SAND Update #7 Targets Trampler Bugs and Squad Communication

Hologryph and publisher tinyBuild have shipped Update #7 for SAND: Raiders of Sophie, adding a middle-mouse ping system for team communication and resolving a batch of trampler death, respawn, and anti-cheat bugs in the Early Access extraction shooter.

The ping tool is the headline addition, letting squads mark locations without leaning on voice chat during looting runs. The rest of the patch is heavier on fixes than features, targeting complaints that have piled up around the game's signature trampler mechs and their surrounding systems.

What's in Update #7

• Ping system: Players can now ping map locations and markers with the middle mouse button, cutting reliance on voice comms in squad play.
• Map pulse animation: A subtle pulse effect appears when zooming the map, making it easier to locate your position mid-combat.
• Trampler ownership SFX: New audio cues play when someone interacts with a trampler's ownership device, helping teams catch attempted takeovers.
• Death and respawn overhaul: The character death system was refactored to fix ragdoll and positioning bugs, and players no longer spawn outside trampler bounds after dying on a moving vehicle.
• Anti-cheat correction: False-positive triggers during trampler respawns, which had caused unfair bans and kicks, are resolved.
• Trampler uptime fix: Vehicles now keep running as long as any player is onboard, instead of shutting down when the owner steps away.
• Turret and crafting repairs: Turrets retain their packed state, can no longer be double-mounted, ammo swapping no longer conflicts with existing loads, and island crafting works again after being broken outright.
• Exploit patch: A dangerous auto-cannon bug letting players fire faster than the intended rate is closed.
• Matchmaking fix: Four-player teams can now correctly select the Small Crews mode.

What's still broken

The known-issues list is long. Shotguns can whiff at close range, boosted tramplers can cause bullets to pass through characters, and players can pick up unintended melee invulnerability while interacting with turrets or steering wheels. There's also a rare animation break after Orbital Strike on the Smuggler control scheme, with the workaround being to swap a tool or weapon into hand, or simply respawn.

Ping systems have become a quiet arms race across the extraction genre lately - Wildgate's recent patch leaned on similar communication and awareness tooling, and it's not hard to see why: these are squad games where a beacon or a ping does more for coordination than another weapon balance pass ever could. SAND remains an Early Access proposition with a rough-edges known-issues list to match, but Update #7 is squarely aimed at the friction points - trampler downtime, turret jank, false-ban anxiety - that actually erode session-to-session trust in a live extraction loop. Worth watching whether the next patch finally tackles the shotgun and hit-registration complaints, since those hit combat feel directly rather than around its edges.

Further reading: SAND: Raiders of Sophie Update #7 Patch Notes