Hex of Steel News

This is part 1 of the naval update, part 2 will come out later this month.
I would have waited to release it all in a single update, but some fixes were kinda urgent to release and could not wait 1 or 2 more weeks.

Part 2 is simply going to be a graphical update, so it can wait a bit longer :)

This update features a COMPLETE rebalance, from scratch, of all naval units in the game.
It would not have been possible without the HUGE help of @Chrys (that you may know through his work, such as his Napoleonic Wars mod, or American Revolution, WW1, and more).
He basically is responsible for 80% of the work that this rebalance demanded.

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• 12 new ships to Italy.
  
• 13 new ships to the UK.
  
• 8 new ships to Japan.
  
• 6 new ships to Germany.
  
• 14 new ships to the USA.
  
• 9 new ships to France.
  
• 2 new ships to the USSR.
  
• 1 new ship to Canada.
  
• 2 new ships to Fascist Spain.
  
• 1 new ship to Republican Spain.
  
• 5 new ships to Sweden.
  
• 1 new ship to Yugoslavia.
  
• 1 new ship to Norway.
  
• 7 new ships to Turkey.
  
• Possibility to import/export units databases as .CSV format. Finally!
  
• Max purchase for units is now shown in the store.
  
• Units having a sonar or a radar are now shown as small icons in the store.
  
• Possibility to change the configuration of a player mid-game (impacts ironman automatically). Human --> AI and AI --> Human. Cannot be done during a PBEM or real time multiplayer game. Only singleplayer.
  
• Bridges are now shown when you press the 'show all buildings' button.
  
• Carriers now have an anchor icon in the store.
  
• Flag missing texture texture.
  
• Per unit missing texture textures.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer version is now 7.7.0.
  
• All of the game's ships stats.
  
• Ships cost calculation formula.
  
• Added +2 movement points to all planes.
  
• Supply ships now have 50 HP (vs 100).
  
• Convoys, Supply Ships, units in landing crafts can no longer capture victory points at sea (trade routes etc). AI behaviour has been updated accordingly.
  
• All prototypes now have a max fielded limit of 1.
  
• Reduced the cost of prototypes a little (to balance the fact that now they are limited to 1 fielded at a time).
  
• Reduced AI paratroopers purchase rate + more strict control when Historical Focus is ON.
  
• Weather, ZoC, Upkeep, Historical Focus must now all be ON to enable ironman mode.
  
• Editing a unit's name in the units editor will now trigger a refresh of its graphical representation.
  
• Several nations got a counter graphics update.
  
• Many current ships got renamed / a change of class.
  
• Landing crafts graphics have been updated.
  
• Reorganized the order in which stats are shown in the units editor.
  
• Improved AI units deployment routine. Should handle multi fronts better.
  
• Updated Russian localization.
  
• Rebalanced Europe 1939 standalone scenario.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Germany not going at war with USSR.
  
• Zooming in/out with the keyboard shortcut was way too fast.
  
• Campaign scenario Philippines North would set the wrong side when playing as the Allies.
  
• Players in lobby amount was wrong (it included people currently playing a MP game too).
  
• AI not moving some of its units in some cases (defensive ones).
  
• Issue when trying to join a faction in your native language.
  
• A nation not joining the proper faction when being declared war upon when the player declaring war has the same ideology.
  
• Terrain modifier value on the UI would not be shown when a unit was selected.
  
• Units having the 'radar' or 'supply depot' property would never retaliate.
  
• Players added mid game would have 0 research points.
  
• Disabling mods which had custom videos for the main menu would not stop the video from playing.
  
• Event action units spawned/added would be broken/overwritten, huge cluster fuck happening :)
  
• Deleting a modded map from the map editor menu would still list it after refresh.
  

[h3]REMOVED[/h3]

• 1 Japanese ship.
  
• Turkish placeholder navy.
  
• 2 British ships
  
• 2 Soviet ships.
  
• 1 Spanish (Repubican) ship.
  
• 1 Portuguese ship.
  

All removed ships have been removed because they either didn't serve during WW2, or were wrongly added.

[h3]WARNING: [/h3]This update resets ALL of the leaderboards. Some exploits were found and fixed.

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• New and improved ironman mode tooltip. This new tooltip now efficiently explains which setting must be turned ON or OFF in order for the mode to be ON. Very helpful and informative.
  
• Berlin 1945 standalone scenario leaderboards.
  
• Molotov-Ribbentrop pact upon Polish capitulation on Europe 39.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility --> 7.6.2.
  
