Hex of Steel News

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• Several new tile variants for railroads (intersections with roads and intersections with railroads).
  
• Courland '44 standalone scenario (Which was made live on Youtube).
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility --> 7.4.2.
  
• AI engagement rules when defending a VP.
  
• Capping AI planes purchases to be 1:3 ratio with ground units (active, units in VPs don't count, units taken into account are: Infantry, Tanks, Artillery, Ships). It still has the 'air supremacy race' going on, so, if the AI is seeing more enemy planes than his, then the cap will be bypassed and he will try to match the enemy's airforce.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Railroads were not providing a 0% penalty for supplies. They will now be used more often, as it is 'free of cost' to move supplies across railroads.
  
• 'Repeated attacks' setting not working properly.
  
• Paratroopers could not longer blow up bridges.
  
• Toggles in map editor did not have the same style.
  
• Artillery price update did not impact 30+ damage arty.
  
• Veteran star icon was shown in the reserve UI.
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• New policy: Mutual Support Pact - Deployment of units in allied territory is possible.
  
• New policy: Strategic Flexibility - Get back 30% of spent HQ points after unselecting a policy.
  
• New optional setting: Damage reduction over attack frequency. Since the poll for that new combat change was not unanimous AT ALL (50/50), I have no choice but to add this as an optional setting. It applies to both artillery, and planes. The damage penalty is 15% per unit attack on a same target.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility --> 7.4.1.
  
• Policies effects changes: Superior Bombing Protection (upkeep for AA units doubled). Winter Equipment (+5% unit purchase costs).
  
• Artillery cost a little, more expensive.
  
• Bunker unit graphics.
  
• Changed french 75mm short barrel arty to be 1 range instead of 3.
  
• On paratrooper drop, instead of checking for direct adjacent neighbours, the game will now check a 10 tiles radius around the paratrooper drop (this won't affect the base game, the change was made for mods which uses rocket AA for modern conflicts which have a range > 1).
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Entrenchment now being added every turn for all land units.
  
• Wrong notification text generated when a city VP was captured but the city tile had no name assigned.
  
• Drawings would not be displayed in multiplayer for your allies (Keep in mind they can only be erased by the player who drew them).
  
• Camera would no longer follow the moves of units in real time multiplayer.
  
• Early winter war initiated by USSR would still have Finland being thrown in its own faction and would result in forced redeployment of troops that were in enemy territory. Same thing about the Baltic States.
  
• Some soviet light bombers had the wrong max ammo count.
  
• When units (human controlled) were out of supplies (red/yellow icons) and auto supplies was ON, on the next turn the icons would still remain until the player selected the unit which forced a refresh of the counter.
  
• 20 extra HP gain when veteran unit is deployed and attacking for the first time.
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• New 'political map' overlay. At the push of a button, you can show/hide it. Combined with the keybind to hide units, you have full control over what's shown/hidden. To toggle the political map, you will need to set up the new keybind for it.
  
• New policy category: National Focuses.
  
• Few new policies to go under that new category: Industrial overtime, Aggressive Propaganda, Military Scientists, Army Training, Resistance Suppression, Construction Engineering, Commanders development program. Description is available in game :) The goal for this new category was to be more useful late game, to have something where you could have your HQ points spent on a per turn basis automatically. Some of these policies do require a sacrifice of 1 HQ point per turn.
  
• New other policies: Bigger command centers, Highlands experts.
  
• Possibility to completely hide the in game UI by pressing F10 (+ new keybind).
  
• Possibility to assign/change a country's ideology in the map editor.
  
• AT infantry to Greece.
  
• AA and AT and arty units to Turkey.
  
• Basic AA and artillery as well as Engineers to Baltic States.
  
• Missing buildings to Baltic States.
  
• Vickers M1933 to Lithuania.
  
• M4A3 105mm Sherman to the US.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility -> 7.4.0.
  
• Economy / Occupation policies and income modifiers did not work as intended when a tile was occupied (modifiers applied on wrong value).
  
• Made policies lighter (data wise). Will make some late game save files a tad lighter/smaller.
  
• Increased Commanders units upkeep by quite a lot when playing with policies ON (15 upkeep vs 1 upkeep).
  
• Slightly changed the player slots setup in the map editor settings.
  
• Now showing the max cap of HQ points in both the store and the policies menu.
  
• Changed the 'map' button action to toggling the political map. I have disabled the old 'strategic' map.
  
• I have removed the hardcoded 'Winter fighting bonus' for the Northern countries, and instead, made it free for them to pick the Winter Soldiers military tactics policy.
  
• Political unit option no longer add an extra production turn.
  
• Mountaineer unit option now adds an extra production turn.
  
• Mountaineer option is now available for small AT guns and artillery guns.
  
• Several buildings graphics (Coastal batteries, factory, refinery).
  
• Supplies amount per tile penalty with complex supplies setting.
  
• Estonia country revamp (geography) on Europe scenarios.
  
• Latvia country revamp (geography) on Europe scenarios.
  
• Lithuania country revamp (geography) on Europe scenarios.
  
• Added missing naval convoy routes in Europe scenarios (other than 1939).
  
• Reduced a bit the AI's purchase rate of commanders.
  
