Hex of Steel News

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• New 'political map' overlay. At the push of a button, you can show/hide it. Combined with the keybind to hide units, you have full control over what's shown/hidden. To toggle the political map, you will need to set up the new keybind for it.
  
• New policy category: National Focuses.
  
• Few new policies to go under that new category: Industrial overtime, Aggressive Propaganda, Military Scientists, Army Training, Resistance Suppression, Construction Engineering, Commanders development program. Description is available in game :) The goal for this new category was to be more useful late game, to have something where you could have your HQ points spent on a per turn basis automatically. Some of these policies do require a sacrifice of 1 HQ point per turn.
  
• New other policies: Bigger command centers, Highlands experts.
  
• Possibility to completely hide the in game UI by pressing F10 (+ new keybind).
  
• Possibility to assign/change a country's ideology in the map editor.
  
• AT infantry to Greece.
  
• AA and AT and arty units to Turkey.
  
• Basic AA and artillery as well as Engineers to Baltic States.
  
• Missing buildings to Baltic States.
  
• Vickers M1933 to Lithuania.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility -> 7.4.0.
  
• Economy / Occupation policies and income modifiers did not work as intended when a tile was occupied (modifiers applied on wrong value).
  
• Made policies lighter (data wise). Will make some late game save files a tad lighter/smaller.
  
• Increased Commanders units upkeep by quite a lot when playing with policies ON (15 upkeep vs 1 upkeep).
  
• Slightly changed the player slots setup in the map editor settings.
  
• Now showing the max cap of HQ points in both the store and the policies menu.
  
• Changed the 'map' button action to toggling the political map. I have disabled the old 'strategic' map.
  
• I have removed the hardcoded 'Winter fighting bonus' for the Northern countries, and instead, made it free for them to pick the Winter Soldiers military tactics policy.
  
• Political unit option no longer add an extra production turn.
  
• Mountaineer unit option now adds an extra production turn.
  
• Mountaineer option is now available for small AT guns and artillery guns.
  
• Several buildings graphics (Coastal batteries, factory, refinery).
  
• Supplies amount per tile penalty with complex supplies setting.
  
• Estonia country revamp (geography) on Europe scenarios.
  
• Latvia country revamp (geography) on Europe scenarios.
  
• Lithuania country revamp (geography) on Europe scenarios.
  
• Added missing naval convoy routes in Europe scenarios (other than 1939).
  
• Reduced a bit the AI's purchase rate of commanders.
  
• Flamethrower bonus vs units in urban areas is now scaled with the HP of the unit attacking. It felt odd to get the bonus based on base damage without scaling it with HP. I had a 9HP unit having a +10 damage bonus from flamethrower. Broken AF :)
  
• F2A / F4F fighters stats.
  
• P-38 fly range stat.
  
• Engineers can no longer place down stuff in an uncontrolled manner (as well as destroyers for laying mines). They are both restricted to placing down 1 item max per turn.
  
• Graphics of all buildings units icons.
  
• Restat of all AT43 infantry.
  
• Removed some hard damage to marines and NKVD infantry.
  
• Changed some policies effects: Better shovels now give +2 max entrenchment instead of 1, but comes with a dig in speed penalty of 50%. So, instead of gaining +1 entrenchment every turn, it is now every 2 turns. Same with the Organized Defenses policy, it has the same dig in speed penalty. Human wave now has a x2 heal cost penalty for infantry. So it costs double to heal the same amount of HP. Camouflage now increases the purchase cost of all land units by 5%.
  
• Changed a bit the rule for retreating. Now, if a unit is attacked and deals back 0 damage, instead of retreating right away, it will only do so if the amount of damage received is superior or equal to 30% of its current HP.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Tile info displayed with mouse hovering would not display the right amount of income production if the amount was modified in the editor (on a per tile basis).
  
• AI buying too many AT infantry even when not needed.
  
• Changing faction in the diplomacy menu did not provoke a refresh of the income summary.
  
• Units with 0 movement points would not turn 'dark' once they had attacked (indicating they are out of actions). Example: Coastal batteries.
  
• Newly deployed units would not be darkened unless selected and unselected (force refresh).
  
• Units on small islands could not resupply if a single enemy was nearby.
  
• Trench tiles if set as VP when captured would yield a 'no translation' notification.
  
