Icon: Voidfall - Alpha v0.1.12

New Systems, New Structures, New Ways to Shape the Battlefield

Alpha v0.1.12 is here!
This is another major systems update for Icon: Voidfall, introducing new strategic objectives, faction structures, defensive mechanics, environmental simulation, and another substantial combat pass.

Relics now give armies reasons to contest the wider map. Frequently travelled routes physically wear paths through the grass. Arx gains new economic and defensive infrastructure. Arafel gains new ways to conceal and consume its own forces. Arcane Aegis has evolved into a full battlefield barrier system.

And underneath all of it, CogSys continues learning from real player matches.

Introducing Relics

Relics are new neutral strategic objectives scattered across the battlefield.
These ruined and ancient remnants of Atrum can be discovered and claimed for a one-time Research Point reward.
Relics are designed to give players another reason to leave the safety of their base, explore the map, and contest locations that aren't simply another resource deposit.

The computer player can recognize visible, unclaimed Relics as valuable objectives and send an available unit to claim one without abandoning active combat, construction, harvesting, or other committed work.
Relics are fully supported across Multiplayer, Theatre, Replays, keyframe seeking, and live synchronization.

Spirit Paths

Your armies now leave their mark on the world.
Repeated movement across the same terrain gradually wears paths into the grass.

Workers travelling between resources and drop-offs, armies moving toward the front, Golems crossing industrial routes, and even wildlife following familiar corridors can gradually create visible trails across The Strand.
These paths aren't painted onto the map or generated from issued orders. The system samples where grounded units actually travel.
Frequently used routes become increasingly visible, while abandoned trails slowly recover as the grass grows back.

Wildlife contributes less wear than player-controlled traffic, allowing natural animal paths to emerge without overwhelming the battlefield.
The result is a subtle visual history of the match itself.

Arcane Aegis

The Arx Imperium has gained one of its most substantial defensive systems yet.
Arcane Aegis is now a true battlefield force field.
Aegiscus structures and mobile Aegiscus units can spend 10 Ichorite and 5 Zeal to create an Arcane Aegis field lasting up to 120 seconds.

The barrier isn't simply visual.
It physically defines the battlefield.

• Enemy and Neutral units cannot cross its boundary.

• Ground and flying movement respect the barrier.

• Knockback and forced movement cannot push enemies through it.

• Projectiles collide with the shield before reaching protected targets.

• Direct attacks can target the visible Aegis shell.

• Damage against protected targets is intercepted by the field.

When multiple Arcane Aegis fields overlap, they form a connected defensive network.
Damage is distributed across the connected Aegiscus network, while intersecting shields visually resolve their overlap with an energized seam along the exact intersection.

Aegis fields also react visually to nearby units, structures, terrain, vegetation, and incoming impacts.

Arcane Aegis Auto-Cast

Right-clicking the Arcane Aegis control toggles Auto-Cast.
An Aegiscus with Auto-Cast enabled will automatically establish a new field whenever it is ready and resources are available.

Active Auto-Cast controls now pulse between your faction Primary color and Cyan, establishing a common visual language for automated abilities.

Aegiscus Takes Flight

The Aegiscus is no longer limited to a static defensive structure.
After researching Faith Engines Hum, both Dawnspire and Aegiscus structures can transform into their corresponding mobile forms.

A mobile Aegiscus retains access to Arcane Aegis and can reposition its defensive field across the battlefield.
Transforming while an Aegis is already active preserves the existing field, its remaining lifetime, cooldown, and Auto-Cast state rather than destroying and recreating it.
The shield simply goes with you.

Arx Tower & Garrison Overhaul

Watchtowers and Arcane Sentries have received a major redesign.
Both are now true six-slot defensive garrisons.
Each tower permanently contains its Tower Watch and can accept up to five additional player units.
Every occupied FirePoint contributes its own independently cooled arrow cadence, allowing a properly staffed tower to become considerably more dangerous than an empty fortification.

Loaded units can be removed through the new Unload All Units command.
Upgrading a Watchtower into an Arcane Sentry now preserves its garrison rather than destroying the occupants during renovation.

Hoardings

Watchtowers and Arcane Sentries can now construct permanent Hoardings for 150 Materials.
Hoardings:

• Increase total tower inventory capacity.

• Add +1 Armor.

• Remain permanently attached once constructed.

• Transfer when a Watchtower becomes an Arcane Sentry.

The upgrade is fully preserved through Multiplayer, Theatre, and Replays.

Arcane Sentry

Arcane Sentry now combines the Watchtower's garrisoned projectile fire with an independent area-magic attack.
Its magical pulse reaches six units around the structure and resolves at the authored attack animation's actual impact frame.

