The meat of EA17 is in the brand new Engagement Levels. They are all about fast paced battles, often focused on infantry combat. There are 4 new levels introduced in this update taking place on a wide variety of scenery. 3 of them are still works-in-progress, but Glacier is for the most part finished!
You'll notice that some maps have recieved a face lift in the form of baked lightmaps! This is an approach I'll use for some levels which benefit from having more lights than just the sun. Especially Interiors get a visual pop, just check out this before and after:

Baked lightmaps are available on Temple, Glacier and Tunnel for now.
This Early Access build comes with a first look at the Conquest Mode. You can play around in it and move your soldiers around the battlefield, attacking and defending maps. While things are still very much in their early stages, I wanted to keep the open development style of Ravenfield and show this new mode off from its' humble beginnings. Expect more things to come in future EA updates! Full change log: Conquest: - Basic world map gameplay is in place, you can move your troops around and attack/defend levels. - You can gain resources, but right now only the battalion resource does something (spawns new troops each turn) - Conquest disables some "cheaty" features like slow motion. - Conquest is still super early, so expect tons of improvements over time! Added 4 Engagement Levels: (These are smaller, typically infantry focused levels) - Glacier - Tunnel - Twin Islands - Desert Hill Game tweaks: - Added support for high quality baked lighting - Baked lightmaps are available on Temple, Glacier and Tunnel - Added support for loading a different night version scene for night maps. - Improvements to ambient lighting, Skybox ambient lights are now fully supported! - Added special footstep sound when walking on terrain - Bots now make footstep sounds - Redid the victory/defeat animation from scratch. - Added music sting volume slider, controlling the volume of the victory/defeat stings. - Added Endless Instant Action option in the options menu. This option can be disabled if you want the game to end on victory/defeat in instant action. - Skirmish mode domination victory unlocks later, but fills up faster. - Made AI tracking missiles less likely to kill teammates - Reduced APC health from 2500 to 1900 - Added support for maps to have different flag layouts depending on the game mode - Added ghost type spawn points. These can be spawned on as usual, but they do not count towards your team's score in skirmish or point match mode. The AI will not attempt to capture these points, but they can be captured. - You can no longer mark a spawn point in skirmish mode after your initial spawn, since it made no difference anyway. - AI helicopter pilots will now prioritize ground targets over other helicopters targets in the default helicopter. - Taking over a bot in skirmish mode will now ensure all weapons are reloaded. - You can now sprint while reloading. - Fixed a bug where "loaded ammo" and "no ammo" animation parameters would not be set correctly when spawning and when getting up from ragdoll. Known bugs: - Night vision doesn't light up the environment in some levels - Tunnel and Citadel maps only have daytime versions. I hope you'll enjoy both this update and all the *interesting level descriptions*! /SteelRaven7