Hex of Steel News

TO MODDERS: This update changes the way tiles modifier work. You will need to update your mods and properly re set all of your tile terrain modifiers (From negative to positive, and value as well, a x3 should work).

[h3]ADDITIONS:[/h3]

• New awesome wallpaper made by my brother! Well done!
  
• New country: Communist China. With all its units.
  
• New scenarios: Pacific 1937. Pacific 1942. Pacific 1945.
  
• New Japanese units: Imperial Guards, Type 2 Ho-I, Type 98 20mm AA.
  
• M1 Gun 40 mm AA to New Zealand.
  
• Light infantry 43 to British Raj.
  
• More artillery to Republic of China.
  
• Heavy infantry and Engineers for Thailand.
  
• Marines to United Kingdom.
  
• Password visibility button when doing things in multiplayer menu (streaming friendly).
  
• Chat language channels/rooms. Default room is ENGLISH, please speak in english there. If you want to speak in your native language, please use its dedicated channel.
  
• Regions for servers for real time multiplayer. Should solve a lot of desync issues when playing out of Europe.
  
• Permanent death toggle in units editor. When toggled, if the unit dies in combat, it cannot be brought back from the dead or purchased again! Turned ON by default on all commanders/generals.
  
• New event action type: Reset player money. Simply sets the target player money amount to be 0.
  

[h3]CHANGES:[/h3]

• Commanders/Generals bonuses don't stack up anymore. The highest bonus will be used.
  
• Marines now have a 15% damage bonus when landing.
  
• Submarines no longer give recon bonus to land units. Was a bit weird that infantry getting an attack bonus because the submarine is next to a tank unit... Submarines only give their recon bonus to ships now.
  
• Entrenchment now provides a 15% damage penalty per entrenchment level calculated off the final damage.
  
• Encirclement modifier now is calculated based off the final damage value, no longer on base/raw damage.
  
• Deployment around besieged cities is no longer possible. If a tile is more than 50% encircled by the enemy, deployment of reinforcements at this tile will no longer be possible.
  
• Europe maps Middle East improved / upgraded.
  
• Tactical Bombers now have a 100% base damage modifier vs ships.
  
• Tactical Bombers now ignore armour from units.
  
• Capturing a Victory Point now grants HQ points. Regular VP: 1 HQ point, Secondary VP: 2 HQ points, Major VP: 3 HQ points.
  
• Capped commandos to 3 units deployed at the same time max.
  
• Capped Panzergrenadier to 10 units deployed at the same time max.
  
• NKVD capped to 10 units deployed at the same time max.
  
• Soviet Shock infantry capped to 10 units deployed at the same time max.
  
• Capped Marines to 10 units deployed at the same time max.
  
• Capped paratroopers to 10 units deployed at the same time max.
  
• Changed back German engineers to their previous graphics.
  
• Completely upgraded Pacific 1941 scenario.
  
• Japanese Marines graphics.
  
• Thailand light infantry graphics.
  
• British Light infantry graphics.
  
• Type 1 Ho-Ni I, Type 94 37 mm, Type 4 Chi-To, Type 1 Chi-He, Type 97 Chi-Ha, Type 97 Chi-Ha Kai graphics.
  
• French Char FCM 2C graphics.
  
• US Rangers, heavy infantry, Marines graphics.
  
• Max purchase limit UI is now dynamically refreshed as you add / remove units from your basket and shows the actual limit of units once reached (10/10).
  
• SU-122 was a regular tank when it should have been an SPG.
  
• Tactical bombers now take into account entrenchment penalty.
  
• Now showing what track is currently being played in the music tracks.
  
• Reduced battleships vs land units damage by 10%.
  
• German campaign scenario Leningrad 41 balance.
  
• German campaign scenario Minsk 41 balance.
  
• Soviet and Japanese Khalkin Gol battle balance.
  
• Naval Convoy Route tiles now display their name/type in the tile info UI element (instead of displaying 'Sea').
  
