Easy Red 2 Realism Overhaul v1.1.2

1.1.2 - 2026-08-08

Easy Red 2 compatibility: version 2.0.9 Stable, Steam public branch build 24512933 (August 1, 2026).

• General refinements to AI behavior across objective play, movement, cover interactions, and vehicle combat.

• Added an enabled-by-default Spectator HUD option under Player Experience. The cinematic spectator camera retains the full native gameplay HUD, including squad and unit markers, squad and player status, objective markers and capture details, and the battle phase/progress bar, while still respecting the base game's individual HUD preferences. Press F by default to toggle all spectator HUD elements on or off, with an on-screen state confirmation; the key can be changed in the same settings category.

• Hold breath now immediately releases mod-owned aim fatigue instead of remaining blocked by the shared exhaustion flag. A new Player Stamina slider scales the local player's sprint, breath-hold, and jump stamina costs from 0.5x to 3x endurance; 1x preserves the base game. The optional Stamina Bar displays remaining native stamina at the bottom right while the player is alive and on foot, and is disabled by default.

• Aircraft mouse point aiming now keeps its bounded flight command moving with the plane while the camera looks behind, allowing continuous turns past the original nose's 180-degree direction without the command freezing or reversing at the exact rear point.

• Manual A/D roll in aircraft mouse point-aim mode now replaces only the automatic roll command, preserving the mouse-aim system's simultaneous pitch and rudder inputs.

• Fixed a handheld-fire lockout that could leave soldiers unable to shoot on foot while vehicle weapons still worked.

• Fixed Aircraft Speed scaling raising takeoff and full-lift thresholds while lowering maximum speed. Native lift thresholds now scale with the selected player-aircraft speed without changing their authored lift fractions.

Easy Red 2 Realism Overhaul v1.1.1

1.1.1 - 2026-08-03

Easy Red 2 compatibility: version 2.0.9 Stable, Steam public branch build 24512933 (August 1, 2026).

• AI infantry now notice and switch to a materially closer visible threat after the normal reaction delay, even while tracking another confirmed target. A valid close target is still retained until it is killed, lost, or meaningfully out-prioritized.

• Newly spawning and mission-scripted squads can no longer be mistaken for settled autonomous defenders, preventing them from being halted at their spawn or scripted move point.

• Fixed the Quality, Balanced, and Large Battle Quick Setup presets reporting that their settings were unavailable instead of applying.

• Fixed isolated scene-pixel dots leaking through the edge of the binocular blackout mask.

Easy Red 2 Realism Overhaul v1.1.0

1.1.0 - 2026-08-02

Easy Red 2 compatibility: version 2.0.9 Stable, Steam public branch build 24512933 (August 1, 2026).

• Added an AT Launcher Accuracy slider; the default gives autonomous AI 35% tighter spread with low-velocity handheld launchers.

• Reworked infantry posture control. Soldiers crouch while fighting unless measured cover requires standing or prone, and moving soldiers may dive prone when they first spot a new enemy. Fixed recurring crouch/stand, crouch/prone, inch-forward, and aim/lower loops.

• Suppressed infantry remain crouched until suppression drops below the release threshold, preventing stance cycling while incoming fire decays.

• Target memory now requires a fresh visual reacquisition after confirmed sight loss, while recent gunfire can still reveal crouched or prone shooters concealed by vegetation without seeing through solid cover.

• Attackers now hold to fire after contact and each bound, avoid abandoning clearly better firing positions, and advance in five-second crouched bounds under fire. Attack Firing Hold Seconds is adjustable from 5–15 seconds and defaults to 7.

• The objective commander now reassesses every 24 seconds, and unchanged plans no longer interrupt soldiers already moving.

• Stalled paths retry once before being abandoned; short spacing corrections no longer cause repeated run/stop or stance changes.

• Cover slots remain exclusive through brief native-state flicker, and overlapping soldiers separate instead of sharing the same position.

• Renamed Awareness to Perception; saved values migrate automatically, and the setting now also affects when a visible enemy stops an advance.

• AI crewmen retain their native vehicle-boarding order after repairs unless a player order, mission script, or immediate lethal hazard takes priority.

Easy Red 2 Realism Overhaul v1.0.9

1.0.9 - 2026-07-28

Easy Red 2 compatibility: version 2.0.8 Stable, Steam public branch build 24435722 (July 29, 2026).

• AI tanks now pivot their hull only toward a currently visible enemy tank and stop once their frontal armor is within the configured facing arc. They do this as much as possible outside of pathfinding which forces them otherwise.

