Squad Update 6.0: The Infantry Combat Overhaul Patch Notes

In its continuous pursuit to offer the most authentic military simulation, the developers behind Squad have rolled out their monumental Update 6.0. With a primary focus on revamping infantry combat, this patch promises to redefine the battlefield experience for veterans and new players alike.

Squad Update 6.0: The Infantry Combat Overhaul Patch Notes

THE INFANTRY COMBAT OVERHAUL

The infantry combat overhaul intends to create the most fun, immersive, authentic, and teamwork-oriented infantry combat experience possible. The goals are to:

• Increase the amount of teamwork needed to win a fight.
• Create more meaningful tradeoffs between different factions, weapon types, and optic types.
• Keep the game fun while making it more approachable for new and existing players.
• Mitigate the amount of punishment newer players experience in combat while learning the game.

FEATURES

These patch notes will not list the exhaustive changes that we have made to each of the following areas, so please see the original infantry combat overhaul blog posts (LINK 1/LINK 2) for more detailed information about the changes:

Suppression

• The suppression effect has been completely reworked to become more immersive and to enable the use of suppressive fire to become a valuable tactical tool for overcoming the enemy in combat. More powerful weapons will create a more intense, and longer-lasting suppression effect. The suppression effect itself will reduce the ability of a player to be effective in combat, encouraging them to reposition themselves or seek cover.
• Newer players can stress less about knowing exactly where the enemy are and instead provide meaningful suppressing fire to fix the enemy in place so that others can flank or maneuver on them.

Picture-in-Picture Scopes

• Picture-in-Picture (or PiP) scopes have been added to the game, this is a more authentic way of representing magnified optics in a game. Instead of your whole screen being zoomed in when aiming through a magnified scope, only the area inside of the scope will be zoomed in. The field of view (space that the optic takes up on the player’s screen) for different optics will follow real-life measurements in most cases.

Gunplay Changes

• Gunplay overall has been adjusted to create more fun, immersive, and authentic team-oriented infantry combat. The ability for a single player to affect the outcome of a firefight has been mitigated; effective communication and teamwork should overcome lone individual fighters in the majority of cases. All weapons have been adjusted and the weapons available to some factions have also been adjusted. Adjustments after release will be an ongoing effort to ensure we strike the correct balance.
• Different types of weapons and optics will now have much more meaningful trade-offs, magnified optics will not be the best choice in every situation.
• In the majority of situations, players who are in a bad position relative to the enemy are more likely to be wounded or suppressed, and less likely to be instantly killed, giving them meaningful moments to be able to react to incoming fire and making combat less punishing overall.

Infantry Movement Changes

• Character movement has undergone changes to encourage greater communication and coordination between infantry and other infantry, as well as between infantry and vehicles.
• Overcoming tall obstacles will be more challenging for individual infantry players than before, work together with your teammates to buddy-boost over taller objects and plan your movements through urban areas more deliberately.
• Vaulting over obstacles is now triggered only when also holding the “Move Forward” key. Otherwise the character will instead attempt to climb on top of the obstacle. This is intended to give you more control over your actions in combat and help prevent accidental vaults causing deadly falls.

Additional System & Gameplay Updates

• Added proximity indicators to the squad list:
• • These dots appear alongside the names of squad and fireteam members within your local voice chat range. The color of the dot represents how far away from you they are (bright white for 0-25 meters and grey for 25-50 meters)

• Vehicles that can hold ammunition will now show a 3D ammo icon so that you can identify them more easily
• Updated several CAF faction reload animations to be more true-to-life
• Nametags will now only appear when there is a direct line of sight between you and your teammate
• Temporarily added a “Scope Image Clarity” option to the Settings menu. You can use this setting to choose whether to prioritize clarity or anti-aliasing while using scopes. You can learn more about why this setting is being introduced in the “Known Issues” section below

