V36 is live: Season 1 and the new FFA Rating

09 Nov 2026Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

V36 is live!

Hey everyone,

V36 is out now and Season 1 starts today. Every public FFA game you play while signed in now counts towards your new FFA Rating, so jump in and see where you land.

If you want the full story behind the new rating system, it's all in last week's dev blog:
Read the V36 dev blog

The highlights

FFA Rating and Season 1

Ranked FFA has been rebuilt from the ground up with our partners at OFstats. There's no separate queue any more, every public FFA game you play while signed in is rated. Play 10 calibration games and you'll be placed in a tier and division, with a rating and how sure we are about it (something like "1613 ± 85"). Your rating moves on both the result and where you placed, measured against how likely you were to win.

After each rated game the win screen shows your rating before and after, your expected win chance, how much came from the result and how much from placement, and a "Promoted to…" message when you move up a tier. Your game history and profile track it all too, including your peak.

The leaderboard's FFA tab is now the FFA Rating ladder, with tier badges and a season banner showing how long Season 1 has left.

Friends and notifications

You can now send and accept friend requests. The bell in the menu opens a new notifications panel where your requests show up, and friends are kept on the same team in public Duos, Trios and Quads.

Save, load and share singleplayer games

Signed-in players can save a singleplayer game from the in-game menu. Your saves live in the Solo screen, where you can play, rename, share or delete them, and you can open someone else's save from a link or code.

Continue from any point in a replay

The new replay viewer is now the default. Stop a replay at any moment and carry on playing from there.

Lobby presets and win threshold

Save your settings as a preset and load them again in one click.

Save your host-lobby and singleplayer settings as named presets and load them from a new button in the header. Custom games also get a Win threshold setting. It's off by default, which keeps the usual 80%.

Donate with a keypress

Press J to send troops to the ally or teammate under your cursor, or O to send them gold. No more radial menu needed.

Smarter nuke warnings

The nuke range circle turns yellow if a strike would only break an alliance, and flashes red if it would mark you as a traitor.

Mobile quick-build

Mobile now has a permanent quick-build bar for structures, warships and missiles, with tap-to-preview placement. The unit bar is smaller too.

New maps and a new map picker

Browse every map on the new Atlas tab and hover any one to see its designer, description and stats.

The map picker has a new Atlas tab, and every map now shows its designer, a description and stats. We've also added London and Mexico, new greener terrain for Africa, and fixes or reworks for Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Crimea, Channel Islands, Korea, China, Qing China and Yellow Sea.

London and Mexico are new in V36.

Monthly Steam exclusive skins

Every month a new Steam exclusive skin drops. You'll get a popup when you launch the game to claim it, equip it straight away, or preview it first.

Big performance gains

Nukes, SAMs, MIRVs and range checks have been reworked. In testing the whole simulation ran about 15% faster with a third less worst-case lag, and click-to-build placement is around 130× faster.

Full patch notes

Ranked: FFA Rating and Seasons

New FFA Rating, built with OFstats. Every public FFA game played while signed in is rated, and the separate Ranked FFA queue is gone. Guests aren't rated
10 calibration games, then a tier and division, with rating ± uncertainty and your peak rating
Rating changes are based on both result and placement, weighted by your expected chance to win
Win screen after a rated FFA game: rating before and after, the change, expected win chance, the result and placement split, and "Promoted to…" on a tier-up
Game history shows the rating change and expected win chance for each rated FFA game. Hover to see the result and placement split
Profile and account page show your tier, rating, uncertainty and peak, or "Calibrating N/10"
Leaderboard FFA tab is now the FFA Rating ladder, with tier badges, an OFstats credit and a pinned "Calibrating N/10" row for players still placing
Season 1 begins: a season banner on the FFA Rating tab with start and end dates, days left, progress through the season, and a "Last day" warning when it ends

Gameplay and balance

Fixed a crash for every player trading with someone who has a very high-level port
Fixed nations sending almost their whole army away when two attacks start in the same tick
Nations now save gold for hydrogen bombs when atom bombs are disabled, and only respond to real warship build-ups instead of overbuilding warships
Island nations now boat over to nearby bots before attacking players
Fixed boats failing at, or taking long detours around, river bends that double back (Didier, Conakry, Russia, China, Europe)
Fixed territory being annexed twice when encircled land is split between several enemies
Fixed trains moving 3 tiles on their first tick instead of 2
Hold H to build a separate structure instead of upgrading the one nearby
Ghost structure multiplier now steps 1 → 5 → 10 → 15…, with Alt+scroll for ±1 adjustments
Better rail placement preview
Nuke previews clear when you lose your last missile silo
Fixed a crash in player icons when a nuke's target changes owner

