It came to our attention that the letter we sent to our contributor team about ongoing talks with a potential publisher partnership has been shared publicly without our authorisation. The document is real. We had been planning to make a proper public announcement if the contract is signed and we could coordinate the rollout with the publisher, but since excerpts are now making rounds, it makes sense to put the main facts on the record directly so the conversation can be based on accurate information instead of selective quoting.

Together with the other admins we have been working on negotiating a deal with Hooded Horse, a publisher specialising in strategy games. You probably have heard about them, their catalogue includes Manor Lords, Old World, Terra Invicta, Against the Storm, HOMM: Olden Era, and a long list of others in the genre. They have a strong reputation among developers for being hands-off on creative direction and unusually transparent about how they operate which is why we figured out it might be interesting to see what’s possible to build together. 

Why we wanted this

The partnership got real traction on our side because of what it actually unlocks. Parts of BAR have been hard to push forward under a fully volunteer setup. Some areas just struggle to attract volunteer interest because they aren't the most exciting work to do in your spare time. Others need a level of coordination, scheduling and team hierarchy that's extremely difficult to achieve in a hobbyist team, where everyone contributes on their own pace, on their own terms. Both categories have been very obvious bottlenecks for years.

Securing funding could help us alleviate these hurdles. We can hire dedicated people for the work that needs sustained focus, fill the gaps that volunteer enthusiasm doesn't naturally cover, and put proper full-time coordination on parts of the project where production milestones depend on it. The result is a Steam release with much bigger scope, on a shorter timeline, than we could realistically pull off ourselves.

This also opens up real job opportunities for our existing contributors. Many of the people who have been building BAR on evenings and weekends for years are exactly the right people for the paid roles that come out of this deal. We are committed to giving existing contributors hiring preference, and the goal is for as many of them as possible to be able to carry their careers forward with BAR rather than treat it as a permanent side project. For people who've poured serious time into this game, that's a meaningful shift.

The whole point of the partnership, on our side, is to push BAR much further than we've been able to so far, and to give as many of the people who built it the chance to keep building it, this time on a real budget. However, marrying the community-driven soul of this project with commercial incentives required serious work to make sure nothing about what makes BAR what it is today gets taken away. We have done that work. 

What's protected

• BAR remains available for free. BAR remains available for free. This has been our consistent promise through the years and we are keeping it. The free multiplayer experience you are enjoying today will be available both through the existing BAR website launcher (as it is today) and on Steam, with full feature parity and cross-play. Nothing currently free becomes paid. The monetisation is based on premium single-player content built on top of it, whose costs will be covered by the funding.
• No IP transfer. BAR's brand, trademarks and intellectual property stay with the BAR team and the contributors who built it. The publisher gets the licence to distribute the game on Steam and help with proper marketing to give the title the powerful launch it deserves.
• Off-ramp built in. If the partnership is ever terminated for whatever reason, the free version stays free and the community keeps developing it. The free version isn't tied to the publishing relationship continuing.
• Reinvestment commitment. A binding internal commitment makes sure most of what BAR receives flows back into the project (development, infrastructure, contributor support, content) rather than getting siphoned out as company profit.

 

Where we are

The contract isn't signed yet. We're discussing the offer with full disclosure to our contributor team, including a sentiment survey, before signing. The only way we see ourselves steering the project in this way is by making sure there is a strong mandate from our beloved team. 

What's next

If the mandate is clear we will proceed with the signing and then a full public announcement will follow. We are excited to share what we have been working on with the Hooded Horse team. We will make that announcement properly and will give it the treatment it deserves

If you have questions or concerns, bring them to us and try to not rely on third-party framing/potentially doctored versions aimed to cause harm. We will be reading and responding where we can, and a fuller picture will follow shortly.

Thank you for your attention and continued trust, 

The BAR Admin Team

I saw a recent post here asking for an "air bridge" feature that would continually move units from one point to another, so I made a quick tutorial showing how to do this with tools already built into the game!

Hey ya'll. I got my friends into BAR and the more we play the less I feel like I'm getting better enough to continue playing. A single easy barbAI can beat all 3 of us without almost any effort. I've spent the last 3 days watching video after video and haven't had even the slightest improvement, so I'm caving and asking directly for help.

I like artillery, always have in most games. I love the idea of raining hellfire down from the comfort of my base. I picked the arty team after playing the other team for a few games. My goal was always to tech up to tier 2 quickly to get the fun arty out. This never happens, at least not "quickly". Unless 20 min is "quick" in a 3v1.