• Flamethrower bonus vs units in urban areas is now scaled with the HP of the unit attacking. It felt odd to get the bonus based on base damage without scaling it with HP. I had a 9HP unit having a +10 damage bonus from flamethrower. Broken AF :)
  
• F2A / F4F fighters stats.
  
• P-38 fly range stat.
  
• Engineers can no longer place down stuff in an uncontrolled manner (as well as destroyers for laying mines). They are both restricted to placing down 1 item max per turn.
  
• Graphics of all buildings units icons.
  
• Restat of all AT43 infantry.
  
• Removed some hard damage to marines and NKVD infantry.
  
• Changed some policies effects: Better shovels now give +2 max entrenchment instead of 1, but comes with a dig in speed penalty of 50%. So, instead of gaining +1 entrenchment every turn, it is now every 2 turns. Same with the Organized Defenses policy, it has the same dig in speed penalty. Human wave now has a x2 heal cost penalty for infantry. So it costs double to heal the same amount of HP. Camouflage now increases the purchase cost of all land units by 5%.
  
• Changed a bit the rule for retreating. Now, if a unit is attacked and deals back 0 damage, instead of retreating right away, it will only do so if the amount of damage received is superior or equal to 30% of its current HP.
  
• Several US tanks graphics.
  
• Artillery purchase cost difference has been increased and sorted by 'tier'. The heavier the gun, the higher the cost difference between light arty. This change was needed as the difference in cost between a 105mm and 150mm arty was only 10.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Tile info displayed with mouse hovering would not display the right amount of income production if the amount was modified in the editor (on a per tile basis).
  
• AI buying too many AT infantry even when not needed.
  
• Changing faction in the diplomacy menu did not provoke a refresh of the income summary.
  
• Units with 0 movement points would not turn 'dark' once they had attacked (indicating they are out of actions). Example: Coastal batteries.
  
• Newly deployed units would not be darkened unless selected and unselected (force refresh).
  
• Units on small islands could not resupply if a single enemy was nearby.
  
• Trench tiles if set as VP when captured would yield a 'no translation' notification.
  
• F4F Wildcat could be equipped with torpedoes even though it could not IRL.
  
• If a unit had some turns in production left before being upgraded, the upgrade would override the production value. Now, the highest will be kept. So if for example before the upgrade, the unit still needed 3 turns of production, and after the upgrade only 2, it will stay on 3. No more upgrade production time cheesing :)
  
• AI will no longer deploy ships in 'closed' bodies of water. It will now check if it can move from its harbour to reach an enemy target. If no enemy target is found, then it will not deploy the ship at the harbour.
  
• Missing frozen versions of convoy route tiles (graphics) as well as naval reinforcement tiles.
  
• One instance of unit stacking! Yay!
  

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

• FINALLY -> Possibility to re order players turn order in the map editor. This works simply, every player has an index, you can change that index to change the player order. That's it!
  
• New doctrine: Fleet in being. Damage bonus in naval combat, at the expense of higher upkeep/repair cost.
  

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]

• Multiplayer compatibility -> 7.3.9.
  
• Tanks (units in the Tank category/type) and all mechanized units (mech. option from the store) now will require -50% movement points when moving on Plain tiles.
  
• Embarking or disembarking on a destroyed tile is no longer possible (ships/trains/paratroopers).
  
• Reduced the amount of triangles renderer per hexagon and unit and flags on the map. I have reduced this amount of drawn triangles from 9M when zoomed out on Europe to a little under 2M. This translates as a direct +50% FPS boost (due to rendering being cheaper). It should work fine on more recent machines, I am not sure yet for older hardware, in the case it is worse on older hardware, please let me know so that I can reverse the change.
  
• You can no longer build bunkers in enemy territory.
  
• Rebalanced north african front in Europe 39 (standalone).
  
• Replaced the Counter Bomber graphics for something less visually distractive.
  
• On Europe scenario, with Historical Focus turned ON, Italy will no longer try to invade mainland France.
  
• Guadalcanal map changes (campaign).
  
• Sometimes AI would not pick policies in some categories.
  
• Reverted AA with 2 range to 1 range max.
  

[h3]FIXED[/h3]

• Notifications showing 'enemy got reinforcements' or 'allies got reinforcements' were not displayed as intended.
  
• In map editor, event action spawn unit issues.
  
• In map editor, tile update event action having issues when using another season than default 'Summer'.
  
• AI sometimes purchasing too many units even though it should not have because of upkeep, this would lead him into negative income because of too high upkeep.
  
• British AI would declare war on Iraq at the wrong date (before real life invasion).
  

Hello everyone!

Quick little post today to, first, wish you all a great Sunday (bit late), great beginning of a new week, and...

That I would love to meet with more of you during my livestreams!

In case you did not know, I am now going live on youtube on a weekly basis to play Hex of Steel

You can find my last series available on youtube (where I stream)

This last series of 7 episodes is me playing as Finland on the Europe 39 standalone scenarios.

These weekly streams are a time of exchange between the players, and me

If that's something that you feel would be interested it, seeing the dev playing its own game, or chatting with me, then please, by all means, join me!

Next week, we will be starting a brand new series, on that same Europe 39 map, but with improved events and setup. This time, as Romania!

That's all for me today :)

See you in the forums, or in the chat...!