[2.1.0] Better AI, Bipod System, Redesigned UI, New Vehicles and More!

[2.1.0] Better AI, Bipod System, Redesigned UI, New Vehicles and More!

Hello Soldiers!

Update 2.1.0 is now available. It rebuilds a large part of the interface, improves vehicle and infantry AI, refines pathfinding, adds two new infantry systems, and makes tank sights more historically accurate — along with new vehicles, improvements in road system, and a long list of fixes.

Quick Summary

  • Rebuilt interface — main menu, faction selection, respawn menu, and in-game HUD

  • Better vehicle AI — pathfinding, unstuck behavior, and driving through obstacles

  • Deployable bipods on cover, working with every weapon that has one

  • Auto Peek around corners and over low walls

  • Reworked tank sights with real optics zoom levels and accurate crosshairs

  • Road system, now used in Shanghai and Balaton and with new QoL features

  • New Wespe, SOMUA S35 and F6F-3 Hellcat, plus reworked Panzer IVs

  • New Spectating Camera Mode in Respawn Menu

A Rebuilt Interface

The interface is one of the part of Easy Red 2 you have often asked us to improve, especially in the recent poll, and it received the single largest share of work in this update. The faction selection menu, the respawn menu and the in-game HUD have all been rebuilt, and the main menu gained a notification area for beta information and error reporting.

The respawn menu changed the most: information is presented far more clearly, the menu refreshes itself when the situation on the field changes, and camera angles have been reworked for better framing.

An optional automatic spectating cinematic camera can now run in the background while you choose where to deploy. Vehicle seats show the role of the soldier occupying them instead of a generic label, and battle information such as reinforcements, sector, and objective type is now fully localized.

The objective conquer bar has been rebuilt and is now fully scriptable through Lua. Mission creators can add custom values and icons to it, or hide sections such as the phase advancement display — particularly useful for non-linear scripted missions.

Squad markers now use more specific symbols, so squad types can be told apart at a glance.

New UI customization options has also been added in order to allow players to find their favorite balance between immersion and UI information.

Vehicle & Infantry AI

Vehicle AI received a round of improvements: better pathfinding, better unstuck behavior, faster routes to their destinations, and more sensible clearance around small obstacles. Vehicles can now also traverse some trenches and rubble instead of treating them as walls.

On top of that, a new system lets AI vehicles drive through destructible props — sandbags, barbed wire, fences, street lights, small walls — instead of stopping dead in front of them or trying to path around.

Infantry AI also received various improvements in order to act more tactically, better throw grenades and use AT weapons, and various overall polishing to make the game experience more immersive than ever.

New Infantry Systems

Bipod Deployment

Weapons fitted with a bipod can now be deployed on cover with a completely redesigned system. Aim on top of a suitable surface — a low wall, a sandbag, a window sill, or the ground while prone — and the bipod settles onto its support, cutting recoil and sway dramatically. Your view then pivots around the bipod itself rather than around your soldier, so traversing the weapon feels like handling a genuinely mounted gun.

The system ships with a generic animation set that works retroactively with every weapon that has a bipod, including modded and Workshop weapons. Dedicated per-weapon animations are being added progressively, and will eventually cover reloads and barrel changes performed with the bipod still deployed; until a weapon has its own set, it simply lifts off its support to reload.

The third-person upgrade of deployed bipods is planned for a later upgrade.

Auto Peek

Aiming while behind cover now makes your soldier peek out on their own — leaning around a corner or rising over a low wall — and drop back down as soon as you stop aiming. The system reads the geometry around you before committing, so you lean out where there is actually something to shoot at rather than into the wall you are standing against.

Third-Person Movement Style

Third person now offers a Camera-Relative movement mode alongside the original Aim-Relative one.

With Aim-Relative your soldier always faces where the camera is looking and moves relative to their own body.

With Camera-Relative they run wherever you push the stick while the camera stays free to look somewhere else, and only turn to face the target once you start aiming — useful for moving between positions while keeping an eye on a flank.

A new option lets you choose how your soldier moves and turns in third person, so you can pick the handling you prefer instead of being tied to a single behavior.

Reworked Tank Sights

Vehicle and static gun sights have been reworked. Each gun now uses a sight matching its nation and calibre instead of a generic reticle, and zoom levels have been recalculated against real optics data, so magnification now matches what the original gunner would have seen. Tank sights also dim at night.

The reticles themselves are still being refined, so expect further polish in the coming updates.

Improved Roads

The new road system is now in use in Shanghai and Balaton, and new roads have been added to several other maps. Roads are built as a network of connected nodes that generates its mesh, junctions and terrain flattening as you work, which produces cleaner intersections and lets roads follow the terrain properly.

It is available in the Map Editor, where the road tool also received quality-of-life work: deleting a node now automatically selects the adjacent one, so removing a whole stretch of road no longer means reselecting a node after every deletion.

Full Changelog

New Features and Content:

  • Interface

    • New faction selection menu.

    • New respawn menu, with an optional automatic cinematic camera.

    • Reworked in-game player HUD.

    • New objective conquer bar, fully scriptable through Lua.