• Completely upgraded Invasion of Yugoslavia german campaign scenario.
  
• Yugoslav Light infantry, heavy infantry, and partisans graphics.
  
• Europe 1939 scenario (Geography and Historical Accurateness).
  
• AI will purchase less engineers and artillery (ratio was too high).
  
• Bunkers now take armour into account when attacking an enemy (15% of armour).
  
• Soviet Heavy infantry, 76 mm divisional gun M1936 graphics.
  

[h3]FIXES:[/h3]

• Soviet Union turning Neutral because of an event on Europe 1939 while a human player was at war with it.
  
• One Soviet Air Commander could be bought in lend lease.
  
• Portuguese translation issues.
  
• Adding new player in map editor issue sometimes.
  
• One AI freeze fix with air policies when playing in < 1900.
  
• Price issues when upgrading units.
  
• Coast generation issues.
  
• AI difficulty income modifier not changing if ironman mode was OFF.
  
• Accidentally added one extra month of winter/snow.
  
• No buildings appearing in store when the amount of days per turn was set to 0.
  
• Upgrading a unit from the reserve which had a production time would get overwritten by a new turn production which could be way shorter that its initial production time. Now, it will be added on top of the initial redeployment time.
  
• Strategic bombers could bomb naval reinforcement tiles.
  
• Minimized destruction policy not reflected on the UI.
  
• Economy policies not reflected on the Tile Info UI element.
  
• In the map editor, setting a unit entrenchment to be 0 on scenario start would not display the proper value.
  
• Various AI issues.
  
• Scorched earth would take place on sea tiles.
  
• Difficulty did not influence income modifier in campaign when going from one campaign scenario to another.
  
• Changing the season of a map in the map editor would make jungle tiles turn black.
  
• White border issue.
  
• Clicking on 'next' or 'prev' track in the tracks window would not properly play the next or prev track based on current track being played.
  
• Coastal batteries did not remove entrenchment when attacking land units.
  
• German naval hero had a name issue (incorrect characters).
  
• Empty tooltips in Random Scenario Generator menu.
  
• Units blinking event when set to be skipped.
  
• Supply planes in WW2 era could resupply other planes mid air.
  
• When resupplying a unit, the supply plane would move right on the tile where you clicked, even though it should not have.
  
• Duplicating a unit in the basket would bypass any 'max purchase limit' for units. You could buy an infinite amount of units actually having a max purchase amount.
  
• AI engineers never leaving their river tile and staying there forever (sometimes).
  
• In the lobby in real time multiplayer, when a player disconnected or closed the game while joining a room or after he had joined a room, he would never free its player slot.
  
• Upgrading a unit with a hero would not carry its bonuses over to the upgraded unit.
  

[h3]REMOVED:[/h3]

• Flat -5 damage penalty to tanks. Not needed anymore due to the changes with how the terrain modifier works now.
  

1 week has passed since the last major update, it is time again for some regular update...

And welcome again to all new players :)

[h3]ADDITIONS[/h3]

• Brand new upkeep mechanics (optional setting). Default OFF. This new setting aims at bringing more balance to the game. Each unit now have an upkeep cost that will be removed from the player's income at the beginning of every turn. Upkeep is reduced when a player is not at war with anybody (-70%).
  
• Brand new income tooltip, shows a short breakdown of the income of the player. Including the upkeep for each category of units. Upkeep part is hidden if upkeep is turned OFF.
  
• New Keybind to pause the game (Default: P).
  
• End turn summary headers are now clickable buttons, so you can sort stuff by category.
  

[h3]CHANGES[/h3]

• Engineers have their regular building destroyer buff back.
  
• Japanese Light infantry, Heavy infantry, Light infantry 43, Paratroopers, Engineers graphics.
  
• German engineers, Paratroopers, Panzer I F, Tiger I E, Panther A and G graphics.
  
