Silica
by Martin 'Dram' Melichárek · 3 May, 2023
About the Game
Silica is a crossover of FPS and RTS, where you take part in epic photorealistic battles either as humans or aliens. Lead as the commander, or join the assault from the ground - the choice is yours!
Take Part in Epic Combined Arms Warfare
Immerse yourself in epic battles where humans and aliens fight for ultimate domination.
Dominate Land and Sky
Take control of both land and air vehicles to assert power over the sandy dunes of planet Baltarus
Lead as RTS Commander!
Take charge as RTS commander over battles of epic scale. Use your tactical prowess to dominate the battlefield, coordinating complex operations from a top-down perspective.
Experience Realistic Unit Scale
Witness the impressive scale of units, from small infantry squads to colossal harvesters and massive buildings. Each unit type is meticulously designed to reflect its size, providing an immersive and realistic experience on the battlefield.
Screenshots
15 imagesVersion Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
We've just launched a hotfix, focusing on the crash that appeared recently for some players.
Until next time!
Change Log:
- Removed framegen plugin that caused crashes on some machines
Join our Discord to get the latest updates
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We've just launched a hotfix for the crash that was happening on startup with certain hardware configurations.
Until next time!
Join our Discord to get the latest updates
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Greetings Everyone!
Firstly, we'd like to thank you for the overwhelmingly positive reaction on Steam, our Discord server, and our social media channels, as it truly means a great deal to us!
As this also marks the last update of 2025, we would like to wish you great Christmas holidays and a happy new year - we'll see you with more updates in 2026!
Now, let's jump into some hot fixes and changes coming with the 0.9.1 version of Silica.
Fixed: Massive performance loss on minimap with many units and structures
- Sandbox players can now set rally points
- AI pathing got a brain boost
- The map just got way more interactive with fresh ping tools.
Oh, and did someone say Sol Research Facility? (Cheaters only—for now.)
Full patch note below:
Silica V0.8.144:
Gameplay:
Added: Rally points for UnitGenerators in Sandbox
AI:
Improved: Smoother AI pathing
UI:
Added: Pinging on large map
Added: Pinging units directly via map
Added: Name of pinger and pinged target to ping icon display
Added: Simple tooltips for map icons in Full screen map
Improve: Generator Settings in Sandbox (Clear separation between Generator Properties)
Fixed: Problem when UI in Arena changed when another player joined
Fixed: Missing ammo display for vehicles in Arena
Fixed: Centauri UI for Centauri units in Arena
Technical:
Fixed: Super high mouse sensitivity when the keyboard language layout was changed
Fixed: Mouse sensitivity setting being applied multiple times
Fixed: Saving of UnitGenerators in Sandbox
Multiplayer:
Fixed: Stored admins were not given admin rights when they joined
Units/Structures:
Added: Sol Research Facility (cheat-spawn only for now) We’d love for you to jump in, test things out, and share your feedback. Let us know if you encounter any issues—your input helps shape the game!
See you on the battlefield!
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Back in mid-October, we gave you an exclusive sneak peek at Crimson Peak in our first devblog. Now, the wait is officially over—the highly anticipated new map is live and ready for action!
Breaking away from the arid, sprawling sand plains of Baltarus, Crimson Peak introduces a stunning new biome. Picture a battlefield with sparse vegetation, partially covering the landscape, all bathed in a haunting crimson glow.
Nestled within the Southern Tablelands, this top-secret balterium seeding site on the Centauri homeworld has become the epicenter of ferocious clashes for control over the precious resources. Get ready to fight tooth and nail for dominance in this breathtaking new frontline.
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But that’s not all! This update packs even more changes and enhancements. Check out the full patch notes below for all the details.