I also don't believe a "build order" is something that can be really followed but I have been starting almost every game with.

metal -> metal -> 2 wind -> 3rd metal -> lab/factory. After this, I'm usually getting attacked and everything spirals out of control and I die. With the lab I'll produce 1 con unit, then a few of the quick basic unit which I'll try to form a front line with, but the AI usually has arty units by this point and outranges whatever I try to put out. So my units die before they can even engage.

Since it's a bunch, I'm just going to bullet point what I THINK are my issues.

• I can't seem to figure out resources to save my life. I'm either way over or don't have enough to build anything. I use wind when the winds are high, solar when they're not
• I have no idea when to build storage. I'm ALWAYS building. But I never remember storage.
• I hit tier 2 between 18 to 30 min depending on if I get picked first by the AI or not. That seems like forever in a 3v1.
• I have absolutely no idea what units to build (a bit of an explanation at the end). If the Ai builds X do I build Y?
• When should I be pushing out for more metal? I've tried building 3 con units (between units for defense) and went out for more metal nodes right away and every time, the Ai just waltz's over with arty units and kills everything outside it's range. I can't afford to stick my own arty over there cause I never have the metal for it by this time.
• When I do hit tier 2, I send my first Con unit to upgrade all the metal, second one starts building reactors.

Please, any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm really bummed that we have something to play together and I'm so bad that I'm slowing losing the enjoyment and I'll be honest, I'm relatively desperate to have something for us to play together again. Even if I can see some improvement in my gameplay, it'll help. I don't have to go for gold right off the bat.

Also, as a relatively new player. These units look so similar it's nigh impossible for me to tell what the hell I'm looking at or about to build without extra time taken to stare at the unit. Why does everything look so similar?

(Releases 2026.03.21 – 2026.05.05)

Commanders! Unless you have been living under a rock, (and honestly if so, I envy you), you have probably already heard about the potential partnership with Hooded Horse that the Admin Team and I have been cooking up.

We plan to make some proper announcements about that soon, but for now, we have addressed what leaked from our internal comms with the contributors. We hope you can separate the wheat from the chaff when parsing the controversy.

Tim, Hooded Horse’s CEO, has also said hi in our subreddit and explained a bit more about the things we are cooking together. Give it a read and say hi too!

Now, in some actual gamer news, let’s see what we’ve got from the last month (and a bit) of BAR development!

✨ Visual Overhaul: New Effects

This period saw a major push on next-gen GL4 visual effects, bringing the game significantly closer to a modern visual standard:

• Build Particles – Are now energy cube shaped with varying size/speeds and noise/brightness. Particles now also home in towards the target when moved.
• Death Fire & Smoke – Exploding unit-pieces now burst into proper fire and smoke trails + using the same effect crashing aircraft trails.
• Beam Lasers – Beam lasers received a complete visual rework: traveling pulse effect. Handles moving origin/target fadeout better: no longer displays beams for each fadeout step.
• Plasma Cannon Projectiles – Plasma projectiles now use a new multi-billboard rendering approach with improved noise, size calculations
• Missile Thruster/Trails – Missiles now have their thrusters properly attached to their missile models, previously they were limited to 30 fps, trails are still limited but can be positioned more correctly instead of starting in front of the missile models!
• Shield Effects – Shields received visual enhancements and now only show when in (air) LoS (bugfix).
• SSAO – Improved quality, more pronounced and wont render on top of grass/particles! (+fix for AMD cards)
• Bloom Shader – Enhanced overall and wont overbright as easy
• Brakelights – Vehicles now have dynamic brake lights that illuminate when decelerating.
• Metal/Geothermal Spots - when under water these are no longer distorted
• Grass - bends when walking on top of it

Misc Visual Fixes

• FFA anonymouse team colors are now all the same when you are (becoming) spectator
• Commander name tags, healthbars, rank icons, group number, wait and energy icons are no longer affected by game lighting/effects
• LOS view remains the same after LuaUI reload
• Added measures to prevent white-outed ui elements

⚔️ Gameplay Changes

EasyTax 2.0

The Easy Sharing Tax modoption has been completely overhauled. Key changes:

• 30% tax applies when sending resources, overflowing resources, assisting ally construction, or inserting metal into partly reclaimed wrecks for resurrection.
• Combat unit transfers remain free.
• Economy buildings/factories given to allies are now stunned for 30 seconds instead of being blocked outright.
• Builder units (including commanders and rezbots) given to allies have their buildspeed set to 0 for 30 seconds — they can still move and start builds, just can't make progress unassisted.
• Commanders can now be shared.
• Partially built units still can't be given (except for mex/geo upgrades or taking over a dead ally).

