- August 2026 Development Update - Side Campaigns - 27 August 2026
Hello everyone, Luke here.Unstable BranchA remind that regular unstable updates are pushed to the Unstable branch.ATS > Properties > Versions > UnstableIf you want to learn more about unstable updates, come join our Discord server, speaking of...Reminder about updates posted on Discord.We spend a lot of our time on our community Discord server. Discussing the latest Unstable changes, talking to people, testers, and posting internal updates on things to come. Which is why I often forget to post updates on Steam. Please come join our server (even as a faceless anonymous) so you can stay up to date with our changes to UnstableCampaign Progress: Apocrypha and White TowerThe Apocrypha and White Tower side campaigns have finally entered testing on our private tester branch after a lot of rewriting, rebuilding, and unit work. The Fryhart non-player faction has received a lot of tuning and fanc…
- Unstable [2714] - Better Movement, Better Missiles, Better Bang - 22 April 2026
Hey, Luke here.Got an update regarding the unstable branch. Which you can access via:Right Click ATS > Properties > Versions > UnstableWhat's up?Over the last two months we've been working on a heavy overhaul of ships movement. You know how sometimes your Tollies will charge right at a hostile battleship, then as it starts to retreat they get a little timid and scared about chasing after? Every seen a drone kind of just not get in range of a target that's fleeing? Or just rocket out into a weird orbit that doesn't help it? Ever seen a Partell just refuse to continue along this mortal coil and freezer perfectly in place? Well that's a rather large and annoying issue, and it's been my job to handle movement code for the last eternity of years that we've been working on this game. So let me tell you it's not a trivial problem. There are a lot of unique units in this game that all want to d…
- Tester/Unstable version rename and re-opt and experiment ship movement changes. - 4 March 2026
Hey people, Luke here.We're messing with some new movement system changes over on the new Unstable branch that are really experimental. But fix some very long-standing issues with how some of our ships approach, chase and track targets in respect to velocity and acceleration. Especially impactful on Drones and Lights. Sadly, this does have a lot of teething issues making the game somewhat unplayable while we get feedback and testing data on it. But that's the whole point of tester.Since Default is now the actual stable version of the game, and tester is very unstable, we're going to go ahead and rename the Tester branch. This is going to kick everyone off it - and make sure no one is still on it thinking it's safe - but you can just opt back into the new Unstable branch if you want to help out and give feedback.Cheers.Luke AP
- Patch [2641] - Comms bug fix, HUD alerts last longer, and mission tweak - 13 February 2026
- Fixed (I hope) a long-standing uncommon bug, where exiting out of a mission with a communication playing, would not correctly clear the black backing or unpause the game enough. - HUD Alerts (top right) now persist for double the time. - Delayed the initial attack wave on Kreydell mission 2003 by 20s, was unreasonably harsh on slower players. Partial oversight from earlier version of the mission where you got control of the outposts automatically. - Achievements menu should now more reliably adapt to resolution.
- Hotpatch [2639] - 13 February 2026
- Fixed a stupid mistake on my part, breaking the in-mission achievement display.
- Patch [2638] - Achievement Difficulty Labels - 13 February 2026
- Kreydell Rock , significantly reduced the amount of time the threat waits before attacking you. - Adjusted the wording of some achievements for clarity. - Added a difficulty label to Hard and Brutal achievements. - Adjusted main menu physical title tracking smoothing.
- Patch [2637] - Crash Resistance, System Optimisations, new Main Menu - 12 February 2026
Luke here, I'm pushing out a general optimization and crash resolution patch for ATS.We are still working to increase ATS's "heavy-load crash resistance".Casual campaign gameplay should (I hope) no longer crash. Or at least take 8x longer to crash.Gameplay under very heavy load (huge volumes of units) should take 8x longer to crash.The game should run a bit faster also.- Large amount of work across the project to reduce the generation of (this is technical) junk transitional archetypes during prefab>entity conversion, unit setup, damage application, health processing, hud operations, entity-entity messaging, and various other systems.- Updated Unity to 6000.3.8f1- ECS updated to 1.4.4, modded for 64MB allocator budget.- New main menu scene. (sub_bg_mainMenu, for the level editors out there)- Old main menu is now (sub_bg_greenGiant)As mentioned in past posts, the recurrent crashes that p…
- ATS v0.91 Released - Revamped campaign missions, modding, and many other things. - 1 February 2026
Hey people, Luke here.Welcome to 0.91A vast update.Achievements: A whole set of interesting, challenging, and sometimes just odd challenges.Modding, making your own ships, weapons, factions, putting them in your own custom maps.Tychon is playable (but still incomplete) in Skirmish, with it's unique port-based building system.Rewritten campaign missions for Kreydell, updated briefings, comms, remade maps, updated maps, rough but acceptable challenge versions of 12/15 missions (Relaxed/Trauma)New Skirmish maps.Heavily improved visuals for ship damage, explosions, general combat and scene visuals like map backgrounds, spance clouds, etc.Updated Level Editor with new capabilities.Crash fixes, bug fixes, performance improvements, etc.Faction balance and adjustments to many many units.Rewritten tactical tooltips for all the factions.New mini-faction The Fryhart (made for Apocrypha which can n…
