Darkest Hour: Europe '44-'45 News

We’re back again at long last with a new batch of weapons for you to get your mitts on!

The team has been hard at work putting together the upcoming Italian update for the last several months. We are still aiming for a late 2023 release date, though realistically we may have to delay the release somewhat to make sure the release is as stable and polished as we would like.

A reminder also that our Patreon supporters get exclusive access to development progress reports (screenshots) and exclusive access to (upcoming) Italian update beta tests. Your donations through Patreon keep the game servers and our development infrastructure running. If you can afford to, please consider becoming a patron!

Without further preamble, here are the change log notes:



[h2]Karabiner 98k (ZF41) and Marksman role[/h2]



The Germans have been given a new “Marksman” role which has access to the new Karabiner 98k (ZF41). Depending on the time frame and units involved, this role has replaced the Sniper role on some maps.

The ZF41 is a 1.5x scope developed to provide German squads with a “designated marksman” optic after lessons learned in the Battle of France. However, following Operation Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht found they had a severe lack of dedicated sniper scopes and pressed the much more plentiful ZF41s into the role. Not designed for such use, it was viewed generally unfavorably by trained snipers given its low magnification and poor field of view. Love it or hate it, Snipers and Marksmen will now be able to adorn their K98ks with this sight on many maps.

[h2]Gewehr 98 variants[/h2]



This update adds the German service rifle from WWI and a couple of its variants into the arsenal:

• Gewehr 98
  
• Vz. 24
  
• FN Model M1924

[h2]Degtyaryov machine gun DT-29[/h2]



Primarily meant as a tank machine gun, it’s been a common sight for it to end up in the hands of infantry after being “dismounted” from damaged tanks.

[h2]Mannlicher M95/30[/h2]



With it’s unique straight-pull bolt, this Austro-Hungarian mainstay is now (narrowly) the fastest firing bolt action weapon in the game. It can be found in small numbers in the hands of Germans fighting on the eastern front.

[h2]Maschinenkarabiner 42(H)[/h2]



The predecessor of Sturmgewehr 44, the MkB42 can be found being trialed in small numbers on the Eastern Front.

• The Fallschirmjäger 42 has had its first person animations completely remade, bringing the feel of the weapon more in line with our more recent overhauled weapons.

• The British vehicle voice lines have had a radio effect added to them to bring them in line with the other faction's vehicle voice lines.
  
• The M45 Quadmount now has a dramatically longer reload time to properly reflect the loading of 4 seperate ammo boxes.
  
• Vehicle gunners will now automatically alert the crew (via vehicle voice commands) that the gun is loaded after reloading a main cannon. This behavior can be changed in the settings menu.
  
• There is now a new "Use Native Item Names" option in the settings which uses the native weapon names used by the nation of origin.

• Fix for bug where cancelling artillery strikes were being refunded when they shouldn't have been
  
• Fixed an inconsistency in the spotting menu where the number & location of the options would change depending on what the level's game mode was.

[h3]Armored Kasserine Pass[/h3]

• Reduced German tank spawn times across the board.
  
• Changed Panzer IV tank models from Late to Early type, to more accurately depict the historical setting.
  
• Increased Axis and Allied tickets significantly.

[h3]Armored Raid to Bastogne[/h3]

• Fixed collision issues with certain trees/bushes in the mid-section of the map.

[h3]Armored Road to Leningrad[/h3]

• Changed map name from the generic "Road to Leningrad" to "Iskra" (Spark) after the offensive it was based on.
  
• Changed tanks from 1944 models to more accurate early 1943 models.
  
• Changed objective layout to better suit the Advance game mode (previously it functioned more as a Clash map).
  
• Changed attacking team to Soviets.
  
• Added more detail around the map.
  
• Added a new final objective.
  
• Fixed areas where you could fall through the terrain.
  
• Fixed a bug where teams could run out of tickets before the time limit and no longer be able to spawn.

