Indiefields: Battlefield-Like EA-Dislike

Ladies and gentlemen, after 20 years of development, and after 24 years of rock 'n’ roll time, we've got a present for ya. The moment we've all been waiting for.

12 years of beta testing has led us to this: Renegade X 1.0.

This is the full release of Renegade X; the last major iteration of this fan-made passion project is here. And we are releasing it on Renegade’s birthday. The spiritual successor to C&C Renegade, that FPS/RTS hidden gem we loved, has arrived. Command & Conquer lives on.

Graphics look old as hell, they are, but the core gameplay is really fun and has benefited from a core playerbase that has evolved the game balance and mechanics over quite a few years.

Definitely worth a download!

If you have never heard of Angels Fall First or even if you have seen it mentioned in passing, please give it a second chance, or a first chance!

The idea isn't radically new, it is a space and ground combined arms battlefield type game but the thing is the gameplay is really good, the vehicles are really good. There is a lot of variation and depth to the combat, this game really deserves a closer look and while the playerbase is small the bots actually play really really well.

Honestly I think this game is worth $17 even if you only ever play against bots by yourself while listening to something or with a friend. Angels Fall First is FANTASTIC!

This is a decent guide https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=643737733 but overall the gameplay is pretty intuitive, bots can be ordered around easily and are quite good at following you and helping.

I am VERY excited for this update!

ReviveJointOps is a fan-powered rebirth of the classic FPS Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising, rebuilt for 2026 and beyond.

Featuring the all-new expansion JO:TAC, we've modernized the game, boosted its features, and reignited the community.

No NovaWorld, no installation hassle — just a sleek launcher, auto stats, Discord integration, and global competition. Jump in and relive the battlefield with hundreds of players.

Empires is a really fun, quite old source mod where a commander on each team plays a sort of RTS and the rest of each team pilots all the vehicles and captures objectives. The graphics are outdated sure, but it is quite fun and development is fairly mature on the game.

Changelog:
Features

    Major overhaul to the visibility system that drives the networked information used by the mini-map (and in-game visibility of entities).
        For more information see the detailed write-up here. https://www.empiresmod.com/posts/visibility-system-overhaul/
    Updated the resource income display on the HUD and mini-map:
        Resource delta and income values now show up to two decimal places when appropriate (e.g. a refinery output of 1.75 will now display as-is, instead of rounding to 1.8).
        Decimal places are hidden entirely if the value is a whole number.
        Slightly increased the width of the top-right HUD panel to accommodate the extra digits.
        Resource delta now uses a moving average of changes over the last 1 second, instead of displaying changes instantly and clearing them after 1 second. This change was made in response to player feedback that the numbers were updating too frequently and were distracting.

Bugfixes

    Fixed a server crash relating to the command vehicle being unexpectedly removed.
    Fixed a server crash relating to maps that spawn buildings without an initial team being set.
    Fixed a bug with capture points awarding victory to the incorrect team.
    Fixed a problem with ablative armor’s HUD icon. The VTF texture file became corrupt due to an issue in the build pipeline that publishes the game.
    Fixed a bug where the Biological Machine Gun’s damage-over-time effect was being unintentionally reduced by armor angle modifiers.

Script/Game Balance
Infantry Weapons

    SMG3 (NF Heavy Carbine)
        Damage reduced from 32 to 30
        Minimal Damage reduced from 18 to 14
        FalloffEnd reduced from 10000 to 5000
        Clip Size increased from 12 to 14
        Reduced overall accuracy

Vehicle Armors

    Adjusted the angle modifier range from 0–45° to 0–60°. Damage now decreases more gradually, reaching the full reduction only at impact angles greater than 60°. The modifier is used by all armor types, most notably Deflective armor.
    Regenerative
        Increased Regeneration from 3/s to 4/s
    Absorbant
        Increased Speed to Damage Reduction from -0.00007 to -0.0001
    Capacitive
        Reduced Damage to Heat from 0.05 to 0.02
        Reduced Speed to Damage Modifier from 0.000035 to 0 Ablative
        Increased Damage to Heat from 0 to 0.01
            This is something all armors have, it was forgotten until now
    Deflective
        Reduced Angle Modifier Damage Reduction from 1 to 0.8

Vehicle Engines

    Engine heat from driving input is now only applied if handbrake is off and the vehicle is moving.
        This has been changed to combat Fission engine cooling being applied while stationary. (Handbrake or driving against walls etc.)
    Fission
        Reduced Heat at Max from -4 to -3
    Bio Diesel
        Increased Cooling by 0.25
    3 Phase
        Reduced Heat Output at Max from 4 to 3

Vehicle Weapons

    Nuclear Warhead
        Increased Weight from 150 to 180
        Increased Heat from 75 to 100
    Railgun
        Added armor penetration. 20% of damage will ignore armor. (Calculated after damage multipliers and armor resistances.)
    Salvo Homing Missiles
        Heat from 5 to 4

