Hex of Steel News

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

New change-log :)
Got tired of appending to the old one haha

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• Added missing default keybind for opening/closing the Order of Battle (L is the new default keybind).
  
• Prototype icon in the store for prototypes. It doesn't do anything, it just visually shows you what units are prototypes.
  
• 43M Toldi III (hungarian light tank).
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Attempt to nerf the overpowered fighters: Rockets option and Bombs option no longer give an extra ammo to base ammo. This means, fighters don’t get 6 ammo anymore, they stay at 4 as they start with.
  
• Bombs on fighters now reduce their air damage by 25%, this is to represent their loss in agility and effectiveness in air vs air combat.
  
• Rockets don’t give any more bonus to air combat (they previously had a +5 air damage bonus).
  
• Bombs option now costs 50 instead of 60.
  
• Torpedo option now costs 50 instead of 60.
  
• Bombs and Torpedo options impact on plane action range now works as a percentage (25%) of their base action range instead of being a flat 15 tiles penalty.
  
• Keyboard camera layout has been changed for French (ZQSD vs WASD).
  
• Sd. Kfz. 232 graphics.
  
• Panzer III Ausf. A graphics.
  
• ML-20 152 mm graphics.
  
• ZiS-3 graphics.
  
• StuG III F graphics.
  
• Wurfrahmen 40 graphics.
  
• T-28 soviet tank graphics.
  
• BA-10 graphics.
  
• BT-2 graphics.
  
• Almost all Hungarian tanks graphics.
  
• Rebalanced Toldi hungarian tanks.
  
• Hungary 1944 standalone scenario update.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Soviet Union and any other Communist country had wrong hero icon on counters.
  
• Fixed issue in PBEM games where if AI was set to play first, upon first human playing the turn would end and game would be sent the server.
  
• Siracusa (city) typo.
  
• Torino (city) typo.
  
• Small scroll issue in multiplayer host menu.
  
• Freshly dropped paratroopers, after attacking, would still blink (if the option was ON).
  
• AI freeze instance with paratroopers.
  
• Spawning buildings through events did not work.
  
• PBEM game listing not displaying country the player would play if he joined if the first player to play was set to be AI and not human.
  
• Order of Battle unit highlight not always working issue.
  
• Garrison units had the 'division' suffix added which made it weird. They will be called 'Garrison' from now on.
  
• When generating a random scenario, the game would not check for units having a max purchase limits when populating the map.
  
• Winter frozen sea tiles would turn black at times.
  
• Upkeep value displayed being incorrect if you were Neutral.
  
• Continuing a game that ended after you surrendered did not work.
  

[h3]REMOVED [/h3]

• Strategic redeployment for the AI because it was not working as intended (not in all cases, really hard to get it working like a human player would, almost impossible to cover all cases and situations or map layouts to make an actual good use of it). It would endlessly send back its unit to the reserve then re sell them and in the end never deployed them, it just crippled its army.