The ground goes smooth

September 24, 2026 · feature

Since the first sortie, the islands of the Brick Sea have been built in steps: every hill a staircase of twelve-metre blocks, every beach a ledge. It was charming from the air and it was all wrong at ground level. Today the ground goes smooth — in the air game, on the naval map, across the steppe and all along the Brick Gulf.

Hills you can read

The island rolls now. Meadows swell into ridges, ridges climb to bare scree and snow on the peaks, and the coast runs down into sandy beaches that slide under the water instead of stopping at a ledge. The highway follows every ridge and dip on its way across the island, and carries on out over the sea on its timber trestles.

Down low, it changes how you fly. A valley is a valley: you can drop into one, follow it round a hill, and pop out over the next ridge with the ground right where it looks like it is. When you clip a hillside now, it's the hillside you saw.

A crimson fighter banking low over rolling green hills, a paved road winding across them to a sandy beach, a timber bridge running out over the sea to a battleship at anchor — Smooth country: rolling hills down to the beach, the highway running every ridge to the bridge.

A furball of fighters trading fire inside the golden Sky Ring, the island spread out far below with its lake, its roads and its hills — The Sky Ring furball, with the whole island rolling out beneath it.

Tanks on real ground

On the Brick Steppe the change is bigger still. A tank sits on the dirt it's driving over, and it sits the way a tank should: nose up as it grinds up a rise, rocking over the crest, rolling as it crosses a slope. The turret keeps the gun laid on your aim whatever the hull is doing underneath it.

Your gunsight is back down at the turret, where the gun is. It used to ride well above the tank so it could see past the steps in the old ground — now there are no steps, and your eye sits just over the turret roof. That makes the folds of the steppe matter: back your Paladin off a crest until only the turret shows and you're hull-down for real, with a gun over the lip and the hull hidden behind the ground.

The fighting holds its pace — kills and hits come about as often as they always have — but the ground between you and the enemy is finally ground you can use.

A tank climbing a smooth grassy rise on the steppe, tufts of tall grass and half-buried boulders on the slope, bare earth and stone on the crest above — Every rise is a position. Whatever waits past that crest can't see the Paladin yet.

A tank firing across the open steppe at a treeline, rolling hills behind the woods, grass tufts and boulders scattered over the ground — Gun duels across the open steppe, rolling hills behind the treelines.

Islands for captains

At sea, the islands have shores now: beaches that shelve down under the water, and headlands that stand a little higher than the stepped ones did. They're better cover — a battleship hiding behind an island is hidden a little more, and a salvo that skims the shoreline bursts on it. Plan your runs round them.

A destroyer under way on the Brick Gulf with the conning HUD live, a sister ship ahead among the low islands and an enemy hull burning to starboard — Putting to sea on the Brick Gulf, low islands and their beaches all around.

Painted, on High-fidelity graphics

Switch on Settings → High-fidelity graphics on a desktop and the ground gets painted: meadow grass and sun-bleached steppe, packed earth where the grass gives out, scree on the steep flanks, sand on the beaches and snow on the peaks, all blending into each other the way ground does. Up close you'll see the grain of it under your tracks. The classic look keeps its clean painted relief, and phones keep the lean look they were tuned for.

A tank nosed out from the edge of an oak wood in late-afternoon light, the trees throwing long shadows across the grassy steppe, a smooth hill rising behind — Late sun on the painted steppe, and a Paladin waiting where the oaks end.

See you over the hills.