Squad Update 10.6 Brings a New Party System, Smarter Compass, and Major Performance Overhaul

Offworld Industries has released Update 10.6 for Squad, focused on quality-of-life systems, a new social feature, and a sweeping performance pass across the game's art and UI.

Party System Finally Arrives

The headline feature is a new Party System that lets players group up in the main menu before deploying together. Parties can include up to nine players for PvP servers or five for Fireteam missions. Leaders can lock or unlock party access, manage members through new social tools (add, remove, block, kick, mute, promote), and use in-menu voice chat that switches over to normal squad/proximity VOIP once in a match.

When a party loads into a server, its members are automatically placed into their own in-game squad, with the party leader becoming squad leader. These auto-created squads default to "unlocked" so other players can still fill empty slots. If the leader switches servers, the whole party follows automatically. Server owners also get new admin tools and an updated queue system to curb team-stacking.

Compass and Observation Markers

Squad communication gets an upgrade with a new "Observe Marker" that any squad member can drop, visible only to their own squad as a blue circle on the compass. Markers have a set duration and cooldown to prevent spam, and placing one triggers the same hand gesture already used for leader markers.

Map Vote Rebalancing

To cut down on repetitive rounds, new servers will default to tighter map-vote rules: three faction choices instead of six, longer cooldowns before a faction (5 rounds) or faction unit (4 rounds) can reappear, and maps now need two rounds to pass before repeating instead of one. Existing servers keep their current settings unless owners manually opt in.

Performance and Visual Overhaul

This update includes one of the largest art-asset replacements in Squad's history. Most Eastern European biome foliage has been reworked, foliage now uses voxelized representations at distance for better occlusion, and many textures have moved to a virtual texture system to reduce VRAM use. Clouds, volumetric fog, and lighting setups were also retuned for performance. Combined, these changes may let Offworld lower the official VRAM recommendation from 6GB to 4GB pending further testing.

Yehorivka is the first map to use Unreal Engine 5's World Partition level-streaming system, cutting memory usage by roughly 1GB on top of foliage-related savings. Known issues include occasional texture swapping and missing rocks at a distance, both already slated for fixes.

The UI has also been migrated to a new backend to eliminate the legacy menu's persistent VRAM footprint, though some visual rough edges — overlapping elements, misaligned text — are expected short-term.

Gameplay and Suppression Tweaks

Based on community feedback, suppression has been reworked: shots need to land within 3 meters to suppress effectively, suppression's camera punch has been reduced by 80%, and bullet-snap audio was toned down so it no longer drowns out directional gunfire cues. Suppression now blocks breath-holding but not scope zoom.

Other notable fixes include:

• Turret surfing — riding a vehicle's turret at speed — is no longer possible.
• Vehicles getting stuck on street clutter and curbs has been largely fixed.
• HABs now include a built-in ammo crate.
• Downed soldiers see a revive progress bar.
• Players can aim down sights immediately after being revived.
• AT mine detonation delay was shortened so fast vehicles can no longer outrun them.

Faction and Weapon Adjustments

Several factions received kit corrections, including fixed magazine counts for Iranian Crewmen/Pilots, added binoculars for IMF's LAT 03 kit, and corrected USMC Armored Battlegroup setups on Fallujah and Mutaha. US Army battlegroups now use full-auto M4A1 rifles instead of burst-fire M4s, while USMC Combined Arms units switch to M27 rifles. Bolt-action rifles (Mosin, Lee Enfield, SKS) no longer incorrectly retain a chambered round when reloading, and the AK-12's sights were widened for better visibility.

Also Fixed

Update 10.6 resolves numerous smaller issues: VOIP dropping out due to Windows audio enhancements or server queue pop-ups, incorrect vehicle wreck materials, collision problems on Al Basrah, Harju, and Tallil, and a bug that let players shoot through a rock wall on Harju. A highly experimental branch adding HOTAS and TrackIR support for helicopter pilots is also available separately for community testing.