• Parachutes now drift with map wind. Players jumping from moving aircraft briefly retain some forward momentum, and multiplayer drift is host-authoritative.

• Ground-vehicle turrets and direct-fire static weapons now use War Thunder-style third-person point aiming with separate camera and bore-direction indicators. Gunsights retain native reticles and offer stabilized or unstabilized aiming.

• Ground-vehicle third-person freelook no longer moves the turret. Releasing freelook smoothly returns the camera to the commanded aim direction.

• Added optional aircraft mouse point aiming with a third-person command circle, smooth chase camera, and smooth C-key freelook. Holding the configurable hold-breath key during freelook provides 0.5x-10x zoom in first- and third-person, defaulting to 4x.

• Improved and tuned Realistic flight physics for player aircraft. EXPERIMENTAL: AI Flight Model applies the same tuning to AI planes and may cause unforeseen issues, including crashes. It is off by default and host-authoritative in multiplayer.

• Improved the frequency of use of static weapons by AI.

Easy Red 2 Realism Overhaul v1.0.8

1.0.8 - 2026-07-27

Easy Red 2 compatibility: version 2.0.8 Stable, Steam public branch build 24420558 (July 27, 2026).

• Quick Setup now offers Quality, Balanced, and Large Battle performance presets built from the settings that scale most directly with battlefield load: distant animation quality, artillery round count, smoke and dust lifetime, supplemental blast and fragmentation work, penetration depth and added ricochets, retained decals, simultaneous audio, and diagnostics. Quality restores the recommended defaults; Balanced keeps every gameplay system with lighter expensive effects; Large Battle keeps the core AI and fire-safety systems while cutting supplemental battlefield work and enabling frame-sliced garbage collection. A preset only stages ordinary settings, so every value remains visible and individually editable before Apply; startup audio-capacity changes are clearly identified as taking effect on the next launch.
• Restored the proven 1.0.5 large-battle stutter fix without restoring its mixed-mod failure: transient base-game objects no longer build an enormous managed finalizer backlog, but UnityEngine objects and objects injected by this or another plugin are left on Il2CppInterop's normal lifetime path. A wrapper that another mod still holds remains live and is never reclaimed.
• A lightweight objective coordinator now spreads AI attackers across as many simultaneous objectives as their available infantry squads can support, while keeping enough squads together for part of each attack to use alternating offset approach angles. Defenders place a squad on every active objective before distributing surplus squads, prefer intact cover clusters within their separate defensive sectors, and spread into individual cover posts instead of repeating the same open-ground kneeling formation around the hold point. They can also shift one surplus squad toward an objective whose capture progress is changing without leaving another objective empty. Individual defenders occupy and validate protective fighting positions inside those areas even before contact. The coordinator uses Easy Red 2's native synchronized attack and hold orders, never stages or delays an assault, and leaves player-led and mission-scripted squads untouched. The system can be switched off in the new AI / Objectives settings category.
• Targetless AI infantry now check promptly for nearby enemies they can actually see between the game's normal staggered scans, and a new closer threat can preempt an unrelated unconfirmed contact, while still waiting through the configured human reaction time before engaging. The recommended close-target delay is now 0.15 seconds and the point-blank delay is 0.1 seconds. Once a close target is confirmed, riflemen and machine gunners immediately interrupt an objective or cover move and regain fire permission without waiting for the shared tactical decision queue; only eligible close-range submachine guns retain moving fire. The configured close-quarters accuracy bonus also stays stronger through typical room and building distances before returning smoothly to native spread at the range limit.
• AI soldiers now call out personally confirmed targets to nearby friendly AI within a configurable 5-50 m radius (15 m by default). Recipients receive only the frozen last-known position after a short voice delay: they must stop before turning toward it, and still need their own line of sight and normal target-acquisition time before aiming or firing.
• Infantry directly fired upon now retain the attacker's last-known direction for at least 15 seconds and for five seconds longer than the configured visual target memory, so recovering from suppression does not immediately erase the danger and send them through the same firing lane. This coarse memory never grants aim or fire permission against an unseen enemy.
• Stationary AI carrying an explosive grenade can now throw at a fresh, personally confirmed last-known enemy position after direct sight is lost. The remembered position stays frozen, and the attempt is allowed only once per observation when range, cooldown, blast clearance, and the full arcing throw path are safe; moving soldiers are never turned for it.