General Bug Fixes

• Players in a server’s queue will no longer get stuck in the queue when the server changes maps
• When projectiles pass through walls, they will now have appropriate exit VFX
• Aiming down sights with the AK-74M’s GP-25 grenade launcher while your FOV is set to 120 will no longer cause the gun to clip into your viewpoint
• Binoculars now behave correctly when FOV is set to 120
• Corrected the appearance of the ADF Crewman/Pilot icon on the deployment screen
• Fixed a bug that allowed vehicles with blown-out tires to drive over AT mines without detonating them
• Fixed a bug that could cause players to encounter an infinite running soldier animation after joining the server
• Fixed a bug that could cause the barrel and scope of sniper rifles to momentarily become invisible if a user collapsed a bipod while aiming down sights
• Fixed a bug that could cause the deployment loading screen to appear incorrectly
• Fixed a bug that could prevent players from damaging vehicles with emplacements in certain situations when playing on Jensen’s Range locally (not online)
• Fixed a bug that could prevent players from switching to certain seats in a vehicle even when they were unoccupied
• Fixed a bug that could prevent the IMF RKG3 AT Grenade’s SFX and VFX from playing – after destroying hedgehog traps or the second state of barbed wire
• Fixed a bug that prevented the salute emote from playing when used by a player on the ADF or BAF team
• Fixed a client crash related to WorldSettings
• Fixed a client crash that could occur while loading into the main menu after starting the game
• Fixed a minor visual issue impacting the glasses and visors of BAF soldiers
• Fixed an issue that could allow the third-person camera to clip through certain walls during emotes
• Fixed an issue that could cause occasional waves of server log spam when having multiple clients connected
• Helicopter control settings for Pitch, Roll, and Yaw are no longer reset each time the game is started
• Players can now exit HMG bunkers as intended
• Players will no longer become stuck inside the vehicle after attempting to exit the LAV, BMP1/BMP2, AAVPW, MT-LB, BFV,  or M1126 vehicles in places where the vehicle’s exit points are obstructed
• The ADF EF88 Ironsight Rifle can now be zeroed reliably
• The emote wheel description for the Push Ups emote has been updated to reflect that it cannot be used while standing
• Water shields on amphibious vehicles are no longer deployed automatically upon vehicle spawn-in and will reliably deploy and retract properly when entering and exiting the water
• When a player using a recruit kit joins a squad and uses VoIP, the VoIP widget will now correctly display a recruit role icon next to their username

Map Updates & Bug Fixes

Anvil

• RAAS v4 – Replaced the BMD-1M with the BMD-4M for the VDV faction
• RAAS v4 – Replaced the PMV Mag58 3x with PMV RWS for the ADF faction

Black Coast

• AAS v1 – Replaced the BMD-1M with the BMD-4M for the VDV faction
• AAS v1 – Replaced the 2x Kamaz Logi with 2x BTR-DG Logi for the VDV faction
• AAS v1 – Added 1x LAV-25 for the USMC faction
• RAAS v1 – Removed the BMD-1M from the VDV faction on this layer

Goose Bay

• RAAS v1 – Removed the BMD-1M from the VDV faction on this layer

Manicouagan

• RAAS v10 – Reduced the number of BTR-MDMs from 2 to 1 for the VDV faction
• RAAS v10 – Removed the BMD-1M from the VDV faction on this layer
• RAAS v11 – Reduced the number of BTR-MDMs from 2 to 1
• RAAS v11 – Reduced the number of MATV M2s from 2 to 1
• RAAS v12 – Reduced the number of BTR-MDMs from 2 to 1
• RAAS v12 – Removed the M1151 M2 Open Door vehicle from the USMC faction on this layer

Mutaha

• RAAS v4 – Replaced the M113 TLAV with the TAPV for the CAF faction
• RAAS v4 – Replaced the Sprut-SDM1 with a T72B3 on a 10min initial delay
• RAAS v4 – Removed the BMD-1M from the layer

Narva

• RAAS v2 – One helicopter with a 10-minute initial spawn delay has been added for each team
• Destruction v1 – Fixed a bug that could cause objectives and objective caches to spawn floating above the floor in certain areas

Pacific Proving Grounds

• Made various visual improvements to terrain.
• Added missing map boundaries
• Seed v1 – The PLANMC team can no longer place infinite HASCO bunkers for free. The team must also now abide by the three-player requirement.
• PLANMC-VDV Training – The Sprut-SDM1 and ZTD05 vehicles are no longer missing from this layer
• PLANMC-VDV Training – Fixed a bug that prevented RHIBs from spawning at the dock