Lobby and social

Friend requests, with a new notifications panel on the bell
Save and reuse lobby settings presets
Win threshold setting for custom games
Spectators no longer count as players in lobby counts
Fixed the max-player cap for team modes in lobbies
Clan tags now show as team names on the team leaderboard
Fixed the FFA hero slot height and section placement on the homepage
Nation difficulty tag is hidden when nations are disabled
Fixed the username reservation banner covering the upcoming lobby heading
Fixed desyncs and disconnects at the join check for players on dual-stack connections or with lag

Replays and sharing

The new replay viewer is now the default
"Continue game from here" in the replay viewer
Save, load and share singleplayer games, and open a shared save from its link or code
Share button on the end-of-game screen and in the in-game top-right control bar
Player overlay shortcut buttons are hidden in the replay viewer

Trust, safety and moderation

Players are thanked when someone they reported gets banned
Redesigned ban notice, with appeals linked to Discord

Maps

New map: London, covering Greater London
New map: Mexico
Map fixes: Los Angeles road network rework with new nations, Las Vegas, Crimea (Henichesk Strait), Channel Islands, larger Korea, China, Qing China and Yellow Sea (Yellow River)
New terrain for Africa, with green areas in the Congo basin and West Africa
New Atlas tab in the map picker, plus designers, descriptions and stats for every map
New descriptions for several maps
V35 maps are no longer marked New
Dutch province flags

Graphics, UI and quality of life

Nuke range circle shows alliance-break (yellow) and traitor (flashing red) warnings
Mobile quick-build bar and tap-to-preview placement
Smaller mobile unit bar without unit counts
Bigger teammate spawn glow
Option to hide all cosmetics
Default profile setting for Detailed View filters
Restored the left-aligned graphics tuning panel
Game timer stays in the corner when the Overtime or Doomsday Clock panel is showing
Scroll-to-top button in the shop and inventory
Smaller Start game button on short screens
Improved help screen on mobile
Fixed the in-game settings order
Fixed the performance overlay's hardcoded key and its toggle not always updating
Fixed buttons under the sticky date labels in game history not being clickable
Unscored provisional XP now expires after 3.5 hours instead of hanging around
Fixed nameplate hover and targeting areas, including the verified badge
Fixed the share button's flash ring shifting on hover
A failed effects shader no longer crashes the game
New key art in search results and a black favicon background

Keybinds

Donate Troops (J) and Donate Gold (O) to the player under your cursor
Fixed AZERTY and other regional keyboard layouts showing the wrong keys
Modifier keys can now be remapped in settings
Keybinds settings tab now shows on touch devices that have a keyboard
Fixed Shift-modified hold-to-pan and hold-to-zoom
Tidied up wrongly grouped keybinds, unified modifier rules, and clarified the upgrade and pause hotkeys
Fixed a keyboard layout crash

Cosmetics and Steam

Monthly Steam exclusive skin drop, with a popup at launch to claim, claim and equip, or preview this month's skin
"Steam exclusive" corner banner on cosmetic cards in the store and inventory

Performance

Large speed-ups for nukes, SAMs, MIRV targeting and range checks: about 15% faster simulation, a third less worst-case tick lag, and around 130× faster click-to-build placement
Fewer per-tick and per-frame allocations in the simulation, stats sampler, attack labels and skin uploads, plus faster nearest-tile search
Fixed memory leaks and errors from screens and listeners not being cleaned up (radial menu, matchmaking, news box, renderer, flag textures)

Audio

Two new gameplay music tracks that rotate in game
Fixed music streaming on devices where volume is locked

Translations

Translation updates

Thank you

V36 took a lot of people, from code and maps to performance work. Thank you to everyone who contributed:

AppieKalac · Aotumuri · Ashique · ayushthepiro11-design · cazlabIO · crunchybbb · Evan · FloPinguin · gabigabogabu · Gemini · Himansu · JB940 · Josh · Lewis · Niels_600 · NOBODY · Patrick Plays Badly · Pedro · RickD004 · Rikardo66 · Ryan · VariableVince

If you spot any bugs, let us know in the Discord and we'll get on them.

See you on the battlefield!

Lewis and the OpenFront Team

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