The build radius was one circle. Now every building brings its own.

One circle, and the map decided how much of it you got

Until today, building worked the way it does in most base builders: a circle around the command centre, and everything you put down had to stand inside it.

That sounds fair until the map disagrees. Drop your command centre next to a cliff and half the circle is rock. Steep ground inside the circle is unbuildable too, so the usable area shrinks again. Two players start with the same radius and get a very different amount of ground, decided before either of them gave an order.

Now every building brings its own

From this build, every finished building opens a build area of its own: half its own width plus thirty metres. The command centre is a building like any other - it has no special circle anymore.

The consequence is the interesting part. If the ground in front of you is unusable, you can put a cheap building at the edge of what you have, and its area carries you past the obstacle. A base can grow around a mountain instead of losing the ground behind it.

Construction sites count for nothing. A building has to be finished and standing before it opens anything.

Walls are the exception - twice

Walls and turrets do not open an area. If they did, you could chain walls across the entire map, one segment at a time, and the whole rule would be worth nothing.

In exchange they may be placed up to twenty-five metres outside your areas. That is enough for a proper wall line that stands in front of the base instead of on top of it, and far too little to walk a wall to the other side of the map.

One surface, one outline

Twenty buildings mean twenty overlapping circles, and drawing them as circles is unreadable: translucent discs darken each other where they overlap, and every rim cuts through its neighbours.

So the game draws the union instead - one surface with one outline, following the ground. When you place a wall or a turret, a second, fainter outline appears twenty-five metres further out. Everything inside the line is yours to build on. There is nothing else to learn.

Same rule for the AI

The opponent builds by the same rule and gets no exception, which is the standard this game holds itself to everywhere: same starting money, same catalogue, same costs.

Iron Command is a classic base-building RTS in the spirit of Command & Conquer and Dune 2 - on your monitor, or from inside the battlefield in VR. Coming spring 2027. If this sounds like your thing, the wishlist button is right up there.