[h3]Berezina[/h3]

• Increased German tickets slightly.
  
• Increased objective lockdown timers significantly when captured by attackers.
  
• Removed objective lockdown timers when recaptured by defenders.
  
• Reduced objective unlock timers by 20 seconds.
  
• Fixed pop-in for some objects such as trench supports.

[h3]Flakturm Tiergarten[/h3]

• Reworked tank unlock progression. Allies start with SU-76M immediately and receive T-34-85 after a 3 minute delay. Germans start with Sd.Kfz. 251/22 immediately and unlock Tiger after a 3 minute delay.
  
• Changed SU-76M to use new LWP skin.
  
• Changed advancing spawn protection minefields to offer defenders additional time to retreat if they are inside of the area when the minefield activates.
  
• Fixed incorrect US ammo box texture on resupply boxes inside of the Flakturm.

[h3]Klin 1941[/h3]

• Increased German tickets slightly.
  
• Increased lockdown timers of final objectives to 5 minutes.
  
• Removed rally point restrictions from trenches around the final objectives.

[h3]La Cambe[/h3]

• Changed the first objective to disable upon capture.
  
• Added lockdown timers to all objectives upon capture.
  
• Fixed infamous floating fire emitter.
  
• Fixed blue static stove inside the old manor building.

[h3]Maupertus Advance[/h3]

• Reduced all objective capture speeds.
  
• Reduced Axis respawn timer from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
  
• Fixed map boundaries preventing you from using flanks that were otherwise intended to be open.
  
• Fixed Axis initial spawns not spawning players in the correct position.

[h3]Pointe du Hoc[/h3]

• Added Artillery Officer and Gunner roles to Axis.
  
• Limited WSS Rifleman roles to 8 (Artillery Gunner roles replace them as unlimited).
  
• Changed Allies to have +2% team ratio.
  
• Increased Axis respawn timer to 20 seconds from 15.
  
• Increased Allied Combat Engineer roles from 3 to 4.
  
• Removed requirement that objectives be cleared before capture.
  
• Fixed a bug where Higgins boats could spawn inside of eachother and launch into orbit.
  
• Fixed floating rocks on the beach.

[h3]Poteau Ambush[/h3]

• Changed minefield boundaries to be more forgiving to both teams.
  
• Rebalanced Danger Zone influences of all objectives.

[h3]Rakowice[/h3]

• Removed Soviet airstrip minefield, as it was much too close to the final objective and could block Germans from properly defending the final objective.
  
• Increased kill time of all minefields from 15 seconds to 20 to give vehicles a little more chance to back out.

[h3]Valko[/h3]

• Increased max active Universal Carriers to 2 for Soviets.
  
• Added limited M3A1 Halftrack spawns to Soviets.

See you on the battlefield,
Darklight Games

Hello again! We are back with another patch that adds a number of quality of life changes and fixes a long-standing bug around machine-gun deployment! As usual, many map tweaks and fixes as well!

• Players will now resupply & reload players that are shouldering AT weapons with a single keypress.
  
• A message will be displayed to the team when a vehicle pool has been activated or destroyed.
  
• When using a shovel, players can now simply hold down the fire button to continue digging.
  

• Fixed a long-standing bug where weapons could sometimes fire blanks after deploying due to a client-server desync.
  

[h2]Cambes en Plaine[/h2]

• Reworked objective territory influences.
  
• The final objective can now be recaptured by the Axis.
  

[h2]Pegasus Bridge[/h2]

• The Allies can now spawn from 2 approaches.
  
• Fixed a bug where Benouville and Corner House objective volumes were too large.
  
• Added new Axis initial spawn with a maximum of 12 spawns.
  
• Reworked objective territory influences.
  
• Reworked Bridge objective area.
  
• Increased tickets for both teams to account for additional fighting.
  

[h2]La Fiere Day[/h2]

• Enabled Allies a limited construction of 57mm AT guns (historically delivered by gliders)
  
• Allied supply caches now have a lower limit.
  
