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.