Indie development studio Bulkhead Interactive has released patch 23011 for its competitive shooter game Battalion 1944. The game released in May.

The new patch brings some highly requested changes to the game, such as the shotgun nerf, BAR weapon balance and Wartide XP bonus.

In addition, the patch brings the Unranked Wartide Trial event, replacing the previous Shotgun Sendoff event, as a trial to see whether a casual Wartide queue is a sustainable option.

The casual Unranked Wartide game mode features 10 vs 10 player Wartide with bots to fill empty slots. Bots are enabled as a test to see if these could replace leavers in competitive Wartide.

The casual mode could also help mitigate some of the issues competitive players have reported over the past month, such as inexperienced low level players joining competitive queues deteriorating the match experience.

The patch also marks the start of the fourth BattleRank season, bringing a new XP track to work through to earn new unique weapon skins. The level 50 reward this season is an animated shotgun skin.

Battalion 1944 patch 23011 went live earlier today and competitive servers are now back online to play.