Gunner, HEAT, PC! Patch Notes — June 18, 2026
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
GHPC Early Access has been updated to version 20260618. As always, you can get additional info on this and future updates by visiting our Discord server and YouTube channel. Links are on the GHPC website.
AI OVERHAUL
Seeing an update come out without a single vehicle or mission may seem unusual, but we have a very good reason for this. (Aside from the fact that the majority of the team's efforts are pouring into the remaining milestones on the game's roadmap, which are complex and deserve ample time to build and refine!)
"Content" can only get you so far; the underlying game systems are what carry the experience. For that reason, we decided this time around to put a strike team on one of the issues that's been on our plates for a while: improving the AI crew performance. This is both a longstanding internal goal for us and a popular player request (enough so that it made it into the Frequently Asked Questions page).
The idea of "improving the AI" is too multifaceted to properly get into here, and even the extensive changes we've made in this update are just scratching the surface of what we're working on, but it's a solid start in two main areas: simulated vision and simulated awareness. Both are worth explaining in more detail.
COMMUNICATION AND AWARENESS SYSTEMS
Enemies now use their radios
Perhaps the most basic issue with GHPC's previous AI system was often summed up as: "They lack object permanence." Even backing down a hill for a few seconds was enough to make the enemy gunners give up trying to hit you and resume scanning the horizon like nothing had happened. This very obviously needed to be remedied at some point.
Now, the AI crews have full access to the radio system - the one that's used to send enemy location pings to your tactical map. The exact same communication network simulation is running for the enemy team, too, and now they have the ability to respond to what they know! Platoons will assign a portion of their members to watch for nearby reports, anticipating the detected enemy making an appearance soon. They'll keep watch until enough time has passed that they feel their attention is needed in their original assigned sectors, at which point they'll return to standard mode. But if they hear about a new, closer threat, they'll orient on that one instead.
What this means is that if you are flanking a position and get spotted by the scouts (and if they survive long enough to send a report on the net), you can expect every enemy formation nearby to start watching for you once the information filters back to them. If you approach from the same angle you were reported at, you'll find that they have guns up and will not take long to spot and engage you. To keep the upper hand, you'll need to either reposition frequently or never get spotted long enough for the alert to go out!
Enemies are more coordinated within a platoon
If you engage a group of enemy vehicles and then decide to back off to reload, they'll no longer lose interest in you immediately. Instead, some of the members will watch your last position, waiting for you to re-appear. It should be quite a bit harder to play "peekaboo" with a defensive formation and expect easy kills. In fact, appearing in the same place will not only get you seen quickly but also cut down on their re-aim time! (More on that below.)
There's also been a system in the game for some time that allows platoons to react to one of their members getting hit. If a vehicle survives a shot, the crew guess at the location of the shooter, turn the gun toward it, and (if still alive long enough) alert the rest of the platoon to follow suit when they can. We've fixed some issues with this system, and it should nicely augment the other communication enhancements.
Friendlies report what they see
For some time, we've had a way to see reported enemy locations on the map, with a walkie talkie icon that popped up to let you know a new message had arrived. We found that this system was both vague and unintuitive, with many players asking what the icon means and never actually checking the map. We've now replaced the icon with a full text message, explaining who saw what. The map pings are still present, but you can get a sense of their urgency by simply reading the text message.
As a bonus, we've also patched Close Air Support (CAS) pilots in to this radio message system. Now, any active CAS flight will report its status to you, including what target it's decided to strike. We've seen some confusion about whether CAS planes do anything at all, despite their bomb runs being one of the most powerful "win buttons" in the game - so we hope this system will help clarify whether CAS found a target to bomb and provide a hint when it wasn't the one you expected.
VISION SYSTEMS
Once a crew is aware of a target, they still need to acquire it. Previously in GHPC, this process was heavily abstracted, amounting to a lightly randomized countdown timer that (in theory) responded to the target's distance and speed, the night vision systems, light conditions, and the tuning setup of the shooter's tank type. In practice, for various reasons, this did not work the way we intended. Not only was the system too basic to properly convey the subtleties of different tanks' performance beyond night vision effects; the actual timing of target spotting was generally homogenized and flat. We decided to do something about all of this.
Vehicle visibility score
With this update, units in GHPC are now rated on how visible they currently are, which heavily affects how much difficulty an observer will have in finding them. The list of things that affect vehicle visibility are currently:
(New)
How large or obvious the vehicle is inherently
Whether the vehicle is in partial defilade ("hull-down") from the observer's perspective
Recent weapon fire by the vehicle
(Previously broken, now working)
The vehicle's speed
The vehicle's distance from the observer
(Existing)
Whether the vehicle is casting an infrared light beam (only in cases where the observer is using near-IR night vision at night)
Whether the vehicle is in an illuminated zone from a flare (only in cases where the observer is using non-thermal optics at night)
If a vehicle's visibility is being boosted by firing a weapon, the strength of the effect depends on what kind of weapon it is. The effect wears off with time, but you can also dodge it faster by leaving the area where you fired the weapon.