• F4F Wildcat could be equipped with torpedoes even though it could not IRL.
  
• If a unit had some turns in production left before being upgraded, the upgrade would override the production value. Now, the highest will be kept. So if for example before the upgrade, the unit still needed 3 turns of production, and after the upgrade only 2, it will stay on 3. No more upgrade production time cheesing :)
  
• AI will no longer deploy ships in 'closed' bodies of water. It will now check if it can move from its harbour to reach an enemy target. If no enemy target is found, then it will not deploy the ship at the harbour.
  
• Missing frozen versions of convoy route tiles (graphics) as well as naval reinforcement tiles.
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• FINALLY -> Possibility to re order players turn order in the map editor. This works simply, every player has an index, you can change that index to change the player order. That's it!
  
• New doctrine: Fleet in being. Damage bonus in naval combat, at the expense of higher upkeep/repair cost.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility -> 7.3.9.
  
• Tanks (units in the Tank category/type) and all mechanized units (mech. option from the store) now will require -50% movement points when moving on Plain tiles.
  
• Embarking or disembarking on a destroyed tile is no longer possible (ships/trains/paratroopers).
  
• Reduced the amount of triangles renderer per hexagon and unit and flags on the map. I have reduced this amount of drawn triangles from 9M when zoomed out on Europe to a little under 2M. This translates as a direct +50% FPS boost (due to rendering being cheaper). It should work fine on more recent machines, I am not sure yet for older hardware, in the case it is worse on older hardware, please let me know so that I can reverse the change.
  
• You can no longer build bunkers in enemy territory.
  
• Rebalanced north african front in Europe 39 (standalone).
  
• Replaced the Counter Bomber graphics for something less visually distractive.
  
• On Europe scenario, with Historical Focus turned ON, Italy will no longer try to invade mainland France.
  
• Guadalcanal map changes (campaign).
  
• Sometimes AI would not pick policies in some categories.
  
• Reverted AA with 2 range to 1 range max.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Notifications showing 'enemy got reinforcements' or 'allies got reinforcements' were not displayed as intended.
  
• In map editor, event action spawn unit issues.
  
• In map editor, tile update event action having issues when using another season than default 'Summer'.
  
• AI sometimes purchasing too many units even though it should not have because of upkeep, this would lead him into negative income because of too high upkeep.
  
• British AI would declare war on Iraq at the wrong date (before real life invasion).
  

Hello everyone!

Quick little post today to, first, wish you all a great Sunday (bit late), great beginning of a new week, and...

That I would love to meet with more of you during my livestreams!

In case you did not know, I am now going live on youtube on a weekly basis to play Hex of Steel

You can find my last series available on youtube (where I stream)

This last series of 7 episodes is me playing as Finland on the Europe 39 standalone scenarios.

These weekly streams are a time of exchange between the players, and me

If that's something that you feel would be interested it, seeing the dev playing its own game, or chatting with me, then please, by all means, join me!

Next week, we will be starting a brand new series, on that same Europe 39 map, but with improved events and setup. This time, as Romania!

That's all for me today :)

See you in the forums, or in the chat...!

[h3]ADDED:[/h3]

• New dedicated unit counter for bombers (to better identify them at a glance): Counter Bomber.
  Modders will need to update their mod to include the missing graphics.
  
• Clicking on a notification for a unit researched will now open the right category in the research panel.
  
• Level of the unit in the reserve.
  

[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]

• Germany's counters color. In case the new color is not something you like, I have made an official mod which will replace the new counters with the old ones: Old German Counters
• Belgium counters color (slight change in shade of yellow used).
  
• Turkish counters color (New Beige color).
  
• Hungary slight counters color (slight change in shade of green used).
  
• Romania slight counters color (slight change in shade of yellow used).
  
• France counters color (less bright/pale blue).
  
• USA counters color (slight change in shade of green).
  
• Japan counters color (Less orange, more yellow/orange/brown).
  
• Manchukuo counters color (slight change in shade of yellow).
  
• Finland counters color (closer to white, but still light grey).
  
• Type of the unit taken into account for dealing damage when the target is in a landing craft will no longer be 'hard' in 100% of the cases (except if attacked by ships) but will be the proper one used on land battle too.
  
• Tanks fighting on ice will take double damage (frozen sea / river / water tiles).
  
