Commanders, we're back with another look at what's live, what's next, and what's cooking behind the scenes. This series is your early peek at upcoming plans; a situation report, a SITREP. While we can't reveal everything yet, and some plans mentioned are pure teasers, as each update approaches you'll get the full deep dives in our devblogs as usual.
Rein your horses in, this one's another long ride!
Disclaimer:
We're excited to share work-in-progress details ahead of devblogs, the dev server, and the update itself, but do note anything mentioned here may change, be delayed, or be cancelled. In some cases, we're sharing ideas first to gather feedback before development proceeds. Enlisted is in active development, and as with any game, delays or unforeseen issues can occur. Thanks for your continued support!
Neptune's rings
A bit of background on the new location Omaha - split into the distinct Omaha and Sword beach areas with their own missions - which arrived with the Operation Neptune major update. We initially planned a refresh of the original Fortified Beach map with the D-Day missions (one of our oldest) based on player feedback, but the scope of improvements kept growing. The old map is generally narrower and more vertical than our newer maps, and we wanted to provide more flanking opportunities. At the same time, many of you told us the classic D-Day is iconic, so we changed course and built a new, larger-scope location in addition to keeping the one everyone knows well. Huge thanks to our Alpha team as well for extensive feedback throughout, and we're thrilled to see your positive reactions on it.
We've also seen a surge in well-sourced submissions since the "Suggestions" forum area rework. As the game grows, finding historically authentic firearms gets harder, but your research keeps yielding credible candidates. As a result, we're considering sharing a live shortlist of weapon candidates we've forwarded to the development team - many from your posts - tagged by likely use (tech tree, events, Battle Pass, premium). Entries that would be on that list are already carefully under review by developers, after which many of the suggestions are brought to life in the game. Thanks to your help, we navigate this tough selection process a little easier.
Looking forward to the next major update, the headline addition for both the tech tree and pre-order is something brand-new to Enlisted; and a popular community request. We'll withhold specific details for now though, as it'll become clear soon!
The melee major
Another focus of the last update was animation improvements; and you noticed. We're doubling down in the next major, focusing on melee this time: including crawling melee attacks, charge animations, and how the strike at the end of a charge looks and feels.
Here's a quick peek at the new work-in-progress charging animations in action:
In short, in this coming update there will be improved charge animations (for all charging-capable weapons), bayonet stabs, buttstock strikes, and standard knife attacks - even the knife idle stance is getting a facelift.
We'll also likely continue polishing specific weapon families as they feature in news and releases. For example, we updated M1941 Johnson LMG animations shortly before the M1944 Johnson LMG event - it's fair to expect more of that pattern. Remember too that the 1944 version even has a dynamic bipod!
One last thing while we're on the topic: some select weapons have recently been given hidden reload animations. It's possible to encounter these, as for now they have an exceptionally low chance of appearing, and they will act as rare "Easter egg" reloads. If you catch one, show it off!
Optimization: Possible
We've seen reports from players of reduced performance right after major updates. We've been looking into it a lot already, but without before and after performance logs, isolating root causes has been tough - but we've made progress, and have a solution.
To give additional context here, with each update and ongoing engine upgrades, shaders need to be re-cached. If many do at the same time, that can cause short-term dips that you might feel. Some can cache while idle in the hangar, but most only initialize in battle on your first encounter with this shader, and different maps use different shaders, so full caching can even take multiple matches. This currently affects PC; console players don't need to worry about it.
However, starting with the next major update, there will be improvements to infrastructure warm-up for DirectX 12 (which most players already use) so that most shaders pre-cache during first boot of the client; even before your first login. It'll pull in shaders from as many maps as it possible to minimize in-battle hitches.
This should greatly smooth the post-update experience on PC. As always though, if you encounter other performance regressions after a major, we'd encourage all affected players to generate performance and client logs before and after the update and submit a bug report so we can investigate thoroughly.
Mind the (BR) gap
We're also planning several quality of life upgrades around UI and Battle Rating (BR) for the next major update.
To begin with, we'll be adding a new animation prompt that will appear when you switch to queue into a different BR than what the player was just on. This is mostly aimed at helping new players avoid accidental high-BR battles, but also saves veterans from mismatched equipment and queues.
Alongside that, there will also be a number of other improvements, not least including to squad slot redesign and fixes, to mission lists in custom battles and the likes/dislikes menus, to the reasons for anticheat kicks, to how unavailable settings are displayed, and to quick-switching between soldiers on multiple screens like when changing weapons, uniforms and soldier perks. Ongoing updates to equipment descriptions for consistency is something you may also notice over time.
