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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The effectiveness of chaff increases dramatically when you are flying perpendicular to the incoming missile, or the incoming radar. For Command Guided missiles though, you will want to be perpendicular to the radar, since the missile itself has no sensors.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Made a little HP bar as a debug tool to visualize how countermeasures affect missiles, but I think I'll leave it as an option. It's kind of ugly though, and if I leave it I should probably make it look a little nicer.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Now that it actually matters, the question is how bad is the R-3R supposed to be?

A bunch of MiG-21 shooting missiles at each other.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

With the AI starting to fire radar guided missiles, I'm learning a lot about how bad the R-3Rs are. I never really put any thought into its stats since the AI couldn't fire it anyway. Apparently the missile was slow enough that the proximity fuze would blow up the launching jet half the time.

MiG-21 from Tiny Combat Arena carrying 4 R-3Rs.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The side effects of this goofy system are really neat. The biggest one being that other planes dropping chaff unrelated to anything you're doing can cloud up and sort of "jam" the environment. It's even possible that chaff you dropped a little bit earlier can muck up even your own missiles.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I really tried to make it work, but I think chaff is just going to function similar to flares and I'll leave it at that. It's a tried and true, and very predictable system. There's a reason pretty much everybody, including most real sims/wargames, do it that way instead my bubbles idea.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I have a couple more ideas I want to try, but I have a concrete fallback plan in case nothing really works out.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Unfortunately the way this works is kind of counter-intuitive, and it makes evading radar missiles work in almost exactly the opposite way I was intending. E.g. flying perpendicular to a target is basically the worst thing you can do here, since it reduces the chance of chaff blocking a radar.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Going through the list of essential features I think are needed before a main branch patch, one of them being chaff for the radar missiles. I've had this idea in the back of my head for years now, of treating chaff as this line of sight blocker for missiles, but it doesn't really work in practice.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

0.18.2.1 is now available on the Tester's branch. A full suite of missions with a variety of targets are now available in Instant Action Strike. The old island has been removed from Instant Action now that it's obsolete.

store.steampowered.com

Tiny Combat Arena - 0.18.2.1 is available on the Tester's branch - Steam News

A full suite of missions with a variety of targets are now available in Instant Action Strike. The old island has been removed from Instant Action now that it's obsolete.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

What used to be called the Sand Island (WIP) map is now just the Sand Island map, with an updated thumbnail and description. It's kind of a big milestone! For now, the old Arena Demo mission on the old island remains, but further Arena missions are to come.

The map selection screen showing only the Sand Island map.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Finished filling out the rest of the instant action missions for the new island map, which is now becoming THE island map!

The "Island SAM Complex" strike mission features up to three SAM sites over open ocean.

Dive bombing on the "Kudamaki" target, which is a military base on a peninsula of the big island.

Tanks driving down a coastal road to attack a base.

The bridge with various radio towers in the distance.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Was digging through some old footage and found the dev footage of the procedural runway markings the game has.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Been filling out the Instant Action Strike missions. Each strike mission has some themed target like e.g. bunkers which require iron bombs to destroy or a big garrison. Once all these get done, the old placeholder island map can be removed from instant action entirely.

The targets are the big fuel tanks, defended by an SA-2.

The targets are three hardened bunkers, which up to two ground groups defending.

The target is all the hangars on the airfield, but it's defended by two SAM sites.

The targets are the various garrison buildings on the base.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

The loadout is 2 Shrikes, 2 Mk82 (Airburst), and 2 AIM-82s. It's meant to be fast and light, since speed and maneuverability are what you want when ducking behind the cover of terrain against SAM sites.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena of the AV8B with the loadout in the post. The "Shrikes" are still WIP and for now are just reusing the AIM-7 model.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I was looking for a good "SAM Hunting" loadout and was going to use cluster bombs for the "clean up" but they looked kinda awkward and heavy. Then I remembered that I added airburst bombs specifically for dealing area damage to soft targets and just two of them worked out perfectly!

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Patch 0.18.1.1 is now available on the Tester's branch of Tiny Combat Arena. The SA-2 and its radar guided missile is the big feature of this patch, along with a reworked Instant Action Strike mode (currently only fully featured on a single base) that supports the new island map.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena of an SA-2 flying towards the camera just after the booster has separated.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Platoon of M60s advancing against a bunch of APCs while an Abrams is firing on T-62 at the rear defensive live.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

There's still some work to be done with spawning the ground formations. Right now it's done procedurally, which doesn't account for terrain or water restrictions. There's also still a separate code path necessary for spawning SAM sites, since they are somewhat unusual vehicles in their operation.

The southern airbase from Tiny Combat Arena on the "New Island" map.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

The options for aircraft wings and ground formations are now dynamic in the instant action Strike menu based on the mission as defined in the map's JSON data. The menu also finally properly handles a map with no strike missions.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I fixed a crash where if you alt tabbed while in photo mode, and then tabbed back into the game, and had a joystick plugged in, but you did NOT have a gamepad plugged in.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

SAM sites are done, now they need to be integrated into the rest of the game. As part of that process, instant action is getting another pass, which means the new island is getting a whole host of new strike missions.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena showing the AV8B bombing big spherical fuel tanks.

AV8B strafing some tanks on a beach with the cannon.

T-62 taking pot shots at an F-5 over the Garrison target.

Dogfight over the southern base with the big protected harbors. An F-5 just ate a missile to the face from a MiG-23.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Simple, but obvious in hindsight solution to just showing both. Just use a subtitle for when you want to add an alternate name to something. For modders, there's a new property so they can add subtitles to their objects too.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena's database showing the new subtitle text on database object names.