• Infantry no longer treat barbed wire, razor wire, or chain-link screens as ballistic cover or as blocked firing lanes. Deliberate cover moves also favor a substantially safer nearby trench, building position, or solid barrier over a merely closer marginal obstruction; the conservative native-cover fallback now applies only when the material truly could not be classified.
• Suppression no longer makes infantry go prone under a nearby solid ceiling. Pinned and recovering soldiers in roofed fighting positions stay crouched so they can keep using indoor firing lanes, while exposed soldiers outdoors can still drop prone.
• Suppressed attackers released by the maximum combat-halt deadline now crawl toward their objective while prone, including along a cover route they already selected. Native AI crawl movement is also left intact instead of being forced into a crouch.
• Defensive infantry now spread more assertively across equivalently protective firing positions instead of clustering around the first good node, while materially safer cover still wins. Dense cover geometry can no longer as easily hide an occupying soldier from the slot check. Native cover claims remain owned during the approach and are renewed for the full occupation; if two soldiers nevertheless reach one slot, the later claim is released and reselected. A new Minimum Soldier Separation slider, set to 2.5 m by default, controls both hard cover-slot separation and the short lateral correction made when settled squadmates overlap at a fighting halt; halted soldiers are rechecked periodically, try the other safe side when a trench wall blocks the first step, and stop the correction as soon as they arrive.
• Exposed infantry who confirm a distant threat now treat a bounded move into nearby protective cover as urgent even before that enemy fires, so the exposed-route filter and attack covering-fire wait no longer leave them fighting indefinitely in open ground. Suppressed soldiers still avoid a new exposed move, and a threat inside the existing immediate-fire distance is engaged from the current position instead.
• A cover route that circles outside a trench without getting closer to its selected slot now receives one fresh native path request. If it still cannot find a usable entrance, the soldier rejects that slot and returns to cover selection instead of treating endless movement as progress.
• Unsupported standing and crouched aim accumulates fatigue and feeds the game's own exhausted-aim sway; lowering the weapon, going prone, or using the native hold-breath input recovers or prevents it.
• First-person shadows now keep the ordinary third-person soldier model casting the local body-and-equipment silhouette while suppressing only the separate first-person arms and weapon models. Turning the option off still removes the whole local-player shadow in first person; other soldiers and third-person view remain unchanged.
• The lethal-headshot presentation remains headshot-only, but its black layer now belongs to Easy Red 2's native death panel and follows the game's death/respawn lifecycle directly. The death text remains visible, other deaths remain native, and both screen and audio are restored on respawn with a timed failsafe.
• The optional immersive world HUD hides floating squad and marked-unit icons only during the 3D world draw, preserving the same icons on the tactical map. Nearby AI squadmate and allied multiplayer names share one camera-aware world-label path without duplicate native labels, using each live soldier's native name anchor while multiplayer labels retain the player's Photon nickname. Contextual names now use one clean gold draw instead of a separate black shadow pass that made each name look duplicated.
• Dead multiplayer players get a visible Leave Squad & Redeploy action on the native squad-selection canvas, allowing them to leave their current infantry squad and return to Easy Red 2's deployment screen through the game's synchronized squad-leave operation.
• Ragdolls now inherit the soldier's actual movement velocity at death, with configurable inheritance and speed limits, so moving casualties no longer lose all forward momentum the instant ragdoll physics begins.
• The base game's separate seven-loop weapon-audio cutoff is raised to a configurable 24 automatic weapons by default. Handheld and mounted machine-gun loops are no longer stopped merely because seven other looped weapons are already active. Unity's local capacity is also raised once at startup to at least 256 audible voices and 512 virtual voices without lowering higher native values; all four controls are available on the Audio settings page.
• The F10 settings menu now starts AI tuning with five straightforward, centered 0.5x-1.5x Core Behavior sliders: Aggressiveness coordinates close-contact return fire, grenade frequency, and advance tempo; Accuracy scales AI weapon spread; Reaction Speed coordinates the three visual-acquisition delays; Awareness coordinates field of view, peripheral awareness, and visual contact memory; and Suppression Resistance coordinates crouch, prone, and recovery thresholds. Their 1.0x midpoint preserves the detailed settings, which remain independently adjustable. The complete playtested numeric configuration now ships as the recommended default, and each adjustable default has useful range on both sides except the intentional 0 m “rifle moving fire off” floor. Detailed controls remain with their owning categories; ordnance tuning stays in Battlefield and flight-model tuning stays in Aircraft.
• Machine-gun tracer retention now controls both handheld and mounted machine guns, including a true zero-tracer setting and a recommended roughly one-in-five defau...