    • New main menu notification area for beta information and error display.

    • Improved squad marker system with more specific symbols.

  • Gameplay and Options

    • New bipod deployment system in first person.

    • New Auto Peek system for cover and corners.

    • New Third-Person Movement Style option.

    • New quick inventory actions (hold F) and quick inventory transfer (right click).

    • Vehicle zeroing can now be adjusted with the gamepad D-pad left/right while aiming down sights.

    • Weapons that support a bipod now gets one installed automatically in the in-game loadout selector.

  • Vehicles and Aircraft

    • Added the Sd.Kfz. 124 Wespe.

    • Added the SOMUA S35.

    • Added the F6F-3 Hellcat.

    • Reworked the Panzer IV family.

    • Reworked the Daihatsu landing craft.

    • Reworked the Shōhatsu "Type B" landing craft.

    • Reworked the Citroën U23.

    • Reworked the PaK 38 textures.

    • Added a new Africa camouflage for French vehicles.

    • Added an invasion stripes camouflage option for Spitfires.

    • Added a new dust trail effect behind moving vehicles.

  • Environment and Maps

    • New road system, now used in Shanghai and Balaton, with new roads added to several other maps.

    • Changes to the Stalingrad maps.

    • Reworked Normandy Farm, Normandy Barn 2 and Normandy Barn 3.

    • Added new Screwpine plants and new rock variants.

    • Added new US helmet variants for the 3rd and 29th Infantry Divisions, with randomized chin straps.

  • Editor and Modding

    • The objective conquer bar can be scripted through Lua, including custom values, custom icons, and hidden sections.

    • Map Editor road tool: deleting a node now automatically selects the adjacent one.

    • The animation tester now works with all GenericGun-derived weapons and includes every compatible override animation, including bipod and magazine variants.

Fixes and Improvements:

  • Vehicles and AI

    • Improved AI pathfinding and vehicle unstuck capabilities.

    • Improved vehicle AI path following and travel times.

    • Vehicles now keep a greater distance from small obstacles in certain situations.

    • Vehicles can now traverse some trenches and rubble props.

    • Tank sights now get darker at night.

  • Visuals

    • Improved grass wind effect.

    • Improved rain: better droplets, stronger wind during rainfall, and random lightning in the clouds.

    • Improved various visual effects.

    • Improved the German first-person running animation.

    • Reworked the Type 96 LMG scope sight.

    • Fixed the sun ray effect not working on Linux, and improved the effect in general.

    • Fixed tree branches flickering on macOS.

    • Fixed 3D markers appearing bouncy during fast camera movement.

    • Fixed issues with some tree destruction.

  • Interface and Localization

    • Battle information in the respawn menu (reinforcements, sector, attack and defense, weather) is now localized.

    • Vehicle seats now show the role of the soldier occupying them instead of a generic passenger label.

    • Added mission localizations for Hungarian and Korean language settings.

    • Fixed various icons for vehicles and items.

    • Numerous localization fixes and smaller interface polish passes.

  • Missions and Stability

    • Improved network stability.

    • Fixed the keyboard button reassignment system on PlayStation.

    • Fixes in various missions and squads.

    • Various smaller bug fixes and several stability improvements.

US Pilot Uniforms

The US pilot uniform is being reworked, and instead of a single set covering every theatre it is being split into regional variants: US AAF, replacing the current uniform, a late-war US AAF version without the life vest, a US AAF Pacific variant, and a US Navy one. New squads will be added to make use of them.

Iwo Jima and Khalkhin Gol

Both campaigns announced in our roadmap are still in active development, and we are still aiming to release both before the end of the year. Neither will be sold as a separate paid DLC: they will arrive as part of the base game, or as free additions to the DLCs you already own.

Iwo Jima returns Easy Red 2 to the Pacific in 1945 and covers the full battle rather than ending at Mount Suribachi, with difficult amphibious landings, close-quarters infantry fighting, fortified bunkers, caves, and a dedicated system of underground tunnels forming part of the Japanese defensive network.

Khalkhin Gol takes the game to the largely overlooked 1939 border conflict between Soviet-Mongolian and Japanese forces, with large early-war armoured battles fought across open steppe.

Alongside them, the larger Normandy rework is still planned, adding five new missions on top of the existing ones.

Normandy Rework in Progress

Work on the larger Normandy rework has started. The mission updates and new intros that shipped in earlier updates were groundwork rather than the rework itself: this pass goes over the campaign properly, on the existing Normandy map, and adds five new missions on top of the ones already there.

Various buildings have been already reworked and new troops and vehicles added already in this and previous updates as well

Utah Beach: La Madeleine/ Widerstandsnest 05 (rework in progress)

It is still early days, and we will show more of it as it comes together.

THANK YOU

You can read more about our plans in the development roadmap:

You can also join the Easy Red 2 community to share feedback, report issues, publish your creations, and follow future development updates:

Join Easy Red 2 Discord Community

Visit the Easy Red 2 Steam Workshop

Our latest released DLC

Thank you for reading, and we will see you on the battlefield!

Marco and the Easy Red 2 Development Team