Steel Division 2 News

Hello!

It is good to see you again. In today’s post, we are going to be talking about the near-future (re)introduction of a “golden oldie” game mode into Steel Division 2: Destruction Mode.

In one of the upcoming Reinforcement Packs, which will be made available to all Steel Division 2 owners for free, you’ll be able to find the popular Destruction Mode.

Read on to find out more.

The great return

We have been working on bringing back the Destruction mode from its iterations found in our older Wargame series and - of course - Steel Division: Normandy. A frequently requested mode, Destruction works in a slightly different way compared to the default Skirmish or Breakthrough mode. Destroying enemy units will reward you with points, and the capture points on the map influence your income rate.

Destruction mode was born in our R.U.S.E game, back in the day, and over time has slowly evolved into the latest iteration, which we are very excited about introducing in Steel Division 2.



How does it work?

Blowing up things and getting points for it has never been as much fun as in the Destruction mode. The premise is very simple: each unit you destroy rewards you with points, equal to their deployment cost. The value will pop up the moment a player obliterates an enemy unit. This means that it is instantly obvious that destroying a more powerful (and thus costly) unit will grant you an advantage over your opponent. Just imagine killing one of those expensive King Tigers! Many salty tears are going to be shed.

At the start of a Destruction game, you’ll determine the threshold of the number of losses for each player. Reaching this point total will result in a victory. For instance, if you play a 2v2 game and set the points at 2000, you’ll need 2*2000 to win the match.

Now, destroying units and getting points is just one half of the experience in a Destruction match. The capture points on a map will have a direct influence on your economy. In the Steel Division 2’s Destruction mode, capturing these points will increase your Requisition Points income, allowing you to deploy more units. Each capture point will give you a set amount of points. This forces each side to keep on pushing and try to dominate the battlefield.

If all the flags are captured by one side, the sudden death rule applies to the losing team that no longer holds any territory. They need to move quickly and recapture terrain or risk losing the whole match.

We are currently also looking at implementing Destruction mode for Breakthrough-type games where the attacking team will have a high starting amount of Requisition Points but controls no capture points. Of course, defensive structures will also be present. We’ll keep you updated!



Conclusion

We originally planned to launch the new Destruction mode, as well as the other new features - the Auto Deployment and Rules of Engagement mechanics - at the same time as our new History DLC The Fate of Finland. However, after more playtesting, we felt that the Destruction mode needed a bit of extra time and love in the Eugen kitchen.

Right now, we are hard at work at getting it in the best shape possible, but this won’t be in time for the upcoming launch of our new DLC. In case you’ve forgotten: The Fate of Finland DLC will release on the 3rd of March! The two other Reinforcement Packs will become available for free on the same day.

Best get ready for some Steel Division 2 action!

In the meantime, keep an eye out on Steam and Eugen forums, or social channels (Facebook and Twitter). You can also join us on our Discord channel or Reddit page.

See you on the battlefield, commander!

Good day to you!

We are very happy to announce that our next History DLC for Steel Division 2, The Fate of Finland, will officially release on Tuesday, March 3rd. We are still considering the exact timing of the launch, but rest assured, we’ll let you know first thing when we get closer to the actual release date.

What can you expect?

Steel Division 2 - The Fate of Finland brings a ton of new content, available in solo, coop and multiplayer, including 6 new Divisions, 200+ new units, 2 new Aces, 2 new Historical Battles, and a gigantic new Army General turn-based strategic campaign centered on the Soviet offensive on the Karelian Isthmus in the summer of 1944.

This 3rd of March, The Fate of Finland will launch with:

6 New Divisions

• Panssaridivisioona
  
• Ryhmä Raappana
  
• 122. Infanterie-Division
  
• 126-y L. Gornostrelkovy Korpus
  
• Podv. Gruppa Vyborg
  
• 358-ya Strelkovy Div.
  

Read all about the new divisions in this blog post here.



New Units and Aces

• Eino “Illu” Juutilainen and his Me-109 G-2/R1
  
• Alexander Bilyukin and his P-39N Airacobra
  
• BT-42
  
• T-26E
  
• VL Myrsky
  
• T-28
  
• BT-7
  
• P-40N Kittyhawk
  

Read all about the new units and 2 new Aces in this blog post here.



Massive Army General Campaign and 2 Historical Battles

• Massive new Army General Campaign focused on the Karelian Isthmus
  
• Fate of a Nation - a 3v3 scenario
  
• The Last Battle - a 2v2 scenario
  

More details about the Army General campaign and the Historical Battles here.



History Pass

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.

What’s Next?

We’ve been hard at work on getting The Fate of Finland DLC in a shape that will be truly appreciated by you, our biggest fans. As always, we are more than happy to hear what you think. We can’t wait for you to get your hands on our next History DLC.

