Steel Division 2 News

Good day to you!

In today’s blog post we will take a closer look at the six new divisions which are going to ship with our new Steel Division 2 History DLC: “The Fate of Finland.”

You can read the first details about this recently revealed expansion in this announcement here.

As you might know, in the upcoming DLC, both Axis and Allies will gain access to three brand-new divisions!

The Axis

• Panssaridivisioona
  
  First off, we have Finland’s sole armored division, the aptly named Panssaridivisioona. This formation was created in 1942 by bringing together all the Finnish tanks. This means that the division can count on a wide array of different models, from pre-war versions, captured Soviet tanks, and the latest German self-propelled guns.
  
  With the Panssaridivisioona you get to play with the ubiquitous but outdated Soviet light tank, the T-26, as well as more exotic equipment. What about the multi-turreted T-28, the T-50 light tank, the T-38 amphibious tank, or the BT-42 assault guns? British Vickers E tanks can also be deployed. German StuG III and Panzer IV J round out your armored options.
  
  Weak in reconnaissance and artillery support, the Panssaridivisioona has an actual fighting strength closer to a typical German mechanized division.
  
  
• Ryhmä Raappana
  
  An ad-hoc formation commanded by general Raappana, this battlegroup (literally Group Raappana) is an infantry-centric force. So much so that it lacks a strong armored punch.
  
  It makes up for this with aggressive recon troops, formidable artillery and air support, and a wide variety of different infantry. From regular riflemen squads to cavalry units, assault Jääkäri, engineers, close-quarters specialists, Sissi special forces and even penal formations, the fighting power of its soldiers means that Group Raappana excels in defensive fights.
  
  
• 122. Infanterie-Division
  
  The German 122. Infanterie-Division was sent north as urgent reinforcements. Its timely arrival contributed greatly to the Finnish efforts to contain the Soviet offensive on the Karelian Isthmus. This regular German infantry division is reinforced with Finnish elements including Estonian volunteers but also reconnaissance troops, infantry, AT units and more. The battlegroup can also count on some hard-hitting assets such as PaK 43 anti-tank guns and Stug IV assault guns. Furthermore, Luftwaffe support is provided by the Detachment Kuhlmey, which features a potent mix of fighters and fighter bombers.
  

The Allies

• 126-y L. Gornostrelkovy Korpus
  
  Not an actual corps but rather a downsized Soviet rifle division, the 126th Light Rifle Corps could count on a cadre of very experienced troops. This battlegroup can deploy Soviet Gornostrelki mountain troops, lightly armed but well-equipped with radios. These veteran soldiers also feature the new “Raider” unit characteristic, meaning that they won’t suffer any moral or combat penalties when engaged in a fight behind enemy lines.
  The division also fields Morskaya Pekhota naval assault troops, which are larger than usual rifle squads carrying a substantial amount of SMGs. Pretty cool, but especially if you know these guns are Chicago-style old-school M1928 Thompsons. Not only that, but fast and iconic BT-7 tank can also be found in this battlegroup as one of the last remaining Soviet ones being used in a combat capacity. Lend-lease units round out this battlegroup, from M3 Lee tanks to P-40 Kittyhawk fighters.
  
  
• Podv. Gruppa Vyborg
  
  One of the most powerful combat groups of the Leningrad Front, the Podv. Gruppa Vyborg was destined to exploit any breakthrough made in the Karelia sector. As such, this battlegroup focuses heavily on its armored role, featuring everything from T-26 tanks (including assault gun and flamethrower variant) to the T-34/76, KV-1, the IS-2 and even lend-lease Churchill tanks. Its infantry and artillery units are highly specialized but few and far between.
  
  
• 358-ya Strelkovy Div
  
  The 358th Rifle Division earned their stripes in one of the other locations already present in Steel Division 2: the hotly-contested battlegrounds of Vitebsk. Part of the first, failed Soviet offensive in 1943, the division was rebuilt and sent north to support the assault on the Finnish lines a year later. A veteran formation, its soldiers are experts in close combat attacks, including its specialized Gruppa Zachistki (“trench cleaners”). The battlegroup can choose T-26, T-60 and T-70 light tanks, a few T-34/76, and even ISU-122 and brand-new ISU-122S tank destroyers to serve as armored support.
  

What’s up next?

If you haven’t, make sure to grab your History Pass. With this History Pass you’ll get access to all three planned DLC’s for Steel Division 2. You can play number one, “Death on the Vistula”, as we speak. Number two, “The Fate of Finland”, has now been revealed and will release in the next two months. Number three: well, you need to hold on tight for that one as it is still some ways off!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/988171/Steel_Division_2__History_Pass/

That’s it for this week’s post. Keep a close eye out on our Steam and Eugen forums, or social channels (Facebook and Twitter). You can also join us on our [https://discord.gg/TEeBArm]Discord channel or Reddit page.

