Pioneers,
Every turret on your train has been rebuilt. Forty-seven turrets you can build, eleven families, up to three levels each, and not one of them looks like its neighbor any more.
While we were in there we wrote down where they all came from. Some of it doesn't reflect well on anybody.
Cannons: the first idea, and then five more
Something came down the line. Somebody pointed a tube at it. That worked, so the tube stayed.
Then something turned up further away, and we got the mortar. Then something turned up bigger, and we got the howitzer. Then something had the nerve to turn up in the air, and we got the flak cannon. The field gun is for when you want it dead flat and immediately. The grenade launcher is for when you'd like it to go round the corner first.
The autocannon came last, built for a driver who didn't want to choose. It still hasn't: every level is the same pair of pipes, just bigger each time.
Six cannons. Every one of them exists because the last one was busy.
Throwers: eight arguments about temperature
The flamethrower was obvious. Fire fixes most things out here.
Then we met something that enjoyed fire, so we built the cryo thrower. Then we froze something we needed intact, so we built the incinerator cannon to thaw it. The frost cannon is the cryo thrower after a long complaint about range. The thermal lance is for when you want a hole rather than a mess.
The water thrower, and we want to be clear about this, was originally there to put out the other four. The steam burst was a boiler accident that worked so well we drew it up properly afterwards. Nobody has admitted whose boiler it was.
Missiles: somebody kept saying "more"
The rocket pod started out with five tubes, which felt like plenty.
It wasn't plenty. Level 2 hangs a second pod off the other side, for ten. Level 3 props a third pod up in the middle and bolts a pair of wings between them, for fifteen, and looks very pleased with itself.
The swarm launcher heard the whole argument and packed nine tubes into every pod: nine, eighteen, twenty-seven. It won. It has not been gracious about it.
The guided missile is for the ones who dodge. The cryo missile is for the ones who dodge a lot. The thermobaric rocket is for when you've stopped caring which one it was.
Menders: yes, that's a cannon, and yes, it heals
The mender beam repairs a car you're standing beside. Sensible.
The mender cannon exists because somebody needed to repair a car they weren't standing beside. Still sensible.
The mender rocket exists because somebody wanted to repair a car on a different train, over a hill, and would not be talked out of it. It works. We've stopped asking questions.
Harvesters: four ways to take something that isn't yours
The harpoon is for what's running away. The mining laser is for what's stuck to a rock. The siphon beam is for when you'd rather not touch it.
The harvester cannon is for when asking nicely has already failed.
Mines, and the two guns that think they're enough
Mines are for the ones who follow you home. There are five kinds, and which kind is best is a conversation that has never once reached an ending.
The spread family has two guns and swears it will never need a third. You point it at everything in front of you and pull. What would you even add?
What upgrading looks like now
A Level 1 is one barrel doing its best.
Level 2 is the moment one barrel stopped being enough. Sometimes that's a second barrel strapped beside the first, or above it, or set back so the crew stop elbowing each other. Sometimes it's the same barrel, just bigger, until people take a step backwards.
Level 3 is where it gets silly, and correctly so. Three in a triangle. Three in a row. Three stacked. A gatling drum. Or one bore you could lose a hat in.
The railgun took the other route and just kept adding rails. Two at Level 1, three braced in triangles at Level 2, four and a ring round the end at Level 3. At that point it's less a gun than a statement.
Every gun got its own mouth this time, too: bells, funnels, a two-stage horn, a scoop, a needle nozzle. No two weapons share one, so you can tell them apart from the business end.
The pad grows another course of stone at every level. That isn't decoration. The recoil kept driving the old one through the roof.
One upgrade, and you can see it land
Upgrading got simpler as well. There's one upgrade now, and it's the turret. The weapon and the ammo come up with it, so there's nothing else to buy and nothing to forget.
And the shots show it. Every round shifts colour as its turret climbs, and a single barrel's round grows with the barrel. A Level 3 railgun slug is a good deal more slug than it used to be.
Two old friends are back
The flak cannon and the swarm launcher are buildable again. We'd benched them while we chased a crash, and our prime suspect was their ammunition.
Every shell they fired split into more shells, and those split again. At Level 3, one shot could end up as twenty-seven, all doing their own sums in flight. So nothing splits now. The flak cannon still bursts, it just does it with one shell, and the swarm launcher's rockets are ordinary rockets. There are twenty-seven of them now, but at least each one stays one.
What's next: nine of everything
Once the min-maxing update is out, the goal is at least nine turret types in every family.
Some families are most of the way there. The throwers are on eight and still arguing. Others have further to go. The EMP family is two guns and a great deal of ambition. And the spread family, which swore a few paragraphs ago that it would never need a third, has been told.
One thing still catching up
The build icons in the menu are still drawing the old guns. They'll catch up. Until they do, if an icon and the thing on your roof disagree, believe the roof.
Go and build a few, Pioneers. Put three different families on one car and walk down the side of it. That's the view all of this was for.