• AI submarines will focus on capturing naval sea trade tiles and attack enemy destroyers less (only if under 50% HP).
  
• Supplies rate through terrain. Hills and mountains as well as forest are now going to play a more important role.
  
• Mountaineers (store option) have a -50% penalty for supplies going through hills/mountains.
  
• Proper UI feedback for scenario setup with income sliders (adjusted by difficulty and configuration).
  
• In game selected unit extra stats UI element now shown at all time.
  
• Units can no longer be redeployed when inside enemy territory.
  
• Supplies penalty for bad weather has changed and is less important during rainy weather than in winter blizzard weather. Before, there was a flat 25% penalty applied for both. Now, a 30% penalty will be applied for winter bad weather, while a 20% penalty will be applied for rainy bad weather.
  
• Increased manpower bonus from conscription policies.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Exploits to complete scenarios in very short amount of time.
  
• Supplies issues.
  
• Redeploy unit button tooltip giving wrong information.
  
• AI in landing crafts could be trying to land in territory that did not belong to an ally or an enemy, and therefore was not moving at all because no path to the tile could be found.
  
• AI maths issues when calculating income for own logic.
  
• Realistic manpower heal cost issue.
  
• AI unit move issue.
  
• AI could buy more than the amount of max purchase for units having a max purchase amount.
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• New AI behaviour: Retreat and defend. When the AI (nation) is considering itself losing the war (turn income of all the enemies > 1.3x the turn income of the AI + its allies), and when it is locally (3 tiles radius) outnumbered by the enemy, it will retreat and look for good defensive positions.
  
• Auto files checker for the mods menu (will refresh the UI automatically when mods are changed outside of the game, like a manual delete or dragging in/out things).
  
• Supplies rate on UI for selected unit or mouse over unit UI element.
  
• 8 commanders to Australia.
  
• 5 commanders to New Zealand.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility 7.6.0 --> 7.6.1.
  
• AI ships target behaviour. They will now ignore empty enemy harbours instead of staying around like a swarm of flies on a dog shit. :)
  
• AI artillery / bombers / ships will try to prioritize shelling/bombing victory points first, even if it means doing less damage (if the unit on the VP has its entrenchment > 0). They (arty and light bombers) will also check the presence of allies in the direct vicinity of the VP to evaluate if they should shell it or if they should attack nearby units. Meaning, if force targeting a VP is not gonna be of any help since no friendlies can attack it anyway, it will do regular attack logic.
  
• Refined risk/reward attack logic for AI planes.
  
• Faction joined upon war declared for players having the same ideology. A Fascist country being declared war upon another Fascist country will now join its own faction instead of joining the Allies (Ex: Japan vs Thailand or Germany vs Spain).
  
• Units added to the reserve through events will now have a turn production of 0 automatically (ready to deploy right away).
  
• Renamed the 'Finite Manpower' setting into 'Realistic Manpower'.
  
• Updated Tutorial scenario.
  
• Tutorial scenario leaderboard entries have been reset entirely (scenario was changed enough that it would require a reset of the steam leaderboard).
  
• Color scheme of Australia and New Zealand.
  
• In the map editor, you can now set a player to be in its own faction instead of the only 4 available.
  
• Tuned down partisans spawn rate.
  
• Supplies rate changes. Units at contact with the enemy had too high supply rate which resulted in really sluggish battles. Now, every unit having an enemy unit adjacent to it will be applied a -25% supplies penalty.
  
• Terrain now has a bigger impact on supplies for the supply route.
  
• Optimized generation of supply line.
  
• Improved AI ships move goal picking.
  
• Updated Russian localization.
  
• Selected unit's stats UI window is now always shown (cannot be closed). This saves a click in the beginning, and reduces the size of the left UI panel by removing a now useless button.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• With Realistic Manpower ON (setting) you could start with negative manpower in some cases.
  
• Notification text when a player is being transferred a tile would show 'No Translation'.
  
• Custom Weather inputfields reacting oddly in the map editor.
  
• Steam leaderboards/stats were no longer working (no more uploads). Big shoutout to @DarthPorscheman without whom I'd never have noticed it was no longer working.
  
• Resistance suppression policy was not working.
  
• Real Time multiplayer units HP not synced.
  
• Event action SET TILE had no failsafe and no clear default value.
  
• Exploits to have ironman mode ON and therefore having your score uploaded to the leaderboard even though it was unfair.
  
