March was a packed month! We've got a major new unit control feature, the Picture-in-Picture minimap graduating to a default-on experience, significant performance improvements, a Carrier rework, several balance patches, and a lot of polish. Let's dig in!

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New Guard Movement

Units with a Guard order now move in formation alongside the unit they are guarding, rather than trailing behind in a line. They match speed relative to their guardee, spread out around them, and maintain sensible positions while moving - combat units actively flank and protect, support units stay at a safe distance.

To get full use of the new behavior, use Space + Right-click drag to reposition guarded units around their guardee before moving out. Note that construction units are not affected by this change, since it is more convenient for them to tail the guarded con so they don't bodyblock constructions.

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Picture-in-Picture: Fully Rolled Out

PIP is now live for all players. It comes in two forms that work together.

As your minimap, PIP replaces the old static overview with what is likely the most fully-featured minimap widget in all RTS. Where the old minimap gave you a fixed bird's-eye view with basic click-to-command support, the PIP minimap is fully zoomable and pannable, operates independently of your main camera, and renders the world with real fidelity — projectiles, explosions, plasma trails, decals, unit health bars, commander nametags, lava and water shaders, and building placement previews are all visible inside it. A TV mode automatically pans to areas of activity, and an Activity button snaps it to recently placed map markers so you can react to a ping or a nuke warning without losing your current view. Portrait maps auto-rotate to landscape. Minimizing it restores the old minimap behavior if you prefer.

As a free floating viewport, PIP can be placed anywhere on your screen as a fully interactive second window into the game world — separate from your minimap entirely. This is where it gets truly unique: Alt+click any player's name in the player list to lock the viewport to their camera. Since PIP is fully interactive, you can issue orders directly into that view. Yes, you can now micro your teammates. For spectators and casters, multiple PIP viewports can cover different parts of the map simultaneously — a genuine broadcast tool built into the game.

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Performance Pass

30+ widgets and gadgets received performance improvements this month. The biggest wins come in large late-game matches - the anti-nuke overlay, shield hit processing, bomber targeting, and transport guard all run significantly cheaper. Frame drops during heavy combat should be noticeably reduced.

UI and Notifications

• Big Notifications Update - improved timing, relevance, and usefulness of in-game messages, with new and reworked notification types throughout
• Added /dance emote command for Commanders, removed dances when idling
• Chat rendering fixes and font improvements
• Settings search is now more optimised and with improved readability
• Reclaim info and order menu fixes
• New Wintergaming announcer voicelines added
• Improved potato GPU detection and graphics preset restrictions for low-end hardware

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Unit Control and QoL Fixes

• Transport factory guard now supports queueing, and has an option to ignore user-issued commands while guarding - making automated ferry lines more reliable (#6984)
• Fixed units losing their build queue when a multi-selection including a transport received a load or unload command
• Fixed Area Unload dropping units in wrong positions. Units now spread out in the intended evenly-spaced pattern.
• Fixed construction turrets going idle when mixed with constructors in one selection and inserting a build at the front of the queue (space). Turrets now ignore unsupported build commands instead of getting stuck.
• Fixed units continuing to fire when Holdfire or Cloak was issued mid-engagement. Units now stop and cancel their target immediately. Manual attack orders you gave yourself are not affected.
• Fixed DGun losing roughly 30 range against shields due to a timing issue with projectile lifetime. Also fixed DGun shots near the ground or water surface sometimes detonating twice.
• Fixed Area Capture with Ctrl accidentally capturing allied units. Area commands now correctly skip allies.
• Fixed (potentially) Alt+Set Target increasingly snapping to the wrong unit in multiplayer games with many units on the map, even when the cursor was on the intended target.
• Fixed Shurikens and other EMP units being unable to manually target Brimstone. The ship's slightly negative float height on water maps was incorrectly flagged as underwater.

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Balance: Legion, Carriers, Community Patch

• Legion balance changes and bugfixes (#7003)
• Updated February 2026 Community Balance Patch - see full changelog
• Scav balance patch - see full changelog

Carrier rework: Carrier behaviour received a significant overhaul. Drones no longer gain health as the carrier earns veterancy XP. They no longer decay and die while airborne as long as the carrier is alive. The Set Target command now works correctly on ground positions, letting you direct drones to a specific area. Carriers built from a factory now start with an initial complement of drones rather than launching empty. Drone range has been tightened to their actual stated ranges, closing a range extension exploit.

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For Contributors and Developers

• CONTRIBUTING.md added - a formal code contribution guide is now in the repository, covering how to contribute, and including an AI/LLM disclosure section in PR templates (#5994)
• Lux Package Manager introduced (#6005)
• Unit test bootstrapping work (#5902)
• Removed the now-superseded "Disable custom widgets" modoption, fully replaced by the Unit Control widget modoption from last month
• g:UnitAutoTargetRange artificial callin added
• Helper utilities table.keys and table.ensureTable added to the Lua library
• Translations updated via Transifex

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