Gameplay:
• Added: Crimson Peak
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AI:
• Fixed: AI better aims at targets (eg: Scorpion misses)
UI:
• Added: Winner notification at the end of Siege
• Added: Upcoming resources shown in UI for Siege
• Changed: Objectives are now in yellow - both in map & in the list for Siege
• Improved: Siege virtual building icons
Sound:
• Changed: Fighter MG sound
Technical:
• Fixed: Nulls in Siege
• Fixed: Non-unlocking side spawn points in Siege
• Fixed: Projectiles continued to make sounds and were visible after 'deletion'
• Fixed: Projectile delete FX played wrong
• Fixed: Dragonfly could sometimes shoot itself
• Fixed: Hit detection on aliens and infantry used the wrong hit zone size causing strange misses
• Fixed: Player aiming at unit detected a phantom sphere around the unit causing turrets to look away close-up
Multiplayer:
• Fixed: Sneaky spots behind Heavy vehicle factory in Siege
• Fixed: Holes in Rift Basin map
Controls:
• Fixed: Free-fly camera could not latch onto individual hit zones on aliens and infantry.
Balance:
• Added: Hover Bike switches off when out of bounds (in defender or attacker zones)
• Added: Air vehicle turbo thrust engage time and cooldown time
• Added: Air vehicle may not fire weapons while turbo thrusting
• Added: Gunship MG aim compensation
• Added: Gunship turbo thrust engage/cooldown times to 1s/2s
• Added: Fighter turbo thrust engage/cooldown times to 0.5s/2s
• Added: Air vehicle turbo thrust limited by time
• Added: Air vehicles cannot fire while turbo thrusting
• Added: Turbo thrust to Bomber
• Changed: Fighter MG range from 600m to 250m
• Changed: Fighter MG magazine size from 40 to 30
• Changed: Fighter missiles replaced with unguided dive bomb
• Changed: Fighter front MG changed to two side-mounted MGs
• Changed: Colossus speed changed from 12 to 14
• Changed: Firebug manoeuvrability increased
• Changed: Wasp attacks turn to face target
• Changed: Bomber bomb drop rate doubled, reload time halved
• Changed: Bomber speed from 30 to 35
• Changed: Fighter levels out if not moving forward
• Changed: Gunship speed from 25 to 30
• Changed: Gunship turbo speed from 40 to 50
• Changed: Scorpion health from 12000 to 9000
• Changed: Scorpion shot damage from 500 to 400
• Changed: Quantum Cortex health from 10000 to 50000
• Changed: Thorn Spire shot damage from 100 to 300
• Changed: Defiler swarm damage from 1200 to 800
• Changed: Defiler move speed from 12 to 20
• Changed: Removed Goliath underbelly weak point
• Changed: Increased max targeting distances of units
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Another build has gone up with numerous fixes, most importantly to the Harvesters which are now able to scale steep dunes just like a player. Additionally pathfinding info for each unit is heavily optimized and sent in a reduced form to each player on the team but in full form to the Commander (so he can see the path the AI will take exactly).
Lastly, the long-standing bug of annoying Barracks doors closing has been fixed as well.
The next update will continue to focus on AI, namely for alien expansion, so stay tuned!
Please enjoy and take care!
Gameplay:
- Fixed: Doors on clients would close after opening
- Fixed: Seemingly random null errors caused by optimization for object updates
AI:
- Fixed: Harvester gave up too early when climbing steep hills
- Fixed: Harvester docking correction algorithm would block it from docking backwards
- Fixed: Units could complete path early if there was just one waypoint
- Fixed: Harvester no longer gets stuck in Refinery while docking/undocking
- Fixed: Harvester could only deposit if the point was not claimed by another Harvester
- Fixed: Attacking units would recalculate pathfinding very often when target was moving
- Improved: Harvester docking algorithm better corrects for extreme angles and offsets from ideal path
- Improved: Commander AI builds Refineries based on needs
- Optimized: AI long range path is now only sent to players in the same team
- Optimized: AI long range path send is reduced to only the end point for non-commander players
Multiplayer:
- Fixed: When a player disconnected from the server it could leave it in an infinite loop of trying to disconnect the player
- Changed: Max packet buffer size from 2048 KB to 4096 KB
We just released hotfix update 0.8.78 which fixed a new issue regarding Harvester pathfinding that popped up in the latest build.
A few other improvements regarding Harvester AI have also been included.
Take care!