General:

• Napalm & Acid on Water - Napalm and acid weapons now create damaging area effects when hitting water or lava (not void). Areas on water have half duration. Submarines are immune to area damage.
• Lab Reclaim Refund - When a factory is reclaimed by you or an ally while producing a unit, the metal already spent on that unit is now refunded. No more losing that partially-built Titan's worth of metal.
• Map Lava - Lava now damages aircraft inside it as well, and also damages features (wrecks/rocks) that have no metal value. Also when hit: lava no longer displays water splashes!
• Area Attack Limiter - Prevents excessive area-of-effect spam (lag) by limiting how many area-attack commands can be issued in a short period. Bombers are excluded.
• Bomber No Air Target - Prevents bombers from targeting air units, fixing an edge case where bombers could be ordered onto air in unexpected ways.
• Fixed turret re-aiming behavior for several units including Garp and Pincer, aligning turret rotation speeds with their actual body turn rates.
• Cluster plasma projectiles now use shield radius when calculating deflection, instead of using a fixed value.

Misc Fixes

• EMP units can now manually target floating labs.
• Reclaim/resurrect progress bars are now hidden under fog of war.
• Transport + transportees are killed on the same frame (preventing stragglers).
• Overpen no longer breaks early on a dead unit or invalid feature.
• Area DoTs now use the largest of the area radius or the target's collision radius for hit detection.
• Preventing some self-flanking bonus cases

⚖️ Balance

Universal Brakerate & Sightdistance Patch

• Brakerate set to a minimum of 90 elmos/s² for vehicles (helps artillery stop cleanly at firing range) and 180 for radar/jammer bots.
• Sightdistance minimum set to 330 for vehicles, 380 for bots (except crawling bombs at 260). This notably improves Centurions, Fiends, rocket bots, cons, and some artillery.
• Legion also received brakerate/sightdistance treatment in a follow-up patch, matching the same standards applied to Armada and Cortex. See dedicated post for details: https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/697141979892416512/1500902036625952828

Misc Balance news:

• The Community Balance Modoption has been updated! See the tweaks the players came up with!
• Legion Balance Patch - read the full breakdown.

🖥️ UI & Quality of Life

New Widgets

• Unit Repeat Icons – Displays icons on units that have Repeat mode active.
• Unit Fire State Icons – Displays icons indicating a unit's current fire state (for Hold Fire and Return Fire).

PiP Improvements

• All PiP (Picture-in-Picture Minimap) keybinds are now fully configurable
• ALT+scroll now required to zoom in PiP (configurable), preventing accidental zoom.
• Activity tracking: smoother zoom and less aggressive zoom-in.
• Multiple bug fixes: shift-queuing, command queue, camera move, radar wobble accuracy, unit taken/transferred events.

Home Grid Prioritizes Advanced Labs & Gantries

The build grid home screen now puts Advanced Labs and T3 Gantries in the priority first row for advanced constructors, hover cons, and seaplane cons — ensuring they're always accessible regardless of how many items are in the build list.

ETA Timer for Feature Reclaim/Resurrect

Units reclaiming or resurrecting features (wrecks, rocks) now display an ETA timer, matching the behavior already present for building construction.

Total Buildpower in Info Card

The unit info card now shows a unit's total buildpower for builders, formatted in shorthand (e.g., 18.5k).

Restructured Restriction Modoptions

• New modoption: No Sea Units – bans all sea units.
• "No Tech 2" no longer also removes Tech 3.
• Removed the broken "No Defenses" option (to be re-thought).

keybinds

• Open chat and type /set_camera_anchor [index] then move the camera and
• type /focus_camera_anchor [index] to recall the saved camera state.
• fov [number] - Set Field of View to [number] or 45 degrees
• fov_inc [number] - Increase Field of View [number] or 5 degrees
• fov_dec [number] - Decrease Field of View [number] or 5 degrees

🎵 Music

• Objective Unfurled by Leon Devereux (menu track)
• Three Raptor tracks from West Basinger: Bioweapon, Adaptation, Biomass Reclamation.
• April Fools 2026 – Community remix submissions from the last "Call to Arms" event were added to the game as special event music.

