In light of the recent events upon Arrakis, the Spacing guild have granted access to the planet and reinforcements are arriving en masse. In the Air & Sand update, Dune: Spice Wars' combat is evolving, with an array of new flying units entering the fray and offering a host of new ways to enter into battle with and gain the upper hand over your enemies! Flying units, aerial combat, new buildings, resources, systems and more await in the newest major update for Dune: Spice Wars... Check out what's new below!
New Air & Sand additions
Spaceships
Every faction has two new flying units: a fast ship and a huge frigate which is limited to one per faction
House Atreides
- Hawk: A small spacecraft with rapid fire
- Kraken: A frigate that can transport ground units
House Harkonnen
- Harpy: A small spacecraft with a powerful AoE attack
- Overlord: A frigate that controls small but powerful flying drones
The Smugglers
- Banshee: A small stealth spacecraft that also damages supply
- Wraith: A frigate that damages the health and supply of ground units in a large area
The Fremen
- Spire: A fully armed and modified Ornithopter
- Altar: A big aircraft that can receive up to two improvements
House Corrino
- Hammer: A slow spacecraft with large AoE attacks, great at shredding armor
- Cronos: A frigate with a large powerful AoE attack that regenerates its health out of combat
Aerial Combat
- Melee units cannot attack flying units
- Ornithopters can now be targeted
- Ornithopters avoid danger on Auto Recon and go back to base to heal themselves when needed
- Demo units deal more damage to Aerial Units
New resources
- Guild Favor (for every faction but Fremen): An expensive new resource that is necessary to deploy your spaceships
- Machine Scrap (for Fremen only): Destroying mechanical units and pillaging villages give scraps that can be used to build airships
New projectiles system
- The projectiles of military units were reworked to add spectacle to fights, with more interesting trajectories and effects
- Projectiles are much smoother in multiplayer
- Missile batteries and main bases now use the new system and fire multiple missiles
New Neutral Enemies: The Renegades
- As the game progresses, Renegades from the Faufreluche system will appear and take control of neutral villages
- Once renegades have taken hold, they will periodically launch powerful raids on players
- To attack a village controlled by Renegades, the players must first destroy their nearby base
- Killing Renegades provides Guild Favors
New Equipment System: Barracks
- Requires the Barrack building in the Main Base
- Customize the gears of your military ground units
- Enhance your units with a trade-off to match your playstyle
- Some melee units can equip handguns to damage flying units
New Major Buildings (limited to one per faction)
Spacing Guild Branch (for everyone but Fremen)
- Allows for the deployment of Spaceships
- Exchanges Resources for Guild Favors
- Unlocks Guild Proposals, special events that will get you Guild Favors in large quantities.
Recycling Plant (only for Fremen):
- Allows for the construction of Airships
- Allows for the production of Machine Scraps by destroying mechanical units
Experimental Alloy Furnace
- +150 Solari production
- +30% production of other Economy Buildings in the region
- 300 Plascrete upkeep
Military Factory
- +25% Power to all Missile Batteries owned by the faction
- +1 Missile Battery and +50% to their range in the current region
General Improvements
AI
- AIs improved in all difficulties
Multiplayer
- NEW Unlimited multiplayer pause option
- NEW Players conceding are now replaced by an AI
- NEW If your last opponents are only AIs that replaced human players, the victory is granted to you
- NEW You can join a lobby using its private code
Multiplayer Chat
- Hovering on the chat shows its last messages
- You can now send private messages to other players using the channel selection on the left
Singleplayer
- New Solo vs AI Kanly game mode
QoL
- Ornithopters set to Auto Recon on game start will now automatically recon the first Spice village
- Autorecall and autodeploy now take into account the harvester's life points
- Added Open CHOAM Market keybind on “U” (can be changed in the options)
- New dynamic cursors to react to more interactive options
- The movement of military unit models is much smoother in multiplayer
- Clearer range displays
- Allow left clicking on the Spice stock, Plascrete, Fuel Cells and Water to cycle between production buildings
Audio
- Added the music theme for House Corrino
- New voice lines for the Mobile Turret (Fremen only), Assassins and Mercenary
- New alerts sounds
- New menus sounds
- New spying operations sounds
- Vehicles are separated from humans in the battle soundscape (so you shouldn’t hear screams and other human fight sounds when watching a battle of mechanical units)
UI
- New Singleplayer menu
- New operations UI shortcut (you can now click on an empty slot to start a new mission)
- Bigger alerts
- Building preview UI
- You can now click on the word “Buildings” on the Villages UI to open a list of buildings you have access to
Other
- Huge performance optimizations
- New in-game visual effects
- New Lobby/Main Menu visual effects
Balancing
- In addition to all of the major additions in Air & Sand we have done a huge amount of balancing and stat changes, which you can read HERE (Please note that as a Google Doc URL, Steam may flag this as malicious, but we assure you, it's safe)
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Restless (from Ramallo’s passive) not removed from the zones around the Main Base when the Fremen are defeated
- Fixed operations making you a traitor when launched on an ally
- Fixed battle sounds that could be heard across the map if they were within the camera’s field of view
- Allow the recruitment of harvesting teams when training queue is full
- Fixed Interdiction Zone not working as intended
- Fixed rebellions not removing oppression’s buff and debuff correctly
- Fixed Shuttles stuck in the air for a few seconds when going back to orbit
- Smugglers can now be eligible to Imperial Audit if they reach 5 000 Hegemony during the vote
- Prevent militia from different villages to attack each other
- Units now properly leave combat when ordered to investigate a Discovery
- Units could play many attack animations after their target died and cause performance issues
- Units ornithopters could accidentally stop escorting their harvester
- Fixed Armor affecting Health loss at 0 Supply
- Fixed transactions points on the CHOAM market curve always showing the buying price
- You can now still see the preview of a building placement even if its Village is not on the screen
- Developments, buildings and resolutions affecting the cost or training time of military units now also correctly affect militia
- Unit recruitment tooltips now correctly display modified upkeep costs (no longer always base cost). If you haven’t enabled decimals display this may not be visible because of rounding
- Peaceful Annexation now correctly displays the action’s actual duration
Thank you all for your continued support of Dune: Spice Wars and for helping us bring this update together with your feedback and suggestions! More major updates on the way, stay tuned! - Shiro Games