Hex of Steel News

7.3.5

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

New unit property in the units editor for modders: AI purchase chance override. Using this, you can now fine tune the frequency of the AI purchasing a particular unit. This can be used to overwrite base units purchase rate by AI, or your own from your mods.
New policy in units production category: Import focus (cancels lend lease price penalty).
New toggle in the map/scenario editor: Force disable Upkeep mechanics.
New policy in the Field Modifications category: Improved AP shells. +30% damage vs armoured targets for all AT units. Ammo cost for supplies x300% for all anti tank units.
10 generic heroes to more or less every nation in the game. All names have been made up, representation is generic, but at least it enables nations without known heroes to get some.

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

Rebalanced the Op. Husky campaign scenario on the Allies side.
Rebalanced the Pacific 1942 standalone scenario.
Upkeep cost of some units (planes and ships were increased and more detailed, veterancy upkeep was brought down to 0).
Starting morale for newly built unit (65vs75).
Flamethrower tanks NATO icon.
Some polish units graphics.
Updated the manual.
Downgrading a unit into a Garrison will no longer result in the unit being sent to the reserve.
Yugoslavian counters graphics color scheme.
Italian counters graphics color scheme.
Denmark counters graphics color scheme.
Campaign commander (you, player) rank now has a max rank cap: 15.
Tanks / Cavalry no longer gets the terrain penalty when attacking FROM a defavorable tile, unless being attacked (in which case they are effectively fighting in that terrain).
Rebalanced Europe 39 standalone (Italy).
Rebalanced Winter War standalone (Finland).

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

When loading a save, if some of your planes were equipped with rockets or bombs, they would see their max ammo increased.
Coastal battery flag/property (from units editor) in game effects.
Using Czech language would prevent the game from working at all.
Buildings could be embarked in transport ships if built on harbour tiles. You could transport bunkers and such :) Funny bug
Romania annexations by Hungary and USSR were happening at the wrong date.
Level 5 units could reach 150 HP (if they were purchased with veterancy) instead of 140 max.
You could deploy in marsh tiles units that could not move through them.

7.3.4

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

New event trigger type: On one of VPs lost (works the same as On VPs lost, but instead of checking if ALL VPs in the list have been lost, this one only checks if ONE of the VPs in the list has been lost).
New event trigger type: On unit destroyed. You will need to register the unique ID of the unit you want to act as the trigger. The unit's ID is displayed when you click on a unit on the map. Simply copy and paste it in the event trigger field.
New event action: Update tile. You can now simply transform one tile into another. I'm personally using this alongside other events to check if the enemy is making an advance to 'spawn' trenches on the map.
Scrollbars in a lot of key dropdowns (with lots of entries).
New policy in units production category: Import focus (cancels lend lease price penalty).

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

Updated multiplayer features compatibility -> 7.3.4
Half fix, half a change, not sure where to put it. AI planes production. When it came to purchasing planes, the AI would take into account all of the visible enemy planes, but only its own planes, this created a disbalance in its understanding of the situation, as it should have taken all of the allied planes instead of just its own into account.
Europe standalone scenarios USSR territory setup.
Minors, but also early war majors, will now have a higher purchase rate of vehicles from other nations PAST 1941. Such as: Belgium, Norway, France, Luxembourg, Poland, etc. This change was made because if somehow, those countries were still alive in 1941+, they would still fight with early war shitty equipment, but now, they will way more often purchase equipment from bigger allies.
The AI will now purchase and deploy supply depots.
Improved balance on Stalingrad 42 and Stalingrad 43 standalone scenarios.
Balance improvements on Crimea 44 standalone scenario.
Improved significantly the calculation speed of a unit supply route.
Norway counters color.
The 'spawn units in VPs' button in the map editor will now work with modded units as well (populating with random infantry from your mod).
Dive/Surface button now has a dynamic icon to better show in what state the submarine is.
Rebalanced the Op. Husky campaign scenario on the Allies side.
Upkeep cost of some units (planes and ships were increased and more detailed, veterancy upkeep was brought down to 0).
Starting morale for newly built unit (65vs75).