• Mechanized and motorized units can no longer cross mountain tiles, even if marked as mountaineers.
  
• Base Ideology of: Ireland (Democracy), Spain (Fascism), Sweden (Democracy).
  
• Income modifier slider now accepts 0% as a value. Useful if you want a game where no side earns income every turn.
  
• Downgrading a damaged unit into a unit that had lost HP would refill all its HP (for example, damaged regular infantry downgrading into garrison would result in full HP garrison instead of keeping the ratio of the lost HP).
  
• Speed of tile season change scales with size of maps.
  
• Reduced the size of save files. Europe scenarios for example have lost an extra 0.3 MB.
  
• Updated Finland on all Europe scenarios.
  
• Tanks no longer take into account the infantry's armour.
  
• Tanks now have an additional flat -5 damage for attacking units that are in bad terrain for armoured vehicles (Forest, urban areas...).
  
• Polish and Soviet 40mm and 37mm AA guns graphics changes.
  

[h3]FIXES[/h3]

• France had the wrong flag (wrong shade of blue).
  
• Units with flamethrowers were missing their damage buff against units on a refinery tile.
  
• Typos in different localization files.
  
• Income modifier based on difficulty sometimes would not work.
  
• AI never bought veterans units.
 AI never bought mechanized or motorized infantry.
  
• Hero's bonuses in damage not shown on counter's numbers.
  
• War declaration on Comintern members would change their faction.
  
• Price/Stats of the 40mm Bofors.
  
• Upgrading a > lvl 1 unit would bring down its current HP to less than its max HP.
  
• Creating new tiles in the tile editor did not really work, as the season was never set and adding it would make the tile hidden forever.
  

Hello guys

You've probably noticed a few updates going through yesterday and today, so here's the change-log for these
I will, as usual, be adding more to this change-log as bugs are reported or changes are made

ADDITIONS

• New Naval Convoy Route tile. I implemented this new tile on Europe 1939 to represent the convoy routes between various countries. They produce 50 income when owned by original owner but are worth nothing when captured. The purpose of those tiles is to recreate the battle of the Atlantic where one side needs to defend its convoy routes (Allies) and the Axis must take control of it to deny any additional income for the British/Soviet Union.
  
• Dedicated background to counters for Marines units featuring a neat little anchor icon (Thank you @Mysh for the suggestion).
  
• Paid mods are now allowed to be posted on the Workshop.
  

CHANGES

• T-34 85, SU-152, ISU-152 and Pershing M26 graphics.
  

FIXES

• Pressing ‘Next’ or ‘Prev’ unit when the Order of Battle is open did not work.
  
• Upgrading mechanized regular artillery would not take into account the proper price of the unit.
  
• Settings not synced when hosting a PBEM game.
  
• Mechanized unit bonus not applied when loading a save.
  
• Upgrading a damaged unit healed it for free. Now, when upgrading a damaged unit, the HP will stay the same and won’t heal magically.
  
• Store upgrade bug when trying to upgrade infantry from one country into another country.
  
• Several big issues with real time multiplayer.
  
• Unit upgrade issues.
  
• Planes that were deployed at sea were sent automatically to the reserve.
  
• Translation errors.
  

Hello, salut, hola, hallo, привет, 你好!

Make yourself a tea/coffee, because today's log is gonna be a long one...

Translation. This was one of the topic that was discussed quite a bit. Lot of people asking me if I could translate the game in this or that language, and the answer I gave was always the same: No. I'd rather make a brand new game at this point. Why? Because the game simply was not made in such a way that localizing (the process of making a game fit to implement translation) was possible

And I mean, boy, I was right.
I spent a full non-stop 10 days of simply re working the UI to support translation. Text element by text element, it was a nightmare, by the end I just felt like a robot honestly.
The first two days, I even felt like I should simply give up given the huge amount of work that was needed to make this possible.
But I did not give up. And here we are, the game is finally translated... I, obviously, do not speak all languages on this planet, but you (the community), do! I therefore asked on the discord server if we had some volunteers to translate the game in their native language, and some of you rose their hands and actually did it! Big shoutout to all of you who helped translating the game (over 1800 lines of text, or over 40 pages in Word).