Fixed: Pathfinding looped when final destination was off-navmesh
Fixed: Harvester could stop and stay on the spot when harvesting due to constant completion of path bug
Improved: Harvester prefers resource cells that are in front rather than to random sides
Improved: Harvester keeps mining arms going as long as resources are nearby
Improved: AI Commander builds more refineries
-- Captain Geiger, lone survivor of the Advanced Forward Reconnaissance Team
A warm summer welcome to everyone!
Today's update introduces numerous fixes, improvements and importantly, a new control keybinding system. Additionally, the Behemoth has received a much needed rework, bringing it in line with other units that have received such. This was a side-step to the current, main focus of improving respawn mechanics and AI collision avoidance, but was highly requested.
Several recurring multiplayer issues have also been addressed, as well as further improvements to performance.
Thank you again for your support and have a wonderful week!
See you on the surface.
Gameplay:
- Added: Full controls keybinding system
- Changed: Behemoth appearance including the addition of a tail-like appendage
- Changed: Behemoth now fires a beam instead of ball-insects
Balance:
- Improved: Scorpion acid ball range increased and AI aim calculation fixed
- Improved: AI will fire on Scorpion when its tail is visible over an edge
- Improved: AI will fire on Shocker when its tail is visible over an edge
Performance:
- Fixed: Memory leak related to deleted units staying in memory
- Fixed: Pathfinding memory overhead for units that are destroyed but not deleted
- Optimized: Precomputed terrain physics material indices for all maps - Stops the huge up to 10s spike at the start of every match
- Optimized: Impact decals now fade on GPU instead of CPU
- Optimized: Animated units use lower quality animation when far from the camera and completely disable animation when very far
- Optimized: Terrain pixel error settings increased on lower terrain detail settings
- Optimized: Harvester pistons updated only on change
- Optimized: Balterium decals disabled all at once instead of individually
- Optimized: Audio effects' volume and pitch changed only for audible sounds
- Optimized: Vehicle ground particle FX updates limited to 100 instances per frame
- Optimized: Clearing of map team layer changed to Array.Clear() instead of a loop
- Optimized: Caching of construction site values, updating on change instead of per frame
Technical:
- Fixed: Don't cull BaseGameObjects when the camera is inside them
- Fixed: ServerSettings.xml could not be saved bug that could occur while it was being read
- Added: Server communication ports now in ServerSettings.xml
- Added: GameSettings.xml and ServerSettings.xml may also be placed into game files root folder and are used from there, if present
- Added: Logging of large, unexpected changes in day time
Multiplayer:
- Fixed: Player names were sent as part of initial player list packet, filling it up when max bytes was reached
- Fixed: Server did not consider connecting players for maximum, allowing more than maximum number to join
- Fixed: When server or client receives any data from client or server, heartbeat is considered received, fixing some disconnects
- Added: Logging of player name change/init on server
- Added: 'Spawn' console command now has optional input team and position/rotation (use 'Camera' command for current cam data)
- Fixed: 'Spawn' console command flooded packet when called on admin client to server
- Fixed: New server log naming did not work on Windows, failed to create log
Debugging:
- Added: 'Lights' console command to toggle hiding of lights on game objects for debugging purposes
- Added: Logging of floor area (in m^2) when logging navmesh recalculation times
- Changed: Server.log now renamed to Server_YY_MM_DD__HH:SS.log to ensure dedicated server history is maintained
- Fixed: Stream Writer did not log the calling function
Further optimizations have just been pushed into main, focusing on the larger alien structures which could drain performance. In some cases (late game with many alien structures) this could be up to 20 FPS.
Thank you everyone and have a wonderful weekend.
See you on Baltarus!
Silica V0.8.53
Technical:
Optimized: Alien Spawning Cyst colliders no longer scale with animation, which caused massive physics CPU usage
Optimized: Alien Spawning Cyst glow spheres share materials in animation, which caused high GPU usage
Changed: Console command 'Team' now supports 'None'
Fixed: Memory leak when reloading AI navigation mesh
Fixed: Level load issue where client reported to server it completed loading earlier than it should have
A new build of Silica has just been released, this one primarily focusing on addressing a new memory leak that led to the game utilizing a massive amount of RAM over time.