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

Research field in the Heroes Editor was not working.
Heroes images loaded from mods would be all grey.
AI ships not working properly in some very specific and rare cases (being in a sea near a lake where there were enemies but it could not really move to the lake because land was preventing its path).
Fast AI (Allies Only) option would not properly work, the AI allies would not play as fast as they should have.
The 'no capture' property in the unit editor would also be preventing the unit to surrender.
AI crashing planes out of fuel.
In multiplayer games, you could see if enemy human units were low on ammo or fuel / or depleted.
Great Britain kept declaring war on people occupying Norway (every turn).
You could not deassign a keybind and set it to nothing for example.
Pressing escape while rebinding would close the settings menu instead of deassign any assigned keybind.
Ships were not sent back to the reserve when the tile they're on is freezing into ice.
When loading a save, if some of your planes were equipped with rockets or bombs, they would see their max ammo increased.

7.3.3

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

New units for Sweden: Cavalry, AT infantry, AT infantry 43, Heinkel 115, 57 mm Pvkan m43, Haubits m40, Landsverk L-62 Anti, m40 automatic cannon, Pansarbil m39, Pansarbil m40, Pansarvarnskanonvagn m43, Stormartillerivagn m43 75mm, Stridsvagn m37, Stridsvagn m38, Stridsvagn m40K, Stridsvagn m40L, Terrangbil m42 KP.
New event action: Add/Remove fixed income. You can now use this to simply add or remove any value to the current fixed income for a player (before, you could only set a value, directly).
Translation of the game in Norwegian.

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

Multiplayer compatibility -> 7.3.3
Swedish counters (new color scheme).
Some Swedish units graphics.
Artillery barrage policy effects (downsides): Artillery repair now costs 2 times more, and ammo costs 3 times more.
All upgraded units will now be sent to the reserve for at least 1 turn.
Some soviet planes graphics update.
Some units stats.
Buildings (units) can no longer get heroes.

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

Auto supplies at beginning of player's turn was not working (units would stay with no ammo or fuel).
Cycle through keybind 'ground only' not working.
Could not join the Comintern when changing faction in diplomacy.
Changing faction through diplomacy would not take into account potential translations, and would not convert those into actual usable game data to assign the proper faction (Axe (FR) -> Axis (EN)).
Paratroopers and upgrades.
Ice not properly forming at coastlines during winter.
AI not deploying new units as close to the frontline as it could.
AI often blocking itself in harbours and not starting amphibs when it could/should.
Bougainville campaign scenario was not marked as 'official' and you could not continue your campaign.
Japan 1945 standalone scenario would end on turn 1.
Ambush would sometimes not fire/work, the unit ambushing would not attack (if it had attacked during its previous turn).
Submarines not dealing any air damage to planes in retaliation.
Movement points issue when deploying new units if movement points amount was impacted by some option from the store.

7.3.2

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

New policy category: Field Modifications.
New confirmation window when the game fails to upload your PBEM game to the server after you played your turn. Usually, this happens when the network is really weak (Northern Alaska weak). This could get really frustrating because you had to play your turn all over again, without any guarantee it would go through. Now, you can play your turn, and if the upload fails, a popup will appear and you will be able to re try to send the file, without having to re take your turn!
Extra tooltip to explain HQ points.

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

Updated multiplayer compatibility from 7.3.0 to 7.3.2.
Reorganized the policies in different categories.
Improved AI 'move after attack' both with bombers and fighters.
Veteran option in the store is no longer available when upgrading a unit.
Updated list of people banned from the chat.
Military tactics policies giving bonuses on specific terrain tiles have been changed to take effect only in the tile where the fight actually happens (instead of any tile from defender or attacker).
When playing with Historical Focus ON, Germany will now declare war on anyone invading Sweden, if they are not with the Axis.
When declaring war through the diplomacy panel on a neutral player, the new neutral player will not get all wars of the new faction it joins. So, when I am playing as Finland and I declare war on Sweden, Sweden joins the Allies, but it doesn't get the wars the Allies have (like vs Germany, Italy, Slovakia, etc).
XP required to reach level 5 (from level 4) for units has been increased (need an extra 15 XP).
Towed artillery and ships XP required to reach next level has been increased. As they would most of the time stay away and shoot over and over, they would reach their next levels quite fast (+50% more XP required in between level).
Cost for veterans option in the store. Now costs more for tanks, ships and planes.
Campaign scenarios are now available in the map editor menu.
When upgrading a unit, if the difference in raw price between two units is too high, the unit will be sent to the reserve for a certain amount of turn (minimum of 1, maximum of 2).
Great Britain will now go to war with a human player if it invades Norway.
Naval convoy routes will now only provide a visibility of 0 hexes around itself (previously 1 all around).

