 The accessible fictional near future combat flight simulator that we featured in a first look video last month, Nuclear Option has just received a major update. In this video we're going to take a look at what's new, what's been added and what it means for the game going forward. As we reported last month, Nuclear Option is an indie developed accessible combat flight simulator for the PC that has just entered early access on Steam and the update this week is the first major update since the game went into early access. The headline feature for the update is the addition of the Shard Class Corvette Warship. Not only is this a new naval warship to the game, it's the first seagoing vessel period and its addition adds a number of wrinkles to the existing framework of Nuclear Option as well as bringing with it its own not insignificant challenges to the game's expanding battlefield. The Shard sports an angular, extremely faceted aesthetic reminiscent of modern stealth warship design with no external railings or masts whatsoever. Immediately forward of the bridge, the ship features multiple vertical launch tubes, housing, ram 45, radar guided surface to air missiles, each one packing a 44 pound explosive warhead, more than enough punch to ruin a sunny afternoon for an approaching aircraft. The rest of the forward section of the ship is devoted to a 57mm turreted deck cannon and aft of the bridge is the ship's diminutive but extremely effective 20mm point defence turret. The point defence turret features such a high rate of fire that it is easily able to target and shoot down a lone incoming missile or bomb. As things stand, when the Shard is fully functional, overwhelming the ship with incoming fire seems to be the only effective tactic to get ordnance past the point defence system. Launching a very close volley of multiple air to surface missiles giving it too many incoming targets to deal with should ensure that at least one or two will get through the wall of lead that the Shard is able to put up. Be warned though the SAM system alone has a range of around 8 nautical miles, the missiles when coupled with the two turrets make the small ship a target not to be taken lightly. At the stern of the ship you'll find a flat deck area that is able to serve as a mobile re-arming and refuelling depot for the game's chicane helicopter gunships to use. Two new missions featuring multiple Shard Corvettes have been added to the game and you'll also find the ship lurking off the coast in the game's signature escalation open warfare mode. The Shards helipad might seem like a simple and obvious addition but the game's ability to land a vehicle on another vehicle has huge ramifications for the simulator going forward opening the door to potential amphibious assaults and carrier based operations in the future. Away from the Shard multiplayer now features a game wide text chat option and there are a bunch of new gameplay options to change such things as the measurement units from metric to imperial, cockpit camera, inertia and the auto zoom on the gun boresight to name but three. Some of the game's missiles have received a graphics overhaul and there are improved graphical effects for the water surface and water impacts and explosions. There's a couple of extra ground vehicle variants and some new features and settings have been added to the mission editor that ships with the game and the usual round of balance tweaks and bug fixes that you'd expect. I've linked below this video to the full patch notes if you want to take a browse through them. As I mentioned the game has only really just gone into early access so it's still very early days for nuclear option but already the game is a huge amount of fun and something that we're really excited to see expanded on as development continues. Have you been toe to toe with the Shard Corvette yet? Have you managed to land a chicane on the ship's helipad and what features would you like to see added next? Let us know in the comments below. If you've enjoyed this video be sure to like and subscribe as that stuff really helps the channel. You can also become a patron and directly support our work here at The Burp Pit. That's it for now, we very much look forward to seeing you next time.