That means a fully staffed Arcane Sentry can simultaneously provide sustained projectile defense and periodic area denial.

The Lumber Mill

Arx Imperium receives a new economic structure: the Lumber Mill.
The Lumber Mill establishes a dedicated forestry work site.
Laborers can be assigned directly to a Mill, after which they will:

• Collect nearby Tree Logs and loose Materials.

• Fell nearby resource-bearing Terrain Trees when no loose Materials remain.

• Return Materials directly to the Lumber Mill.

• Resume work within the Mill's local work area.

Lumber Mills accept Materials from ordinary Laborers only. They do not accept Ichorite, Dermis, or Golem deliveries.

This gives Arx another way to establish specialized economic footholds instead of routing every forestry operation through its primary settlements.

Weeping Wound

Arafel gains a new battlefield concealment tool.
Completed Weeping Wounds hide allied units within their eight-unit radius from enemy and Neutral forces.

Units concealed by the Wound receive a darkened visual treatment for their owner while enemy targeting, Fog of War, Bannerless acquisition, Multiplayer, Theatre, and Replay systems all respect the concealment.
Existing detection mechanics can still reveal hidden units.

Multiple Weeping Wounds can overlap safely, allowing concealment fields to be layered without exposing a unit until it has actually left all active coverage.
Selecting a Weeping Wound displays its concealment radius directly on the battlefield.

Devouring Maw

Arafel also gains the Devouring Maw.
The Maw can physically garrison up to six friendly units.
Once loaded, those units can be Devoured. Devouring them destroys the contained units and refunds their full authored resource costs, including the value of active squad members. This gives Arafel a way to reclaim obsolete, misplaced, or strategically unnecessary organisms and recycle that investment back into the darkness. The exact consumed units and resulting economy changes are synchronized across Multiplayer, Theatre, and Replays.

Tormentum Sentinel

Tormentum gains a new tactical mode: Sentinel.
Activating Sentinel locks the Tormentum chassis in place and grants +6 Sight.
Its Gun Parent then detaches into a wide leashed orbit around the stationary body, independently seeking targets throughout the expanded area.

When a target is acquired, the weapon leaves its orbit and moves toward an attack position while remaining tethered to the Tormentum.
Once combat ends, it returns to its patrol.
Sentinel is a toggle and is fully replicated and recorded for Multiplayer and Replays.

Arafel Reshape Improvements

Arafel's transformation system has received a major presentation and continuity pass.
Reform has been renamed Reshape throughout player-facing UI.
The transformation Cocoon now:

• Uses its own animated portrait.

• Displays construction-style transformation progress.

• Shows the identity of the resulting unit.

• Maintains the source unit's position and facing.

• Transitions visually toward the target unit's size before emergence.

More importantly, transformed units now retain their kill count and control-group assignments.

Squad-to-single transformations also preserve the surviving squad member's actual position instead of centering the Cocoon across the outgoing formation.

Guard & Hold Position

The Unit Hold command has been redesigned around two distinct behaviors.

Left-Click: Guard

Guard stops the unit's current orders and establishes its current position as a defensive anchor.
Guarding units:

• Aggressively engage nearby threats.

• May pursue within their normal local combat leash.

• Return to their guarded position after combat.

Right-Click: Hold Position

Right-click retains the original true Hold Position behavior.
Units remain exactly where ordered and deliberately suppress opportunistic combat acquisition.

Both states are now durable command intents supported across Multiplayer, Theatre, and Replays.

Potion Auto-Cast

Inventory potions can now be armed for automatic use with a right-click.
Different potion types understand different trigger conditions:

• Ichor and Stoneskin trigger when the unit enters its next combat engagement.

• Speed triggers on the next direct player-issued ground move.

• Health waits until the unit falls to half maximum health.

Auto-Cast still uses the normal item transaction, stack consumption, effects, audio, and Multiplayer activation path.

Combat Overhaul Continues

v0.1.12 contains another substantial pass on combat timing and delivery.
Many units now resolve their attacks directly from their authored animation events instead of independent gameplay timers.
This includes:

• Infantry

• Firewall

• Skitters

• Swollen Skitter

• Imp

• Glare

• Slag

• Tormentum

• Artificer

• Artificer Dais

• Alto

• Malign Alto

• Kobolds

• Cabra

• Quillboar

• Null Stalk

Attack animations, projectiles, beams, melee impacts, charge effects, and damage should now line up much more consistently.

We've also hardened fallback behavior so a missing or interrupted animation event cannot leave a unit stuck waiting several seconds for an attack that never happened.

Alto & Malign Alto

Alto area attacks have been rebuilt around a proper 60-degree combat cone.
The impact evaluates the actual physical footprint of hostile units, structures, and Arcane Aegis barriers instead of relying on their center points.