Easy Red 2 Realism Overhaul v1.0.7

1.0.7 - 2026-07-26

HOTFIX

Easy Red 2 compatibility: Steam public branch, build 24246380.

• Unity's initial splash and Easy Red 2's own startup logos are skipped again. The game-authored skip is now limited to LoadingScreen2's first boot sequence and restores its shared static logo flag afterward, leaving multiplayer and later battle-loading screens untouched.
• Aircraft freelook steering now activates only when Easy Red 2 has assigned a physical controller. With keyboard controls, W/S and A/D are no longer mistaken for the left stick while the vehicle-look action is held, preventing movement and hold-breath input from pulling the view or taking over aircraft controls.

Easy Red 2 Realism Overhaul v1.0.6

1.0.6 - 2026-07-26

Easy Red 2 compatibility: Steam public branch, build 24246380.

• Host AI fire-control now sends one SyncStopFire when the mod first inhibits a soldier's fire and does not resend it while that hold remains active. Continuous danger, suppression, range, and movement holds no longer flood reliable RPC traffic while multiplayer clients are loading or playing.
• Multiplayer clients no longer run the mod's host-only gameplay logic while the battle room is still being joined. The old authority check treated every pre-room multiplayer load as offline play, so both computers could mutate the same battle during the transition; multiplayer intent now disables gameplay mutation until the Photon room exists and permits it only on the room's master client afterward.
• Consecutive multiplayer battles no longer lose the next room operation when the new map loads before Photon has finished leaving the previous battle room. The mod now holds that one pending operation through the Leaving, game-server disconnect, and master-server reconnect states, then lets Easy Red 2 perform it as soon as Photon reports ready.
• Multiplayer host settings are now synchronized only after the actual battle room has been established and remained stable. Easy Red 2 briefly joins and leaves candidate rooms while checking the server list; the mod no longer treats that temporary room as the live session or applies a host settings snapshot during the join/leave handoff.
• Other BepInEx plugins no longer have their Unity objects reclaimed by Realism Overhaul. An experimental global cleanup included in early 1.0.5 builds could free IL2CPP objects still in use by another mod, causing ObjectCollectedException errors and failed plugin loads in mixed-mod setups. Object lifetime is now left entirely to BepInEx and Il2CppInterop.
• Infantry cover searches now compare nearby positions with building and trench slots spread across the full search area before their fixed performance budget is exhausted, making strong building cover noticeably more likely to be selected without increasing cover-search cost.
• Defending reinforcements ordered to a distant defence area no longer stop indefinitely to fight and search nearby cover before they arrive. Contact can still produce a bounded fighting halt along the route, but the soldiers then resume toward the assigned point; once inside the defence area, the existing fortified-position behavior takes over unchanged.

Easy Red 2 Realism Overhaul v1.0.5

1.0.5 - 2026-07-26

Easy Red 2 compatibility: Steam public branch, build 24246380.

