Hex of Steel News

[h3]ADDITIONS[/h3]

• Auto chat reconnection when losing connection.
  

[h3]CHANGES[/h3]

• Entrenchment is not taken into account anymore when the unit attacked is retaliating. So only the defenders entrenchment level is taken into account.
  
• Same for the terrain penalty, only the one of the defender's will be taken into account now since the fight takes place in the defender's tile.
  
• Made terrain effect on supply route have twice the impact in cost.
  
• Increased torpedo damage by 5.
  
• How you can resupply ammo and fuel : Only when you have 2 APs. Meaning when you start your turn. If you move or attack you can't anymore. This is to counter the fact that many times units would be simply full of supplies and rarely out of supplies since you could resupply at any given moment (unless you were out of AP).
  
• Moved the workshop panel in the MODS menu.
  
• File browser standalone plugin for the map overlay in the map editor.
  
• You can now enable / disable mods directly from the mod menu, including workshop mods. I will most likely add a workshop browser where you can subscribe and unsubscribe from mods there too at a later time, I finally found how to do it. They will not be loaded automatically anymore, you need to go at least once in the mod menu and activate them there now. Otherwise they won’t be loaded.
  
• Reorganised my canvases in Unity for better performances. The way canvases in Unity work is that whenever an element is changed Unity will redraw the entire canvas, and since I didn't know that and I placed my entire UI inside a single canvas, the game had to re draw the entire UI every time a single UI element was changed. So to improve this I have placed all elements of the UI that are frequently changed in their own canvases, I am not sure how much of a different this is gonna make since its not expensive to re draw everything but it's still some performance gain :)
  
• Unity update. 2021.1.28 -> 2021.2.17
  

[h3]FIXES[/h3]

• Overlay in map editor not working on MacOS.
  
• Units blinking in real time multiplayer for other human players.
  
• Fixes with the overrun mechanics (You could perform more than one overrun in a turn and move endlessly).
  
• You could resupply ammo and fuel more than once because I wasn't checking how many times the player pressed the button. Now it's once per turn :)
  
• Leaderboard and way to win. Winning by diplomacy is not an option anymore since that would defeat the purpose of a leaderboard. Finishing Europe in 30 turns simply by buying everyone to your side as the USSR just to be #1 is not something I want to see, sorry!
  
• The way supplies were calculated. I am so sorry about this, it has been around for years now I think, I mean at least one for sure. Basically the amount of supplies the unit would get when resupplying (HP or fuel or ammo) was based on the total the unit could have. So if a unit has 100 max HP, currently is at 25 HP, has a 75% supply rate well the unit would get 75% of 100 HP back capped at 50%, but I never intended it to work that way. I always meant it to be 75% of the MISSING HP. So the unit would get 75% of the 75 HP missing to reach its initial 100. Anyway, this has seriously been here FOREVER, most likely shortly I implemented supplies rules, and I could never pinpoint the error while playing but now I did and it's fixed! No more units healing from nothing to almost full health in between turns :)
  

Hello there fellow wargamers!

Who here likes to compare with its peers who's got the biggest or ... who can finish first!?

Today I would like to celebrate the implementation of a new feature into the game : Official support and implementation of the Steam leaderboard for Hex of Steel!

What does this mean? Well, imagine you finish the scenario Europe 1939 in about 350 turns, the results for the scenario get uploaded directly to Steam and everyone will be able to see how you did. All players will be ranked from the lowest to the highest turn count.

Here is the list of everything that is being shared :
- Most units killed
- Most units lost
- Most units captured
- Most units killed per type (Tank, infantry, artillery, ships, planes...)
- Lowest turn count for almost all of the quick games AND per team (Axis/Allies)

And one new achievement for being the top 1 of any of the leaderboard!

Also, this is totally save compatible, so if you are in the middle of a game, feel free to continue it!

If you ever play the same scenario twice, only the best score is kept, so don't worry about doing worse than the first time !

May the competition begin, and let's see what numbers we can see on there :D

NOTE : Since the leaderboard uses Steam's API and Steam's servers, you will understand that this is a Steam version only feature, this won't come to the mobile version of the game or anywhere else out of Steam.

As part of this update I also did the following fixes:

• When being neutral you could get supplies from any neutral country not just your own.
  
• When being neutral you could see where other neutral country's submerged subs were.
  
• When deleting a player from the list in the map editor the borders would not get re drawn.
  
• The AI would not declare war on anyone anymore.
  
• Fixes for Europe 39.
  
• Neutral units in sight would wake up units that were put to sleep.
  
• The range of artillery would be shown when in landing crafts.
  

One more screenshot from the new game, an Avro Lancaster Mk. I having 2 engines destroyed during a night bombing :)

[h3]Added[/h3]

• Overrun. This happens when armoured units make an enemy retreat or kill a unit. They will get automatically move in the tile that belonged to the defenders. Hopefully this will make the game more alive and not so much static :) Overrun will obviously not happen in any sea or river tiles as well as mountain tiles. Recon units cannot overrun. Overrun is an optional setting, you can turn it ON and OFF in the settings. The unit can attack a second time after performing an overrun.
  