There is one thing, however, that did not make it into the translation, and it is all of the scenarios' briefings. I know it's a shame the game is not 100% translated, but gosh, there are over 130 scenarios, and each have an intro, defeat, and victory text, each being several lines long. The amount of work required for these is simply enormous and the benefits are simply not worth the work (they only give historical background, the actual important informations is located in the 'Objectives' panel).

The translation of the game is not limited to the current amount of languages. If your native language is not present in the game, feel free to write to me and I can send you the translation file so that everyone can enjoy the game in your language, starting with you!

If there are any issues with the translation, let me know too so that I can fix it.

This update comes with a -50% sale, in case some of you were waiting for a translation of the game in your language to pick the game up... Now is the perfect time!

Update 7.0.0 and all its changes is coming to the iOS/Android version of the game as well today! On top of this whole rework on PC, I decided to make a brand new port of the game for mobile devices with an improved gaming UI, taking into account safe areas with phone edges etc. New and improved!

And without any further ado, I will let you enjoy this change log...

[h3]ADDED:[/h3]

• Localization system to the game, allowing me to translate it into any amount of languages.
  
• Zone of Control mechanics (optional, you can turn it ON in the settings). Many of you wanted this, so here it is (a little late, but hey, it's here now!). In its current form, and after debate with the discord members, we chose to apply ZoC only to land units (so, not applying to planes or ships). ZoC does not apply to several units: Commanders, Land mines, buildings (except bunkers), partisans, garrisons, militia/volkssturm, units having less than or 30% HP, units having no ammo.
  
• Possibility to access the upgrade menu with a unit from another country.
  
• Possibility to upgrade any unit from your reserve (very useful in campaign scenarios).
  
• New setting: Instant season change. If you turn this ON, there will no longer be any animation/smooth transition, but the map will instantly convert all the tiles graphics to match the proper season.
  
• Right clicking in the editors will now unselect the currently selected item (unit, tile...)
  
• In the Leaderboards menu, the game will now let you know if there are no entries for a specific leaderboard, instead of not displaying anything at all which could be confusing.
  
• Changing the country of a unit in the units editor will now instantly refresh its counter.
  
• Thanks to the UI upgrade, sharing links is now possible in the chat. Sending links has been disabled for those who do not have an account, this is to prevent potential spam. Guests will not be able to send links.
  
• New 'Water Freezes' mechanics. I have added two new properties to tiles: 'Can Freeze' and 'Frozen'. The 'Can Freeze' property will be directly set in the map editor, you will have the possibility to choose what water / river tiles can freeze during winter. The 'Frozen' property will be set at runtime whenever the season changes in the game. When a body of water freezes, it becomes walkable for regular ground units, and unwalkable for ships. I have added this to all Europe scenarios to all Northern Areas of the game, such as Finland, Norway, Sweden, and East/North Russia. This should change the battle dynamic during winter and make it pretty interesting to play ;)
  
• You can now easily purchase units from other countries in the map editor.
  
• New Soviet Unit: NKL-26 aerosan.
  
• New toggle in the units editor: Cannot be captured. Does what it say ;) Prevents a given unit to be captured.
  
• New toggle in the units editor: No Lend Lease. Does what it say as well, the unit will not appear in the store when trying to purchase units from other countries.
  
• Foldered saves support. You can now create folders in your Saves folder, the game will recreate the hierarchy in the UI. Meaning you can have a Europe playthrough, and place all your relevant saves in that folder, they will be grouped in the game/UI.
  