• Multiplayer clients now actually receive the host's mod settings. The client-side read of the shared settings failed on every attempt, so a client silently played on its own local configuration for the whole session instead of the host's.
• Destroyed soldiers are no longer left registered in their squads on a multiplayer client. Easy Red 2 detaches the first-person camera from a soldier as it is destroyed, but does so without checking that a camera exists; on a client that has not spawned yet there is none, and the resulting error stopped the rest of the game's own cleanup — including removing the soldier from its squad — for every soldier destroyed in that state.
• The flight model and instrument HUD are now player-only and off by default. Turn on "Aircraft flight physics" for momentum, progressive stalls and spins, energy loss, speed-dependent control authority, and damage-sensitive handling while you fly, and "Aircraft instruments" for the compact airspeed and altitude readout. Both apply only to aircraft you pilot yourself with Realistic Mouse or Realistic Keyboard controls; Simplified controls keep the native controller as before. Aircraft-bomb blast, crater, injury, and suppression tuning is unaffected and stays in the ordnance system.
• An aircraft you bail out of now flies on instead of stopping in mid-air and dropping. It keeps the speed and heading it had, bleeding energy as it coasts, and descends into the ground on its own — so you watch your plane fly away beneath you rather than fall out from under you. Applies to aircraft the flight model was handling for you; it lasts until the aircraft lands, is destroyed, or half a minute passes.
• Holding the vehicle freelook button no longer costs you pitch and roll. Looking around left the aircraft able to yaw and nothing else, so checking your six in a turning fight meant giving up the turn. The left stick now flies the aircraft for as long as you hold freelook — pitch on its vertical axis, roll on its horizontal one — while the right stick moves your head, which is what it already did. This works in both stick layouts, because the freelook camera is always the right stick and the left one is therefore always free. Two things share that stick and stand down while you look: the rudder, when your layout puts it there, and the throttle, which holds its current setting only while you are actually pulling or pushing on the stick, so you can still change power mid-look whenever you are not manoeuvring. It has its own switch, "FreeLookSteering", in the aircraft flight physics settings, and works whether or not the flight model itself is turned on.
• Rudder authority no longer follows the wing's curve. The fin and rudder sit in the propeller slipstream, so with power on they keep working when the wing has nearly stopped flying — you can hold a heading on the takeoff roll, pick a wing up when the ailerons have gone dead, and pivot a hammerhead with the airspeed near zero. Close the throttle and you keep the rudder the airflow alone gives you: its freestream authority is now measured against stall speed rather than cruise, so the pedals are fully alive by about a third above the stall and remain usable in a dead-stick glide, where before they went vague on every low-speed approach. A lost propeller still costs the slipstream half of it. At the other end of the envelope the rudder now goes heavy: these were unboosted controls, and past roughly cruise the pedal force needed for real deflection climbs until little of it is usable, leaving the rudder vague at top speed where the elevator and ailerons still bite. Pitch and roll are unchanged.
• A bullet to the head that kills you now cuts the screen to black and drops all sound to zero on the spot, in place of the death camera lingering on your body. The death panel naming the soldier and the skip prompt still read over the black. Only a lethal head hit does this; every other death plays out exactly as before. The view and sound return as soon as you control a soldier again, and in any case within a few seconds, so a death can never leave you blind or deaf. It has its own switch, "Headshot death blackout", in the first-person view settings.
• AI soldiers no longer get left behind in cover when their squad moves on. The maximum-halt rule that resumes a stalled advance only existed for squads on an attack order, so a rifleman under an ordinary move order who could see an enemy held his fighting position for as long as he could see one — his squad walked off without him. Any squad that still has somewhere to go is now bounded by the same rule, and a soldier who takes cover while his squad is moving holds it for the short assault interval instead of the long defensive one. Squads on a defend order are unaffected and still hold their positions indefinitely, as does a soldier whose squad has stopped.
• The AI in your own squad now behaves exactly as it does in an unmodded game. Every AI system in the mod — perception and target acquisition, cover choice and posture, movement and stall recovery, suppression reactions, fire discipline and friendly-fire holds, grenades, emplacement crewing, transport dismounts, and tank tactics — now skips any soldier sharing a squad with a player, so your squadmates answer to your orders and nothing else. This is structural rather than a setting: there is no configuration in which the mod steers a man under your command. It covers an AI-driven tank you are riding in as gunner or commander, and it follows you when you switch soldier — the squad you leave returns to the mod's AI, the squad you join is left alone. AI in every other friendly squad, and all enemy AI, are unaffected; in multiplayer this applies to each player's own squad, not only the host's.
• Reduced frame-time spikes during large infantry battles, particularly on high-framerate systems:
  • Short-lived game objects created while the mod crosses between Easy Red 2 and its managed patches are now reclaimed progressively instead of accumulating until .NET pauses the battle to clean up hundreds of thousands at once. Normal object lifetime is preserved, and a config-only compatibility switch can restore the original cleanup behavior after a restart.
  • Garbage-collection work now uses measured spare time after fast frames instead of surprising an already busy frame. It stands down when VSync already provides idle time and leaves Unity's normal collection budget intact. In the final seven-minute maximum-AI validation, the original 200-500 ms managed stalls were absent and frames above 33 ms fell to 0.57 per 30 seconds.
  • Repeated ownership checks for the same soldier in one frame now reuse one result instead of crossing the managed/native boundary again for every patched AI entry point.
  • A halted soldier was being issued the same stop command to the game two to four times in a single frame, because several of the mod's entry points each re-asserted it independently. Since that command applies a time-scaled stop, the duplicates were both wasted work and a repeated stop. It is now issued once per soldier per frame unless the decision actually changes.
  • The AI tactical decision pass was tied to the frame counter rather than to elapsed time, so the higher your framerate the more often every soldier re-decided — at 200+ FPS roughly three and a half times as often as at 60 FPS, for the same decisions. It is now capped to a fixed rate in real time. Systems below roughly 90 FPS are unaffected.
  • Per-soldier state for dead soldiers was never released when the game had already torn down the soldier object, so it accumulated for the whole battle and slowed a squad-wide check that runs against it. Cleanup now happens on the soldier's own destruction, where the identity is still valid.
  • The squad covering-fire check, which scans every tracked soldier, was recomputed for every attacker every frame. It is now cached briefly — far shorter than the several-second window it reports on, so advances are unaffected.
  • Close-range target confirmation runs a line-of-sight test per nearby candidate, and every soldier's next check tended to fall due on the same frame, so the whole battle's tests landed at once. Checks are now staggered per soldier and capped per frame; a soldier over the cap simply runs on the next frame instead, so no check is skipped.
  • A machine gunner holding a suppressive burst while standing still had that burst cancelled and restarted continuously, because the movement system treated "allowed to move" as "moving". A burst is now only interrupted once the gunner actually moves.
  • The heaviest per-soldier AI work — situation snapshot, proposal arbitration, and the tactical state machine — is now capped per frame. The game already spreads this work across frames; the cap only affects the occasional frame where a wave of soldiers arrives together, and a deferred soldier keeps his current orders and runs on the next frame exactly as if the game's own schedule had not reached him.
  • A mass-casualty moment re-read each soldier's faction once per casualty instead of once per soldier while spreading suppression through the battle, which made large simultaneous losses the most expensive moments in a battle.
  • Identifying what weapon a soldier is carrying — matching its item name against a list of some thirty patterns, plus component lookups — was repeated for every moving soldier on every frame, and again for every soldier on the suppressive-fire path. Weapon type cannot change while the weapon exists, so it is now worked out once and reused.
  • AI decisions are now scheduled against a per-frame allowance instead of being left to land wherever they fall due. Each soldier already re-decided at a fixed rate, but nothing stopped a large part of the battle from coming due on the same frame, which is what...

