What’s new in The Rust Sovereigns v1.19.0
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.
v1.19.0 — September 6, 2026
- THE FIELD BOOK. The help plate is now a reference to the whole game: pages for Units, Buildings, Protocols and Terrain, with a search across all of them. Every page is read out of the same tables the rules play by, so it cannot fall out of date the way a written manual can — and a summon that carries no description of its own is described by what it summons.
- How to play is the first page of the field book rather than the whole of it.
v1.18.0 — September 6, 2026
- HEROES. A Wanderer is no longer one more counter: it arrives with a name of its own — Vess the Ashwalker, Corwin Rustbane — drawn from the same seeded stream as the age, never sharing a name with another hero in the same age, and it is called by that name everywhere the game speaks of it.
- A hero learns faster and further than a soldier: it is the better for a single fight where a soldier needs two, and rises to the fifth rank where a soldier stops at the third. The age hears of a hero rising.
- A hero may take service with whoever clears a ruin — rarely, and worth more than the salvage.
v1.17.0 — September 6, 2026
- EVENTS. The waste is not still: a dust storm that halts every host in the open, a bound reactor flaring and banking charge, refugees arriving at a hold, a find in the rubble, raiders out of the waste falling on an outlying hold, and blight in the fields. They come from the same seeded stream as everything else, so a season replays exactly, and you hear of yours in the season report.
v1.16.0 — September 6, 2026
- THE SEASON REPORT. When a season turns, a short account of what came of it: what changed in your holds, your power and your ledger, and the lines from the log that concern you — your own business and what the whole waste heard, never a rival's private affairs. A quiet season says so.
- The report can be dismissed for good from the plate itself, or switched in Settings.
v1.15.1 — September 6, 2026
- The window title now carries the version as well — "The Rust Sovereigns v1.15.1" — so the browser tab, the masthead and the cover all agree on which build is open.
v1.15.0 — September 6, 2026
- ALLIANCES. Sworn word, one step beyond a truce: neither sovereign strikes the other, and each sees where the other's holds stand — not the whole map, only what is theirs. An alliance must be earned: a truce kept first, and standing enough that they think well of you. A raider keeps its own counsel unless you have done a great deal for it.
- Computer sovereigns swear with a sovereign they already keep a truce with when someone bigger is on the board, and sworn sovereigns march at the same enemy rather than picking their own.
- Forswearing an alliance costs far more standing than breaking a truce, with every sovereign in the waste hearing of it.
- The Envoys panel names who is sworn and offers to forswear rather than merely break a truce.
v1.14.0 — September 6, 2026
- SIEGE, which the manual has described since the first release but the game did not have. A hold's Wall no longer helps its garrison if the attackers bring a siege unit, and the battle plate says the wall is breached. Sappers carry the siege flag, and any sovereign with a Workshop can raise the new WALL BREAKER.
- Computer sovereigns raise a siege engine when the rival they have a grudge against sits behind a wall.
- YIELDING. A computer sovereign reduced to a single hold with no host left, facing a neighbour five times its strength, now yields: its hold and people change hands and the age is told. A human sovereign is never made to yield, and nobody yields to a sovereign they are at truce with.
- The manual described a siege flag that no unit carried. The game now does what the manual said.
v1.13.0 — September 6, 2026
- THE HUM OF THE BUS. Not a tune: three detuned oscillators through a slow-sweeping filter, the drone of a working power bus, synthesized live rather than shipped as a file. It opens up as the power on your bus grows, so binding a reactor is something you hear. Off by default, with its own switch and volume beside the effects.
- Sound now has two volumes, effects and hum, both remembered with the other settings.
v1.12.0 — September 6, 2026
- SCENARIOS. Five set situations on the charter, each a fixed world with one thing wrong with it: The Last Reactor (every Surface reactor already bound by a rival, horizon at 120), The Undercity Gambit (every sovereign begins below), A Short War (two sovereigns, sixty seasons, twice the guardians), Race for the Broadcast (six sovereigns, every rival a seeker), and a free age with every dial in your hands.
- A scenario settles the seed, the size of the age, the difficulty and the horizon, and briefs you where you choose it. The masthead names the scenario and its own horizon while you play.
- The horizon is now a property of the game rather than a fixed number, so a scenario can end an age early.
v1.11.0 — September 6, 2026
- HOTSEAT. Up to four sovereigns can share one screen. Each drafts their own charter in turn before the age begins — the charter says whose seat it is, and the seed and the size of the age are settled by the first — and each keeps their own fog, holds and protocols.
- A pass-the-table screen between seats: the board stays covered until the next sovereign says they are ready, so nobody reads a rival's map over their shoulder. The season turns only after the last seat has ended it.
- A sovereign's name is now taken per seat rather than only for the first player.
v1.10.0 — September 6, 2026
- CAPTIONS. A setting that writes down what the game just said out loud — a reactor coming on the bus, blows landing, the season turning — for anyone playing without sound. The line is announced politely to a screen reader as well.
- SAVES FROM OLDER VERSIONS NOW OPEN. A game saved before truces, the chronicle or difficulty existed was missing those parts and crashed the moment a season turned. Such a save is now filled in with sane defaults, stamped with the current format, and the game says what it filled in. Nothing already in the save is disturbed.
