Hex of Steel News

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• Confirmation window when trying to play campaign scenarios with unsupported settings (Upkeep, Manpower). You can still play with those ON but it is not recommended because balance will not be good with those settings on those scenarios.
  
• Declaration of war from the Allies in the Pacific scenarios for invading protected countries. Example: Japan invading the Philippines, USA will join the war against Japan. Etc.
  
• In the Steam leaderboards, possibility to see your own score now if you are not part of the top 100 listed.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Chat and multiplayer compatibility updated to version 7.2.6.
  
• Added a few tiles on the upper side of the Bougainville scenario to allow for flanking manoeuvres with ships for Japan/USA.
  
• Few people got banned from using the online chat. What does this mean? It means you should not write shit in the chat because I will know if you do, and then all of your messages are simply hidden for all users, and on top of that, you are not allowed to send any more messages online. This way even if you ever hack it and found a way to still send messages, every other game users will not see them because their game will ignore you. Seriously. Behave nicely.
  
• Supportive fire from ships is now only 50% of their air damage value (was too OP to have all nearby ships attack a single plane with 100% of their strength as supportive fire). Cruisers will use 30% of their AA value.
  
• Units that cannot retreat and would surrender because they have no available tile to move to because of nearby allied forces occupying the only available tiles will now no longer surrender, but instead lose their attack action for the next turn. Still applies some kind of penalty, but not as harsh for not being able to surrender because allies are blocking the way.
  
• Reverted back to the old mod loading system, which although slower, would not result into crazy RAM usage.
  
• Fuel icon will now be displayed (yellow) if the fuel amount is less or equal to 40% (previously 20%).
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Balance on Guadalcanal campaign scenario.
  
• Balance on Midway campaign scenario.
  
• Balance on Sonnenblume campaign scenario.
  
• Achievements not unlocking properly when editing a base game scenario.
  
• Hong Kong not belonging to UK in Pacific 1937.
  
• Minor territorial issues with Thailand in Pacific scenarios.
  
• Russian localization issues.
  
• Real time multiplayer redeploying units was not synced.
  
• One rare deployment issue.
  
• Progressive cost and duplicating unit in the store issue. Price wouldn't go up.
  
• The AI would not purchase ships in some cases.
  
• Japan 1945 standalone scenario would never end.
  
• Tupolev-2 availability date should have been November 1942 instead of May 1941.
  
• Minsk41 scenario had the wrong starting date: June 1st 1941 vs June 22nd 1941.
  
• In some rare cases, ambushes would not trigger, and you could even undo your move.
  
• When in the map editor, if one of the player had no country set, you could not use the store at all and purchase new units. Nothing would load.
  
• In campaign, when forfeiting, the buttons for loading the next scenario would not be working properly. One would not do anything, the other would load the wrong scenario.
  
• Willy's Jeep MB had no NATO counter.
  
• Garrisons with realistic unit naming would have no name.
  
• You could not use supply ships/planes to resupply your allies. Planes would on top of that trigger the destruction of the tile if you tried to.
  
• In the end of game UI, when visualizing the game stats, the manpower fielded values would often show negative values.
  
• Amount of time played on a given save shown at the end of the scenario would not be the correct one whenever the amount of time played was superior to 24h.
  
• Philippines campaign North/South (late war) had issues with the units of the AI players (all of its units were doubled).
  
• Money modification events would not fire in the right order and therefore ended up being useless (only when adding negative income, though).
  
• Republic of China (ROC) was missing its ideology.
  
• Typos in Minsk41 campaign scenario (axis/allies) city names.
  
• Petlyakov-3 availability month (october, not June).
  
• Typo in the LaGG-3 plane (soviet).
  

Last update of the year, it is December 31st already, so, happy new year everyone, stay safe and have fun ;)

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• New confirmation window when pressing the 'reset all' button in the settings menu.
  
• New confirmation window when pressing the 'end turn' button, if some HQ points accumulated and have not been spent, research points are available, units can be deployed but have not.
  
