In the demo launch announcement of 15 June 2026 the developer set out the quality-of-life features and was careful not to oversell them: “Some of them are quite unique to the genre, but overall, the set is pretty ordinary. That doesn’t mean there will be different ones in the full game later. It means that these specific ones exist and they are the way they are.” Here is the list, with what each is worth knowing for.
Moving a placement ghost. “You’ve already marked where to deploy the ’heavy vehicle’, but don’t want to search for the exact one or drag the camera far away? No problem! Select the phantom itself and move it.” You are not stuck with a deployment marker once you have placed it, and you do not need to find the vehicle again to change your mind.
Correcting a bomber in flight. “When you select a tactical ability from the left panel, you call in a bomber. After you set the bombing direction, you can adjust the bomber’s flight path post-targeting.” This one is genuinely unusual: an air strike is not committed the moment you order it.
Attack priorities. “Units have preferred target types. If a tank spots a priority target within its line of sight, it will switch to that target.” He calls this “fairly common”, and it is — but it matters here because damage in this game is so target-specific. An armour-piercing shell does 40 more to vehicles and 30 less to infantry, so a unit choosing its own target is a unit choosing which of its numbers applies.
Drag movement. “Movement with direction by pressing rmb creates a formation in which units are automatically distributed in rows and in a line. To arrange them in rows, you need a lot of them.” Given a game about battalions rather than squads, this is the ordinary way to move an army, not an advanced trick.
Selecting across the whole map. This is the one to remember. “When you double click on an object, you select all objects of that type on the screen. But in Dust Front, you can disable a screen limiter and select objects this way across the entire map. It really helps when you don’t have a control group and don’t feel like searching for buildings all over the map.” Double-click selection that is not limited to what is visible is rare, and on a base with buildings placed in long connected rows it is exactly what you need.
Control groups on a second key. “You also can create control groups by pressing a ’T + number’, not only left control.” A small thing, and the kind of small thing that decides whether you use control groups at all.
All quotations from the demo launch announcement of 15 June 2026, archived in this repository.
Values read from game files · version 23882143