Other changes

    Explosions that apply heat or biological damage-over-time now reduce effects based on distance to the explosion (falloff).
    Reduced the rate at which the repair station repairs the armor and hull of command vehicles.
        Reduced Repair Station Repair (Hull) from 75 to 5
        Reduced Repair Station Repair (Armor) from 0.25 to 0.02
```5

Well, that first test has now been and gone. And the consensus? Despite performance issues related to memory leaks and other developmental nasties, an "overwhelming amount of players" showed up to see what's been cooking for the past year and a half. But we only have to jump into the comments to see that a good chunk of the paying playerbase is far from thrilled.

...

For those calling it "dead" and having moved onto Battlefield, that's fine. Your PC can handle it. Battlebit, in my honest opinion, is the alternative big-battle FPS simulator for those whose rigs can't keep up with the modern multiplayer shooter. Even with the refreshed graphics, Battlebit's minimum requirements still support the GTX 970 GPU. Once the kinks are ironed out, anyway. That's one that celebrated its tenth anniversary last year. Professor Oak would be giving it a Pikachu if he could. The second-hand market has it for less than the price of the game, for goodness sake.

With more playtests planned subsequent weekends from here on out, keep getting those reports in if you're dying for this low-poly Battlefield rival to live to fight another day.

What I don't understand is why isn't mod support a primary goal of development of Battlebit? I have been harsh on the devs of this game before and whatever they probably don't need any more negativity from rando internet people but to be honest they have demonstrated that they don't understand how to do gun and game mechanic balance right with the battlefield-like formula. I typically like more ""realistic"" shooters just because they aren't so frantic, but I can dig this kind of arcade fun if there is actually a diversity of competitive playstyles.... which there wasn't. There was smg/medic/rpg players and other people roleplaying as less useful classes... This would actually be TOTALLY fine if the Battlebit developers prioritized adding mod support so custom servers and gamemodes could proliferate and the community could organically find the most fun gun balance settings, Battlebit is fun to play competitively when things come together no doubt about that but the success of the game isn't dependent on it being perfectly suited to try-hard overly serious players. **In my opinion the developers turn the poor gun balance/game mechanics balance issue from a minor one into an existential one by not prioritizing mod support.

TL;DR People love Battlebit, let them help fix it and build it out in new directions.

🎉 Easy Red 2 turns 5! 🎂 To celebrate its 5th anniversary, the game just received its biggest update ever! 🚀

Since the beginning of this year, we’ve been hard at work improving all base game campaigns, reworking dozens of weapons, vehicles, animations, and sounds, adding tons of new uniforms, and polishing the core gameplay to give Easy Red 2 a fresh, modern look and feel. 💥

This marks a major milestone for Easy Red 2, right on its 5th birthday since launch on Steam. 🕹️

Have you tried it?

This gameplay has narration, but not a lot of youtubers seem to give OHD good coverage and I think this actually gives a good idea of what the game feels like to play as a somewhat newer player (not calling the youtube creator a newb, they are just playing OHD with an approachable vibe).

You get ambushed a lot, things happen very fast, but also the gun recoil isn't balanced to require you to be an ultimate try hard to get kills, any gun is competitive at pretty much any range.

Yes when you die from being shot out of nowhere you don't get a killcam that reveals where the player was that got you, but that also means that when you are sneaky and get a clever position that you don't immediately get revealed the second you actually get somebody.

In short, just because vanilla Operation Harsh Doorstop gameplay is semi-realistic doesn't actually make it a hardcore game to me. In my opinion this kind of game is FAR easier to jump into than more "accessible" arcadey shooters like Apex Legends, Counter Strike or Call Of Duty games where there is a dizzying range of very specifically balanced weapons that need to be employed in certain situations to be effective or else you get steamrolled and they all have purposefully obtuse gun recoil that you have to wildly try to keep under control to get kills because you need tons of bullets to get a kill.

Nope, in OHD you just point and shoot, you only need 1-3 bullets, so you don't need to master the game to win engagements against sweaty players, you just need to be smarter and more aware than they are. Even if you flub it and miss your shots, the suppression mechanics make it so the enemy player will still have been negatively impacted giving you another chance to press your advantage.

Also sniping is a blast with the realistic bullet trajectory/mechanics!

Anyways, to summarize I am posting this video because I think it demonstrates how fun Operation Harsh Doorstop is despite appearing like it is some tryhard milsim with no fun and all military roleplaying vibes. By the end, this youtuber is a bit frustrated, but you can also see that most of the time when things didn't work out it isn't because he wasn't sweaty enough, it was because he wasn't paying attention.

Edit Also, OHD is moddable, the Casualfield workshop mod makes OHD much more into a Call Of Duty or vanilla Battlefield like game with killcams, more arcadey health and gun recoil etc... So this isn't just a sem-realistic game, it is a modding platform!

From the devs of Rising Storm series

'83 is a 40v40 squad based, objective focused online tactical first person shooter set in a Cold-War-Gone-Hot scenario. It's designed with 'accessible realism' for the most enjoyable, but still hardcore experience that gets you to the action fast, without losing the lethality of war.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1059220/83/

C&C "inspired", awesome for a free game!

Some good tank action! I think this showcases gameplay of Easy Red 2 well.

I am going to start posting good example gameplay videos from indiefields to give a better idea of how these games feel in moment to moment gameplay.

I will start with my favorite game in the genre right now, Operation Hash Doorstop!

My intention is the opposite of posting cinematic trailers, I am going to post normal gameplay videos that feel as authentic to playing the game as possible to give a good window into them.

I was pretty negative about this game in a recent comment thread but I don't think it deserves the negative feedback of being abandoned and there is undoubtedly a lot of potential.

I hope they dunk on critics like me and make it better, it is at minimum a game to watch and is an approachable salient benchmark to discuss the indiefield genre from.

As much as I rag on this game, it blew a massive hole in the idea that the only way to make a battlefield-like game successful was big budget cinematic gameplay with eyebleeding graphics and I respect that.

I wouldn't write off Battlebit, I am willing to be proven wrong and heck this is WORLDS better than dealing with EA's bullshit, so go for it, check this game out!