• Europe 1942 configuration. Takes place in November (11th) 1942. Starts with operation Uranus and operation torch, tough year for the germans.
  
• Range of the artillery is now shown when you place your mouse above a ranged unit.
  

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• You can now deploy your core units almost anywhere on the map on turn 1 in campaign scenarios. The rules for determining where each unit can be spawned does not apply, so you can deploy your tigers at a village if you wish. Only at turn 1.
  
• Artillery removes morale now. Lots of morale if it is very heavy artillery or rockets.
  
• Changed the morale bonus / penalty for losing / capturing an enemy VP from being applied to ALL units on the map to something more local. It is now applied to all units in a 10 hex radius.
  
• You can now upgrade any unit that is on an adjacent tile to the tile needed for the upgrade. QoL feature.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Winter tile Road4Intersection not marked as railroad, therefore you couldn’t use trains over it.
  
• When all countries on a map were neutral, the game would end.
  
• Improved performances when having a big OOB.
  
• When declaring war on another country while being neutral yourself your diplomacy state didn’t change. You will now turn Axis / Allies depending on the side the country you just declared war on joined.
  
• Options in the store were not refunded when upgrading.
  
• When using the button « Remove all units » in the map editor, it would not reset to 0 the count of owned unit of each type for the player. So for example if after removing all units from the map using the button you were to place an infantry, it would not say 1st infantry but continue from where it left off the last time you bought an infantry unit.
  
• In game load panel deleting a save would not make the delete button or rename button go away, you could still press them.
  
• When making a save manually from the in game load panel the input field for entering a save name would go missing.
  

Oh, and for those of you who would like some news about my next game ... it's going very well !
Have a look! (Yes, planes, again, but that's what I like the most to play when I play it haha)

Bf 109 K-4 Attacking a formation of Il-4s helped by a Bf 109 F-2

I added so much new stuff, I really am crossing my fingers for a release of the beta this month!
I keep pushing the date back, I know, but it isn't because I'm not working, but because I am working too much! I keep adding new stuff, fixing things, I'm doing my best! My brother has got the season change done, so we can turn summer maps into winter ones, I already got a bunch of winter camos for ground vehicles so they'll blend in :)

Sorry for not being so active with HoS for the last few weeks
First of my girlfriend came to France so I am spending time with her
Second of all all the work time I have left is dedicated to my new game (which is really starting to be ready now! At least the beta phase)

[h3]Additions[/h3]

• Added capitulation events for all Baltic states in Europe 39.
  
• Destroyed sea bridges graphics. We forgot about them ! Sorry !
  
• Large harbours now have a terrain modifier of -15 instead of -10 (which was the same as the small harbours).
  
• Rank icons when you select a unit or hover above one with your mouse, letting you know at a glance the rank of a unit without the need to right click on it.
  

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• The AI will not stay on human owned VPs anymore. They will vacate them so that the human player can use his own VPs for upgrade purposes for example. The AI will still get inside those VPs if there is any threat, but will leave ASAP.
  
• All Baltic states will switch to Allies when the date reaches June 1940 (Soviets should easily take over and perform the annexation).
  
• Winter war in Europe 1939 had both SU and Finland in the same team/faction. SU will now be put in the "Winter War" faction and Finland in the Axis.
  
• Removed the Ju-188 recon stat.
  
• Strengthened the British position in North Africa in Europe 39.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• AI ships could resupply at sea, sorry about this bug this is a major one.
  
• Capitulations events marked as Historical Focus ONLY would get executed even when Historical focus was OFF in the settings … Oops :x
  
• Okinawa as the Japanese was doomed to end after turn 1.
  
• Couldn’t open the escape menu on mobile if OOB was open.
  
• Units with 0 MPs were only blinking half way.
  
• Units with custom names couldn't not be redeployed once sent back to the reserve.
  
• Winter war in Europe 1939 event was happening one year too late.
  
• Strat bombers couldn't blow up bridges.
  
• Achilles tank destroyer didn't have the same attack stats as the 17-pdr.
  
• Op. Edelweiss on the German side there was a random city that was assigned to Germany instead of the Soviet Union.
  
• Op. Edelweiss had a Su-2 light bomber with bomb equipped even though it already is a light bomber.
  

[h3]ADDITIONS [/h3]

• Added new keybinding to deselect a unit. By default it is right click. Had to add this one otherwise you couldn’t use right click to like move or attack cause it would deselect the unit constantly.
  

[h3]FIXES[/h3]

• There were no winter versions of the sea bridges tiles resulting in them turning completely black when season was changing.
  
• Small issues with generals that had air damage bonuses AND ground damage bonuses, their bonuses would never apply.
  
• Cannot move any landing craft in an occupied sea tile that was inside the FOW.
  
• Couldn’t use right click to move or attack a unit since it was also triggering the unselect unit at the same time!
  
• Barrage balloons couldn’t be unfielded.