• Support for mods and Research. Since there is a finite amount of historical periods, I have added some supported time periods that the Research menu will support. 5 new time periods have been added: (Napoleonic Wars) 1790-1820, (American Civil War) 1861-1865, (World War 1) 1914-1918, 1947-1991 (Cold War), 2000-2030 (Modern Era). Regular base game time period now is 1936-1946.
  
• New toggle in the Tiles Editor: is Capturable. By default, this toggle is ON for every tile, except the reinforcement tiles.
  
• New toggle in the Tiles Editor: is Reinforcement tile. You can now make any tile behave as a reinforcement tile.
  
• New toggle filter in the Order of Battle to display only core units. This is replacing the old top of the UI core units menu.
  
• Possibility to generate High Res. screenshots by pressing F12. They will be saved in the new Screenshots folder, alongside the other more usual Saves and Maps folders.
  
• War declarations from Italy to Greece and Yugoslavia on Europe 1939.
  
• You can now set a player target for the 'Show Message' event action to show messages only to certain players. If you leave the player target empty, it will be considered as 'Everyone'.
  
• Button in the mod menu that links directly the youtube tutorial about how to mod the game.
  
• AI will now finally use the 'strategic redeployment' for its units. It has been a little tough to find good use cases for it, but Europe 39 was as good test map for it, as for example Germany would have all its army on the eastern front when declaring war on Denmark, and moving it all from the east to the west was super long, now it simply sends everything back to the reserve (just like a human player would do through the Order of Battle) and redeploys them where it's needed.
  
• Strategic redeployment is now authorized/enabled in real time multiplayer matches too (previously was not possible).
  

[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]

• Upgrade of the entire UI across the game. Lots of optimization were made, as well as QoL. Enjoy :)
  
• Pretty much all tooltips got their text updated and clarity was improved.
  
• Paratroopers while in airborne mode have a reduced autonomy. From 100 tiles (before) to 35 (now). This change was made to make paratrooper use closer to reality, and not use them as a ballistic missile which could fly across the entire map.
  
• Paratroopers now can be resupplied at and around friendly airfields while in airborne mode.
  
• The 'Random Damage Modifier' setting is now a percentage, no longer a flat damage. Goes from 0% to 100%. Works the same as before. Default value is 15%.
  
• Mentions (@) in chat will no longer stay forever and remind you that you got tagged in a message every time you load the game scene. They will be shown a single time per message where you were tagged per game session.
  
• In online chat, the real time at which messages were sent will now be displayed.
  
• Spain (Axis) in the Spanish Civil War scenario will now properly perform landings from Africa.
  
• Changed graphics of major Victory Points circles when opening the Objectives panel.
  
• Changed the look of flags on Victory Points on the map.
  
• The files auto refresh in the Saves / Maps folders is now properly working / more sensitive. The UI in the game will now properly refresh when a file is renamed or moved or deleted.
  
• Various UI improvements.
  
• Flamethrower bonus is no longer a flat 15 damage, but is now a 30% damage bonus.
  
• When setting 'Auto Supplies for all' in the Order of Battle, it will now be saved per player. No more need to enable this every time you load a save.
  
• Newly spawned in units will now properly have their 'auto supplies' set according to the toggle value in the Order of Battle.
  
• Your local game settings will now be saved before joining an online game (PBEM or real time) and be restored properly after going back to the main menu.
  
• When changing a player's country in the map editor, all units owned by the player that are on the map will see their counter refreshed (they used to keep the old counter).
  
• In the Tiles Editor, changing the biome of a tile will now refresh the tile's graphics.
  
• Events panel will no longer disable the currently active event when closing the scenario settings.
  
• Removing a player from the map in the map editor will now properly refresh the 'unit is target' for secondary victory conditions.
  
• Updated version of the multiplayer compatibility.
  
• Units slots generation in the Units Editor has been increased by 2.
  
• Pausing the game will now instantly pause the AI (previously the AI would keep playing for some time).
  
• Policies are now available in campaign scenarios, given you enabled it in the settings.
  