• Android / iOS bugs only.
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• New tile management menu (through diplomacy menu). You can now decide to request or transfer specific tiles. Useful when playing in coop or when the AI captures stuff you wanted to get for yourself. Transferring a tile to a player is free (one of yours) while requesting the ownership of a tile comes at a cost. The cost is calculated as follows: If the tile is a core territory of the player, then it costs 100 times the production value of the tile. If the tile is not a core territory of the player owning it, then it costs 50 times the production value of the tile. Meaning, if Slovakia captures a Polish factory, you can request its transfer to you if you can pay 35 (default factory production value)
• 50 = 1750. If the tile was previously owned by you, then it is only 15 times the production value (although currently, ownership is automatically given back, so no transaction is required). You cannot manage in any way tiles owned by the enemy (no request or transfer). Transferring or requesting a tile will send any unit on the tile back to the reserve of the player owning the unit.
  
• New optional setting: Finite Manpower. This only works if the Manpower setting is ON. It adds on to the Manpower setting, making it a finite resources. When this extra setting is OFF (default), when a unit is destroyed, 100% of its manpower is being sent back into the pool. This extra setting prevents this. Lost manpower cannot be retrieved, and wars of attrition of manpower are now possible. Small specificity: When transferring units to another player, the manpower used is yours. The player receiving the unit will not have less manpower in its pool. This puts an end to the exploit of transferring infinite units to your allies.
  
• New japanese planes: Mitsubishi J2M, Kawanishi N1K-J, Nakajima B6N, Mitsubishi A7M3 (prototype), Nakajima Ki-44.
  
• New optional setting: Show unit pre move path. Default = ON on new installs. This basically shows the path the unit will take when moving to a given tile (under mouse cursor).
  
• New graphics for the Desert biome mountain tile.
  
• 3 New event actions: Add VP (basically turning any tile into a VP) and Remove VP (removing any VP) and Set Tile Name (writing text on a tile).
  
• Units that are too expensive in the store are now greyed out with a 'TOO EXPENSIVE' text above them.
  
• New per scenario setting (map editor): Disable purchases. This will basically disable purchasing new units for players. Useful if you want to have a batch of starting units and only want these to be available in your scenario and control reinforcements with events.
  
• New keybind: End of turn.
  
• Stalingrad 43 Steam leaderboard.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Sending units back to the reserve (redeploying) now has a dynamic cost. It no longer costs a fixed 30 money, but is 10% of the unit's value. Redeploying a light infantry unit will be cheap, while redeploying tanks or ships will cost more, and scale with the unit's cost.
  
• Units in the reserve (but not under production) now have an upkeep cost, but not full like deployed ones. They have a reduced upkeep cost and the upkeep value is 30% of the real upkeep once deployed.
  
• Undo button was brought at the very top of the list of buttons for a selected unit for easier access.
  
• US light tank M2 was turned into the M2A4 light tank.
  
• When playing with Realistic Units Names option ON, the previous 'Battalion' word has been replaced by 'Brigade' to better fit the overall size of units represented in the game.
  
• Manpower cost of some units.
  
• Manpower 'Neutral' penalty has been replaced by Manpower 'not at war' penalty. Before 7.6.0. a country that was in the Neutral faction would have its available manpower cut in half. Now, this happens any time the player is not at war with anybody, regardless of the faction it is in.
  
• Tooltip for resupplying has been simplified, removed some text and changed its general look. It now implements the new manpower cost for healing a unit.
  
• Manpower amount display will now show 1 decimal when under 100k. So, before it would show 50k, it will now show 55.3k. It is more important now that manpower can be finite and you may need to know exactly how much you have.
  
• New risk/reward in AI's attack behaviour to better weight whether it should or should not attack in different situations. Current results are good and will help unclutter the board.
  
• Higher chance of AI purchasing motorized or mechanized units later in the war, or if it has enough money.
  
• Supply circle for supply ships/planes look.
  
• Pressing 'Escape' will now act as a shortcut for the 'NO' option on confirmation windows.
  
• Skip button icon.
  
• Redeploy button icon.
  
• Unit's stats button icon.
  
• Transfer button icon.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Updating tiles through events would not always work.
  
• Units in reserve being removed from the scenario when opening a scenario in the map editor.
  
• Some issue with unit pathfinding when asking it to move from A to B.
  
• You could transfer core units to another player and it would not check if this would make it go over the max limit, this could be exploited to basically have unlimited core units.
  
• Units that were ordered to stay asleep would wake up if there were other units nearby (Neutral).
  
• Stalingrad 43 standalone scenario achievements could not be unlocked.
  
• One potential error during code execution when a submarine was asked to dive/undive.
  
• Game could sometimes show you the 'You still have research points available' popup window when all units were researched except the last ones that are being researched currently.
  