So, this coming 3rd of March, join us in celebrating the launch of The Fate of Finland expansion and kick some ass in single player or online!

Until then, check the Steam and Eugen forums, or social channels (Facebook and Twitter). You can also join us on our Discord channel or Reddit page.

See you soon!

Hello commander!

We are back again, this time with a smaller, but hopefully warmly welcomed new Steel Division 2 feature, specifically created for the Army General strategic campaign mode. Let’s welcome the new Auto Deployment tool to the stage. What does it do? It will speed up your deployment phase by automatically placing your units (and put down those critical but time-consuming defenses) in your deployment area at the beginning of a tactical battle.

How does it work? Read on!

The New Auto Deployment Tool



We noticed that when entering a battle in one of our Army General campaigns, the deployment of your troops and units could get repetitive. This repetition would get boring pretty quick, and as game designers that’s an experience we don’t like! That’s why, behind the scenes, the team has been working on a new Auto Deployment tool. This new feature should speed up the clock and ease the strain of any repeated mouse-clickety finger action experienced by a player during the deployment phase.

We had two objectives in mind with the new tool: on the one hand, we wanted to decrease the amount of time you spend in the deployment phase, on the other hand, we looked for a way to limit or remove the repetition of placing your units at the start of a game.

As with all our new features, we are set at opening up Steel Division 2, making the game more accessible for newcomers while still giving veterans the option to ignore a new feature if they wish to do so.

How does it work?



The principle of the Auto Deployment feature is simple: the AI takes over placing your units, vehicles and defenses, putting them down in the best and most tactically-sound location. Under the hood, the new tool uses exactly the same algorithms an AI opponent does when placing its units.

Now players can hit a button, and voilà, deployment complete.

If you are not happy with the initial automatic placement of your troops or structures, you can right-click on a unit. This will allow you to manually move it, which you can reposition or replace with another unit if you so wish.

An alternative way is to place your most important units yourself, say your Tiger tanks or your bunkers, and then click auto-deploy to allow the AI to finish the deployment of the rest of your battlegroup for you.

Not only that, but we have also redesigned the interface shown at the beginning of a battle. Now it should be much easier to see which players and divisions are being present at the start of an Army General game.

That’s it for this week

As always, keep an eye out on Steam and Eugen forums, or social channels (Facebook and Twitter). You can also join us on our Discord channel or Reddit page.

See you on the battlefield, commander!

Hello commanders!

We are always happy to see new player initiatives come out of the Steel Division 2 community, especially when they concern tournaments or similar activities.

As you know, we recently posted about a 1v1 Steel Division 2 Championship, and this time we are wholeheartedly supporting the latest endeavor: the beginning of the Second Season of the Steel Division 2 League this coming Saturday, the 15th of February.

A disclaimer

Please note that the following tournament is not organized by Eugen. We support it by sharing the message and the tournament details, and putting Eugen’s stamp of approval for guaranteed fun - but that’s it! We try to do our best by supporting community activities we deem worthwhile, but we are only a small team and we don’t have the manpower or the time to actively organize competitions or other contests.

What’s it all about?

With 48 participants, the Second Season of the Steel Division 2 League is one of the biggest tournaments yet. The organizers would like to thank the community for crowdfunding the prize pool of $150.

You can find more information about the Steel Division 2 League here.
The tournament will be covered by multiple Twitch and Youtube Channels, including Rangroo and KhanUlric on YT, AngrybirdLive and SD_League on Twitch.
If you are a streamer or caster and would like to cover the league, please contact the SD League Team via the [https://discord.gg/P7224QC]SD League discord.

Conclusion

Keep an eye out on Steam and Eugen forums, or social channels (Facebook and Twitter). You can also join us on our Discord channel or Reddit page.

See you on the battlefield, commander!

We are back again!

The Fate of Finland DLC will bring a host of new content to Steel Division 2, including 200+ new units and 2 brand-new Aces. In today’s blog post, we are going to be taking a good look at these heroic Aces and their vehicles, as well as highlighting several of the new units featured in our new expansion.

Keep on reading to find out more!

The Aces
First off, two new Aces will ship with The Fate of Finland DLC. As you know, Aces are unique units that play exactly the same as their base version, adding no statistical or gameplay benefit whatsoever. You can find them in your Armory or battlegroup by looking for the golden-trim around the unit portrait. An Ace’s vehicle features a special personalized paint job to set it apart.

