Hex of Steel News

[h3]ADDITIONS[/h3]

• New policy category: Occupation. Bringing 4 new policies: Balanced approach, aggressive approach, Secret police and Forced labor.
  
• New achievement: Tyrant (enabling the Forced labor policy).
  
• New input field to set the original owner of a tile. Since a lot of scenarios have Germany occupy some bits of countries and since now production and manpower values are based on occupation, starting Europe 1941 would give you crazy manpower due to the fact that the game thinks all VPs in France and other countries actually belong to Germany. With this new input field, you will be able to say this VP does belong to Germany now but its original owner is France. This way this VP will be considered occupied and not a German one, creating rebellions with partisans as well.
  
• Garrison unit (for 33 countries). Costs not much but doesn’t do much either, just used to fight partisans and make sure nobody with paratroopers will take your cities from behind :) Free up a lot of manpower for making actual offensive troops.
  
• Key binding to automatically skip a selected unit's turn. Convenient when cycling through unit and when you don't want to have to click on the button or don't want to cycle through all 3 states. (Space is the shortcut).
  
• 4 ground commanders to Greece.
  
• 3 ground commanders to Hungary.
  
• 4 ground commanders to Bulgaria and 2 naval ones.
  
• 1 ground commander to Norway and 1 naval one.
  
• 1 naval commander to Romania.
  
• 2 ground commanders to Sweden and 1 naval one.
  
• 2 ground commanders to Finland.
  
• 1 ground commander to France and 1 naval one.
  

[h3]CHANGES[/h3]

• Occupied tiles will no longer give as much income as they did before. They used to give 100% of production, I think it makes sense that this value should be capped at 25%.
  
• Ideologies are now shown in the diplomacy panel.
  
• Added starting HQ points to most if not all quick games scenarios.
  
• The dreaded upgrade system. Now clearer :) No more confusion! All straightforward.
  
• Graphics for supply depots (Thank you Kelvin).
  
• Yugoslavia counters from red to purple.
  
• Made paratroopers a bit less OP.
  
• You can now delete bunkers or radars or other building unit from the OOB.
  
• 1 range artillery will always provide support fire now even if the enemy attacking the unit is 2 tiles away, that is because the fight takes place in the defending unit's tile which is always 1 tile away from its support.
  
• If playing with Policies setting, generals will now cost HQ points. The price is automatically calculated and is the total of their stats.
  
• Commanders now automatically have the winter option ON when you buy them, I removed the button option from the store.
  
• French and British AI will now (in Historical focus mode) declare war if Germany/Italy attacks Luxembourg or Belgium or the Netherlands or Denmark or Norway or Greece. No more picking countries one by one and having no answer from the allies :)
  
• Added custom store icons for each time period currently covered officially and by mods. I adapted them for the 1800s, WWI, WWII AND by countries (majors and some minors only, others get the old generic look) and modern era. The icons are both in the editor and in the game.
  

[h3]FIXES[/h3]

• Policies weren't saved in real time multiplayer.
  
• Upgrading a unit in real time multiplayer didn't show the upgrade for the players not performing the upgrade.
  
• Upgrading a unit to be a core unit would have its action box be totally yellow instead of black.
  
• Modded flags did not show up in the lobby of the real time multiplayer.
  
• If you opened a save in the map editor and saved the map it would be saved in the original folder, not the Maps folder, so you couldn't find it easily.
  
• Units could be upgraded anywhere (in any VP I mean).
  
• You could buy the same general more than once if it was done during the purchase (adding 3 Hermann Goering to your basket).
  
• Pressing 'P' while in the OOB searching for a unit would pause/unpause the game.
  

[h3]ADDITIONS[/h3]

• New manpower mechanics. Entirely optional and subject to changes very soon as it might not be perfectly balanced, expect incoming updates :p
  This new mechanics has been implemented because some players wanted a soft unit cap.
  This new mechanics is OFF by default and cannot be turned ON in campaign for balance purposes. Quick game only feature. Every VPs on the map will provide the player with a certain amount of manpower and units will now have an extra cost (in manpower) as well as their base cost. Every unit has a different manpower cost, so making planes will not be as expensive as recruiting an infantry division.
  This new mechanics comes with a new policy category: Conscription. I currently made 3 levels of conscription. Every level of conscription grants more available manpower but reduces the damage of new units.
  This feature is save and multiplayer compatible. No need to start a new game to enable it. I cannot guarantee however that you will not be exceeding the manpower limit you should be having. Nothing serious though, you just won’t be able to buy new units!
  Your max manpower is cut by 50% when you are neutral (because you are not at war).
  When capturing enemy VPs, the manpower pool will not be increased as usual but instead a fraction of what it should be (because occupation people are against you and not willing to enlist in your army).
  