Damage is applied exactly at the authored attack impact frame using each Alto's real ground and air damage values.

Health & Balance Pass

We've conducted a sweeping health balance pass across every unit in the game.
This is part of the broader combat work happening throughout 0.1.12 and will continue to be tuned as we collect more match data and Replays.

CogSys Keeps Learning

CogSys receives another replay-backed strategic improvement in v0.1.12.
After reviewing current-build, cheat-free player victories, we've introduced explicit faction-specific research-tier pacing targets.

Arx now begins actively pursuing its later research tiers around the 14 and 24-minute marks, while Arafel uses later 16.5 and 30-minute targets appropriate to its progression.
These aren't free upgrades or hard-coded cheats.

CogSys still has to satisfy normal prerequisites, economy, resource reserves, army needs, action budgets, and research rules.
The change simply gives the AI a stronger understanding of when continuing to buy optional lower-tier research is becoming strategically irresponsible.

Performance

Another broad optimization pass has landed alongside the new systems.
Highlights include:

• Grass chunk generation is now time-sliced.

• Dense grass generation avoids repeated matrix-list allocations.

• Grass uses local Malignance presentation data instead of expensive gameplay queries per blade.

• Wildlife spawn validation continues across multiple frames instead of concentrating work.

• UI particle mesh refreshes are phased across the Canvas.

• Faction cursor variants are prewarmed to eliminate first-use stalls.

• World health overlays more aggressively cull off-screen units.

• Runtime unit-circle meshes rebuild only when their visible state actually changes.

• Combat targeting work is distributed across smaller slices.

• Replay Theatre lists read compact replay headers instead of parsing complete recordings before selection.

World & Wildlife

The Strand continues becoming a more persistent, reactive place.

Spirit Paths

Spirit Paths now form from significantly less repeated traffic and recover more quickly after routes are abandoned.
Common reinforcement routes, worker paths, and travel corridors should become visible earlier in a match without becoming permanent scars on the landscape.

Malignance & Terrain Trees

We've substantially hardened how permanent terrain-tree removal interacts with Malignance.
Only valid, completed Malignance-producing structures and Mines can authorize permanent tree consumption inside their actual local spread radius.

Historical overlay geometry, temporary patches, malformed sources, and construction placeholders cannot erase vegetation.
Decorative trees can still die beneath genuine Malignance, but only resource-bearing trees provide Dermis.

Wildlife

Wildlife path recovery has improved around blocked movement lanes, allowing animals to reverse toward a reachable route rather than repeatedly attempting the same obstruction.
Quillboar are also excluded from natural wildlife populations for the first 20 minutes of a match.

Deernt and Cabra continue populating the early ecosystem, while Quillboar arrive later as the world becomes more dangerous.

UI & Quality of Life

A number of smaller improvements have landed throughout the interface:

• Structures containing real units now display a world-space cargo-count indicator.

• Rally destinations now use the local faction's Primary color.

• Group-cascaded commands give the currently focused unit or structure first priority when resources are limited.

• Auto-Cast controls share a consistent animated Primary-to-Cyan presentation.

• Carrier Drone tooltips now correctly describe the Drone being produced rather than the carrier producing it.

• Malign Mine UI correctly displays its additional Harvest Hooks worker slot.

• Focus Selection now centers on the first selected unit or structure instead of averaging widely spread groups.

• Group Slipstream movement moves the camera only once when the first unit exits.

New & Expanded Developer Cheats

Our offline testing tools have also expanded.
/spawnme TARGET creates a normal player-owned unit from our finite debug spawn catalog.
/spawn TARGET now creates suspended virtual-hostile units that remain near their placement and fight both Player and Enemy combatants using the ordinary combat pipeline.

The catalog has been expanded substantially across both factions alongside wildlife and Bannerless targets.
As always, cheat use disqualifies the active match from ordinary achievement and faction-win progression.

What's Next

0.1.12 is another major step toward the kind of RTS we've been trying to build since the Game Jam.
Relics create reasons to contest the world beyond resources.
Spirit Paths let the battlefield remember where armies have travelled.
Arcane Aegis changes the actual geometry of a fight.
The Lumber Mill gives Arx another way to industrialize the frontier.
Weeping Wounds let Arafel disappear armies inside its corruption.
Devouring Maws let it recycle those armies when their usefulness has ended.
And CogSys continues getting better by studying what players actually do rather than what we imagine they'll do.

There is a lot here, and there is plenty more still coming.

As always, thank you for playing, testing, breaking things, sharing Replays, and helping us turn Icon: Voidfall into something considerably larger than the game we submitted to RTS'99.

We'll see you in Atrum.