See you on the battlefield, commander!

Hello everyone.

We have some exciting news to share with you. Are you ready? Drumroll, please…



We are ready to reveal the next upcoming History DLC for Steel Division 2 “The Fate of Finland”. The expansion should launch within the next two months. We are hard at work, but we can’t tell you the exact date just yet.

Some of you internet sleuths already figured out that the next battlefield would be Finland. Very astute.

The new History DLC is set on the heavily defended Karelian Isthmus in the south-east of the country during the summer of 1944. The “Fate of Finland” DLC will bring six new divisions (three for both the Axis and Allies), as well as 200 new units, new camouflage skins, new aces, a new unit trait, a brand-new Army General Campaign, two new Historical Battles, and much more.

Let’s take a closer look at what you can expect.

The Finnish Front 1944

Chronologically, the new DLC stays close to the general timeline found in the Steel Division games: the summer of 1944. With the new expansion, we will transport the player to the far north of the Eastern Front, where the Finns, their German allies and the Soviets have been locked in a stalemate for a number of years - also known as the Continuation War.

Finland, having allied itself with Nazi-Germany to reclaim what it lost in the Winter War of 1939, has governed over a mostly static front. However, by June 1944, things were heating up as the Leningrad siege had been lifted and Stavka was planning a large offensive to knock the Finns out of the war.

The “Fate of Finland” DLC deals with the massive Red Army assault, which began on June 10th, 1944 and resulted in the breakthrough of several defensive lines on the fortified Karelian Isthmus, the subsequent fall of Vyborg, and near-collapse of the Finnish Army. The centerpiece is the crucial battle of Tali-Ihantala, where the resilient Finns finally managed to stop the Soviet advance - but at great cost.



The Divisions

We will take a closer look at each division and their new units in a blog post closer to launch, but for now, we’ll give you a sneak peek at some of the battlegroups you’ll be able to form in the new DLC. You’ll find three new divisions on each side.



The Axis

• Panssaridivisioona - As the sole armored division of the Finnish Army, this military formation can count on a wide array of different vehicles and tanks, from T-38 and T-50 to the BT-42 assault gun.
  
• Ryhmä Raappana - Meaning “Group Raappana” is an infantry force made up of regular riflemen, cavalry troops, assault Jääkäri and more. Excellent on the defense and in close-combat situations.
  
• 122. Infanterie-Division - German reinforcements rushed north to stem the Soviet tide. This division also fields Estonian volunteers and the powerful Luftwaffe air group “Detachment Kuhlmey”.
  

The Allies

• 126-y L. Gornostrelkovy Korpus - This Soviet division features elite infantry, including mountain troops, as well as a powerful airforce consisting of lend-lease A-20, P-40 Kittyhawk, and Hurricanes.
  
• Podv. Gruppa Vyborg - One of the ad-hoc military formations of the Leningrad Front, this mobile group is heavily armored, and includes various T-26 tank variants to the mighty IS-2 and even Churchill tanks.
  
• 358-ya Strelkovy Div. - The veterans of Vitebsk, this rebuilt division was redeployed north to spearhead the assault on the Finnish defensive lines. Very experienced, this battlegroup features brand-new ISU-122S tank destroyers.
  

One new unit trait is the “Raider” unit type. A Raider unit can operate behind enemy lines and doesn’t suffer any moral or combat efficiency penalties doing so. In our first game, this was a common trait found with paratroopers, but in Steel Division 2 the Raider trait can be found with Soviet mountain troops.

The Army General Campaign and Historical Battles



The Army General campaign puts you in the shoes of either the Soviet commander ready to break out of the Karelian front or the Finnish general desperate to hold the line.

One new feature will be the so-called Fortified Region unit, a new type of Soviet battalion. The role of this largely static military formation was to hold extended stretches of the frontline. As an infantry battalion in Army General, they are very weak, but once entrenched, are much more difficult to defeat, being able to call upon more bunkers and defenses compared to a normal infantry battalion.

The two Historical Battles, which we will detail in the future, will cover some of the most important engagements that occurred during the Red Army’s push across the isthmus. This includes the armored clash at Portinhoikka, one of the rare tank-on-tank battles on this part of the front. A second scenario deals with the attack and brutal counter-offensive in the Ilomantsi sector, which saw the Finns use their famous Mötti encirclement tactics, as well as the deployment of elite Soviet navy infantry.



What’s Next?

As we mentioned before, we’ll take a much closer look at some of the new features, aces, divisions, scenarios, and units at a later date.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/988171/Steel_Division_2__History_Pass/

If you haven’t, be sure to grab yourself the History Pass for Steel Division 2. With it, you’ll get access to all the three History DLC’s planned for our game, including the new “The Fate of Finland” DLC and the “Death on the Vistula” DLC.