- 2026 and the final stretch of the road to the 0.91 Update. - 9 January 2026
Hey people, Luke here.Update 0.91 to the Live (default) Branch is coming.A real update to live. we have been aiming for the 14th, but we are lagging a bit behind (map reworks still being refined) so may need another week. But come hell or high water an update is going out in Jan.Welcome to 2026By the 14th it will be the one-year anniversary of ATS's release. We've managed to actually make a living off this insane project of ours and have continued to dump thousands of manhours into improving a vast amount of stuff in ATS that we simply didn't have the time to deal with before release.Huge enhancements to unit visuals, damage effects, weapons, unit behaviors, unit balance, visual niceties like rotating parts and pistons on buildings. Entirely new scene backgrounds with different spance-cloud tech. Overhaueld missions and plot-points, human-made-character-art.An uncountable number of adju…
- New stable updating coming soon, and 21+ new Achievements! - 19 September 2025
Hey People! Luke here.I know it's been almost a year, but an actual update to the stable version of the game is coming!!! (ironic because tester version is more stable, though level balance is direly needed so the baseline experience for a new player is pretty bad)With any luck, I'll finish my cleanup work on Shallows and Kreydell by October 10th, but no promises sadly I'm one guy working on Kreydell and there's a lot to get done. I'd love for this to have all been done months ago but it ain't so easy.Since the last 8 months have been about overhauling the game's internals and adding a whole lot of new visual fidelity and stuff, there wouldn't be much to replay if you'd already beaten ATS. (there are overhauled levels but only 3) So......Achievements!While I'm updating all our levels across the entire game, what better time to get some achievements setup for people to have fun with.We h…
- Tester build [2340] released - 0.91 Modding, Fixes and Awesome Stuff - 11 August 2025
Hey people, Luke here.A reminder that you can play the latest \ build of ATS by: right-click on ATS > properties > Betas > Beta Participation > None > tester - unstable( Reminder that campaign balance is a mess due to past changes, and may crash due to bugs )Alright let me catch you up on the last few months of work.Modding! (experimental)Yes, modding is here. You can make your own Faction and Units. Though still buggy and incomplete, I've put together a rather approachable "character sheet" modding system for creating new units and factions with their own models, behaviours, stats and weapons. All without you needing to write any code at all! The (very incomplete) Example Glaves Mod on the Discord contains everything you need to start making a full faction. Modded factions can even be put into Custom Maps. Just remember that the player needs a copy of the mod in order to run it.The mod…
- Many [Tester] updates, crash resolution progress, hows the next campaign? - 7 June 2025
Hey people, Luke here.Been a while, let me catch you up on some things you might have missed over on the \ branch.(Campaign progress at the end.)= = =A reminder that the \ beta branch is available and regularly updated. If you want to help us sort out crashes, find issues, and test horribly broken campaign missions then swap over to \ and join the Discord to chat with us about your findings.(Note campaign balance is broken due to a wide variety of fixes and balance adjustments.)= = =v0.91 progressI've been deep in the code jungle for the last few months. Owl has been working on general game balance, Apocrypha and the Vaalkorei. Aleks has been away but is now back finally.I've been rooting out a rather massive set of issues and problems caused by our engine update. (Which was very necessary regardless of the price I've had to pay in sanity.)A lot of crashes have been resolved thanks to o…
- 0.91 build 20250320 available for [public testing]. - 26 March 2025
Hello everyone, Luke here. = = = You can join the Tester beta via: Steam > Right click ATS > Properties > Betas > none > tester - unstable Bare in mind can contain SPOILERS, CRASHES, and other nonsense going on. = = = Brendan is writing out an update message for what we've been up to and what we're doing, so that should be out soon. But let me give you a quick overview. Beta 0.91 is available for public testing. This includes a large internal engine update, performance improvements, instability, visual ship and structure damage effects, among other things. Attempts to fix various crashes... still haven't fixed the main leak crash, pain in the butt. I have completed a rather massive update to the game's engine code (Unity 2021 > Unity 6000) including updates to Unity ECS (v0.51 > v1.3.10) including a variety of system improvements. We had hoped this would help solve our infamous crashes.…
- Patch 2205 - Kreydell 14 difficulty fix - 9 February 2025
Kreydell mission 14 : Corrected an AI related issue causing the mission to be harder than intended. Also toned down some other things at the same time. Let us know how that feels.
