Hex of Steel News

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• Game has been translated in a brand new language, although very niche, players who speak Catalan are going to be happy, we can thank @Divadov for his work! Enjoy!
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Overdue rework of the settings menu. It really was a mess, it is now much more organized!
  
• Improved balance of Europe 1939, as well as a geographical rework. Also, Italy will now join the Allies when Rome falls (to the Allies). Romania will now properly join the USSR upon capitulating when being invaded by the USSR (instead of just capitulating).
  
• AI organized retreat/defense system. It will now much more intelligently pick defensive spots or retreat when being outnumbered or in a defavorable situation when losing the war.
  
• Morale passive regeneration rate (3% -> 5% per turn).
  
• Morale loss from artillery pounding or bombardment now directly scales with damage to HP ratio, with a minimal morale loss of 5.
  
• Increased impact of morale on retreat of units.
  
• All italian infantry graphics.
  
• AI will now properly enlarge its frontline instead of massing its troops in a single place.
  
• Added major VPs to Stalingrad '42 standalone.
  
• Increased manpower growth rate (from 3% to 5%).
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• AI's turns slowing down a lot in certain cases (when it tried to calculate a path towards its goal, but none could be found). I am now running a lightweight algorithm (
• AI would upgrade its garrisons even though it did not have the manpower for it, ending up with negative manpower (when playing with realistic manpower ON).
  
• One instance of AI freeze in very specific cases.
  
• Buying/Requesting/Transferring tiles being part of a capitulation event would not cancel the capitulation (Example: German player buying Paris hexagon, if Paris fell, Germany would capitulate).
  
• Berlin 1945 Steam leaderboard not working.
  
• Major manpower exploit when playing with realistic manpower ON.
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• 2cm Flak to Slovakia.
  
• Possibility to annex territory through the Territory management UI (making captured territory your own, removing the occupation penalty).
  
• When you try to deploy a unit, the cooldown for destroyed tiles will now be shown (on top of the minimal occupation time).
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility -> 7.7.4.
  
• Ships upkeep cost (lowered).
  
• Cost to refuel ships (lowered).
  
• AI ships will now focus on going primarily towards naval capturable victory points instead of rushing coastlines.
  
• AI fighters will be more careful when engagement ground targets and taking back supportive fire (less aggressive as a whole to let bombers perform this role, so that they can better focus on escorting or air supremacy).
  
• AI planes starting their turn over an enemy unit, and attack right away will now use all of their movement points instead of just 1.
  
• Winter now lasts one less month. Snow starts falling on November 15th, and will start melting on March 15th (Before, it was from November 1st to April 1st).
  
• Balance on Europe 1939 standalone scenario.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• In real time multiplayer, you could not end your turn after an AI played.
  
• On War Declared event trigger sometimes not firing.
  

[h3]REMOVED[/h3]

• Hardcoded Soviet income debuff (-50% economy up to June 22nd 1941).
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• Excelsior UK heavy tank prototype.
  
• T14 US heavy tank prototype.
  
• Light infantry 43 for Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
  
• Shortcut (new keybinds) to bring up the draw/erase tools.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility bumped to 7.7.3.
  
• AI fighters will now seek air superiority at all times. Meaning destroying enemy fighters.
  
• AI order of play of its paratroopers and fighters (paratroopers now playing before fighters so that fighters can properly escort them if needed).
  
• AI order of play of all of most of its units. Units closer to the frontline will now play first (basically the play order is now based on their distance to the frontline).
  
• AI will prioritize playing its units that are sitting on harbours first to help with starting landings.
  
• Way the modified base game units are saved. It is fully failsafe now. Before, some cases were found where units duplicated themselves, and as a results some modifications were never applied. This update not only improves the system, but also patches any mod (upon loading) that suffered from this.
  
• Prototypes no longer count in the research tree. You are not forced to research them to move on through the techs.
  
• Small performance improvements during AI turns.
  
• Improved AI goal picking routine. I am now assigning each landmass and body of water an ID/index, and so if a ship is trying to go from A to B, but both hex have difference ocean index, it means they aren't linked and cannot be reached by ship. So it will try to go somewhere else. Same for land units which have landings disabled.
  
• Units embarking in trains can now move right after doing so.
  
• Units embarking in landing crafts can now move right after doing so.
  
• Units embarking in air transports can now move right after doing so.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Missing translation entries.
  
• Inconsistencies in the manual (PDF).
  
• Damage UI elements not being shown when the unit dealing the damage was not in the camera's FOV.
  
• Planes with range > 1 could not target ground units at a distance greater than 0 (right underneath them) with mods.
  
• AI was not using up manpower when purchasing new units when playing with the 'realistic manpower' setting... Oopsie.
  
• Ironman tooltip for campaigns not working properly.
  