Easy Red 2 Realism Overhaul v1.0.4

1.0.4 - 2026-07-24

Easy Red 2 compatibility: Steam public branch, build 24246380.

• AI infantry now identify a point-blank threat noticeably faster than a merely "close" one, heavy suppression can no longer shrink a soldier's awareness of an immediate threat below a configurable minimum radius, and AI weapon spread now tightens the closer the target is inside close-quarters range, making room-to-room fights meaningfully deadlier.

• Crewed static AT guns now fire on enemy infantry when no vehicle target is available; vehicles still take priority.

• AI defenders now also man the gun of an empty armed troop transport parked inside their defend area, such as a halftrack or gun truck with a mounted machine gun, instead of only manning static emplacements. The soldier takes the gunner position rather than the nearest free seat, tanks, assault guns, and aircraft are never crewed this way, and the gunner gives the vehicle up as soon as a player orders a squad onto it or it drives away. It can be switched off with the new "Staff abandoned vehicle guns" defense setting.

• Rockets and other shaped-charge warheads now detonate against the first thing they strike instead of being carried through fences, sandbags, and thin walls by the prop-penetration system and re-appearing as a fresh projectile on the far side. This restores correct bazooka, Panzerschreck, Panzerfaust, and PIAT behavior, including the duplicate exhaust trail that appeared mid-flight. Solid armor-piercing shot and ordinary bullets still punch through props as before.

• Rocket exhaust trails are no longer stretched by the longer-smoke-effects setting, which left them smearing through the air after the warhead had already hit. Explosion and ground smoke keep their extended persistence.

• Removed the squad contact-reporting system (squad-local last-known-position reports and their voice/radio sharing between allied squads, with the related delay, confidence, and radio-error settings). AI now reacts only to what it actually sees or is shot by, which is simpler and cheaper; cover selection, defensive positioning, and APC dismount decisions still work from direct observation and incoming fire.

• Removed the experimental AI commander (attack/defense operation planning, staging gates, squad/vehicle/aircraft command roles): Easy Red 2's maps are balanced around vanilla's continuous frontal pressure, and the commander's staged gating made attacks stall instead of pressing the assault. Squads and vehicles now attack and defend under native game routing, with the existing infantry tactical layer (perception, suppression, danger reactions, cover) unchanged. AI staffing of defensive static weapons remains as a standalone behavior, no longer tied to the commander.