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

AI in landing crafts in harbour stuck in landing crafts and not staying as regular units.
Units landing on the ground would have a LOT of movement points (254 to be exact).
AI would place down pontoon bridges on frozen rivers.
Game freeze when Vichy France units reached level 5 on Europe 39.
Fixed once and for all the UI input issues with joysticks/controllers/wheels/pedals....
Supply rate was not capped between 0 and 100. You could get 100+ if you had the policy which grants an extra 50% supply rate.
XP animation or other text animations would stop animating if you unselected the unit right away.
Paratroopers in real time multiplayer could end up in landing crafts when a save was made and loaded.
Ping/Mentions in the chat.
PBEM chat was not working.
Stacking menus when clicking on all top UI buttons (they would not close each other).
Notification saying you got a new tech researched would not have the left click shortcut working (supposed to open the research panel).
"Sea was lost" notification text when losing a naval convoy route tile.
Notification area on the right of the screen would not properly scale with game's window's height.

[h3]REMOVED[/h3]

Icon for Veterans units, as it no longer have any real meaning (simply makes a unit start with extra levels and XP).
XP loss for upgrading/downgrading a unit.

7.3.1

[h3]WARNING: [/h3]This update introduces 2 new settings which need to be manually setup by the player. I cannot modify default values of newly introduced variables, therefore you have to check your settings. By default, for already installed games, the values for 'Autosaves amount' and 'Autosaves frequency' will be 0. Please set those to whatever value you feel comfortable with.

[h3]ADDED:[/h3]

New setting: Amount of autosaves. You can now choose the amount of autosaves you want the game to keep (ranging from 0 to 10). If 10 as a max value does not make you happy, drop me a message and I will increase this max value.
New setting: Autosaves frequency. How often will the game performs autosaves (Never, every turn, every 2 turns, etc).
New setting: Display unit's level on counter. Useful if you want a bit more info each unit displayed on the counter.
Missing Pacific scenarios Steam leaderboards.

[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]

Balance on Europe 1939, we're almost perfect now...
Changed a bit the AI fleet composition. It will no longer have infinite amount of destroyers or submarines try to escort a single ship. Some of those will be used for proper recon tasks instead of simply following the main capital ship (some will still follow, just not like 6).
The way smoke on destroyed tiles is rendered.
Improved file size (save files/map files), reduced by 7% (Vanilla Europe 1939 map save file size original was 6.5 MB, brought it down to 6.1 MB).
Surrendering units will now lose their XP and Level (fall back to 0 XP and Level 1).
El Alamein 2 Allies side balance.
Artillery taking armour into account % changed from 15% to 20%.
Reduced the manpower growth over time (0.03% -> 0.02% / month for majors, and 0.03% -> 0.01% / month for minors).
Introduced a new AI setting to better identify Major naval powers and adjust their ships purchase rate. Non major naval powers will have lower purchase rate for ships.
Minors countries will no longer purchase big ships from majors (No more Romania purchasing Bismarck).
Marked the Italian Aquila carrier as prototype.
Optimized a bit more the second movement for AI planes, making sure they would not move out in enemy AA or fighter fire.
AI planes will now be more or less aggressive given how the conflict is going for them (if they are winning, they will be more aggressive and allow more losses and riskier attacks).
Airfield tile terrain modifier changed (reduced) from 25% -> 15%.

[h3]FIXED:[/h3]

AI pathfinding issue with sea bridges (thought it could walk across sea by starting from a bridge).
Error message when booting up the game because steam API key expired and game could not communicate with Steam servers to get the time played to unlock related achievements.
Unit suffix in unit name setting issue on some scenarios.
Selecting a unit in the map editor (on the map) would set it a custom name (its own name).
Finland/Norway/Sweden were getting the Winter damage bonus (+15% damage in winter) when attacking with AA vs planes. Should have been only be for land combat.
Soviet Union performing naval landings in 1942 on Europe scenarios.
Units capturing Naval Convoy Routes would display in their history 'Captured : Sea' instead of 'Naval Convoy Route'.
AI ships purchased rate.
Score for completing a scenario would not be uploaded to the steam leaderboard.
AI in landing crafts with low HP would move back (all good) even when they could capture a VP right away (not good).