• AI pathfinding issue, where when given a goal (tile to move to), if it could not reach it, it would just sit there instead of trying to get something else to do.
  
• AI ships did not prioritze capturing enemy VPs when they were in reach.
  
• AI gunboats did not move.
  
• Instances of AI recon land units or artillery units or fighters (during escort missions) not moving because they were assigned a goal they could not reach.
  
• Aggressiveness on AI planes was set too high which could lead to suicide attacks.
  
• Embark/Disembark button not showing up when staying on an enemy VP (in a train).
  
• Crazy movement points with trains when playing on turn 1, saving, and loading that save, then getting out of the train.
  
• AI ships sometimes not moving at all (in very specific cases).
  
• Potential movement path visualization could not work when a unit was in a landing craft on a harbour and you were pointing at land right next to it.
  
• AI trying to cover its naval victory points, although it would be useless since they cannot be bombed.
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• Norwegian light infantry 43.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Improved performances of the remove borders fog of war function. It is now 3 times faster to process.
  
• AI pathfinding algorithm. I noticed something was wrong with it some time ago, but couldn't pinpoint what it was. After doing some more digging and extensive debugging, I found out what it was. I have fully re written it, and it is now 500% faster than before, while actually doing what it should have been doing. Should be better now! :)
  (The performance test was made on a 300x300 test map, going from the 2 most far apart hexagons. Old algorithm speed was 13ms. New algorithm speed is 2.5ms. Bigger maps will even more benefit from this).
  
• Too expensive units in the store are no longer entirely greyed out, but have a subtle UI change to make sure you know they are too expensive and cannot be bought (but you still can check their stats out).
  
• Units moving with waypoints at the end of their turn will now automatically disable moving animations so that they move faster and you don't wait so long.
  
• Unit move animation speed is now based on the type of unit. Planes will move faster than ground troops, trains will move also faster, etc. This is to solve the 'I'm waiting 5 minutes for my plane to move 15 tiles' problem. Same with trains basically. Does not apply to AI with Slow AI setting ON.
  
• Norwegian infantry graphics.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• No leaderboards for Poland 1945 and Courland 1944 scenarios.
  
• Event processing causing a freeze during AI's turn (introduced with 7.7.1, regression).
  
• Various major and minor AI related issues.
  

[h3]REMOVED[/h3]

• Afghanistan from list of official base game countries. Not featured in any base game scenarios. Up to modders to add it.
  
• Recent ZoC change I made. It actually really ruined it. Works back the way it worked before.
  

If some of you missed the fact that the game now supports .CSV modding, here is a tutorial on how to batch edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGF8Bg_itHw

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• NATO garrison icon.
  
• Plenty of new units for Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. They are now fully playable nations.
  
• Some new infantry units to Mongolia as well as some graphics update.
  
• Heavy infantry to Philippines.
  
• Regular AT infantry to Japan (turned the current one into AT infantry 43).
  
• M2 light and Medium tanks to USA.
  
• War declaration of UK + USSR on Iran on August 25th 1941.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Updated game engine from Unity 2021.3.40f1 to 2021.3.42f1.
  
• Multiplayer compatibility version --> 7.7.1.
  
• NATO ships, partisans and HQ icons.
  
• Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia counters color scheme.
  
• Picking conscription policies will now provide an instant 'refill' of manpower equal to the bonus given by the policy itself. So, if the policy gives +10% manpower, you will get an instant +10% available manpower. Cancelled due to exploit of picking the policy over and over again to have infinite manpower.
  
• Improved AI deployment of reinforcements to face enemy attack.
  
• Philippines light inf. graphics.
  
• Bulgarian infantry graphics.
  
• Turkish infantry graphics.
  
• Reworked Iran and Iraq Geography on all Europe scenarios.
  
• Thai infantry graphics + counters color scheme.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Dreadnoughts had no NATO representations.
  
• Sauron's Eye achievement could be unlocked in a weird way.
  
• Some early war planes stats.
  
• Weather prediction UI when no weather was enabled on the map or disabled in the settings.
  
• AI sometimes not killing enemy units when it could/should have.
  
• AI sometimes going over the limit/ratio of artillery to infantry it must have.
  
• AI sometimes leaving its position or moving somewhere it shouldn't have moved to when it should have moved forward and attacked in the next turn.
  
• Issue with ZoC and moving through enemy's ZoC across your own units.
  
• Changing the difficulty of the game mid-game would not update the minimum requirements of AI income modifier.
  
• AI stopping purchasing fighters in some cases.
  
• Barrage balloons had movement points.
  
• Prototype units costs were wrong.
  
• Visual glitch when units were being spawned and fog of war was calculated at the same time.
  
• Exploit with production policies and disbanding units.