• Removed every aircraft system: AI attack safety and threat evasion, autonomous target-of-opportunity engagement, idle patrol re-centering, the whole flight model (momentum, stalls, spins, energy retention, damage effects, engine and speed tuning), and the flight instrument HUD, along with all of their settings. Planes now fly, fight, and handle exactly as they do in vanilla Easy Red 2 for both AI and players. Aircraft-bomb blast, crater, injury, and suppression tuning is unaffected and stays in the ordnance system.

• Close-range reactions no longer wait on the shared AI update queue: a soldier who sights an enemy inside surprise-contact distance confirms and engages after his normal short reaction delay even in large battles, so running riflemen no longer sprint obliviously past enemies directly in front of them for seconds at a time.

• Attackers caught crossing open ground under sustained trench fire no longer stall there forever: the maximum-halt escape that resumes a stuck advance now works while under direct fire in the open (it still holds a soldier in real cover until covering fire is established). A suppression pin now also releases after a bounded time even if incoming fire keeps suppression high, with a brief immunity window so the same fire cannot instantly re-pin the soldier before it can move.

• The mod no longer restricts the player's own actions anywhere: the stop-crawling-before-reloading-or-bandaging rule now applies only to AI soldiers, and a player who takes over a suppressed AI machine gunner can no longer inherit a stale duck latch that blocked standing back up at the gun.

• The AI fire-discipline and suppression systems now explicitly refuse to act on the locally controlled soldier even if the game misreports that soldier's control state after entering or leaving a vehicle, guarding against a reported permanent loss of the player's fire action after using a parked truck.

• Exiting a vehicle can leave a phantom seat reference on the player, which makes the game silently swallow every shot while the trigger animation still plays. The mod now detects that broken state on the next trigger pull and clears it through the game's own dismount path, restoring the player's ability to fire.

• Fixed a memory leak behind the persistent late-battle stutter: the mod's distant-sound and vehicle/cannon audio caches held on to every audio source they had ever seen, so with soldiers respawning all match the game's heap grew without bound and garbage-collection pauses grew with it. The caches now drop entries the game has already destroyed and reset at battle start. Audio behavior is unchanged.

Easy Red 2 Realism Overhaul v1.0.3

1.0.3 - 2026-07-21

Easy Red 2 compatibility: Steam public branch, build 24246380.