Spotter vision score
When a crew is scanning for targets, their success is now influenced not only by the visibility of the targets but also by the vision abilities of their own equipment. Previously, we only simulated the effects of night vision optic types on sight ranges at night or in rain. Now we also adjust spotting times based on:
The magnification quality of the gunsights
Whether there is a thermal sight available for observation
Much like the rest of the new vision features, this score is now standardized across all vehicles and emplacements in the game (i.e., if a Soviet vehicle is rated as having a high-zoom, non-thermal sight, it will have the same spotting speed as a West German vehicle with a high-zoom, non-thermal sight). This is much easier for us to set up and tune, and it also helps avoid accidentally favoring one vehicle unfairly.
Nearby target detection
A rather amusing quirk of GHPC's crew AI in the past was that they could only become aware of things in the driver or gunner's vision arcs. We have plans to properly expand this to include the commander, but in the meantime, it was possible to simply drive up behind the enemy - even touching their vehicle - and watch them remain oblivious. That is no longer the case.
Crews now have a simulation of basic point-blank target detection, due to doing things like looking around through periscopes, or hearing a nearby vehicle on the move. At extremely close ranges, they will detect you instantly, unless you keep proper concealment between yourself and the enemy.
AIM TIME SIMULATION
Once a target is spotted, the crew still need to line up a weapon and perform some steps before a shot goes out. In the past, this was heavily abstracted, to the point that many tanks were performing complex manual rangefinding and gun laying calculations at a pace that would barely be possible even for a trained crew. (Many people have asked things like, "How are these T-55s shooting at me so rapidly from 2400 meters?") Chasing down and adjusting these settings was unnecessarily clumsy, so we created a new standard, which is both easier to tune and more realistic.
Each vehicle is now tagged to indicate what kind of systems it uses for rangefinding, lead, and elevation adjustment. The process is carried out in sequence, with sensible delays for each step. For example, the crew of the T-72M must go through this sequence: (1) Perform laser rangefinding; (2) Allow the range wheel and reticle to move to the desired range setting; (3) Perform manual lead compensation with the reticle.
An understandable reaction to this information might be, "But wait! There are plenty of cases where you don't need to do all of those steps. What about shortcuts?" And I have great news: we thought of that too! There are a whole set of exceptions and scaling bonuses in this aim time system for things like being within battlesight range (skipping the range setting exercise), engaging a slow or stationary target (reducing or skipping the lead process), and even engaging a target that's at a similar range to the previous one (skipping rangefinding entirely). We've set the AI behavior up so that the crews will act as quickly or methodically as they need to under the circumstances.
The result of all this intricacy is that every vehicle's rate of fire is now indicative of its tech level and features, applied in a consistent way that matches what you as the player can do when operating the same tank.
AI IMPROVEMENT IS ONGOING
Reading all of this might bring to mind related ideas for how the AI crews could perform more convincingly, or other dimensions of "realistic AI" that a vision and comms update doesn't address. Rest assured, we've thought about the issue extensively and have a list of other features to explore. What you see in this update is just the set of adjustments that we feel are ready to debut right now.
We're also monitoring the way people's gameplay experience changes as a result of all these adjustments. If issues arise, we'll address them as they come. The feedback channel on our Discord server and the general board on Steam are great places to give constructive input on how this update affects the game.
GAME DIFFICULTY SETTINGS
With all of these changes in place, the average difficulty of fighting enemy AI tanks has gone up dramatically, especially if you're used to exploiting their lack of situational awareness to get easy kills without retribution. There are, of course, tactics you can use to adapt to this change, but we also recognize that some people are playing to have fun rather than to become the world's greatest tank commander. So for the first time, we've added difficulty settings. You can now tune the AI crews' performance in both speed and accuracy - from the default setting of 100%, down to 20%, or even up as far as 300%! This will allow both casuals and sickos to chase the experience they're looking for.
NEW FEATURE: TERRAIN IMPACTS
As a follow-up to our recent release of armor impact marks, we now have terrain impact marks as well. A wide variety of munitions will now leave visible evidence of their effects on the ground, cutting away small vegetation and scattering soil. We have gouges for darts, various craters for high-explosive rounds, and more!
After a pitched battle, the entire scene should more appropriately reflect what happened, with the earth itself showing scars and disturbances instead of looking pristine. This may be a purely cosmetic change, but we know many of you have been waiting for it for a long time, and so have we! Internally, we've always considered terrain impacts to be a goal, so we're glad to have added it.
OPTIMIZATIONS
It bears repeating every time that optimizing GHPC is an ongoing effort, something we spend time on both when first writing a feature and when we find time to return to it later on. Lately, we've had a solid streak of optimization work coming to fruition, and this update is no exception. A wide variety of game systems have been altered to make them run more efficiently and free up precious CPU and GPU resources. As a result, your game will likely run more smoothly. How smoothly? The answer is different for everyone's individual PC hardware and software setup, but we hope it's a good result for you.