• Added an Allied supply cache to the end of the Causeway objective.
  

[h2]La Fuellie Advance[/h2]

• Fixed an issue where invisible geometry would block howitzer shells in some areas of the map.
  
• Slightly increased Allied tickets.
  

[h2]Wanne Advance[/h2]

• Reworked objective territory influences.
  
• Slightly reduced the size of some objective capture areas.
  

[h2]Berezina Advance[/h2]

• The Soviet main spawn now has territory influence.
  

[h2]Les Champs de Losque[/h2]

• Fixed a bug where minefields on the south east side of the map would kill the player too quickly.
  

• Leveler-placed spawn points can now have a limited number of players spawn on them (`MaxSpawns`)
  

See you on the battlefield,
Darklight Games

[h2]Grenades[/h2]

• The amount of grenades that players spawn with has been increased from 1 to 2.
  

[h3]Developer Note[/h3]
This reverses a long-standing change made years ago that was intended to reduce grenade spam. However, the change was largely ahistoric, as most troops were issues with 2 or more grenades, depending on the unit. We will evaluate how this shifts the nature of firefights, and may issue additional changes to keep grenade spam down in the future.


[h2]Satchel & Engine Fires[/h2]

• The radius of resupply points attached to vehicles (i.e., logistics trucks) has been increased by ~1 meter.
  
• Satchels that explode on the tops of tanks and within range of the engine will no longer 100% start a fire in the engine. The likelihood of an engine fire is now determined by how close the explosion is to the engine.
  
• The likelihood of an engine fire spreading to the hull has been dramatically reduced.
  

[h3]Developer Note[/h3]
In reality, most vehicles had firewalls that separated the engine from the crew cabin, making this type of thing unlikely.

Previously, due to some wonky programming, the likelihood of the hull catching fire was virtually 100% (and ironically, made worse if your engine had a lot of HP), since it was doing a fire-spread dice roll every second while the engine was on fire. This system makes it to difficult to reason about and balance the likelihood of fires for different vehicles because the probabilities have to be amortised in relation to the vehicle's HP which is far too much complexity for what should be a simple dice roll.

These two changes together make it so that satchels are no longer a guaranteed one-hit kill weapon against every tank in the game.

[h2]Infantry Howitzers[/h2]

• Reduced the reload time of all infantry howitzers from 12 seconds to 6 seconds.
  
• Reduced the resupply interval of all howitzers from 25 seconds to 12 seconds.
  

[h3]Developer Note[/h3]
This change was submitted by community member Punic, and it's one we agree with. Historically, the howitzer reload times were set as high as they were because we feared that they would be overpowered when used in battery. We feel safe in making these more viable now and reevaluating the balance once the changes have had time to settle in.



[h2]Berezina Advance[/h2]

• Added 2 Combat Engineer roles for Soviets.
  
• Reduced max tanks for both teams, Soviets now have 2 tanks active at once, Germans have 3.
  
• Made BT7, Panzer III and Panzer IV Ausf. F1 spawns unlimited.
  
• Reduced max active logi trucks for both teams from 3 to 2.
  
• Implemented gun limit of 6 for Soviet light AT guns.
  

[h2]Cholm Advance[/h2]

• Fixed issue where Axis would bleed tickets while still controlling objectives.
  
• Improved spawn protection minefield around Axis main spawn.
  
• Added additional cover to Axis main spawn.
  
• Disabled Karma collision on all wooden fences.
  

[h2]St Marie du Mont[/h2]

• Added new Northwestern and Eastern Road objectives, replacing the old Stable objective.
  
• Added new spawn protection minefields for both teams.
  
• Added some additional light cover around the Church objective.
  
• Added artillery triggers to static radios on the map.
  
• Added additional logistics truck spawn for Axis.
  
• Reduced Axis main spawn cache limit from 8000 to 6000.
  