SA-9
9M31 Strela-1

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Running into a funny problem right now where I can't decide if I want to use the NATO names or Russian names for various Russian missiles. I don't really have room for both, but I want to standardize on one. I tend to prefer NATO names for SAM (e.g. SA-2), but Russian for A-A (e.g. R-27).

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

It's the chase camera, nothing new about it.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Taking out the radar will disable the SAM site and any missiles already in the air. Getting close enough to do so, can be risky. At both long and very short range, you can outmaneuver the SA-2s. At medium range though, you'll need to either terrain mask or fly nap of the earth.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

They look so much more legit when you put the big tracks under them.

SA-2 site in Tiny Combat Arena with a low poly funny looking version of the big tracks that these sites are known for.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

The trails already have a "jitter" added to them to give the effect of turbulent air pushing them around even if they fly perfect straight, but yeah this makes the trails even more interesting looking.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

While digging through various test scenes for reference I found the prototype map that the game started on. This is from 2020 and it's where all the earliest parts of TCA were built from.

Green very polygonal island. I think this was first created for the final version of what would be called Tiny Combat Legacy, but the new project that became Tiny Combat Arena started on this. You can see this island in the earliest TCA footage on YT.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

SA-2s are wiggly. This was something I wanted to add because of the source videos showing it. Basically it adds noise to the control inputs.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

The SA-2 itself has been having its stats tweaked as I've been working on it. I want the SA-2 to be pretty scary, and keep your head down, so while the missiles are big and slow, they hit hard with a proximity fuze and a huge warhead. It doesn't have to hit you to destroy your plane!

Screenshot of Tiny Combat Arena of an F-5 that has already taken critical damage, about to get obliterated by a second SA-2 just off its left wing.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

The missiles are now using a more correct "Command" style guidance, with the radar directing the missiles. The missiles depend on the radar for guidance. If the radar is lost, the missiles lose guidance. If the radar switches targets, it'll try to redirect missiles already in the air if possible.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Added an option for turrets to need to align to azimuth only to handle the case for missile launchers which don't necessarily aim the missile at the target. For this launcher, even if the target is very low, it elevates to a minimum of 25 degrees to avoid the missile hitting the ground.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena of two SA-2 batteries. Three of the launchers are firing. All the launchers are angled up 30ish degrees even though the target is very low.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I'm not sure how many games even have the staging, but I really wanted to make sure you could see it!

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

The SAM launchers have their turrets cued off of the lead vehicle in the group's sensors. The lead radar also keeps track of missiles in the air, so it doesn't fire off all the launchers at once. In this case it's set to keep only 2 missiles up at a time.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Fields in the Germany terrain with the updated trees and scatter rendering.

Screenshot of Tiny Combat Arena's finished new terrain with the updated trees and scatter rendering.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

0.17.2.3 has been released for Tiny Combat Arena. It contains a hotfix for the Unity security vulnerability that was patched this morning.

store.steampowered.com

Tiny Combat Arena - 0.17.2.3 - Steam News

Patched Unity security vulnerability

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

The #StopKillingGames EU Citizens' Initiative is the best shot we'll likely get at a pro-consumer outcome. This is NOT just an internet petition. Only 200k more signatures means the EU Commission MUST take action. If you live in the EU, please consider signing! eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#...

eci.ec.europa.eu

European Citizens' Initiative

Give your support !

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

I play a lot of retro games. I'm spoiled by the fact that you just install a game and play. For the next generation of gamers, this is becoming increasingly untrue with even singleplayer games like The Crew being rendered inoperable due to mandatory server-side connections.

An increasing number of publishers are selling videogames that are required to connect through the internet to the game publisher, or "phone home" to function. While this is not a problem in itself, when support ends for these types of games, very often publishers simply sever the connection necessary for the game to function, proceed to destroy all working copies of the game, and implement extensive measures to prevent the customer from repairing the game in any way.

This practice is effectively robbing customers of their purchases and makes restoration impossible. Besides being an affront on consumer rights, videogames themselves are unique creative works. Like film, or music, one cannot be simply substituted with another. By destroying them, it represents a creative loss for everyone involved and erases history in ways not possible in other mediums.

Existing laws and consumer agencies are ill-prepared to protect customers against this practice. The ability for a company to destroy an item it has already sold to the customer long after the fact is not something that normally occurs in other industries. With license agreements required to simply run the game, many existing consumer protections are circumvented. This practice challenges the concept of ownership itself, where the customer is left with nothing after "buying" a game.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Since release, Tiny Combat Arena has been designed to be able to be played 100% offline. This means with no connection to Steam whatsoever. If Steam isn't detected, the game will save all its settings locally, and Steam APIs and features are bypassed/forwarded to local versions. #StopKillingGames

The STANDALONE on the bottom left of the main menu shows that the game is running in standalone mode, and will run everything saving files locally and without any connection to Steam. Even mods can still be loaded and run locally, without Workshop.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Hotfix 0.17.2.2 is on the main branch, fixing the newly broken sounds that only happened on the main branch. Units have also been added to the external camera bar, and match the HUD Units setting.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena showing the AV8B flying above an island. The info bar at the bottom of the screen reads
HEADING: 215 AIRSPEED: 444 KT G: 1.27 ALTITUDE 2022 FT

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

It essentially mirrors the plane's, same as the HUD, but it needs to "remember" what units to use if you look at something after the player dies. This has the unfortunate downside that before the player spawns, you can't know what units to use, so it just defaults to Imperial in that case.

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