• Units on fortifications tiles will now get entrenchment too.
  
• Potential movement tiles on winter tiles (black shaded, should be more visible).
  
• Bunkers can no longer be built in enemy territory (not sure if it should be counted as a bug).
  
• Upkeep for planes (all) 3% -> 5%. Extra +0.5% for each loadout type.
  
• Upkeep for artillery 1% -> 3%.
  
• Rebalanced Khalkin Gol scenario (Campaign, Allies).
  
• Rebalanced Operation Weserunbung (Campaign, Axis).
  
• Increased ships purchase rate for naval powers (GB, USA, etc).
  
• Croatia will now be properly created upon capitulation of Yugoslavia in 1941 on Europe 1939.
  
• With Historical Focus ON, Germany will now buy 2 times more submarines.
  
• Higher purchase rate of ships for naval major powers.
  
• Updated the cost and turn production time for all coastal batteries (cheaper).
  
• Motorized or mechanized units are now banned from entering or moving through marsh tiles.
  
• Damage reduction for ships vs land targets when shooting at ranges > 1. For up to 3+ range, a 30% damage penalty will incur. For 2 range it will be a damage penalty of 15%. This is to simulate lack of accuracy on very far shots, and also to prevent ships 'cleaning' coastlines up to 3 tiles inland.
  

[h3]FIXED:[/h3]

• You could not deploy a pontoon bridge on a bridge tile (destroyed).
  
• French commanders units had the wrong flag (modern France flag).
  
• Big big data leak. Notifications for AI players were NEVER cleared. Just noticed this on turn 242 of my game, 11900 notifications stacked, never deleted from the game file.
  
• Upgrading a unit and having sent into the reserve, if there were two units on that tile, one of them would be come disabled/hidden forever.
  
• Landings could be performed on mountains or marshes, even for units that could not move on those tiles.
  
• Some units dealing unlimited damage in infinite loop on damage preview. FINALLY FIXED.
  
• Units in train (transport) would show damage for fighting back even though they would not fight back.
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• Confirmation windows for the two new buttons on the unit's UI: Disband and Send back to reserve.
  
• Two new properties for units: 'Immune to winter damage' and 'Can attack ships'. I believe they are transparent enough so that I don't need to explain what these do!
  
• Cavalry to Manchukuo.
  
• Light infantry 43 to Sweden.
  
• AT infantry to Belgium.
  
• AT infantry and AT infantry 43 to Hungary.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility -> 7.3.7.
  
• Updated manual.
  
• Reorganized the order of unit's UI buttons.
  
• Heroes list is now updated on a per hero generation basis, not anymore when the map is created. Very good change as it means it is fully dynamic now and you don't need to restart a new scenario to get the update for heroes.
  
• Engineers will now show mines near them (instead of them being invisible).
  
• Changed armour modifier/penalty taken into account for infantry. It used to be 5% for every infantry unit. It now is 5% for all AT units, and 10% for every other infantry units. It will make regular infantry less of a threat to tanks, and reinforce the use for AT units.
  
• Brought down the hard damage of MG only vehicles way down (from 15 to 5).
  
• Money reward when capturing a VP will no longer fire on every VP capture. It will only fire when the VP has been established (when the recent occupation timer reaches 0). So, if a VP is changing hands every single turn, no money reward will be granted. The occupation timer is the same as for deployment (cannot deploy until X turns have passed).
  
• Heroes icons, I have made some per country ones instead of the 4 generic ones.
  
• Armoured skirts policy now has a new downside: +5% armoured purchase cost.
  
• You cannot upgrade units anymore if there are enemies nearby.
  
• Changed weather probabilities for every month.
  
• Rebalanced Eastern Front 1941 (standalone).
  
• Experimental new combat modifier: Tank retaliation when attacked by TD or AT guns reduced by 50%.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Heavy bombers destroying tiles while no one was on them would not benefitiate from the 'one more tile' plane move.
  
• Turning OFF bad weather from the game settings would result in preventing any season change.
  

[h3]REMOVED[/h3]

• Conversion of old events into new events. The new events have now been introduced for like 8 months, I have therefore decided to remove some old obsolete code. This will have no impact on scenarios that are using events and were made less than 8 months ago. As for current scenarios, it will have a positive effect on them since it will reduce the weight/size of each event when they are saved.