• Drawings sync in real time multiplayer issues/not always shown for allies.
  
• Country editor issues when having loaded mods which did not feature a Custom Countries.txt file.
  
• Deleting / Disbanding a unit that was a goal for the scenario would grant manpower and income but cancel the disband process after that. Could be heavily exploited.
  
• Checking if the unit has been used (while in the reserve) to determine its cost for a refund was wrong some times. Logic is: If you cancel the production of a unit that has never been deployed on the map, you should get full refund.
  
• Manpower difference calculation when upgrading a unit was wrong.
  
• Real time multiplayer damage and unit HP sync issue.
  
• Tooltip being displayed over the supplies popup/tooltip window.
  
• You could not resupply allies with supply ships or planes.
  
• Battle of Tripoli introduction text for the Allies was empty.
  
• Steam Rich Presence was wrong when using the map editor (after you opened and closed the store).
  
• Battle of Berlin Soviet side, wrong side assigned.
  
• Duplicating a 'Spawn unit' or 'Add unit to reserve' event action would result in the same unit being used over several event actions, and so instead of adding 2 or more separate units, it would always be the same one.
  
• AI not using Sea Bridges.
  
• You could not use supply ships while being Neutral.
  
• AI upgrading and downgrading its units to and from garrisons.
  
• Modded sounds would not play anymore in the Units Editor (but work fine in game).
  
• Linked/Chained capitulation would not work with event actions.
  
• UI bug in the map editor which prevented you to open the scenario settings.
  
• Sometimes events could not fire.
  
• AI not spending a single HQ point when purchasing commanders with Policies setting turned ON.
  
• Event issues with spawning units + repetition of event (resulting in 0 HP units).
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• Political map opacity slider.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Updated game engine (Unity 2021.3.33 --> 2021.3.40).
  
• Multiplayer compatibility version --> 7.5.4.
  
• UK and US rules of war declaration on Vichy France.
  
• When importing an overlay for the first time, its opacity will be at 100% instead of 0% which could mislead a lot into thinking it was not working properly.
  
• Removed the popup window warning you of unsupported setting(s) when playing a campaign, since now all campaign scenarios have been reworked to work in par with manpower and upkeep optional settings.
  
• Units are now able to embark/disembark from trains on any railroad tile (hopefully this will solve the previous very tedious process of having to embark units one by one in cities and having to clear cities etc).
  
• When political map is ON, zooming in close to the map will fade out the country's names.
  
• Units can now embark and disembark in and from trains from any tile that is neighbouring a valid train tile.
  
• Reworked entirely the Steam API integration. Much more performant now. Cleaner code.
  
• Changed AI AA purchase rule a bit so that it purchases them a bit more often.
  
• Changed AI fighters purchase rule so that it purchases them even if things are not going well but are not yet entirely desperate.
  
• All AT guns now take 1 turn to produce instead of 2 (base, other modifiers still apply).
  
• Heavy tanks production time is now 3 turns instead of 2 (regular tanks).
  
• AA units now have a penalty when fighting in 'closed' spaces: Urban tiles (cities, harbours, factories) or in forest tiles. -50% damage modifier.
  
• Core units amount is now shown in the store menu for campaign scenarios when the manpower setting is ON (cannot display both at the same place on the UI).
  
• Italian counters color changed to prevent confusing them for US ones (when both were used next to each other).
  
• Minor rebalance on Europe 1939.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Potentially fixed a crash on startup on M2 and above Macs (I need confirmation from one of you guys :)).
  
• 2 events system objects were in the editor scene when you were trying to import a new overlay.
  
• Some UI issues in the standalone games menu.
  
• Achievements missing for Pacific 1937, 1941, 1942, 1945 standalone scenarios.
  
• RGB color code for drawing not working/appearing.
  
• Manpower overlapping with core units amount when playing a campaign with manpower setting ON.
  
• Spring Awakening scenario in the soviet campaign had wrong player to be playing the Allies side.
  
• Soviet Western 1939 campaign scenario should have been the Poland invasion but started right away with the Winter War.
  
• Redeploying units or transferring units would not reset their waypoints.
  
• Event sometimes could not fire if they had a check date set but then the event check type was changed.
  
• For some reason the trench building had a progressive cost of 50.
  
• 2 trench units were with unknown countries.
  
• Steam rich presence status would not be working if you played some AI vs AI then went back to the main menu.
  

[h3]REMOVED[/h3]

• Bunch of achievements that were not really useful or were impossible / too hard to achieve (winning 100 multiplayer games for example).