Darkest Hour: Europe ‘44-’45 update 8.0.9 is here!
The highlights this update are some design changes to vehicles such as the Opel Blitz, GMC, Jeep, Kubelwagen, and APCs such as M3A1 and Sd.Kfz 251 Halftracks. In addition, level optimization and polishing.

Vehicles

All vehicles:

• Adjusted “spike timer” to 15 seconds (if engine is set on fire, spike timer determines how long until it explodes)
• Fixed an issue where a vehicle could be set on fire, but burn forever if friendlies were in the area

Soft Vehicles and APCs (cars, trucks, halftracks):

• Adjusted these vehicles to have a standard body health of 2000, making them harder to explode from small arms (Armoured APCs are still impervious to small arms)
• Adjusted engine health to be very low, making them the critical weak spot to aim for
• Added wheel hitpoints and a system which will make vehicles slower for having wheel damage (making wheels the secondary weak spot to aim for)
• Adjusted engine hitpoint sizes to be larger, to make them easier to hit
• Set these vehicles to only be spawnable by players that are in a squad
• Increased required speed to run over players from 30 kph to 35 kph
• Reduced explosion damage and radius
• Greyhound & Stuart have slightly reduced penetration ability at a distance
• Increased Panther’s side armor as it was weaker than intended
• Lowered view position of the Sherman hull machine gun to make it easier to tell where it is aiming

Maps

Minor changes for performance (decreased view distances):

• Barashka (also adjusted balance)
• Putot en Bessin
• Makhnovo
• Baranovka Armoured (also adjusted balance)

Stoumont Advance:

• Removed Kubelwagens and Jeeps
• Axis are now able to field 2 tanks instead of 1

Bridgehead Advance:

• Removed an undesired minefield in the northwest part of the level Increased reinforcements Removed several no arty volumes (relics from the Push version)

Hattert Advance:

• Decreased Allied crewman roles to 3 Replaced the unfinished M22 Locust with a M5 Stuart

Black Day July:

• Some balance changes to hopefully make the map worthy of keeping around Construction Reduce placement radius of barbed wire obstacle, so they can be closer together and closer to other objects

Infantry

• MG42 and MG34 deployed recoil has been reduced

Miscellaneous

• Changes to protocol for connecting to servers that are passworded:
• Players will now be required to enter the password each time (even on level change)
• Players will no longer get a black screen when connecting to a passworded server
• Players should no longer be required to change their name to join a passworded server
• New admin menu for the AdminMutator:
• New setting to change the server’s password in real time (WebAdmin requires a level change, this setting will be instantaneous)
• New toggleable setting to lock weapons so players cannot fire If you have use for any commands not yet implemented, please let us know!

Optimization

This update we continue to decrease view distances of Advance levels for performance sake. In addition, this update has several more maps using the dynamic view distance setting we added last update. So far we’ve had no complaints about it and no one really even noticing it, so we figured it was time to implement it on more levels. Again, the setting is not enabled by default and can be enabled in the display settings. It works by automatically adjusting your view distance for you based on your desired FPS.

Survey

We have created a new survey, surveys have been very successful for us to understand what the community wants and what path Darkest Hour needs to take. If you haven't already please complete the survey and help us keep Darkest Hour on the right path! See you on the battlefield, Darklight Games