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.