So, keep an eye out on our Steam and Eugen forums and social channels (Facebook and Twitter).

You’ll hear from us soon!

Hello there!

We’ll be releasing a patch for Steel Division 2 today which should significantly decrease the online waiting times with some of the server formats that we use.

Right now, players can wait a long time for a 10v10 server to fill up. We worked on an update that should alleviate some of the waiting times.

What this new patch does is to automatically assign virtual players depending on the total waiting time of a server, thus reducing it.

Not only that, but we have also opened up a number of new 3v3 and 4v4 servers. Previously, this server format could only be custom created by the players themselves. Now, there should be several ready-made in the server list.



PATCHLOG :

SMART ORDERS: Counter-Battery order's reactivity has been toned down.

GENERIC: Forgotten transports (SdKfz. 251/9, GMC .50, Kangaroo, WC 52 .50, M4 HST) from the last patch now have the new standard prices.

ALLIES: Increased the 4,2-inch Mortar's supply cost.
Increased the M1 Carbine x8's damages (they dealt the same damag as x6).
Increased the French & US Sherman OP's 155mm salvos from 2 to 3, as other off-map observers.

AXIS: Increased Axis pionners' explosives' aim time from 3 to 4s, on par with the Allies'.
Increased Ersatztruppen HG’s availability from 12 to 18 (forgotten in previous patch).
Decreased Schuma from 15 to 10
Decreased Landesschutzen Ost from 20 to 15
Decreased Rona Schutzen from 25 to 20
Decreased LVF's price Gren from 25 to 20

Let us know if everything works well (or not) or if you have any questions. We’d love to hear from you! You can always drop us a line on our Steam and Eugen forums, or social channels (Facebook and Twitter). You can also join us on our [https://discord.gg/TEeBArm]Discord channel or Reddit page.

See you on the battlefield, commander!

The “1st Steel Division 2 Championship” will be a 1v1 tournament that starts on the 11th of January at 15 CET(Central European Time) and it will be played until the Semi-Finals. Semi-Finals and Finals shall be played on the 12th of January 2020 (The Bronze Match and the Finals can be delayed if needed)

To Participate you have to join the Official Steel Division Discord
Invite: https://discord.gg/UxF3j88



Format:
The tournament will be a Single Elimination BO1 event until the Semi-Finals. Once the Semi-Finals phase is reached all games will be a BO3(Best of 3 games).

The players defeated in the Semi-Finals will play a Bronze Match to decide who is the 3rd and 4th place.

Prizes are yet to be announced(but there will be prizes.)
The winner of the Tournament will gain a prize for him as well as the discord he comes from. (If someone from the Official Discord wins we will giveaway the extra prize.) See: Sign up link for more informations on what that means

Rules:

To decide a map the allies player bans 3 map using the $banmap (map name) command, if you are unsure what a map is called use the $maps command to have the exact name list of all maps available.
Once the map bans from the allied side is done the axis player bans another 3 maps and then the command $rmap 1v1 is used to decide the map played.
Each players has a total of THREE division bans. Allies ban 3 divisions first and then the axis bans 3.

Each match UNTIL THE SEMI-FINALS consists of 1 game. After the

Semi-Finals each match is a Best of 3 (whoever wins 2 games wins the match)

Mirrors aren't allowed.

To decide the sides players should flip a coin using the $flip command in the #SODROOM-Championship room(You will have access to this room when you sign up.)

Games will be played with:
750 Start Points
Medium income
Medium game speed
Eastern front mode (conquest)

Any exploits and cheats are forbidden, if we find out any kind of advantage was gained due to an exploit or cheat the player accused will be banned from any future tournaments organized in the Discord.

Offending another player is also not accepted and will be met with similar consequences.

Reporting results:
To post a result make sure you are registered by using the command $register
Results will be posted using the #SODBOT-Results channel in the Steel Division Discord(Access will be given to this room when you sign up.), you will need to drop the replay file into this channel and the bot shall do the rest.

If anything is unclear feel free to ask a moderator.

Have fun !

Happy New Year, commander!

The whole Eugen team wishes you all the best for 2020. May you win many battles and be ever-victorious in Steel Division 2!

We wanted to kick off the new year with a bit of a recap of 2019, which was quite momentous for us as we released Steel Division 2.

Let’s take a moment to celebrate what has come to pass, so we can focus fully on all the exciting new things that are just around the corner.

New players and veterans alike: gather around. Let’s see what 2019 meant for Eugen, Steel Division 2, and you, the community.

New Steel Division 2 Features - January to March

Around this time last year, we were knee-deep building up Steel Division 2 to the version you would see at release. This means that the Eugen team was hard at work getting all the new bits in - functional in the beginning, fun at the end. Compared to Steel Division: Normandy 44 we had a slew of new features we were aching to use, most of which we revealed in our dev diaries in the early months of 2019.



