Hex of Steel News

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 :)

Fellow players, friends, hello!

It’s been some time now since the last sale on HoS, and even more time since the game was discounted this low, so hey, why not doing it again?:)

Hopefully, we can get even more people into the world of wargaming and get them to love hexagons!
Wargaming is COOL!

Now is the time to gift the game to your friends that were reluctant and thought wargaming was boring :p

If none of that is of any interest to you, then juste enjoy the discount :)

Limited time, for this weekend only

—————————————————————

On a more personal note now, some of you may know that we (my brother and I) are currently travelling to Finland, we will go home soon and get back not normal working hours but before all that, we decided to go to … the TANK MUSEUM

Who doesn’t like tanks?

The museum was Parola tank museum, located 100km north of Helsinki

It features numerous WWII vehicles as well as cold war / modern ones (T-72, Leopard 2 and others)

But what we went to this museum for was… the WWII tanks! Of course!

(Okay we also played the tank shooting simulation and destroyed 2 T-26 using a Bofors 37mm. Yes, we handled a true anti tank gun! Didn’t fire for real though but it was nice to use a piece of history)

Anyway, here are some pictures that I thought were worthy to be shared :)

A captured soviet KV-1E:


A captured soviet SU-152:


A rare BT-42 (only 18 produced):


An early StuG-III G, this one saw battle and destroyed 5 soviet tanks:


And finally, a (once more) captured BA-10:


All of those units are available in Hex of Steel for you to use, or even capture!

NOTE: 6.6.1 is not compatible with earlier versions of real time multiplayer. PBEM is fine.

Hi there!

So, I am currently travelling (Finland) and don't have much time to work, but since this trip included many hours spent in the train and the plane, well I had time to work on Hex of Steel.

I spent a lot of time thinking to solve a few issues I was having, including modifying base units' stats and saving those as part of a mod.

Well, my friends, wait no more, I found a way to do it and even implemented it already!

This small update actually changes several things, adds a little bit and fixes some issues you guys reported back to me (thanks!)

So here's the change log!

[h3]Added:[/h3]

• Possibility to modify base units' stats (official) and save those changes into a mod.
  
• Added boolean for is coastal battery so the unit's abilities don't depend on its name anymore.
  

[h3]Changed:[/h3]

• Submarines can now detect ships 3 tiles away.
  
• Mods' weight is now very accurately displayed in the mod manager (down to the kb).
  
• You can now play the same country in real time multiplayer. Not same player, but same country. So you can have a map with 3 players and have 2 Germany.
  
• Reinitialized all leaderboard for scenarios. I am sorry, but since I added the leaderboard many things have changed and I found ways to prevent players from "cheating" and have impossible scores (like 2 turns on the Europe map). So, this way, everyone has a chance again!
  
• Changes to partisans spawning and policies.
  
• Mines little icon in mouse over UI. They now have their own icons.
  
• Small changes to Europe 1939.
  
• When typing in the name of something (map, unit..) it doesn't matter anymore if you're using CAPS or lower case letters. QOL feature.
  
• Rommel's offensive allied side improved balance.
  
• Eastern Front 1941 improved balance (USSR was too powerful).
  

[h3]Fixed:[/h3]

• When changing a base unit's max HP down to 50 let's say, if you started a new scenario, the unit would show 100/50 HP.
  
• Buildings didn't appear in the map editor.
  
• Infinite money bug while upgrading units in some cases (with truck or mech option).
  
• Selling a unit from the reserve would not apply the 'use modifier', for example if you sent a unit back to the reserve from the order of battle and sold the unit afterwards, you would get back 100% of the cash.
  
• Unit's icon not showing for buildings after changes I made to the categories of units.
  
• Couldn't edit production value and reward value in tile editor.
  
• Desert tiles in desert biome in randomly generated scenario had no MP cost.
  
• Coastal batteries not showing up in map editor (question mark instead).
  
• Played 250h achievement never unlocked.
  

And that's it for this update!
Will share some pictures from the tank museum when we get there :)
There are mostly soviet tanks but german and finnish as well ;)

Cheers!

I am working my way on the most asked features, not especially fast, but I am!

First I have some stuff IRL going on, but I am also working hard on my next game

Anyway, the object of this new update is the possibility to build airfields on the spot, or factories to boost your economy.
Both come at a cost and a certain amount of time to be ready in order to keep the game balanced. But still, it is now possible to make those!
Why not roads? Because I couldn't find any simply way to choose the orientation of those when placing them on the map.

The way I made this work is to create 4 new units (Factory, Refinery, Airfield and trenches). And upon placing those on the map (using engineers, just like when you make bunkers or place mines) the unit will not even spawn but the tile will change instantly to whatever it should be (Factory or airfield).

I have set the amount of turns to make a factory OR an airfield to be a total amount of days, not turns (internally). So, to make a factory, you will need 90 days, and to make an airfield 4 days. 180 days for a refinery.
Number of turns will depend based on the scenario's pace. This will keep things realistic, and balanced!
Playing at 1 day a turn will mean 90 turns to produce a factory.
Playing at 7 days a turn will mean 13 turns to produce a factory.
Making an airfield or a factory will immobilise some of your manpower that you will get back once the unit is placed on the map (and destroyed).

AI hasn't been programmed to build any of those.

[h3]Additions:[/h3]

• Possibility to build airfields on the spot as well as trenches, factories or even refineries to boost your country's income.
  
• New category in the store / research (buildings). I moved all buildings to this category for organisations sake.
  
• Button to remove units only in victory points in the map editor (Useful if you don't want to touch the OOB but still want to re do all garrison or simply remove it).
  
• Button to place garrison in VPs only in the map editor. Once again, very useful if you want in just 2 clicks to replace all units in the VPs by garrisons.
  
• HQ points are now shown in the store if you are playing with the policy option turned ON.
  
• AT infantry 43 for italy.
  
• 3 new achievements for building: an airfield, a factory and a refinery.
  
• New category in the store: Buildings. I moved all the buildings there (Bunkers, coastal batteries, mines and the new buildable tiles).
  
• Charts for end of scenario stats review. Added a new button at the bottom of the screen that says "Visualise data", this opens a new window, from there you can choose either bar or graph charts, and their given data. Bars will give you a visual representation of the stats of the end of game numbers, while the graph will give you an evolution over time of the different stats of each player.
  

[h3]Changes:[/h3]

• Internally created a "Shared" folder for all common graphics for units such as: Bunkers, all coastal batteries, mines (both types), supply depots, RADARs, newly added factory and airfield. Since they all look the same, it didn't make sense to have 257 sprites when you could have 1 of each). So yes, I deleted 257 images which should make some free space for your computers :) No difference in gameplay, or for mods, just more free space for you :)
  
• Changed the way units are counted in the unit editor, duplicates are not counted anymore. It is now based on unique units only. New total of units: 1213 unique units.
  
• Stalingrad as the soviets scenario overhaul.
  

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]

• AI would go for reinforcement tiles (cannot be captured).
  
• Op. Husky could not be finished as the Axis.
  
• Units could capture VPs from other countries if they were not in the same faction but also not at war with them.
  
• You couldn't buy units from neutral countries if yourself weren't neutral.
  
• Bunkers, coastal batteries, radars and supply depots didn't cost any manpower.
  
• Categories icons in research menu didn't lit up properly on mouse hover.
  
• Sometimes for some reasons units with auto supplies ON would not be resupplied.
  
• Game freeze when upgrading a veteran unit that was level 4 or more to another veteran unit.