• Winter season Lake tile graphics now show the lake as frozen.
  
• IMAM Ro. 44 can now be launched from ships having a catapult.
  
• Re. 2000 can now be launched from ships having a catapult.
  
• Destroyers attacking submerged submarines have a 30% chance at every attack to force the sub to the surface.
  
• Several tiles' variable types (from integers to shorts), doesn't have any impact on gameplay but cut the weight of save files. On Europe 39 for example, save files now are 1MB lighter.
  
• AI planes purchase rate has been reworked. It will no longer 'spam' air units. It will stop buying planes when it is not needed.
  
• Adjusted research time for units, more granular now.
  
• Updated manual with Zone of Control.
  

[h3]FIXED:[/h3]

• AI not 'fighting back' against submarines, it will now properly produce destroyers in priority to match enemy subs.
  
• Typo on Europe maps with the tile 'Fort Maddalena' in North Africa.
  
• For some reasons autosaves were made during PBEM games.
  
• Tooltips were always shown, even when option turned OFF in the settings.
  
• Newly imported overlays would not show in the game, their opacity would be at 0% by default.
  
• In the store, it would always be written 'Remove core unit' even if the selected unit was not a core unit.
  
• Lag spike issue in the Diplomacy menu when hovering with your mouse over a country when it displayed the relationships.
  
• Multiplayer online leaderboard is now responsive again and will no longer freeze the game when you click on the button. I have applied some filtering to only display relevant information. Players will need to complete at least a game (losing or winning) to appear in the leaderboard.
  
• Clicks going through the musics playlist background.
  
• Fallschirmjäger name display. Properly showing the 'ä'. This is a save breaking change, it will take effect only if you start a new playthrough or purchase a new unit. Existing Fallschirmjäger will have the "?" graphics show.
  
• Upgraded units lost the Flamethrower bonus.
  
• Modded tiles did not carry their Manpower and Occupied Manpower values.
  
• Random Damage Modifier is now properly synced in multiplayer.
  
• No more lag spike when pressing TAB and using numbers on counters when having a huge amount of units on the map (Ex: Europe scenarios). Probably improved performances as a whole too.
  
• File Locked game settings would be saved after you went back to the main menu, and if you created a new map in the map editor right after that, you would lock your new map and you could never open it again.
  
• Partisans never spawning.
  
• Carrier/Naval planes could resupply at battleships using their catapult rendering carriers useless.
  
• Pressing 'escape' while in the map editor menu did not close it.
  
• Units disappearing (planes) when they were above a land/naval mine and the mine was from an enemy team (= unseen). Your plane would simply disappear when swapping air/ground view.
  
• Units getting a hero in battle did not refresh their counter to show the hero icon on it.
  
• Placing supply depots on cities/towns/villages would confuse the game and they would get ignored and it would use the tile instead of the unit (as a supplies source).
  
• Issue campaign scenarios and HQ points when playing with the Policies option ON.
  
• Issue with season change. When season was changing already and another season change request was made before the first completed.
  
• Tech Tree tooltip research time did not take into account some policies.
  
• Showing low ammo icon on units that have a max of 1 ammo (V1s, V2s...)
  

[h3]REMOVED:[/h3]

• Core Units panel from the top of the UI. No longer needed since I added a toggle 'sort core units' in the Order of Battle.
  

Alright, it was a big one! I will be around to fix any potential issues, so let me know if anything is wrong or missing...

I hope you will all enjoy this MASSIVE update!

Cheers and see you in the comments/forum ;)

PS: This is not it for Hex of Steel quite yet, there is another update in the works, a whole ships rework with new mechanics and options for ship customizations... Stay tuned for more...

Version 7.0.0 is coming, work has started, it is the biggest update since the game was released (in the amount of work I have to put in).

Many of you asked for it, I had to say no countless times due to the gigantic amount of work because of the way the game was made.

I will not name it, but most of you should guess what I am talking about by now

It is coming...