Hello,

Following the announcement, i have read 2 conflicting versions concerning muliplayer

1- Multiplayer will stay free only Single player will be paid

2-Matchmaking will be on the paid version

im newish player and i would like to know if i will be able to keep playing bar for free otherwise i don't feel like investing so much time into it if i won't be able to keep playing after steam release.
Thank you

So I'm now chev 3, and already put a lotta hours into the game in the past week+.

I've had 3 games precisely where the randos are super chill, patient, fun, and just looking for a good time. I've even been fortunate enough to make some friends in the UK (USA based here) that have experience and were thrilled to show me the ropes and offer advice.

However, that's about where the good experiences have ended. Outside of those 3 isolated incidents, the majority of the experience playing this game with real people has been a terrible experience. Experiences that my two new UK buddies with hundreds of hours of play have stated is very common.

I come from League of Legends, Overwatch, AoE2, and other games where toxicity reigns supreme, but the experiences I've had in BAR take the cake. There is SO MUCH hatred toward new players, so much impatience and intolerance.

Today alone, I was;
- Forced spectator because one of the teammates buddies wanted tech but I was just earlier in the pick order (not to mention the guy didn't say anything, so I had no idea he wanted tech or that there was an issue at all).
- In another lobby, I asked why the boss chose to play with different settings and one guy said "lobby leaders choice, if you don't like it just skip the lobby." When I replied, "The attitude isn't necessary? I was just curious" and called him condescending, I was banned out of the lobby.
- Was ENDLESSLY flamed in a 8v8 game mid match because, as a new player, I was expected to extrapolate what "just make spam" means (as the individual continued to spam that same message 10 more times like I understood what it meant.) while also trying to deal with the fact that my troll lane neighbor made SIX t1 radar jammers then dc'd. When getting stressed over being expected to know what "make spam" meant and stating that if I was doing something wrong they should have told me what to do different, I was called an entitled little shit.

This doesn't even cover the other toxicity I've experienced.

I'm really not trying to stir the pot or cause issues, and I want to learn and be better at the game! I grew up on Command & Conquer games, the Halo Wars games, Age of Empires, and WH40 Dawn of War, and so on.

Finding BAR was so awesome, but now I can't even get my buddies to play it again with me because they;ve all had similar experiences and were put off by it. I can't blame them, I don't expect any NEW player to continuously subject themselves to a playerbase that, while some are super fun and cool, others are just so polarizingly opposite of cool.

Is this an issue in the game? What have your experiences been if so?
Do you think this contributes to new players being gatekept out of a game that is genuinely SO FUN?

I just got gifted a copy of Tempest Rising from a friend's Humble Choice. No money was harmed in the making of this story.

I was looking forward to giving it a spin; classic Command and Conquer vibes, base building, single player campaign - all that good nostalgia stuff.

And yet.

The controls are just so frustrating. All the units just move to where you click. All of them. Then if there's an enemy nearby some of them will just run off to fight on their own. You can't line your infantry up in front of your tanks without ordering each guy individually to stand in a particular spot, and then once an enemy turns up they'll just go running off anyway!

This lack of fine control is compounded by there being multiple units even in the early campaign that do area damage. Have fun individually ordering your infantry to avoid rubbing into that flamethrower! Oh, and of course, units can only move OR shoot.

Oh, and per-unit abilities. Man. I do not miss those! Am I playing a MOBA or an RTS? Every damn unit has a special ability or combat mode, which just compounds how unwieldy everything is.

The UI is also frustrating. No range indicators on anything, except for some abilities - but only when you mouse over the ability button when you have selected that particular unit - or for when you're placing turrets. But once they are placed? Nah. No indicators of enemy ranges at all.

The resource model and base building are just different, and that's fine - but BAR's UI and control interface has made it so hard to enjoy other RTS games no matter what else the game might offer D:

Has anyone managed to overcome this pain to enjoy other RTS titles?

Idk about u but I like my energy in place and not moving up and down cuz of inconsistent winds. But I feel like id be behind a min or 2 cuz of building. What do u guys think? I like to calculate my energy and converters just the way I like it.

it is so hilarious. i (ZjadlemKota) was banned from lobby for a nickname by catlover. FYI this nick translates to 'I ate a cat' and its just a miningless nickname

For example. Im pushing thugs on front early and opponent is microing rocket bots. I cant hit them so i back up and they keep creeping forward and i back up more. I dont know how to handle this.