In addition to this, a plethora of balancing changes have been made, lowering the health of many units and structures, while at the same time increasing health regeneration of smaller alien units. The Headquarters has also received formidable defenses, in the form of heavy turrets, that ward off most early base rushes.
Another welcome addition is the introduction of improved friendly fire avoidance, where a weapon will not shoot at an enemy if it risks inflicting a decent amount of damage on a friend. This will certainly go through multiple iterations into the future, but means that Rocket Launchers will no longer try to take out that one Crab on the Harvester.
So, please give the new changes a try and as always, feedback is very much appreciated.
Thank you for your support and see you on the surface!
Silica V0.8.52:
Technical:
Fixed: Growing RAM usage over time
Added: Vehicles and turrets do not fire (per weapon) at enemy targets if they are likely to cause friendly fire above a tolerance
Added: Culling of structures/units when off screen
Fixed: Queen could be instructed to nest in a dead Nest
Balance:
Added: Heavy Turrets to Headquarters
Changed: Increased health regen for all small alien units
Changed: Rifleman cost changed from 60 to 30
Changed: Rifleman build time changed from 15s to 10s
Changed: Scout cost changed from 30 to 5
Changed: Scout build time changed from 10s to 5s
Changed: Headquarters cost changed from 4000 to 9000
Changed: Heavy Turret cost changed from 2000 to 1500
Changed: Turret cost changed from 1000 to 750
Changed: Crab health changed from 500 to 300
Changed: Horned Crab health changed from 700 to 500
Changed: Dragonfly health changed from 300 to 200
Changed: Firebug health changed from 9000 to 5000
Changed: Hunter health changed from 6000 to 5000
Changed: Shocker health changed from 500 to 400
Changed: Shrimp health changed from 300 to 150
Changed: Bio Cache health changed from 4000 to 3000
Changed: Colossal Spawning Cyst health changed from 120000 to 80000
Changed: Grand Spawning Cyst health changed from 60000 to 40000
Changed: Greater Spawning Cyst health changed from 30000 to 20000
Changed: Lesser Spawning Cyst health changed from 10000 to 8000
Changed: Hive Spire health changed from 5000 to 3000
Changed: Thorn Spire health changed from 5000 to 3000
Changed: Nest health changed from 60000 to 50000
Changed: Node health changed from 500 to 300
Changed: Air Factory health changed from 300000 to 200000
Changed: Barracks health changed from 100000 to 80000
Changed: Headquarters health changed from 200000 to 150000
Changed: Heavy Vehicle Factory health changed from 300000 to 200000
Changed: Light Vehicle Factory health changed from 100000 to 80000
Changed: Radar Station health changed from 100000 to 80000
Changed: Refinery health changed from 300000 to 200000
Changed: AA Rocket Turret health changed from 8000 to 10000
Changed: Heavy Turret health changed from 12000 to 14000
Changed: Turret health changed from 8000 to 10000
Changed: Bomber health changed from 24000 to 15000
Changed: Dropship health changed from 12000 to 8000
Changed: Fighter health changed from 7000 to 3500
Changed: Gunship health changed from 5000 to 2500
Changed: Bunker 01 health changed from 10000 to 40000
Changed: Bunker 02 health changed from 5000 to 20000
Changed: Bunker 03 health changed from 7500 to 30000
Changed: Bunker 04 health changed from 5000 to 20000
A hotfix has just gone live, addressing a hit registration issue that occured in the 0.8.49 build.
Thank you for both your understanding, and support.
Take care and see you on the surface!
A hotfix has just gone live online, addressing the issues mentioned in the changelog below, as well as a few extra goodies.
Enjoy the weekend!
Full changelog:
- Added: Logging of failed upgrading or unit production when the area is blocked etc to help locate source of tech glitch
- Added: 'Team' console command allowing manual setting of local player team (cheats must be enabled)
- Fixed: NullReferenceException related to TargetGrid
- Fixed: Potential NullReferenceException in ambient life handler
- Fixed: Potential NullReferenceException in various functions in Team (including UpdateTechnologyTier)
Current Release
Build 25179420
Uploaded Sep 29, 2026
System Requirements
How to Install
Silica.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
Needed when extracting (WinRAR / 7-Zip) — not a site login.
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