Hex of Steel News

666, haha

Alright so in this version I am trying to update the version of the game engine (Unity 2021.3.0 -> Unity 2021.3.17)
Last I tested it worked on MacOS and Windows without issues, now some things might go wrong so I'm relying on your feedback on this one :)
If something seems off / is broken, please let me know so that I can either fix it if it's fixable, or simply revert to the previous branch
As always, you can always manually revert to the previous stable release!

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• New event type: Spawn unit at turn. Instead of spawning a unit at a given date, it will be based on the turn.
  
• New setting for units in the unit editor: Max purchase amount.
  
• New setting to hide the battle preview (was asked in order to play a more hardcore version of the game, why not). Turning this setting ON will hide completely the little UI part that tells you what damage are done to each side when you hover with your mouse over an enemy.
  
• Barrage balloons for the USSR.
  
• New setting: Permanent blinking. Without this option turned ON, units will blink only when at a certain distance from the camera (units having action points left). Turn this ON and they will always blink, regardless of the distance to the camera.
  
• AI behaviour will ignore staying on trench tiles for scenarios taking place between 1914 and 1919.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• HP modifier is now being calculated and applied BEFORE the encirclement modifier.
  
• Made the AI purchase barrage balloons more often in losing air war situations.
  
• Barrage balloons turn to produce reduced to 1 (instead of 2).
  
• Panzergrenadier stats.
  
• Volksgrenadier stats.
  
• Updated manual (political units).
  
• Inverted zoom scroll for Windows users.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Supply units that were upgraded passed this on to the newly upgraded unit. Ex: Upgrading/Downgrading a supply plane into any other plane would make this plane a super supply bomber!
  
• Units that had no suffix even though the option was turned ON.
  
• Units' names not being updated after an upgrade (linked to the issue above).
  
• Upgrading a unit from one that had less max HP than the new one would result in the unit being upgraded not being full HP (keeping old HP).
  
• You could upgrade barrage balloons.
  
• Prices in research panel were wrong (All).
  
• Commanders not being given back when deleting them in the map editor from the deploy panel.
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• New toggle in the unit editor "IsEngineers". This replaces the now deleted "Pioneer" unit type. More versatile this way, and faster in code.
  
• Added separation for counting for ships types as well (same as I did for infantry types in the latest 6.6.4).
  
• Also added a separate counter for rail artillery guns and armoured trains.
  
• Possibility to mod / change the graphics of the movement tiles. Example mod in the workshop (download it and feel free to copy it), I also added the "how to" in the README file that gets generated when you create a mod, there you will find the instructions on how to change the graphics.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Updated Operation Grapheshot, factories were missing.
  
• Ships for Great Britain and the USA cost 50% less manpower, this change is made to enable them to have a better / bigger fleet in scenarios where they cannot field more due to manpower shortages resulting in weak fleets (Only for the WWII period, from 1939 included to 1945 included).
  
• Reset and regenerated all units numbers on all maps.
  
• Slightly improved the generation speed of potential movement tiles.
  
• Updated manual.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• You could walk on mines from your allies and the mine would now go off, this would result in a unit overlap. You cannot walk on friendly mines anymore.
  
• Upgrading a plane without a drop tank to a plane with a drop tank would not grant you the extra fuel.
  
• Upgrade fuel issue (giving you more than you could have at your max).
  
• Ju 188 had 2 visibility and wasn't marked as a recon unit.
  
• Deploying unit was using LeftMouseButton by default and wasn't using the keybinding the user set (now is mapped to the move unit keybinding).
  
• AI freeze instance.
  
• Damage breakdown HP modifier was showing wrong values leading to some confusion. Damage dealt were right, but the breakdown for the HP modifier was wrong.
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• AI income modifier in the settings (singleplayer only).
  
• Human income modifier in the settings (singleplayer only).
  
• Fast AI only for allies setting (mutually exclusive with Fast AI).
  
• New event: Add unit to reserve. Was suggested by a player and I was seduced by the idea, this way you don't bother with having to pinpoint exactly where you want the unit to appear, the AI will handle that himself.
  
• Clone/Duplicate event button. You can now duplicate events at will at the push of a button.
  
• Convert save to playable scenario button in the map editor. When you click this button, it will reset a certain amount of variables to turn a save into a brand new scenario (reset time played, turns count, alliances, wars, etc). Only resets what needs to be reseted in order to use the old save file as a new scenario.
  
• 2 new achievements for completing the tutorial (As the Axis and the Allies).
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• To unlock achievements that are scenario linked, you will need to have FOW setting ON, infinite ammo and fuel OFF, have the AI income modifier set to at least 100% and the human player's income modifier at maximum of 100%.
  