• Reworked Axis main spawn protection minefield.
  
• Reworked Danger Zone influences of all objectives.
  
• Reduced artillery strikes available to both teams significantly.
  
• Removed US Automatic Rifleman roles and instead increased Machine Gunners to 2.
  
• Fixed an off-grid BSP building that caused an invisible wall near the stables.
  

See you on the battlefield,
Darklight Games

This update brings a number of quality of life changes to the squad system that have been requested by the community (and devs!) for a while. We've also snuck in some map fixes and some tweaks to the vehicles.

• The squad panels in the UI are now colored differently depending on whether or not you are a part of the squad.
  
• While in a squad, you can now join another squad directly without needing to explicitly leave your existing squad, preserving any squad-only role you might have.
  
• Squad Assistants are no longer immediately promoted to be squad leader after the squad leader leaves.
  
• Squad Leader promotions are now prompts that must be accepted by the player being promoted (this stops malicious or careless squad leaders from bumping players off of their roles).
  
• A "no rally points" icon (i.e. mark of shame) is now displayed on the squad menu next to the names of squads who have not had a rally point for 60 seconds. This should help unassigned players choose an appropriate squad to join.
  

[h2]Hedgerow Hell[/h2]

• Added new initial Axis main spawn.
  
• Streamlined design of final Axis main spawn to make it easier to navigate.
  
• Fixed a number of anomalous invisible walls.
  
• All objectives now require 2 or 3 players to capture.
  
• Reworked Bridge Defences capture area to include the nearby house (this should make the objective more defensible).
  
• Reduced Allied artillery strikes from 12 to 8.
  
• Increased Axis artillery cooldown from 15 seconds to 1 minute.
  

[h2]Godolloi[/h2]

• Increased lockdown timers on all objectives.
  
• Slightly decreased the capture speed of all objectives.
  

[h2]Champs d'Agonie[/h2]

• Fixed a bug where capture notifications wouldn't play when objectives were secured.
  
• Scaled back German anti-precap minefields across the board (they are still present but less oppressive than before).
  

[h2]Les Champs de Losque[/h2]

• Removed "fake" supply cache props.
  
• Replaced weapon props with real weapon pick-ups.
  

[h2]Vehicles[/h2]

• The M93 (76mm HVAP) projectile (found on the M18 Hellcat, M4A176W Sherman and M10 Wolverine) has had it's penetration capabilities increased to match contemporary penetration tables.
  
• APCs are now vulnerable to catching fire.
  
• APCs now have fuel tank hit points.
  
• Reworked Universal Carrier damage model to be consistent with other APCs (i.e., invulnerable to small arms, reduced resistance to penetrating shots)
  
• Added "tank steering" to the Sd.Kfz. 251, allowing the vehicle to make tight turns while nearly stationary.
  
• Added hit point for turret ammunition on the M16 Halftrack.
  
• Increased the likelihood of the ammunition detonating on the Sd.Kfz. 251/22 (Pakwagen) & Sd.Kfz 251/9 (Stummel) when hit with a penetrating shot.
  
• The Sd.Kfz. 234/1 now gets 2 magazines of APCR rounds. These rounds have a much higher penetration than the AP.
  
• Increased the damage and damage radius of the 20mm high-explosive round (found on the Sd.Kfz. 234/1, Wirbelwind etc.)
  

See you on the battlefield,
Darklight Games

As you have probably heard, Sicily will be coming to Darkest Hour in 2023!

This means a brand new Italian faction 🇮🇹 , new maps , weapons , vehicles and more!

We have put together a little teaser to get everyone HYPE! This will be the largest update to DH in years, and our team is hard at work to bring everything together. We look forward to hitting the shores of Sicily with you later this year!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

See you on the battlefield,
Darklight Games 🕸️

P.S. If you want to keep up to date on the team's progress, over on Patreon we are giving our patrons regular updates and exclusive content like Italy playtest highlight reels and more!