• New achievements in link to the new manpower mechanics: Have 0 manpower (Krieg ist verloren), and enact the very last conscription policy (scraping the barrel).
  
• "Ideologies" for diplomacy and only if Historical Focus setting is turned ON. This will influence how countries interact with each other in the diplomacy in general.
  

[h3]CHANGES[/h3]

• I made land and naval mines instantly available (no turn to produce) as they should be carried with destroyers / engineers at all times.
  
• Increased the production turns for building some ships (was too quick for battleships).
  

[h3]FIXES[/h3]

• Paratroopers didn’t make a plane sound when being deployed.
  
• Modded attack sounds would not appear in the proper category in the unit editor, and no custom movement or attack sound would play when being selected in the unit editor.
  

Discord link to see the work on the world map: https://discord.gg/Tn63mrwJyH

[h3]ADDITIONS[/h3]

• New edge-to-edge movement mechanic. This opens up the possibility for a ... WORLD MAP!!!! Which I started making already, the amount of tiles is a staggering 160.600 for a size of 550x292. This mechanic can be toggled ON or OFF based on the map directly from inside the map editor. OFF by default because there is no world map in the game YET.
  
• Possibility to edit the HQ points directly from the map editor, so if you want to give some HQ points to a certain country when starting a scenario, this is now possible.
  
• Input field to search for a particular unit in the OOB.
  

[h3]CHANGES[/h3]

• Added a little color to the switch air/ground view button.
  
• Added an extra second at the end of an AI turn per unit when slow AI option is active. Player feedback was that slow AI was still too fast.
  
• Mods in the list of mods will now be refreshed live if you delete / add a new mod from your mods folder. No need to go back and in again to have it refreshed.
  
• Any AI can't deploy ground troops at naval reinforcement tiles except US and Japan anymore.
  
• Units that are marked as SKIPPED or ASLEEP will now be greyed out. Easier to identify the ones you really want to play.
  
• High command points now are earned on a turn basis, not depends on capitals anymore. This is so that they work on all maps equally.
  

[h3]REMOVED[/h3]

• Amount of players dropdown in the map editor. Was useless and created issues when adding more players than the dropdown had possibilities. Was rendered useless a while ago since I added a "Add player" button.
  

[h3]FIXES[/h3]

• Clicks going through UI.
  
• Camera moving when typing a message.
  
• AI could deploy missiles (V1s and V2s) at airfields.
  
• OOB would close itself (Core unit issue).
  
• Several minor fixes that I actually attributed to the 6.3.0 changelog.
  
• Modded background for counters would not show up in the store when buying from other countries.
  
• If you had modded units loaded, when a ship was moving left or right it would mirror and so would the text.
  

Cheers!

[h3]ADDITIONS[/h3]

• Brand new (updated) UI! I added a blur/transparency effect and it looks more modern/slick now, I think it looks better like that, it's refreshing!
  
• New policy mechanics! Totally optional, can be turned ON or OFF in the settings, multiplayer and campaign compatible (carried over from one scenario to the next). 43 policies split in 3 categories. I will add more, I just need ideas, so take a look at what’s already there and suggest me some others! :D
  Same for categories, I’m sure we can come up with more than 3 to make it more interesting or balanced.
  Now, with the introduction of policies I am also introducing High command points, using those high command points you will be able to choose policies. You can have one active policy per category MAXIMUM. You can change as many times as you wish as long as you have the high command points necessary. High command points are earned every turn based on how many city tiles you own (biggest city tiles = capitals basically). The maximum amount of high command points you can store is 100. Each city tile will produce 5 a turn. All policies have a different cost based on what they do. AI will also pick policies.
  Unfortunately, none of this is moddable. I am sorry! (It requires deep changes in several places in the code, and you do not have access to the sourcecode so that's why I can't be edited from the outside). But I am really open to ideas so go crazy!
  

