I'm still here and kicking, as well as the game is. As some of you already know, I've been having some major health issues, and it completely ruined my (admittedly patchy) schedule of pushing updates to the game. I haven't been vocal about it recently, but I have been working to upgrade anything I could, nonetheless, in my recluse. Also, I've recently got better and if everything goes well, I should again be able to get back to more regular and meaningful updates.

For now, I present you the summary update of all the things that I have been able to fix since the last major version got released.

1. the biggest change will probably be the newly added ammo management - I've always wanted to have more management elements in the game (if you leave your units deployed on the map, I'd want them to eventually get tired, hungry and run out of ammunition, forcing you to run ressuply convoys to them), so consider this step one of this plan. Units that are low on ammo will try to resupply automatically, either from a car nearby (if you added the "ammo" cargo to it, when dispatching) or Ammo Stockpiles that you create (by unloading cargo from your cars into the ground).

2. I've added an Active Pause, probably the most commonly requested feature in the game. You can now slow down the game time whenever your want, making it much easier to manage chaotic situations. The pause function is now by default assigned to the SPACEBAR key.

3. I've also added the second-most requested feature - you can now hire Militia Members during meetings with the locals. Militia are just a simple replacement security, patrolling the villages automatically and slightly improving your relations with the locals. As a bonus, if a militia gets killed - that doesn't hurt your relations with the locals or your own command - as would probably happen in the real world, nobody cares about these people or their fate, in the end, so their deaths are meaningless to your gameplay - these are not soldiers your responsible for.

4. An untold number of gamecode lines have been touched, rearranged, optimized and re-thought. Anything from traffic to unit icons, from shooting, firing RPGs, helicopters flying, cars finding their destinations, random issues and many other little details that are hard to list. Basically a result of me playing the game, getting annoyed and fixing whatever bad I noticed.

More to come soon.

Changelog:
* NEW: Active Pause - since so many players have requested this feature, you can now slow down the game time to 10% whenever you want. This actions is by default mapped to
the SPACEBAR key. With the time slowed down, the game continues to operate normally, so you can issue any order you normally would to your units.
* NEW: Ammo Management - your units and vehicles will now use ammo and will need to reload their weapons. I'm trying to add some more management elements to the game, where eventually the player would be forced to either rotate the units actively deployed on the map, or run supply missions with food and ammo.
Your units automatically seek sources of ammo when they have no other tasks - it could either be cars with the proper cargo added to them during dispatch, or ammo dumps (cargo from cars can be unloaded into stockpiles, including the newly added Ammo Dumps). Squads will also share ammo between the members.
* NEW: Militia - also a feature many players have requested - you can now recruit militia members during the village meetings. These are troops that will fight on your side (although they never leave the village they got recruited in), and will constantly improve your relations with the locals. If a militia member gets killed, it doesn't incure any cost in your relations with the locals or the command, and you can always recruit more of them during the next meeting.
* FIX: fixed the unit pre-selection logic. It should now be much easier to preselect/ select the exact unit your mouse is pointing at. Previously, it was often trying to select the unit closest to the camera, instead, which often made it very sketchy and confusing.
* FIX: re-scaled some gigantic UI elements, like the Progress Summary Window
* FIX: re-scaled the Unit Dispatch Window
* FIX: many ridiculous behaviors of cars in traffic, like trying to avoid things that don't actually block their path, have now been tamed. This is a never-ending process, but some of the most annoying issues should now no longer be happening.
* OPTIMIZATION: car driving logic, car pathfinding, car acceleration - everything related to cars have been updated and optimized
* OPTIMIZATION: game physics and time settings have been optimized
* FIX: the issue with cars randomly going through the desert has been fixed
* OPTIMIZATION: unnecessary calculations and extra textures on the terrain have been removed, which should make the terrain rendering faster
* FIX: the HVT window was not being updated correctly with stats and open missions
* FIX: enemies will not use RPGs to execute anyone, or fire them from within buildings, anymore
* OPTIMIZATION: removed random stutters related to units beginning to plan their next course of action. This was related to unnecessary memory allocations in the AI planning process.
* OPTIMIZATION: updated the way the game renders icons for the units on map, reducing unnecessary calculations
* SECURITY FIX - the game was built with the new version of the engine, patching an ongoing security issue