Eino “Illu” Juutilainen
The new Axis Ace is no other than the Finnish fighter pilot Eino “Illu” Juutilainen who during the war became the top flying ace of the Finnish Air Force. After a long and illustrious career, with 94 confirmed kills, “Illu” shot down his last plane over the Karelian Isthmus in September 1944. In Steel Division 2, he will be flying the Me-109 G-2/R1, the same type in which the Finnish pilot scored 58 of his real-life air victories. Let’s see which one of you can match that record in-game!





Alexander Bilyukin
On the Allied side, we have another Ace fighter pilot: Alexander Bilyukin, officially decorated with the highest distinction possible, the Hero of the Soviet Union medal. Based in Leningrad for most of the war, the experienced Russian managed to shoot down 23 enemy planes during his career. Bilyukin too survived to see the end of the war. In Steel Division 2, he flies the lend-lease P-39N Airacobra.





Over 200+ new units
Finland proved to be a unique battleground in World War 2: sparsely populated, densely forested and far to the north on the flank of the Eastern Front. Being a minor theatre meant that quite a few of the vehicle types found here were unusual, outdated, or did not see much action elsewhere due to their low production numbers. Not only that, many captured tanks found a new lease on life thanks to their new owners. The Fate of Finland brings over 200 new units to Steel Division 2, with some pre-existing vehicles becoming available to a different nation for the first time.

BT-42
Throughout the Continuation War, the Finnish Army lacked sufficient tanks to make a strong armored fist. Having only minor production facilities, the Finns needed to scratch-build their way through the conflict. One of the results was the BT-42 assault gun, available in Steel Division 2 courtesy of the Panssaridivisioona battlegroup. Only a handful were built by combining captured Soviet material, namely BT-7 fast tanks, with a consignment of outdated British QF 4.5 Mk. II Howitzers. The BT-42 was not particularly successful as a tank, especially having trouble penetrating the armor of enemy tanks such as the T-34 but very effective when used as an infantry support vehicle. However, with only limited resources available to the Finnish Army, they were nonetheless pressed into action during the heavy fighting around Vyborg in the summer of 1944.



T-26E
An interesting design, the T-26E is actually the Vickers 6 ton, a British light tank design passed on by the United Kingdom when first offered to them. Instead, it was not only adopted by the Soviet Union (which led to one of the most successful tank designs of the 1930s, the T-26) but a small number were also bought by Finland. Those examples that survived the Winter War of 1939 were retrofitted with captured Soviet 45mm guns, creating in effect the Finnish T-26E. This model was almost identical to its Red Army’s counterpart, save for several minor differences (shorter engine deck, turret mounted right-hand side, etc.).



VL Myrsky
The VL Myrsky series of fighter planes was the only Finnish true homegrown design. Events on the ground outpaced development, though, and only by 1941 did a prototype take to the air. The first tests were far from satisfactory, with crashes killing two test pilots, and revealing structural issues which delayed the introduction of the Myrsky. Only around the time of the Soviet offensive into Karelia did the first production examples make their way to the Finnish Air Force, where they performed well in their assigned reconnaissance regiment. In Steel Division 2, the VL Myrsky will be available as a dedicated fighter plane.



T-28
The multi-turreted T-28 was one of the first true medium tanks when built in the early part of the 1930s. It featured multiple turrets - smaller machine gun turrets flanked by the main turret carrying a 76.2 mm gun - and had a reasonable amount of mobility and armor when introduced. However, by the start of World War 2, the T-28 was no longer effective with large numbers lost in the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa. By 1944, only a scattering of T-28 tanks had survived, in some cases captured by Finnish forces and being put against their original owners.



BT-7
The BT-7 was the last of a short but influential line of Red Army fast tanks, mass produced at the start of World War 2. Favoring speed and maneuverability over armor protection, the BT-7 could still pack a punch thanks to its 45mm tank gun and was used to great effect in the first years of the war. This fast tank is also the direct ancestor to the iconic T-34. By the time the Leningrad Front went on the offensive against Finland, plenty of BT-7 tanks were still around to be used in active combat. In Steel Division 2, the Axis already had access to captured BT-7s, but for the first time the light tank will become available to the Red Army with 126-y L. Gornostrelkovy Korpus battlegroup.



P-40N Kittyhawk
The lend-lease P40 Kittyhawk has the distinction of being the third most-produced American single-seat fighter during the war (behind the P-51 and P-47). Lacking certain combat characteristics, the Curtiss P40N Kittyhawk (also known as the Warhawk) was rarely used on the Western Front but saw extensive action with Allied air forces in the North African, Pacific and China theatres. Not only that, the Kittyhawk was the first aircraft to be lend-leased to the USSR. With over 13,000 produced in total, including variants, the P40N was the final production model, and well liked by the Soviet pilots who flew them.



What to look out for next?

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 Discord channel or Reddit page.

See you on the battlefield, commander!