• AI tanks in armored contact now hold a genuine standoff position instead of stuttering forward and backward around the reverse threshold: the hold persists until the enemy is destroyed, breaks away, or stays out of sight, and a tank caught side-on at standoff range now rotates its hull to face the threat. Close-range and retreating tanks still keep their frontal armor toward the enemy and reverse straight back without pivoting. Turretless vehicles such as assault guns are exempt and keep hull-aiming naturally.
• Tank standoff and tactical reversing now trigger only against actual armored vehicles; tanks no longer keep their distance from, or back away from, unarmored trucks and jeeps.
• Before a tactical reverse, tanks now check for dismounted friendly soldiers and obstacles directly behind the hull and hold their ground instead of blindly backing over them, and a damaged tank's retreat now ends once it opens distance rather than looping indefinitely.
• Enemy infantry no longer freezes AI tanks in place: a tank with a live movement order keeps driving to its destination while its turret tracks the threat, and only a tank that is already parked halts to exploit its firing position.
• AI tanks that become stuck on obstacles while driving to a commander destination now attempt a short reverse to free themselves, and after repeated failures the commander reassigns them instead of counting a wedged tank as an attacking force forever.
• Once a commander assault launches, the whole force stays committed: infantry no longer gets recalled to staging by momentary suppression spikes while the tanks drive on alone, tanks assigned to an attack keep stable assault and flank roles instead of rotating through the reserve on transient suppression, and tanks attacking the same objective now spread across separate points instead of funneling into its exact center.
• A force consisting only of armor no longer waits at staging indefinitely against a single spotted enemy tank; armored attacks can now launch at power parity.
• Tank crews are no longer affected by the infantry armor-panic reaction to nearby enemy tanks, which could capture a crewman's movement decisions whenever enemy armor was close.
• AI commanders now track each objective's real capture state. In scenario missions attackers genuinely attack from the first minute (previously they could behave as defenders from the start and never leave their opening positions), and after taking an objective the side pushes straight on to the next uncaptured one instead of digging in on the captured point.
• Attacking infantry now search a much wider area for cover, so they reach flanking positions, doorways, and building corners instead of clinging to a narrow strip of ground directly ahead. The default cover search radius was raised and its upper limit extended for players who want an even broader search.
• Advancing soldiers may now peel off to cover that is slightly to the side or a few metres behind their line of advance, as long as it keeps them moving forward overall, rather than only accepting cover that is strictly closer to the objective. This opens up real flanking and building cover during an assault while still preventing them from retreating.
• Defending and staging squads are now placed onto the nearest cluster of protective cover—settling into a building or trench line—rather than standing on the open geometric point they were assigned. A squad already dug into good cover keeps its position. When a squad holds a dense line of cover, its members are allowed to spread along that whole building or trench instead of being compressed into a small circle of grass.
• Soldiers who genuinely cannot reach any protective cover now stay down and keep fighting, waiting progressively longer between attempts instead of endlessly milling in the open searching for cover that is not there.
• Defenders engaged from two directions at once now hold one sensible stance instead of rapidly flickering between crouch and prone. The stance is chosen against a stabilized threat direction that ignores brief bearing jitter and only turns to a genuinely new flanking attacker, and dropping from crouch to prone now requires the threat to persist rather than reacting to a single evaluation flip. Suppression and pinning keep their immediate drop to cover.
• Defenders holding a trench, window, or other authored fighting position now keep the stance the position was built for—crouched at the parapet, able to fire over it—instead of lying prone below it and going blind when the ground material cannot be classified. A confidently measured thin, penetrable barrier still sends them prone.
• Defenders now value being able to return fire when choosing cover. A position from which no stance can shoot back is now strongly avoided in favor of a well-protected position with an actual firing lane, so defenders no longer settle into protected but blind holes and stop shooting. When the commander settles a squad onto a cover cluster, clusters that can see the likely attack axis are preferred.
• AI aircraft threat evasion now reacts only to genuinely hostile fire, so pilots no longer break off attack runs because a nearby allied faction was shooting past them.
• AI soldiers must now keep an enemy in sight to identify them: brief glimpses separated by long gaps no longer add up to a confirmed target.
• Squads no longer replace fresher relayed contact intel with older sightings; newer information always wins, with first-hand reports preferred only on ties.
• Added rebindable binocular, freelook, and compass controls to the F10 settings menu. Binoculars still default to Caps Lock, freelook to either Alt key, and the five-second compass reveal to K.
• New installations and RESET TO DEFAULTS now use the current tuned gameplay, flight, audio, visual, and player-suppression settings, including the high-quality distant-animation option. The melee-reach, aircraft-power, and tank-gun-volume sliders also provide headroom above those new defaults for further adjustment.
• Added ENABLE ALL SYSTEMS and DISABLE ALL SYSTEMS controls to the F10 settings menu. They stage every gameplay-system switch together, preserve personal display/diagnostic preferences and F10 access, and take effect when applied.
• High Command artillery now rotates commander fire missions across eligible AI gun crews instead of repeatedly taking the first crew in the engine list, skips unavailable player- or mission-owned guns, and keeps crews on operational artillery rather than letting automatic infantry cleanup orders pull them to the front.
• Attacking infantry now use separated staging lanes rather than collecting at one distant wait point. The new Attacker Aggressiveness control tunes how much strength, suppression, and reserve margin is required before an assault proceeds.
• High Command now retains the established attacker and defender during temporarily contested objective ownership instead of turning both factions into attackers. Squads receive stable, distributed defensive sectors and assault-entry points, and planner updates preserve the last accepted stationary destination until an objective, role, or attack-phase transition genuinely requires a new order.
• Support-by-fire squads now orient on the strongest recent contact rather than blindly facing the objective marker. A support assignment requires both authored protective cover and an unobstructed firing lane to that target; squads remain in reserve when buildings or terrain make the position unable to support the attack.
• Defensive cover searches now inspect a deterministic spread across the entire objective-area inventory, giving protected building and trench slots a fair chance to beat nearby exposed cover while keeping detailed ballistic evaluation bounded. Penetration-rated protection remains the first choice, but valid authored building and trench slots are retained as a conservative fallback when sampled material cannot be classified, instead of leaving soldiers at exposed arrival points.
• Stationary commander assignments now keep squads in compact, distributed areas around their leaders, while attackers that complete a covered bound retain their authored building or trench anchor even when the game's native cover flag briefly flickers off.
• Tactical pose ownership now latches the more protective posture immediately and prevents suppression or a valid protective assignment from churning soldiers between prone and crouched. Soldiers rise only after that owner releases them and the new posture remains valid for a stable interval.
• Armed wheeled combat vehicles now receive the same High Command attack and hold orders as tanks.