What’s new in The Rust Sovereigns v1.9.0
THE RUST SOVEREIGNS — CHANGELOG
v1.9.0 — September 6, 2026
- BREADCRUMBS. With a stack selected, moving the pointer over the map lays out the road it would take — every step it will spend movement on, with the destination marked larger. The path is worked out with the same search the march itself uses, so what you see is what will happen.
- THE CHRONICLE. The Realm tab now opens with the ledger of every sovereign drawn season by season, so an age can be read as a shape rather than a number: who rose, who stalled, and when. It carries a written label for a screen reader.
- Every season now records a line — holds, ledger and power for each sovereign — which is saved with the game.
v1.8.0 — September 6, 2026
- A COVER. Opening the game now lands on the front of the box — the title, a line about the waste, and New game, Resume and How to play — over a scene drawn on a canvas rather than shipped as a picture, so the installed package and the single file show the same cover.
- Return to cover on the end plate, so an age can be closed without reloading.
- Resume on the cover names the season it will put you back into, and reaches the quick save if there is no autosave.
- A pinned seed (#seed=NNN) or #play opens the charter directly, so a shared link still goes where it points.
- Panels opened over the cover — How to play in particular — were drawn behind it and could not be used.
v1.7.0 — September 6, 2026
- A SETTINGS section in the controls column, kept in its own storage key so it outlives any one game: high contrast (stronger ink and panels, and brighter hex outlines on the board), advance to the next unit when a stack runs out of movement, and a warning before ending a season while units still have movement.
- A full screen button.
- The warning before ending a season happens in the page — the button changes to "End season anyway" for a few seconds — rather than in a browser dialog.
- Sound and volume are remembered with the other settings instead of resetting each time the game is opened.
v1.6.0 — September 6, 2026
- SAVE SLOTS AND QUICK SAVE. Three named slots in the Game section, each showing the sovereign and the season it holds, plus a quick save on Q and a quick load on Shift+Q. The autosave at the end of every season is unchanged and keeps its own key.
- Resume from the charter now offers itself whenever any save exists, not only the autosave.
- Saving and loading go through one pair of routines, so every slot behaves the same and a storage refusal is reported the same way wherever it happens.
v1.5.0 — September 6, 2026
- UNDO. Anything you do in a season can be taken back — a move, a march, an attack, founding a hold, binding a reactor, casting a protocol, a build order, a research choice, and every envoy approach. The button in the Game section names what it will undo; the U key and Ctrl+Z do the same.
- Up to twelve steps are kept. Ending the season clears them: a season, once ended, stands.
- Undo restores the random state along with everything else, so a battle refought after an undo goes exactly as it did the first time. Taking something back is not a way to reroll the dice.
v1.4.0 — September 6, 2026
- SOUND. Ten effects — a switch thrown, boots on grit, blows landing, a unit falling, charge poured into a protocol, a reactor coming on the bus, a hold founded, the season turning, and the two ends of an age. Every one is synthesized from plain waveforms and noise by tools/sounds.js, so the game carries no sampled audio at all.
- A Sound button and an effects volume slider in the Game section of the controls column. Sound waits for your first click or keypress, as browsers require, and going quiet is a choice the game respects rather than a failure it hides.
- The package plays the WAV files it ships in sounds/; the single self-contained file plays the same bytes embedded in itself.
v1.3.0 — September 6, 2026
- DIFFICULTY. Four levels on the charter — Lenient, Even, Harsh and Merciless — each explained in a line where you choose it, and named in the masthead while you play. The level changes only what the computer sovereigns are given: their income, how large a host they keep, how soon they march and how readily they treat. The rules the human plays by never change.
- The masthead now carries the level alongside the season.
v1.2.0 — September 6, 2026
- DIPLOMACY. Sovereigns who have met can hail one another over the same bus that carries their power. The Envoys section of the controls column shows every rival you have met, how they regard you, and any truce that stands. You may offer a truce, send gold, or break a truce you no longer want.
- Truces are binding: striking a sovereign you are at truce with breaks it first, costs you heavily with the wronged party, and is heard by every other sovereign in the waste.
- Computer sovereigns treat as well: a builder losing a war sues for peace, a seeker close to the Long Broadcast buys quiet with gold, a raider hails nobody, and any sovereign who outgrows a truce tears it up.
- A refused truce now says who refused and why, instead of failing silently.
v1.1.0 — September 6, 2026
- A minimap of both planes in the information column: known ground, holds in their sovereign's colour, bound reactors, shafts, and a box showing what the glass is looking at. Click either plane to travel there.