- UPDATE: All those skipped moments, like... dust, in, Spance. - 8 February 2025
Hey, Luke here. Yes, the update name is a Blade Runner reference. Since the game is out, is reasonably stable, and people quite like it (92% review score!) We've finally had some time to relax, and deal with a large number of back-burner issues. Brendan and I have been working away on a lot of stuff over the last few weeks. We have some unit behavioral adjustments, some balance changes, mission dialogue overhauls, general design updates for the final 2 kreydell missions, and a whole bunch of UI and HUD stuff. Build - ATS_win_2025_02_08_0437_ACTUAL Patch General Updates Crash Handling - We've identified the general source of the crashes on some people's hardware. We're working to resolve it but need more time than we had for this update. Will be coming as soon as possible. Quality of Life - Fast Forward. Holding Shift during cutscenes will fast forward time by 2x. I can't make it go fast…
- What we're working on / things to come - 31 January 2025
Hello everyone, Brendan/Owlfeathers here. While we don't have a full roadmap laid out, here's a little update on what we're currently working on and what additions and improvements you can expect in the near future. Apocrypha Side Story The next major bit of content (at least for campaign-enjoyers); this should be out within the next few weeks. Set between The Shallows and Kreydell chronologically, Apocrypha takes you out of Junior's shoes and has you following a small Vaalkorei Coalition task force, sent to discover the fate of a missing archaeological expedition deep in the Spance. This will be a string of six missions with full Relaxed/Normal/Trauma difficulty options. QoL Improvements There's been lots of great community feedback since our early access launch, and we're adding in a bunch of features that have been widely requested. You'll be able to select the production of yards be…
- Memory Leak Crash on some systems, and how to avoid it for now. - 22 January 2025
Hello everyone, Luke here. There's a memory leak in our rendering systems when clearing the play field and it's proving very difficult to hunt down. Over time it will use up ATS's Memory reserve and crash ATS. Some systems don't seem to crash - which is frustrating me because it makes it even harder to pin down - however systems with high memory (16+ GIGs) *should* notice this less unless you play for a very long time - open very big custom maps - or already have most of your memory used up by other programs (internet tabs). If you're hitting crashes regularly, open Task Manager and keep an eye on ATS. If it's Memory usage is going above 4 GIGs (or more if you have a lot of memory), kill it and restart. You can of course let it run on until your system runs out of memory to allocate to it, but that's risking a crash. I am working to fix this, and losing no small quantity of my hair in d…
- Fight Me More, Fight Me Less, But Do Fight Me - 20 January 2025
Hey, Luke here with our first post release update. Did you know the build number is just the time I make the build? ...Yes I will get some sleep now... Build `ATS_win_2025_01_20_0402_ACTUAL` patch `2169` Fixes - Tried my best to locate and resolve the memory leak causing crashes to people. Please let me know if you keep crashing. - Controllable units (Hemedall) no longer self-eviscerate from reality itself when ordered to hold position. Changes: - Skirmish AI build rate range greatly increased, you can make them a lot easier. - Skirmish team income multiplier for matter. Go ahead, to a 1v4 with 4x matter income. Kreydell - Heavily overhauled mission 3, it was quite ugly and too unrefined. - Added Relaxed/Trauma variants for missions 1, 2, 3, 4. Let me know if they're too easy. - Reduced difficulty of Vein Rebellion somewhat. - Heavy Mortar changes should make mission 11 somewhat more ch…
- Annihilate The Spance is released, take a moment with my reflections. - 15 January 2025
Hello everyone, Luke here. Four years, three guys, and a tiny budget. Welcome to the Spance. I'm Luke, and along with Brendan, and Aleks we've been piecing this game together for what has felt like eternity. I don't really remember the times before ATS, and at the rate we've been working to get this thing done to release yesterday I can hardly remember last week! We released last night, content and happy in a Discord call bridging three continents, we hit the release button. After finally sleeping for the first time in a few days I thought I'd give a little look back over the last years and reflect a bit on how it's been going. To be clear, we've been working on this for four years out of our own pockets, and to finally be here today with ATS released and - potentially - earning us something to live on... is a relief hard to express. I would like to quickly mention our testers, who have…
- I reckon you autobattler sickos will like Annihilate The Spance, probably you RTS nutters too - 14 January 2025
The "spance" of Annihilate The Spance is apparently “an ancient, roiling storm of matter and energy” that harbours both “extreme and inexplicable phenomena” and “unfathomable riches”. I’m happy to discover this explanation, because at first I thought that “spance” was just a litigation-avoiding, supermarket rebrand of “space”. I was bracing to send the good news to developers Skyglow Softworks that, so far, nobody has managed to copyright “space”, though I’m sure somebody’s tried. Maybe, um, God? It’s a relief to know that God won’t be suing Skyglow Softworks for breach of copyright, because off the back of two demo missions, Annihilate The Spance is worryingly compelling. It’s a mixture of space RTS and autobattler, wherein you construct bases that produce spanceships who autopilot towards the nearest and largest c…
