The game
A front line, and everything it takes to hold one
Frontlines is a first-person, 50 v 50 war. One side wins by pushing its territory across the map, and territory only exists where players have built it, supplied it and kept it connected.
01 / The front
One line, and it moves
Each army starts at a naval base on its own side of the map. Territory grows outward from there along a chain of forward operating bases, and the edge of that territory is the front.
Work in progress- A forward base is a radio. It only counts while it is within link range of another connected radio, all the way back to the naval base.
- Kill a link radio and the chain is cut: every base beyond it stops holding ground until the link is restored.
- Strongpoints across the map are held by whoever’s territory covers them.
- A match opens with a staging phase, can end in a breakthrough countdown, and is capped at four hours. Afterwards you watch the front replay from first move to last.
02 / Logistics
The war is won in the back of a truck
There are two supplies, build and ammunition, and both start in the yard at your main base. Players load them, drive them and unload them into a forward base’s store.
Work in progress- A radio needs build supply delivered before it becomes an established base at all.
- Everything a base does draws from its own store: construction, rearming its guns, and the team’s support strikes.
- Convoys are targets. An army that cannot protect its roads cannot hold its front.
03 / Building
Fortify by hand
Inside a forward base’s radius, players place fortifications from the build menu and shovel them to completion.
- Hesco walls, sandbags, wire and ditches to shape the approach.
- Watchtowers, ammunition crates, aid stations and supply depots to keep the base working.
- Bunkers with doors that lock, and breaching charges that open doors, walls, wire and radios, loudly or quietly.
04 / Fire support
Crewed guns and called strikes
Emplaced weapons are built, manned and rearmed by players. Bigger effects are bought with the supply your team hauled forward.
Work in progress- Machine guns, launchers and anti-aircraft guns fire directly. Mortars and howitzers fire indirectly on a computed solution.
- Spotters mark targets and call for fire; gun crews answer.
- The fire-support screen offers UAV sweeps, supply drops, smoke, mortar and artillery barrages, electronic warfare, naval gunfire, close air support and cruise missiles, each with a price in build supply.
05 / Infantry
Modular weapons, real consequences
Weapons are assembled from parts at the gunsmith. Rounds are simulated in flight, and what they hit matters.
Work in progress- Several kinds of round per calibre, with drop, penetration and ricochet.
- Damage by body part, armour that stops what it is rated for, bleeding, and a downed state your squad can bring you back from.
- A grid inventory, a persistent stash, a shop and a gunsmith. You deploy with exactly the kit you equipped.
- Die and your kit drops with you. Someone will pick it up.
06 / Vehicles
A motor pool of your own
Trucks, transports, armoured carriers, tanks, helicopters and boats. Team vehicles come from the depot; your own come from your garage.
Work in progress- Buy vehicles with the cash you earn, fit modules, choose the ammunition load and pack the hold.
- Separate pools for ground, sea and air, which grow as you drive, sail and fly.
- Insure a vehicle and losing it means a wait, not a write-off.
07 / Progression
Skills, not classes
Nobody picks a role, and nothing is locked behind a level. You get better at what you actually do.
- Every skill levels from use: driving, building, shooting each kind of weapon, hauling, and the rest.
- Anything the quartermaster or the depot sells can be bought by anyone with the cash.
- On ranked servers your skills, cash, stash and garage are kept centrally. Community servers are unranked: issued kit, nothing kept.
08 / Squads
Six to a squad
Squads of six share a radio beacon, take on reconnaissance tasks together and spawn close to each other.
Work in progress- Spawn free at the main base, the carrier or your squad’s beacon. Spawning at a forward base costs your own cash, more the nearer it is to the front.
- Recon pays: spotting marks, and intel tasks such as recovering a drone or photographing an enemy base.
- Stretchers and casualty evacuation for the ones worth carrying back.
- Join with a Steam party and you land on the same side, in the same squad.
The battlefield
Grand Gulf
Two naval bases, a gulf between them and eighteen strongpoints to fight over.
Development
What is done and what is next
Frontlines is in development. The roadmap says where each part stands.