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, 25 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.
v1.19.0 — September 6, 2026
- THE FIELD BOOK. The help plate is now a reference to the whole game: pages for Units, Buildings, Protocols and Terrain, with a search across all of them. Every page is read out of the same tables the rules play by, so it cannot fall out of date the way a written manual can — and a summon that carries no description of its own is described by what it summons.
- How to play is the first page of the field book rather than the whole of it.
v1.18.0 — September 6, 2026
- HEROES. A Wanderer is no longer one more counter: it arrives with a name of its own — Vess the Ashwalker, Corwin Rustbane — drawn from the same seeded stream as the age, never sharing a name with another hero in the same age, and it is called by that name everywhere the game speaks of it.
- A hero learns faster and further than a soldier: it is the better for a single fight where a soldier needs two, and rises to the fifth rank where a soldier stops at the third. The age hears of a hero rising.
- A hero may take service with whoever clears a ruin — rarely, and worth more than the salvage.
v1.17.0 — September 6, 2026
- EVENTS. The waste is not still: a dust storm that halts every host in the open, a bound reactor flaring and banking charge, refugees arriving at a hold, a find in the rubble, raiders out of the waste falling on an outlying hold, and blight in the fields. They come from the same seeded stream as everything else, so a season replays exactly, and you hear of yours in the season report.
v1.16.0 — September 6, 2026
- THE SEASON REPORT. When a season turns, a short account of what came of it: what changed in your holds, your power and your ledger, and the lines from the log that concern you — your own business and what the whole waste heard, never a rival's private affairs. A quiet season says so.
- The report can be dismissed for good from the plate itself, or switched in Settings.
v1.15.1 — September 6, 2026
- The window title now carries the version as well — "The Rust Sovereigns v1.15.1" — so the browser tab, the masthead and the cover all agree on which build is open.
v1.15.0 — September 6, 2026
- ALLIANCES. Sworn word, one step beyond a truce: neither sovereign strikes the other, and each sees where the other's holds stand — not the whole map, only what is theirs. An alliance must be earned: a truce kept first, and standing enough that they think well of you. A raider keeps its own counsel unless you have done a great deal for it.
- Computer sovereigns swear with a sovereign they already keep a truce with when someone bigger is on the board, and sworn sovereigns march at the same enemy rather than picking their own.
- Forswearing an alliance costs far more standing than breaking a truce, with every sovereign in the waste hearing of it.
- The Envoys panel names who is sworn and offers to forswear rather than merely break a truce.
v1.14.0 — September 6, 2026
- SIEGE, which the manual has described since the first release but the game did not have. A hold's Wall no longer helps its garrison if the attackers bring a siege unit, and the battle plate says the wall is breached. Sappers carry the siege flag, and any sovereign with a Workshop can raise the new WALL BREAKER.
- Computer sovereigns raise a siege engine when the rival they have a grudge against sits behind a wall.
- YIELDING. A computer sovereign reduced to a single hold with no host left, facing a neighbour five times its strength, now yields: its hold and people change hands and the age is told. A human sovereign is never made to yield, and nobody yields to a sovereign they are at truce with.
- The manual described a siege flag that no unit carried. The game now does what the manual said.
v1.13.0 — September 6, 2026
- THE HUM OF THE BUS. Not a tune: three detuned oscillators through a slow-sweeping filter, the drone of a working power bus, synthesized live rather than shipped as a file. It opens up as the power on your bus grows, so binding a reactor is something you hear. Off by default, with its own switch and volume beside the effects.
- Sound now has two volumes, effects and hum, both remembered with the other settings.
v1.12.0 — September 6, 2026
- SCENARIOS. Five set situations on the charter, each a fixed world with one thing wrong with it: The Last Reactor (every Surface reactor already bound by a rival, horizon at 120), The Undercity Gambit (every sovereign begins below), A Short War (two sovereigns, sixty seasons, twice the guardians), Race for the Broadcast (six sovereigns, every rival a seeker), and a free age with every dial in your hands.
- A scenario settles the seed, the size of the age, the difficulty and the horizon, and briefs you where you choose it. The masthead names the scenario and its own horizon while you play.
- The horizon is now a property of the game rather than a fixed number, so a scenario can end an age early.
v1.11.0 — September 6, 2026
- HOTSEAT. Up to four sovereigns can share one screen. Each drafts their own charter in turn before the age begins — the charter says whose seat it is, and the seed and the size of the age are settled by the first — and each keeps their own fog, holds and protocols.
- A pass-the-table screen between seats: the board stays covered until the next sovereign says they are ready, so nobody reads a rival's map over their shoulder. The season turns only after the last seat has ended it.
- A sovereign's name is now taken per seat rather than only for the first player.
v1.10.0 — September 6, 2026
- CAPTIONS. A setting that writes down what the game just said out loud — a reactor coming on the bus, blows landing, the season turning — for anyone playing without sound. The line is announced politely to a screen reader as well.
- SAVES FROM OLDER VERSIONS NOW OPEN. A game saved before truces, the chronicle or difficulty existed was missing those parts and crashed the moment a season turned. Such a save is now filled in with sane defaults, stamped with the current format, and the game says what it filled in. Nothing already in the save is disturbed.
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, 25 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
- 1.19.0