- Computer sovereigns now go to a war footing: once the host outweighs a rival hold they stop grabbing sites and converge on it, and they press the assault when the ring around it is strong enough.
- A sovereign of the seeker temper now pursues the Long Broadcast: it hunts reactors of doctrines it still lacks, researches the Broadcast once four are bound, opens the SURGE breaker to lift the cap, and hoards every watt until it can pour the 400 charge.
- A sovereign that binds a reactor now stands on it for a few seasons instead of walking away, which ends the re-bind war that used to fill the log.
- Ages now end in three different ways rather than always on the ledger: across twenty measured campaigns, fourteen ledger, three by conquest and three by the Long Broadcast (previously twelve of twelve on the ledger).
v1.0.2 — September 6, 2026
- On a narrow screen the whole page now scrolls and the columns stack in the order map, controls, information; on screens under 1200px wide the two columns are narrower so the map keeps its room.
- On a phone the two columns were short scroll boxes that hid most of the controls: the Switchboard, hold orders, research and casting and the Save game buttons could only be reached by scrolling inside a 138-pixel window.
v1.0.1 — September 5, 2026
- The two columns are now information on the LEFT (Ground, Protocols, Realm, Log tabs) and controls on the RIGHT (orders, the Switchboard, hold build orders, research and casting, Save game / New game).
- Battle protocols that need a target now use an inline target picker on the battle plate instead of a browser dialog.
- Computer sovereigns now know of rival holds near their own and cross planes by shaft to hunt the last rivals.
v1.0.0 — September 5, 2026
- Initial Tronsoft Games release.
- Two-plane hex world (Surface and Undercity) with shafts, reactors and ruins under fog of war.
- The Charter: 11 picks across five doctrines, nine traits and five factions.
- The Switchboard: STORE, STUDY and SURGE breakers over one power bus.
- 44 protocols, 24 unit types, 11 buildings.
- Stack battles in rounds on a battle plate with battle casting and retreat.
- Three roads to victory: conquest, the Long Broadcast, the ledger at season 150.
- Computer sovereigns with three tempers.
- Mouse, keyboard and touch controls; zoom and pan; phone layout; autosave.
v1.9.0 — September 6, 2026
- BREADCRUMBS. With a stack selected, moving the pointer over the map lays out the road it would take — every step it will spend movement on, with the destination marked larger. The path is worked out with the same search the march itself uses, so what you see is what will happen.
- THE CHRONICLE. The Realm tab now opens with the ledger of every sovereign drawn season by season, so an age can be read as a shape rather than a number: who rose, who stalled, and when. It carries a written label for a screen reader.
- Every season now records a line — holds, ledger and power for each sovereign — which is saved with the game.
v1.8.0 — September 6, 2026
- A COVER. Opening the game now lands on the front of the box — the title, a line about the waste, and New game, Resume and How to play — over a scene drawn on a canvas rather than shipped as a picture, so the installed package and the single file show the same cover.
- Return to cover on the end plate, so an age can be closed without reloading.
- Resume on the cover names the season it will put you back into, and reaches the quick save if there is no autosave.
- A pinned seed (#seed=NNN) or #play opens the charter directly, so a shared link still goes where it points.
- Panels opened over the cover — How to play in particular — were drawn behind it and could not be used.
v1.7.0 — September 6, 2026
- A SETTINGS section in the controls column, kept in its own storage key so it outlives any one game: high contrast (stronger ink and panels, and brighter hex outlines on the board), advance to the next unit when a stack runs out of movement, and a warning before ending a season while units still have movement.
- A full screen button.
- The warning before ending a season happens in the page — the button changes to "End season anyway" for a few seconds — rather than in a browser dialog.
- Sound and volume are remembered with the other settings instead of resetting each time the game is opened.
v1.6.0 — September 6, 2026
- SAVE SLOTS AND QUICK SAVE. Three named slots in the Game section, each showing the sovereign and the season it holds, plus a quick save on Q and a quick load on Shift+Q. The autosave at the end of every season is unchanged and keeps its own key.
- Resume from the charter now offers itself whenever any save exists, not only the autosave.
- Saving and loading go through one pair of routines, so every slot behaves the same and a storage refusal is reported the same way wherever it happens.
v1.5.0 — September 6, 2026
- UNDO. Anything you do in a season can be taken back — a move, a march, an attack, founding a hold, binding a reactor, casting a protocol, a build order, a research choice, and every envoy approach. The button in the Game section names what it will undo; the U key and Ctrl+Z do the same.