Army General
The biggest new feature of Steel Division 2: our dynamic strategic campaigns, the turn-based Army General mode. Making all the individual parts of the Army General to work took its time, from the way the information was displayed, the art style of the map, to the intricate interplay between different types of battalions, and much, much more.

Between January and the launch of Steel Division 2 in June, quite a bit changed within Army General.

In this dev diary, you can read how we envisaged combat to work in Army General. Can you spot the differences?

One thing left behind on the cutting room floor was full multiplayer integration. It wasn’t easy to exclude player-vs-player action, but in the end we made a choice to spend more time to give this functionality all the love and attention it required. And, lo and behold, in the very near future, you should be able to play an Army General campaign with or against your friend.



Defensive Structures
The new defenses (barbed wire, trenches, the bunkers ready-equipped with machine guns or AT pieces) are another new feature in Steel Division 2. We had been toying with the idea for a long time, and with our new game, we made an effort to implement defensive structures in a smart and fun way. We settled on creating a new game mode (Breakthrough) to accommodate the defensive structures, and to not allow them in a Conquest game. Also, we wanted to give our in-game divisions some additional power, especially if they lacked the latest tank models or elite infantry. That’s why Rating C Divisions (184th Rifle Division, Armia Krajowa, Korück 559, and 12. Tartalék) have eight open defensive slots and have access to the best bunker with a 75mm AT gun.

Read more about the Defensive Structures in this dev diary right here.



Deck Builder
A couple of neat things can be found in another new feature we brought to Steel Division 2: the revamped Deck Builder. While recognizable for any Steel Division: Normandy 44 player, the version seen in our new game carried some improvements. One of the biggest was the flexible economy rate you could set for each of your battlegroups. Another was giving the player the option to set the veterancy and allowing them to decide how many copies of a particular unit they wanted to bring.

Read more about the new Deck Builder in this dev diary.



Steel Division 2 Beta - March 27th

At the end of March, players who pre-order Steel Division 2 could play the game for the very first time in an exclusive time-limited closed beta. At this point, we already had to push back the launch of the game a number of times, but we really wanted our fans to sample the game ahead of the full launch. It would not only give us critical feedback but also see how the backend and all of our support infrastructure and machinery would hold up.

Luckily, it was a great success! We ran a number of additional betas, with the last phase running uninterrupted before the full launch of Steel Division 2.



Launch - 20 June

This was a big day for us: the launch of Steel Division 2. By this time, we had been working on the game for many months, and we were finally able to release it into the wild. Steel Division 2 came with a solid foundation (the first Steel Division) but was plenty different, not only thanks to the awesome feedback from you, the community. We also took the chance to introduce some features we always wanted while exploring a setting and timeline (Operation Bagration) we felt was frequently overlooked in the history books.

Steel Division 2 had arrived, and everything, from the initial positive reception to later reviews and healthy player numbers, was much more than we could have asked for!



Death on the Vistula DLC Launch - 17 Oct

Our first History DLC, “The Death on the Vistula”, launched on the 17th of October. As part of our efforts to widen the scope of the military history we try to depict in Steel Division 2, shifting the battlefield further west, but still within the historical context of the game’s Operation Bagration, made a lot of sense. Not only that, it allowed us to play with cool new units such as the Sturmtiger or, for instance, the heroic soldiers of the Polish Home Army.

We are planning to release two more History DLC’s. If you want to get access to all three expansions, don’t hesitate to get the History Pass by following the link below!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/988171/Steel_Division_2__History_Pass/

In case you have forgotten, the reveal of the next History DLC is almost upon us. Keep a close eye out on our Steam and Eugen forums, or social channels (Facebook and Twitter). You can also join us on our [https://discord.gg/TEeBArm]Discord channel or Reddit page.



Smart Orders - 17 Oct

The Smart Orders was one of the first Reinforcement Pack updates we pushed out for Steel Division 2. These are free updates available to all our players! We know that our games can be a challenge to get into, with a steep learning curve and lots of things happening at the same time during a tactical battle. To lessen the micromanagement load, we opted to develop a new feature: Smart Orders. This new information panel and unit order mechanic was released at the same time as our first History DLC, and made commanding your troops and vehicles on the battlefield much easier by automating some of their behaviour!

We will continue down the line to make Steel Division 2 more accessible by the upcoming Rules of Engagement mechanic. Read more about this upcoming feature in this blog post here.



Modding Tools - 15 Nov

The last date we want to look at was when we released the Modding Tools at the tail-end of 2019. The modding tools are something that we have wanted to release to our community for a long time, but it takes effort, manpower, and resources to get it done properly. In the end, we managed, and we have already started seeing the first player-created mods hit the game. We can’t wait for more!

Conclusion

That’s it for today’s post. You’ll hear from us soon.

See you on the battlefield, commander!