, the cheapest piece in the Defences tab. It has no gun of its own. Its job is to work in tandem with your anti-air guns.
Its beam swings up, finds the closest enemy plane and holds it there. Any enemy aircraft caught in the beam takes 25% more damage from your AA fire for as long as it stays lit. A lit airship takes 15% more. No plane in the sky? It lights the airship instead.
It is fragile, so keep it behind your guns. Its one upgrade is a Booby Trap, a nasty surprise for whoever comes to knock it out. For now you will find it on the Harbor only.
And the enemy fields Searchlights too on water maps. Send your planes over its side of the harbor and expect them to be lit, and to take more damage.
Specs Searchlight
Works in tandem with your anti-air guns: it lights enemy aircraft so your AA fire hits them harder.
- Price
- $20
- Research
- 5 s
- Build time
- 4.5 s
- Armour protection
- -86
- Weapon
- none
- Targets
- 1 plane, the closest
- AA damage on a lit plane
- +25%
- AA damage on a lit airship
- +15%
- Maps
- Harbor only
Upgrades
- Booby Trap · a blast for whoever comes to knock it out
Special rules
- Lights an airship when no plane is in the sky.
- One light tank shell destroys it.
- The enemy fields Searchlights too on water maps.
05 · The Hammer gets teethTwo new shells
The Hammer tank fired the biggest shell in the game and had nothing of its own to show for it. That changes.
Grape Shot
The shell flies as it always did and lands where it always did. Then it bursts. Scattered shot rips out in every direction, and every enemy unit within a few squares of the hit takes a hard knock. One Hammer shell into a column is no longer one dead tank; it is a column with a hole in it.
The tactical nuclear shell
A single-use upgrade. Buy it, and the Hammer’s next shot carries a small nuclear charge. The slot reads LOADED until it fires. Where it lands, everything in that square dies, a small mushroom rises, the ground shakes, and the square stays hot for a while. Everything means everything: your own units in that square go with it, so pick the square with care. Fire it, and the slot offers you another shell. One at a time, each one paid for.
The big strike from the Apocalypse bomber stays the big strike. This is its little brother: a scalpel for the player who knows exactly where the enemy is about to be.
Mortars that lead the target
Mortar crews now aim at where a moving unit will be, not where it was. The Wasp‘s mortar, the stationary Meteor and the Battleship‘s new mortar all do it, and all of them miss now and then, the way a lobbed shell should. The Hammer stays dead accurate: it fires rarely, and it cannot afford to miss.
And the stationary anti-air gun gets an Autoloader, for a lot more flak in the air per minute.
06 · The other sideThe enemy sails too
Enemy gunboats and cruisers come up the strait. Enemy submarines slip under your fleet, stop when they see a ship of yours, and fire. Every torpedo they fire leaves a long white wake that points straight back at them: follow it, park a destroyer there, and listen. Enemy tugboats lay mines where your ships like to sit. Enemy planes do not leave your bigger ships alone either. The Adaptive AI reads how you play on the water the same way it reads you on land: hold the strait with ease and the sea gets busier.
The enemy Battleship
Until now the enemy had two super weapons: the nuclear strike and the war airship. On a battlefield with water it now has a third. An enemy battleship. Sabrina warns you when it is coming, and you will want the warning: it is slow, it is heavily armored, and once it is in range it pounds your base. It carries no anti-air guns, so bombers are one answer. A submarine under its keel is another.
07 · The 12-pounder goes to seaGuns on the water
The stationary 12-pounder from the Defences tab is the one unit allowed on both sides of the shoreline. Put it on land and it digs in as before. Put it on water and it arrives on a floating platform, rides the swell and covers the strait. It is the only piece that can do that.
08 · Going downShips sink like ships
A dead tank burns. A dead ship sinks. The bow or the stern lifts, the hull rolls once or twice, and down it goes, leaving burning fuel and a fading ripple on the surface. The submarine‘s conning tower is the last thing you see. And when a turret or a wing is blown off over the water, it splashes and goes under, as it should.
09 · Small thingsThat matter
New loading screens
While a battlefield loads you now meet the crew: Sabrina at her terminal, Sabrina and Hawk in front of the tanks, an enemy general who is not having a good day, and the Battleship at full broadside.
- Upgrade icons with a little life. The upgrade buttons breathe and glint now. AP shells catch the light.
- A different tune every match. Each battle opens on a random track from the jukebox. The next and previous buttons work as before.
- Play again, somewhere else. After a win, a loss or a draw, Play takes you to a different battlefield than the one you just fought on.
- The whole story in the log. The Game Log keeps every line from the first second to the last; nothing scrolls away any more.
- New tips. Eighteen new loading-screen tips, and every ship’s card now has one of its own.
- Red means armor-piercing. AP upgrade icons carry a red tip, and the booby trap‘s fuse sparks.
- No more friendly missiles. Your strike jets and bombers will never put a missile into your own side again.
- Columns keep their shape. A fast unit no longer drives through a slower one ahead of it.
- Restart means restart. After Restart, or Main Menu and Play, every shop card and price shows as it should, and the music carries on.
- Thinner smoke after the bomb. The haze that hangs over the harbor after a nuclear strike is lighter, so you can still find your units in it.
- The Wasp and mines. A Wasp crossing a minefield sets the mines off, like everything else on tracks or wheels.
- Health bars you can read. The enemy Trident‘s bar sits above its launcher, where you can see it.
10 · LanguagesGeorgian is here
Global Ordnance now speaks Georgian, the language of the two people who make this game. Menus, cards, tips and voices, the same as every other language. And every ship’s crew talks in your language, whichever one you play in.
Georgian is in beta. We’re still polishing the translation and the voices, and more improvements are on the way.
ძვირფასო სტუმრებო, ჩემთვის დიდი პატივია წარმოგიდგინოთ თამაში, რომელიც შევქმენით მე და ჩემმა მეუღლემ, სანამ, თითქმის ერთი წლის განმავლობაში, ვმოგზაურობდით ბორბლებიან სახლში, ნიუ იოკიდან ლოს ანჯელესამდე. დღეიდან, Global Ordnance ხელმისაწვდომია ქართულ ენაზეც!
11 · NextWhat we are working on
More water, for one: the ships deserve more than one strait. The result of the next-era vote from the last update. And the little things you tell us about through the bug button, which we read every day.
12 · Honest wordsHelp us polish it
Six ships, a map, mines, torpedoes, a nuclear shell and a phone that turns, all in one update. We tested it with everything we have and worked hard to polish every corner, but an update this big may still bring a few more bugs than usual. We will be watching it closely and fixing what turns up. You can help: if a boat does something silly, if a mine sits where it should not, if the upright view hides a button, tell us. Two taps in the game (Pause, then Report a bug) or the button below. Reports go straight to the people who fix them.
Support desk
Found a bug?
Two taps in the game (Pause > Report a bug), or file a field report right here.
Report a bugGlobal 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 1.24: your war, your language. Or browse every upgrade and every unit.
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