- Up to twelve steps are kept. Ending the season clears them: a season, once ended, stands.
- Undo restores the random state along with everything else, so a battle refought after an undo goes exactly as it did the first time. Taking something back is not a way to reroll the dice.
v1.4.0 — September 6, 2026
- SOUND. Ten effects — a switch thrown, boots on grit, blows landing, a unit falling, charge poured into a protocol, a reactor coming on the bus, a hold founded, the season turning, and the two ends of an age. Every one is synthesized from plain waveforms and noise by tools/sounds.js, so the game carries no sampled audio at all.
- A Sound button and an effects volume slider in the Game section of the controls column. Sound waits for your first click or keypress, as browsers require, and going quiet is a choice the game respects rather than a failure it hides.
- The package plays the WAV files it ships in sounds/; the single self-contained file plays the same bytes embedded in itself.
v1.3.0 — September 6, 2026
- DIFFICULTY. Four levels on the charter — Lenient, Even, Harsh and Merciless — each explained in a line where you choose it, and named in the masthead while you play. The level changes only what the computer sovereigns are given: their income, how large a host they keep, how soon they march and how readily they treat. The rules the human plays by never change.
- The masthead now carries the level alongside the season.
v1.2.0 — September 6, 2026
- DIPLOMACY. Sovereigns who have met can hail one another over the same bus that carries their power. The Envoys section of the controls column shows every rival you have met, how they regard you, and any truce that stands. You may offer a truce, send gold, or break a truce you no longer want.
- Truces are binding: striking a sovereign you are at truce with breaks it first, costs you heavily with the wronged party, and is heard by every other sovereign in the waste.
- Computer sovereigns treat as well: a builder losing a war sues for peace, a seeker close to the Long Broadcast buys quiet with gold, a raider hails nobody, and any sovereign who outgrows a truce tears it up.
- A refused truce now says who refused and why, instead of failing silently.
v1.1.0 — September 6, 2026
- A minimap of both planes in the information column: known ground, holds in their sovereign's colour, bound reactors, shafts, and a box showing what the glass is looking at. Click either plane to travel there.
- Computer sovereigns now go to a war footing: once the host outweighs a rival hold they stop grabbing sites and converge on it, and they press the assault when the ring around it is strong enough.
- A sovereign of the seeker temper now pursues the Long Broadcast: it hunts reactors of doctrines it still lacks, researches the Broadcast once four are bound, opens the SURGE breaker to lift the cap, and hoards every watt until it can pour the 400 charge.
- A sovereign that binds a reactor now stands on it for a few seasons instead of walking away, which ends the re-bind war that used to fill the log.
- Ages now end in three different ways rather than always on the ledger: across twenty measured campaigns, fourteen ledger, three by conquest and three by the Long Broadcast (previously twelve of twelve on the ledger).
v1.0.2 — September 6, 2026
- On a narrow screen the whole page now scrolls and the columns stack in the order map, controls, information; on screens under 1200px wide the two columns are narrower so the map keeps its room.
- On a phone the two columns were short scroll boxes that hid most of the controls: the Switchboard, hold orders, research and casting and the Save game buttons could only be reached by scrolling inside a 138-pixel window.
v1.0.1 — September 5, 2026
- The two columns are now information on the LEFT (Ground, Protocols, Realm, Log tabs) and controls on the RIGHT (orders, the Switchboard, hold build orders, research and casting, Save game / New game).
- Battle protocols that need a target now use an inline target picker on the battle plate instead of a browser dialog.
- Computer sovereigns now know of rival holds near their own and cross planes by shaft to hunt the last rivals.
v1.0.0 — September 5, 2026
- Initial Tronsoft Games release.
- Two-plane hex world (Surface and Undercity) with shafts, reactors and ruins under fog of war.
- The Charter: 11 picks across five doctrines, nine traits and five factions.
- The Switchboard: STORE, STUDY and SURGE breakers over one power bus.
- 44 protocols, 24 unit types, 11 buildings.
- Stack battles in rounds on a battle plate with battle casting and retreat.
- Three roads to victory: conquest, the Long Broadcast, the ledger at season 150.
- Computer sovereigns with three tempers.
- Mouse, keyboard and touch controls; zoom and pan; phone layout; autosave.
- Genre
- Game
- Developer
- Tronsoft Games
- Engine
- Standard
- Version
- 1.9.0