• Made Fast AI and Slow AI setting mutually exclusive (cannot have both Slow and Fast AI turned ON at the same time, turning one or the other ON will turn the other OFF).
  
• Turned the random damage modifier setting from a toggle into a slider. You can adjust the value to your liking. From 0 to 50. 0 Acts as if the option was disabled (no random damage).
  
• Follow AI moves will no longer take effect when Fast AI is ON. Nobody will throw up anymore due to high movement speed :)
  
• Semyon Timoshenko was added to the Soviet Army in Europe 1939 start.
  
• You can get supplies from airfields now. Useful when using paratroopers if you can capture an airfield, you can now establish an airlift. However, the presence of enemies in the area will diminish the supplies rate.
  
• Split several sort of infantry in their own category for the amount of units to assign suffixes. So now paratroopers will not count as regular infantry when picking the number for the unit (ex: You have 5 light infantry unit, their names go from 1st light infantry to 5th light infantry, before, if you had bought paratroopers, they would be 6th paratroopers, they will now be 1st paratroopers).
  

[h3]REMOVED[/h3]

• Framerate setting (now automatically set to your screen's refresh rate).
  
• V-Sync setting (now automatically set to false, the framerate was capped at 60 when using this setting).
  
• Anti Aliasing setting (was useless and I was unaware of it).
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Opponent's mines were visible (should have been hidden).
  
• When finishing a campaign scenario, if you had paratroopers on the ground, they would have only 4 MPs when starting the next scenario.
  
• Incorrect amount of MPs set to paratroopers when getting in a plane for the second time (7 instead of 8).
  
• Set core unit button in the store in campaign was not in the proper place.
  
• Infinite money glitch.
  
• Artillery and AA losing soft damage when switching from horse/motorize to mechanize option in the store and could reach negative values.
  

Hello there!

Some players asked if it was possible to have engineers lay down bridges, I initially said no because engineers were supposed to act as a bridge, but I reconsidered and decided to implement a new type of unit (with a new boolean: isBridge).
No need to leave your engineers on a river anymore, build a bridge and go on with your mission!
You can still use them the old way, that doesn't change :)

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• New unit: Pontoon Bridge.
  
• New tanks for France: SARL 42, Renault R40, AMX 40, ARL 44 (Mostly prototypes).
  
• Volksgrenadier unit.
  
• Price of the units in research menu.
  
• Is mine toggle in unit editor.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Europe 1941 USSR/Finnish border was wrongly placed.
  
• Store UI for GB WWII: Artillery + AT category.
  
• Morser Karl graphics.
  
• Renault R35 graphics.
  
• AI will play its engineers before the other ground units.
  
• Some unit's stats.
  
• Sevastopol 41 scenario balance for both USSR and German side.
  
• Small code improvements for displaying flags for selected unit.
  
• Smaller icons in research panel, increased visibility.
  
• Low ammo icon (yellow) now appears based on a percentage, no longer a fixed number.
  
• Since recon bonuses are capped at +5 per type of unit, I enabled this bonus for recon units themselves to get this bonus from other recon units.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• When building buildings (haha) mid game and once built if you pressed the button to show buildings icon they would be inverted. Not showing when they should, and showing when they shouldn't.
  
• Custom countries not changing faction properly when declaring war.
  
• Random terrain in desert map editor bug (dark tiles).
  
• Supply percentage was broken (giving more than it should). Basically units had more supplies than they should have.
  
• Engineers NATO icon broke after I added pontoon bridge unit.
  
• AI was buying naval generals even if it didn’t have any ship.
  
• AI was winterising its naval generals.
  
• Naval mines couldn't be properly placed.
  
• Engineers couldn't get into marsh tiles.
  
• Strategic bombers couldn't bomb railway bridges.
  
• Generals kept giving their bonuses even once removed from the map through the OOB (either deletion or redeployment or transfer).
  
• Waypoints glitch (never hiding/showing).
  
• Engineers couldn't / wouldn't use pontoons to cross rivers and would end up stuck in some cases.
  
• In some scenarios, units would not be updated upon starting a new scenario (resulting in units being at 100 / 200 HP, mainly in pacific campaigns, Saipan, Okinawa...).
  
• Major security issue in the code for multiplayer games (PBEM).
  
• PBEM issue where if you joined a PBEM game, didn't take you first turn, but tried taking it later the game would not let you do it, no units would move.
  

Hello guys!

This isn't the biggest update I've made but a welcome one nonetheless!

[h3]ADDED:[/h3]

• Heroes editor.
  

That's it! Feel free to create your own heroes and make mods and share them on the workshop :)