EXPERIMENTAL FIRE GATING CHANGES
Some players by now have noticed a flaw in GHPC's gun stabilization system: it can struggle to keep up with rapid pitching of the tank's hull, leading to shots dumped into the earth or flung through the sky far from any target. This problem is solved in real life by a feature called "fire gating": an interrupt of the firing circuit until the stabilizers get back to the alignment they're seeking. Fire gating kicks in when the vehicle's motion is unsteady enough to outrun the stabilizers, as well as in more mundane cases, such as the gunner attempting to aim the gunsight down further than the gun can tilt.
GHPC has a form of fire gating, too, but due to technical reasons relating to the physics engine, we've traditionally given it far looser tolerances than a real tank would have. This keeps the gun from getting stuck in a fire gated (interrupted) mode while you drive around, at the cost of allowing more aim error overall. Over time, we've become dissatisfied with this solution. There are several potential ways to address this, including a deep overhaul of stabilizer code, but for now we want to try a simpler fix.
We've made some experimental changes to the Abrams in GHPC. The extra error in the fire gating tolerance has been reduced by over 90%, and we've achieved sub-mil accuracy (close to, but not quite at, the real tank's tolerances). This means that in many more cases than before, the tank will help prevent your shot from going where you weren't aiming. The reason it's "experimental" is that there's a downside: occasionally you may have to hold the trigger down for a beat until the stabilizer catches up and the gun can fire.
If you use cruise control and avoid exceeding reasonable combat speeds, this change should bring the M1's on-the-move performance into a noticeably better state than before. Some of the results will depend on your hardware and your gameplay habits, though. Let us know how it works out for you!
CHANGE LOG
What a mouthful! Of course, we still need to wrap things up with the full change log.
NEW CONTENT
Game settings now include a way to adjust the difficulty by tuning the speed and accuracy of AI gunners, from 20% up to 300%
Ground impacts now make gouges and craters depending on the munition type
FEATURES AND ADJUSTMENTS
AI units now react to radio reports by assigning a portion of the platoon to watch for the enemy
AI units now remember recent contacts and continue to watch for them for a while
Firing a weapon now makes a unit extremely visible for a short time period or until the shooter leaves the area, with the severity of the effect depending on the weapon type
Hull-down units now receive a concealment bonus against enemy spotters
AI units' spotting proficiency is now based on the actual optical systems in their vehicle
AI units' aiming delay is now based on the actual gunnery procedures for their vehicle's optics and fire control system
AI units will now auto-detect enemies approaching at extremely close range
The visibility of all targets is now influenced by what kind and size of target they are
Due to the cumulative effect of the awareness and spotting changes, AI units are much quicker to respond and engage threats on average, while the ability to be deliberately stealthy has also increased
Radio reports from friendly units are now written and include target details, replacing the walkie talkie icon pop-up
CAS planes now send messages indicating their status and what target they are attacking
Fire gating for the Abrams has been significantly improved
AI sight distances in rainy weather have been adjusted to better match subjective visibility
Rain is no longer allowed in the single-vehicle practice range missions
Optimized AI vision systems
Optimized AI navigation systems
Optimized infantry collision modeling
Optimized chassis physics systems
Optimized some model details
Optimized several smaller systems throughout the game's codebase
FIXES
Fixed artillery impacts being invisible in campaign mode
Fixed an issue with unlocking the display of multi-part missions in the mission list
Fixed a rare bug where Steam cloud saves could corrupt and blank out the mission list
Fixed an issue that prevented target distance and movement from affecting AI spotting speeds
Fixed multiple issues that caused AI spotting to always take a similar amount of time
Fixed player's crew calling "He's looking at us!" and assessing a dangerous threat when the enemy was simply turning the turret and not actually looking at them
Fixed the "reaction to being shot" system sometimes making platoon members search for the enemy in nonsensical directions
Fixed CAS planes and helicopters being able to see into thick forest under certain conditions
Fixed some ammunition having the wrong impact marks
Fixed an issue where impact marks could hover away from searchlights
Fixed some ATGM guidance flares appearing incorrectly in thermal optics
Fixed some ATGM guidance flares being visible through solid objects at distance
Fixed tracer clipping out the front of the Malyutka model
Fixed an armor skip in M60A1/A3 headlamp area
Fixed M60A1/A3 losing turret and gun drives when fire control computer was damaged
Fixed scaling issues with the mission planning screen on ultrawide monitors
Fixed rain becoming doubled in AAR X-ray view
Fixed grass blowing over after camera moved quickly over a long distance
Fixed a flickering issue with ready-to-fire indicator lamps
Fixed various visual effects issues
Fixed various mission layout issues