Unity of Command II: V-E Day Update

The V-E Day update is here, and it’s loaded! There are 13 new scenarios (all what-ifs), a shorter and punchier Second Front campaign, numerous rule and balancing tweaks, and a bunch of technical improvements, including full UI scaling among other things.

I also, ekhm… only now realize that Update 11 somehow slipped in without a post on our blog, with just a quick note here on Steam🤦‍♂️ Let’s just attribute that to coronavirus-induced panic and move on.

In general, the whole work-from-home thing seems to be working for our team. We are able to stay productive and keep ourselves safe, which is basically all you can ask for at this point. I wish the same, or at least close enough, to all readers of this blog and fans of our games.

[h2]Unthinkable[/h2]
To quote Daniel Mellbin, who designed all the scenarios in the Victory in the West campaign, “things can now get a bit crazy if you succeed with Operation Market Garden and choose to exploit the bridgehead. Things get even crazier if you don’t feel like giving Stalin a free hand in Poland later on.”

Not that it’s super easy to get there, but if you play both Mediterranean and Northern European theaters to their a-historical conclusions, you will be faced with Operation Unthinkable. See, we knew you had secret longings for IS3s, SU-100s, and other Soviet bad boys from the original UoC, so we decided to bring them into play slightly ahead of time 😀

Because things can now get pretty involved in the campaign, we are providing the Scenario Chart below. Click on the image for the HD version, or get it in PDF or full-size PNG. In addition to scenarios and branching, the chart also enables you to track HQs across scenarios. This should allow for better planning of prestige investment in HQ specializations and upgrades.

For those that are slightly tired of slogging it through Italy at the start of each campaign run, we are now providing the Second Front campaign. This one lets you jump straight into the action at Overlord. The Mediterranean theater is removed, and you cannot reach Unthinkable, but other than that it’s the same campaign. You cannot unlock achievements and milestones related to Victory in the West via this shortened campaign, though.

[h2]Rules and Balancing[/h2]
Special forces have received special attention in this update. The specialists with the black icon will, from now on:

Bypass enemy entrenchment in attack (like engineers) but do not remove it (unlike engineers).
Help their parent unit lower its combat losses: +1 attacker loss shift per active special forces specialist.

Additionally, special forces with the amphibious AMPH flag are able to:

Land un-suppressed in naval landings and major river crossings.
Reduce the river shift from -2 to 0 when attacking across minor rivers.
Allow their parent unit to perform a feint attack (HQ action) across a minor river.

We made smaller changes to other specialists too. Amphibious tanks, like the DD Sherman, now provide armor shift when attacking across minor rivers. M10 tank destroyers got nerfed on attack and defense, while still keeping the formidable +3* armor shift. Stacking multiple towed arty specialists is discouraged further: second and third such specialists are pushed up in the loss queue, by 2 and 4 places respectively.

To help the players keep track of specialists and their abilities, we are providing a Specialist Reference Sheet. You can see a small excerpt below. Get it here in PDF.

We did some tweaking on the prices too. The Air Recon card now costs 10 prestige. At the same time, recon assets in scenarios have been slashed to just one or two across the board. This should make the asset and its card more meaningful. The AFHQ/SHAEF card was also reduced in price, as we feel it’s a good card that should be used more often. HQ branch upgrades are now cheaper in general. Hopefully this will encourage players to experiment with some of the less-used HQ actions.

[h2]UI Scaling[/h2]
The game is now able to do UI scaling on its own. To turn this, go to Options and adjust these settings:

Ignore System UI Scaling: this will make the game ignore the “Make everything bigger” Windows setting. The game will render in native display resolution. Note that the “Make fonts bigger” Windows setting is always ignored for game purposes.
UI Scale: the game will scale (enlarge) UI elements by selected factor, up to 200%. This is done independently of Windows, so you probably want to select the “Ignore System Scaling” option above for anyhing else than 100%.

Q: The game appears to be low-resolution and/or text is blurry
It is possible that you have enabled the “Make everything bigger” setting in Windows. Try enabling Ignore System UI Scaling in Options and then restarting the game.

Q: I have a high-resolution display and text is too small to read
Go to Options, and set UI Scale to desired magnification (up to 200%). Restarting the game is not needed.

Q: I’m running with Very High settings on a high-res display and the framerate seems low and/or fan is too loud
Go to Options/Video and set Smoothing to Off. This should be of most help with the framerate, and at the same time not too noticeable visually. Another thing to try is to go to Options/General and disable VSync. This eases the burden on the CPU (not GPU) and should help with fan noise in most cases.

[h2]Taking the Sting out of Easy[/h2]
If you’re finding the game too difficult even on Easy, I recommend that you subscribe to the Recruit Difficulty mod on the Steam Workshop.

I’ve made this one really over-the-top easy. If you’re finding it useful please comment here or on the mod page, as we might want to use the player feedback to add another difficulty level (Cadet level, say).

In a final piece of news, we are releasing the Unity of Command II Soundtrack as a standalone product on Steam. This version offers an extra track (compared to the in-game version), some different mixes and high-quality FLAC files.

As usual, feel free to AMA in the comments.

Cheers!
Tom