Distributed Shield

Take the watch. Rehearse your plan. Command the defence.

Distributed Shield is a real-time command simulation with a story campaign and an independent sandbox. Protect fictional exercise sites, build your force, follow uncertain sensor tracks and control air and missile engagements across ten connected views.

Commander’s Watch: 24 missions

Begin your first duty at Meridian Command. Receive intelligence, watch a recorded gameplay lesson, test your deployment in a safe sandbox rehearsal, then issue the start order for the live mission. Missions progress from a small drone probe to coordinated raids against several protected sites. Choose Guided, Standard or Expert difficulty, preserve supplies, save your progress and review the after-action report. The original Midnight Watch command-board mission also remains available.

Build your own exercise

Start with a blank sandbox or demonstration forces. Deploy public-source and clearly labelled scenario equipment, draw routes and formations, edit waypoint altitude and speed, choose payload tokens and emissions, then use automatic engagement or operator-controlled launches. Pause, retask, save and score your exercise.

Your live command station

Enter a staffed, photo-textured 3D command room with seventeen live monitor surfaces. Click a screen to expand its actual map, radar, network, air picture or visual camera. Reach missions, deployment, briefings, resources and audio from the command station. Choose a military thriller score with evolving low strings, heavy ensemble drums, marching snares, brass and tension pulses, or keep the classic command score. Adaptive music follows your known tactical picture and lowers beneath briefings.

A clearer command picture

Explore command, selected radar, air picture, radar coverage, EO/IR, network, electronic warfare, cyber command, live visual camera and colour 3D terrain. Connected leader lines link map units to picture cards with live status, flight, fuel, payload and sensor values. Small shaded map models carry compact callsigns. Click a unit to open its picture card and live details. Drag force cards onto the command map or 3D terrain to deploy, and zoom the radar to inspect nearby tracks. Detailed flight, payload and sensor controls remain in the command panel. Expand the map to give the tactical picture more room.

The resource library illustrates 96 catalogue equipment entries and 59 missile profiles. Pictures support recognition by role; equipment names and simulation values remain separate from the illustrations.

Four live engagement screens

Keep the tactical picture visible when deciding whether to fire. Choose four equal panes or one large pane with three smaller feeds: interactive 3D terrain, correlated air picture, selected radar and a live camera or thermal visualization. The commander decision dock leaves these views visible. Readiness and launch cutaways illustrate approved aircraft and point-defence engagements while the engine checks eligibility, consumes ammunition and simulates missile flight. Hold fire or an expired request spends no ammunition. Generic cinematic inserts do not reproduce every platform’s actual cockpit or weapon sequence.

Live IR visualizes friendly and detected entities with weather-adjusted thermal shading. It does not reveal hidden opponents or create independent sensor detections; the existing EO/IR coverage view remains available.

New arena missions

Alongside the original 24-mission campaign, play 16 authored mission designs in India–Pakistan and Ukraine–Russia settings, with eight operations available for each playable side. Progress from opening drone contacts to six-wave raids against several protected sites. Deployment, routes, supplies, sensor confidence and your orders shape the result. These are game exercises inspired by real-world settings, not historical reconstructions or predictions of combat outcomes.

Offline operations

The single-player campaign, sandbox, recorded briefings, opening command-room video, adaptive music and bundled colour relief map run locally. Global relief uses overview data, with extra elevation detail around four exercise theatres. Optional online map detail needs an internet connection and may fall back when a provider is unavailable. English is the supported interface and narration language for this release. Existing Steam careers are retained, with a first pre-update backup of commander and sandbox saves; local-playtest saves remain separate.

Connected, transparent simulation

All views follow the same simulation state. Sensor contacts depend on line of sight, altitude, weather, track quality and network contribution. Component-based defence packages depend on their command, sensor and launcher elements. Follow simulated missile flights and inspect the factors behind an engagement.

Distributed Shield uses bounded public-source game profiles and fictional exercises. It is not certified training software or a prediction of real-world military performance. Steam Workshop and Steam Cloud are not included in this Early Access build.