Keep calm and check your tickets
Right now, the Alpha team is playtesting Tunisia missions with CMs and developers to gauge their readiness for higher BR battles. Initial feedback suggests the revamped Kahif Cave Village - with much more cover for both sides - could enter BR III-IV as a trial, but of course these are just early thoughts and we are eager to hear what players think.
Continuing on the gameplay theme, we're going to be tuning the Assault mode; where two points often need to be captured and held simultaneously to advance. It can notoriously be brutal for solo attackers without a squad, so to add more strategic depth for defenders and another win path for attackers, defenders will be given tickets, but we'll also be adjusting attacker ticket drain too. We hope for this to meaningfully help well-coordinated or high-performing attackers, and we'll be watching your feedback closely once it's live.
As a side note, additional Conquest improvements are under also consideration, though specific details will come when they're ready.
The great equalizer
For upcoming updates, some global balance passes are on the way:
One of these will be for flamethrowers. We can see they aren't the most used class right now, so we'll be removing the "forced walk" when firing (no pun intended). Mobility is returning; it's time to bring fire back into the equation.
Another is for machine guns, as we plan to reduce movement dispersion penalties (both while aiming and hip-firing) by a flat 30% across all MGs. You may notice that MGs are the only class to endure these increased shot dispersion rates for these actions, and this was a legacy due to the old campaign system where weapons could vastly differ in performance and in which machine guns were too powerful overall. Even after the changes, they will still feel heavier with slower movement and initial ADS speeds, but this buff should slightly broaden their viability across BRs versus SMGs, assault rifles and select-fires.
And lastly, we're evaluating balance options for select-fire rifles. At BR V, nine-man rifleman squads running top-tier select-fires have become dominant (one-hit potential, low recoil, fast reloads), and some players have asked for reasons to consider smaller squads or other weapons. We're looking into this, but haven't decided what to do next; we'll let you know once we have a plan.
Deter-mi-nation
We'll continue expanding representation of other WWII-participating nations through special event and premium squads - just as we've already done with France, China, Morocco, New Zealand, and others. This way, we can introduce historically grounded units and equipment from countries whose documented WWII arsenals are more focused or specialized, helping us avoid equipment repetition while keeping authenticity high. We're reviewing several candidates for this approach, such as Canadian units, but these are very early explorations.
It's giving cartography
For the fourth and last major update of 2026 (not the next major update), we're preparing a large, brand-new map in a completely new theater - with many new buildings, fortifications, and fields. This location is seen consistently in player requests and is currently in the concept stage, making sure the map will be inspired by and authentic to the region.
We may share more details, or a teaser image, in a future SITREP between the two major updates. For the upcoming major in the meantime, we're focusing on bug fixes and polish across existing maps based on your forum reports. We'll also continue improving how tanks and wheeled vehicles leave tracks on various surfaces like platforms, fences, funnels, and more.
May I be of assistance, brudda?
We recently re-opened Alpha team applications, but now we also want to open up applications for our Helper team.
Historically, Helpers were hand-picked by CMs. Now, we're widening the net to find talented players who represent different corners of the community and think critically about suggestions and their impact.
What's the difference between Alphas and Helpers? Alpha team works with QA on finding, reproducing and reporting live-game issues. They also use one of our internal clients - the final build before release - to test features early and join playtests with CMs and developers. Their focus is on testing. Helpers on the other hand work with CMs and game designers on filtering community feedback and other reports to the team. They also propose suggestions that can cover all parts of the game both in and out of the client, and help with communication. Their focus is therefore on the feedback and ideas aspect. Both sign NDAs with us.
We've already reached out to a few candidates, but if you're passionate and can contribute to furthering the development of Enlisted, apply - and tell your friends. We're especially looking to add console players to our ranks, though we're of course keeping an eye out great PC candidates, regardless of what you specialize in.
Closing words
From all of us on the Enlisted team, we want to thank you for playing, for your feedback, and for your bug reports. With this experimental SITREP series, we'll keep you more regularly updated on plans and progress; and we might sneak in the occasional bonus for readers in future episodes. As always, today's SITREP highlights only a slice of what's coming over the next few months.
Commanders, you're all caught up - now lead your soldiers to victory!
Cheers,
The CM team