The general’s view: the battle map, and gold you can read

The morning after the day-40 marathon, the playtest notes said the same thing three ways: “with 30 guns it’s hard to see quickly what’s what”, “guns to show hit points left”, and — the big one — “top-down battle map camera… easy to spot where the main wave is coming on a huge map.” All four landed today, screenshot-verified.

• [x] THE BATTLE MAP. Press M (or d-pad up) and the camera lifts straight off the hero to a top-down tactical view of the whole field — roads, lanes, village, every gun. WASD pans, clicking a gun opens its upgrade card from above, [E] puts it away, M (or getting knocked down) drops you back into your boots. TAB steps down and opens the ledger in one motion, because the prompt on screen promises it. Unlocks with the second front — one door fits on one screen; two need a general — asking earlier floats “the battle map unlocks with the second front”. A white-and-blue YOU pin marks the hero, and every upgraded gun wears its ranks as gold pips readable from altitude. Placement-from-the-map is deliberately v2 — look first, manage second.
• [x] Turret HP bars. Hurt guns now show the same wear bar walls do.
• [x] Veteran legibility. Rank bands are twice as wide and brighter, and the first rank crowns the gun’s HEAD with a gold cap that reads from any angle — including straight down on the battle map.
• [x] Menu contrast + lockup. CROP in field green, CORP in Authority grey; settings labels in parchment instead of ink-on-ink.

Harness grew three tools: -CCBattleMap (opens the map a moment into a run for framing), a the_veteran photo vantage (stages and frames the most-decorated gun), and -CCTurretCard now walks the hero to the most-decorated gun instead of whichever post the autopilot wandered past.