[h3]CHANGES[/h3]

• AI now plays ... faster. Just WAY faster. On the map Battle of France AI only it took the AI 20 minutes and 72 turns to finish the scenario, and with the old one it took it 47 minutes and 74 turns. It plays twice as fast at least :)
  
• AI amphibious attacks should be more interesting now it will not send all its troops to a single point but instead spread out and land from different directions.
  
• Updated Europe 1941 and Europe 1939.
  
• Updated Sevastopol campaign scenario and Campaign of Poland campaign scenario.
  
• SPGs took a single turn to produce, I believe it should be 2, so now they take 2 turns, they're tanks right so they should take the same amount of time.
  
• FOW is now shown when playing AI vs AI games.
  
• Showing the amount of money the AI player has when in the same team / AI vs AI game.
  
• Added a 1 turn delay for deploying captured equipment.
  
• Optimized the shit out of the store menu. No more lags.
  
• Submarines are forced to surface every 3 turns now (to recharge their batteries). They will not be allowed to dive in the third turn they have been submerged and will surface automatically.
  
• Optimized the supply line generation. Should lag way less and be more responsive.
  
• Updated Campaign of France quick game scenario.
  

[h3]FIXES[/h3]

• Sometimes the core unit amount would not be properly reset when starting a new campaign.
  
• Retreating units with option quick movement ON were playing the movement animation.
  
• Sonars would show naval mines.
  
• Following achievements were broken (couldn't be unlocked): Creator, Cheater, Loser, Winner, Retreat, Shore bombardment, Follower, Host.
  
• Submarines could attack from underwater (being submerged).
  
• On the Europe maps, the railways would not reach the followings cities: Lulea, Pecs, Hammerfest, Bergen, Oslo.
  
• Time played on a scenario wasn't saved in the autosaves.
  
• OOB sorted by health was not working entirely, now the lowest health is properly at the top.
  
• AI playing by itself without hitting start in some rare cases.
  
• You could get money by upgrading a unit more than once.
  
• All units price and stats on all maps.
  
• Attacking a neutral unit would always make the country turn Allies and never Axis even if you were the Allies yourself.
  

[h3]Added[/h3]

• Redeploy button in the OOB. When pressing this button, the unit will be sent back to the reserve. This operation will cost 50. You cannot use this button in real time multiplayer.
  
• Text message event. Just shows text.
  

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Made Thailand start Axis in Pacific 1941.
  
• Changed starting income in the battle of Khalkin Gol.
  
• Submarines can attack each other when they both are surfaced OR under water after 1950.
  
• Broken scenarios on Android (Korsun Pocket, Courland Pocket).
  
• More changes to Europe 1939 historical version to make sure it is as close to history as possible (I'm talking about the way stuff unwraps not like forces etc, so just the way country handle diplomacy).
  
• Neutral countries will now get one fifth of their income per turn instead of one tenth. Basically they now get double the amount. So if a neutral country has a production value of 1000, then it will get 200 instead of the 100 previously. This will make them more reactive upon war declaration.
  
• I made encirclement remove more supplies as it was quite weak before, so instead of being 10% less supplies per unit encircling it now is 15%, which is 50% more supplies taken compared to before. So a complete encirclement will bring the supplies down to -90% for the unit being encircled.
  
• The Soviet Union now has a 50% production penalty until June 1941 in quick games to reflect their disorganisation and general bad political + economical situation but also to prevent a Soviet domination by 1940 which was not possible at the time. I basically weakened them until real war broke out between them and Germany.
  
• Added a +5 damage modifier to Finnish ground units when fighting in / from winter tiles. This is also to make it tougher to go against Finland in winter and make sure the Soviet Union stalls and not steamroll them.
  
• Compressed a lot of textures and reduced the game’s weight by about 600 MB, I personally can’t tell the difference between that and before in a 4K retina screen. So no quality loss but you just got yourself 600 MB of free space :)
  
• Updated unity version from 2021.1.19f1 to Unity 2021.3.0f1.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Performance issue when playing for a long time on a map and having a lot of units. Buying new units would make the game freeze for a long time before becoming playable again.
  
• Optimization when spawning new units, it will not re generate the entire pool anymore simply delete the unit you just spawned from it.
  
• After unfielding a unit, if on the tile the unit was there were 2 units the two unit indicator would not go away.
  
• France 1940 was not properly part of the new leaderboard.
  
• If not created properly, ships in the unit editor could be assigned the motorize or mechanized option. Now it doesn't matter how you create them.
  

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And as usual some screenshots from my next game :