• New unit property: Progressive cost. Can be edited in the Units Editor. This new property works simply as a way to increase a unit's cost based on amount purchased. For example, factories have a progressive cost of 300. For every new factory purchased, the base cost of factories increases by the progressive cost set up. So, factory #1 costs 1050, factory #2 costs 1350, etc etc.
  
• (Mobile) Confirmation window to perform unit swapping and prevent any accidental swap.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Updated multiplayer/chat version to 7.2.5.
  
• Updated game engine (Unity) to 2021.3.33f1 (from 2021.3.25f1).
  
• Improved mods loading speed by around 20% (Napoleonic Wars mod took 1min46s to load, it now takes 1min18s).
  
• Reduced AI playing lag and increase its playing speed by about 40% on average.
  
• Tooltip for the ironman mode will now be forced shown (no delay for mouse hovering).
  
• Production time for refineries and factories.
  
• Changed the color of the range of units (representation) for colorblind mode ON.
  
• Camera zoom in/out start level (automatic) on scenario opening. Should be better now!
  
• Enabled back the 'support declaration of war' upon invasion of the BENELUX on Europe 1939 scenario, only if Germany is being played by a human player. It stays OFF if Germany is AI played (for balance purposes).
  
• Improved AI's behaviour with its use of anti air units. It will properly assess the situation and work on protecting uncovered areas, cover a maximum of allies, and will no longer rush to the frontline as it did previously.
  
• Changed the order of the buttons on the right side of the UI to better prevent accidental end of turn actions.
  
• Capturing a VP with an enemy balloon on it will now automatically destroy the enemy balloon.
  
• Campaign of France (campaign scenario) balance improved.
  
• Europe 1943 balance improved.
  
• Enemy planes no longer prevent engineers from deploying things on the ground.
  
• The river tile on which an allied pontoon or engineer or any unit acting as a bridge no longer counts when it comes to movement cost. This will solve the 'Thick forest on the other side of the river' issue where almost no unit could cross because the river would take most of their movement points and the bridges were rendered useless.
  
• (Mobile) The game will no longer let the phone go into sleep mode if no action is made/screen is untouched.
  
• (Mobile) Single finger hold is now required to show the damage window.
  
• (Mobile) Damage window is now shown a little bit higher to prevent fingers hiding the values.
  
• (Mobile) Damage breakdown will now come up a little faster (0.75s vs 1s) when holding your finger on an enemy.
  
• Skipping a unit for a turn now automatically selects the next unit in line (saving clicks).

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Unlocking achievements on the Tutorial map did not work.
  
• Clicks went through UI when deselecting a unit and if you had left click set to deselect a unit it would deselect the unit all the time instead of performing UI interactions.
  
• Notification for research (available) will no longer be shown if all units have been researched.
  
• Issues with production time and factory/refinery.
  
• Tiles properties (toggles) from tiles editor were not passed on newly built tiles.
  
• Jumping to next unit did not dim the counter.
  
• Supplies rate UI item sometimes not disappearing properly.
  
• Potential damage UI item sometimes not disappearing properly (if mouse went over UI).
  
• Tanks with flamethrowers would deal no damage to bunkers due to armour modifier being too high.
  
• Online chat not working when coming back from a PBEM game (auto main menu loading).
  
• Submarine out of actions submerged would not show the fact they are submerged (opacity reduced).
  
• Alliances/Wars (Diplomacy) issues in Europe 1939 and in general (logic issues which would bring some countries to an all out war with everyone).
  
• AI was not optimizing its second fighter move (after attacked once). It will now properly cover any potential allies around its area of attack.
  
• Italy never going to war with Greece on Europe scenario.
  
• Missing black outlines on unit levelling up GFX.
  
• Missing 'SS' or 'Guards' political units mention on unit names.
  
• AI war declarations with Japan.
  
• Sync of weather in realtime multiplayer.
  

Merry Christmas to ya'll in advance! :)

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• In the map editor, you can now edit any unit’s starting HP by setting a custom HP modifier (in percentage, from 1 to 100.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer/Chat compatibility version updated to 7.2.4.
  