Skorpo

• RAAS v5 – Replaced the BMD-1M with the BMD-4M for a total of 2x BMD-4M for the VDV faction
• RAAS v5 – Increased the number of Leopard 2A6Ms (on 15min initial spawn delays) from 1 to 2 for the CAF faction

Yehorivka

• RAAS v2 – Removed the T72B3 tank from the VDV faction on this layer
• RAAS v2 – Swapped the M1126 CROWS M240 with the M1126 CROWS M2 for 4x M1126 CROWS M2 total for the USA faction
• RAAS v2 – Swapped 1x MATV M2 with 1x MATV CROWS M2 for the USA faction
• RAAS v2 – Reduced the number of UH60s from 2 to 1 for the USA faction
• RAAS v10 – Updated the vehicle layout for both teams:

RAAS v10 BAF:

• 1x HX60 Transport (6min)
• 2x HX60 Logi
• 1x FV432
• 1x FV432 RWS
• 1x FV107
• 1x FV510
• 2x FV510UA
• 1x FV4034 (10min)
• 1x SA330 (10min)

RAAS v10 VDV:

• 1x BTR-D PKM (6min)
• 2x BTR-DG Logi
• 2x Tigr KORD
• 2x BMD-4M
• 1x Sprut-SDM1
• 3x Mi8
• RAAS v11 – Removed the BMD-1M from the VDV faction on this layer
• RAAS v11 – Removed the Sprut-SDM1 from the VDV faction on this layer

Known Issues

We are aware of an issue that can cause the view seen through a picture-in-picture scope to be blurred for players using anti-aliasing or FSR. The severity of the blur is impacted by the FSR and resolution settings being used, so it may not look the same for each player who encounters it. The cause of this issue is very complex but we are hard at work to address the issue.

To mitigate this issue in the meantime, we’ve implemented a “Scope Image Clarity” option in the Settings menu. There are two options to choose from:

Prioritize Clarity in Scopes: This setting makes the image sharper but may also produce visual artifacts and cannot be used with FSR. This works by temporarily disabling anti-aliasing when aiming with a scope, meaning that players using this option may encounter jagged edges while aiming. This is the option that is enabled by default and is ideal for players who want to prioritize a clear and accurate view through their scopes.

Prioritize Anti-Aliasing in Scopes: This setting smooths jagged edges, reduces visual artifacts, and makes it possible to use FSR, but may result in the blurry image described above. This option is ideal for players who want to prioritize anti-aliasing and FSR or who are not bothered by the level of blur they are experiencing.

Feel free to give both options a try to see what works best for you. We appreciate your understanding and patience as we work to get this resolved as quickly as possible.

We are also aware that nametags do not appear when looking through a picture-in-picture scope. This is a temporary mitigation for a problem we found during development. Nametags appeared to be offset from their intended location while looking through picture-in-picture scopes. We have decided to remove them for now and will update you on any further adjustments to the nametag system in the future.

Mod SDK

• Updated mod SDK to v6.0
• Updated mod versioning to v6.0. This requires mods to be re-cooked with the v6.0 SDK in order to be compatible with the updated version of the game.
• Weapon sway configs in “Weapon Static Info” will be overwritten when the new SDK arrives. Remember to copy these values over to your new version.
• The walk speed multiplier while reloading and using items previously lived in the “Mutable Soldier”, but now it is controlled on a per-weapon basis. See “Walk Speed Multiplier” in “Weapon Static Info”. Changes made to the parameter in “Mutable Soldier” will be lost.
• The three parameters, which together controlled ADS time, have been consolidated into a single parameter in “Weapon Static Info”, adjustable per-stance. “StandLocBlendTime” was preserved but is not functional, so you can refer to this value to see what your pre-ICO weapon ADS time was.
• Added Gameplay Events Subsystem:  This allows modders to easily bind events to common gameplay actions like reloading, aiming, and firing without needing a reference to the soldier or player controller. We aim to add more bindable events in the future.
• Added Generic Punch System: This allows modders to use curves to rotate or translate the weapon and/or camera in response to gameplay events. This system is already being refactored, so feel free to experiment with it for now. Please note the input structs and blueprint nodes will change in the following SDK release.

Please Note: Updating to Squad v6.0 will force your cache to clear, resetting the game settings to their default values. Remember that you can use the “saved keybind preset” feature to save and load custom keybinds so you don’t have to set them up again when clearing your cache.