• The demo version of the game will no longer connect to the same chat as the paid version. Too many trolls without account registration.
  
• The armour modifier is now applied in another way, in order to further increase balance and logic.
  Here is an example of the damage before the change, for an engagement between a Nashorn and an IS-2. Hard damage of the Nashorn is 115, armour of the IS-2 is 93. Base damage is 22. Now, if the Nashorn gets damaged, since the damage scale with the HP but the armour don’t you literally get 0 damage for every single attack, which is kinda wrong. In order to fix this, the base raw damage is now calculated with the armour right away, and the HP modifier is applied based on the remaining damage. Meaning, if the Nashorn is at 50% HP, instead of dealing 0 damage, it would deal around 11 damage, because the HP modifier now applies after armour has been deduced from base raw hard damage. This makes things way more balanced and will solve many combat issues where if a unit was no longer 100% HP it would simply be useless because of the orders in which modifiers were applied.
  To sum this change up. Base damage is now equal to base damage minus armour, and the HP modifier is calculated based on left potential damage, instead of on the base raw damage.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Campaign end of scenario bonus of XP for < 5 units lost could be wrongly applied.
  
• Some XP/rank calculation issues in campaign scenarios.
  
• On the mobile version of the game, on tablet, the ‘unit ready’ or ‘units in production’ icons would never be shown.
  
• In the map editor, the victory and defeat text would always be overwritten by the intro text.
  
• Seems like not all commanders had the ‘permanent death’ toggled ON.
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• 4 new key binds (empty by default) to jump to the each far side of the map (left/right/up/down).
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility versionning: 7.2.3.
  
• Improved network stability when playing in real time multiplayer (reduced the amount of queries sent back and forth to prevent BufferFull error which was creating the desync issues) I therefore managed to reduce the amount of exchanged data/queries by 58%. Hopefully, this has a meaningful impact on stability in general.
  
• If a translation is missing, English will now be used as default instead of ‘missing translation’ text.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• In real time multiplayer, supportive fire from the FOW would not be synced (visually). Meaning if some artillery uncovered itself from the FOW on the host, the client would not see the newly uncovered artillery doing the supportive fire.
  
• AI paratroopers would go towards sea victory points and drop in the sea.
  
• Lot of typos or incorrect translation of soviet cities in the Soviet Union in the Europe scenarios.
  
• Incorrect Chinese cities names in Pacific scenarios.
  
• Heroes graphics having wrong dimensions prevented mods from being loaded entirely.
  
• Building buildings (haha) in real time multiplayer spawned the building at the wrong tile (wrong X coordinates).
  
• Unit suffix setting and realistic naming were both linked to each other, you could not have only realistic naming ON but suffix OFF.
  
• AI income modifier was being overwritten based on difficulty. This was half wrong, since it only matters if you play with ironman mode ON. Income modifier for AI will now only be overwritten based on difficulty IF ironman mode is ON for the scenario.
  
• Tactical bombers no longer dealt attrition. Not sure why it has been disabled for them.
  
• Planes could attack ground units on an adjacent tile if the ground unit had an enemy plane above it.
  
• Upgrading infantry would not make it lose 'isPontoonBridge' attribute, or gain it in the case of upgrading regular infantry into engineers.
  

Hey everyone!

Honestly, I hadn't planned on making a post on the Steam Community today, but something happened over on Discord that just made my day, and I couldn't resist sharing it with you all (with dad's authorization, of course!).

Meet the youngest wargamer out there (at least officially, from what I know!)—young Zalán, who turned 9 today! Happy birthday, buddy!

He's a huge fan of HoS and got his birthday cake designed based on the game—how crazy (and lovely) is that?!

Here's a picture of the special cake:



Now, I'm aware most of us are grown-ups here, but hey, who's up for a cake competition? Just saying... we could totally organize something, haha!

While we're mostly adults, the sheer enthusiasm of a young fan celebrating with a game-themed cake is contagious, right?

Take care, everyone, and I hope this brings a smile to your face as it did to mine. 😊

Val