Fixed attack ground command. Now it works with more than one unit.
Fixed attack ground command for binoculars. They can now do the function.
Fixed humans showing up in middle of the map in conquest (made active when linked in a vehicle)
Fixed conquest MG linkage on vehicles
Removed the stowing away of the binoculars when a rotate order comes in. Now you can use this order freely without the soldier stopping the usage of the binoculars.
Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront - Herr Flick
Hi everyone, we’re back with an update to keep you posted about current development. In this one, we’ll show you what we’ve been up to in the mission building department. We’ll also mention some other stuff, keep reading!
Development
We’ve been very busy in all areas and there’s good progress. The human skins update is still being worked on, we’ve developed new maps, finished the work on the lend-lease vehicles - there’s just never a dull moment. Currently we’re obviously also working to get those bugs out that were reported, and we will keep doing so.
One of the things that gets us close to finalizing the content for “Ostfront” is the 6th German campaign mission. When we push this to the public version, the SP campaigns have been completed (for now). In this update we will talk you through a battle that took place south - east of Leningrad in february of 1943.
The battle of Krasny Bor
This battle took place when the Soviet operation “Polyarnaya Zvezda” was started. This offensive basically followed another one called “Iskra” which had broken the siege of Leningrad by liberating a corridor along lake Ladoga. The aim was to encircle the bulk of the German 18th army, thereby lifting the Leningrad siege completely. It turned into a hellish battle.
On february 10th, the offensive started rolling. Around 1.000 artillery guns had bombarded the German positions around Krasny Bor. The town itself was bombarded as well. The aim was to attack from the direction of Leningrad, break through to the south- east, where it was to link up with Soviet troops attacking towards the north- west, on the other end of the German salient.
Soldiers of the Spanish Blue Division in 1942
The attack by the 63rd guards rifle division was met by the 5.900 Spanish troops of the 250th Infantry Division, or the Spanish “blue division”, who were holding the east side of the position around Krasny Bor. Unable to retreat into Krasny Bor itself, many Spanish units got surrounded. Since their motto was “No possible relief, until extinction”, they defended their positions, most of them getting killed. Meanwhile, other Spanish units had inflicted heavy damage to the advancing Soviets from their trenches and dugouts, using Molotov cocktails and grenades. They took an astonishing toll on the attacking tanks and blunted the attack.
Krasny Bor itself, and the railway station as well as the Leningrad- Moscow highway became a scene of utter destruction, while the station changed hands several times and wave after wave of attacks going back and forth while leaving many marks on the landscape. Quite a number of shell holes, bomb craters and trenches were still visible in 2020.
Krasny Bor in 2020; note the zig-zag trenches and the many shell holes
In the end, the Soviet offensive was stopped and the battle turned into a stalemate, in which the initial gains were followed by bitter fighting without big terrain gains for anyone.
The offensive was not successful in taking back the Leningrad- Moscow railway and highway. That meant that the German 18th army was still preventing a complete lift of the Leningrad siege, in spite of the massive effort. Losses had been appalling on both sides.
After the battle, Soviet reports concluded that the fortifications around Krasny Bor, combined with bad reconnaissance and “clumsy deployment of tanks” were the main causes of their 20.000+ losses in manpower during this battle. The Germans considered the Spanish fighting force “terribly undisciplined but unmatched in tenacity”.
Spanish casualties and losses were around 3.900, or 70- 75% in the blue division. It was to be sent back to Germany later, and disbanded. Parts of this mission have been built according to the memoirs of survivors.
The mission in Gates of Hell
The battle of Krasny Bor hasn’t been depicted in RTS games before, and we wish to pay tribute to the huge number of soldiers from many nationalities whose lives were lost in this battle. In Gates of Hell, you will be facing the Soviet onslaught from your prepared positions, fighting as the Spanish Blue Division. Since we were going to give them this much attention, we added Spanish voices, names and their own nationality in the game, which was a requested feature. This addition will also affect multiplayer, where the Spanish unit will no longer speak German. We hope to be able to add more foreign units with this level of detail in the future.
We researched the composition of the defending forces and we have depicted it historically. You will command several companies; infantry, artillery and AT detachments are at your disposal. You need to get your engineers to set up mine fields and obstacles quickly. Suddenly, the alarm is raised; Russian tanks approaching the line! What now? Fight! Direct your soldiers to defend the several key areas you don’t want to lose. At every opportunity, loot as much enemy equipment as you can, because there’s not a lot in the way of AT guns at your disposal. This is going to be a really tough one! Whatever happens, you cannot let the enemy overrun your HQ, which is in the field hospital. As soon as you think the enemy attack is losing momentum, you will need to counterattack to take back any positions you might have lost. This promises to be a bloody battle indeed. Good thing you have an actual hospital in the back, that will save many lives.
Objectives and replay In this mission, it will be up to you to decide how to stage your defence, and how many secondary quests you want to complete; the main thing is to survive and to hold the hospital HQ! The mission was designed to have varied attacks; it will not become predictable very soon, because the enemy attacks differently every time you play it. This way we are quite sure it will have good replay value. Like in the Courland mission, we added the option of pre- battle doctrine selection. You will be able to specialise your available reinforcements and play the mission according to your own personal style. Do you think you’d try this mission more than once with different doctrines? Let us know in the comments!
Did you know?
Spain, officially not taking part in the second world war, suffered around 22.700 casualties on the entire eastern front
Many of the Spanish soldiers had been forced to take service in the blue division, the real volunteers making up only around 80%. Many of these men were told to enlist, to “clear the names of their families” if they had fought for the Republicans during the Spanish civil war.
The Spanish air force deployed a fighter unit on the Eastern Front, 15.(Span)/JG51, which fought up to the Battle of Moscow.
There also were quite a number of Spanish volunteers fighting on the side of the Soviets during the war.
Any question you might have is likely to get the quickest answer on our Discord server.
That’s it for now, stay tuned for the next update & see you on the battlefield!
Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront - Herr Flick
While we’re working towards yet another massive update to CtA - GoH, we’d like to offer you a short glimpse of things to come. As announced earlier, we are currently working on “Content update II”. In this blog, we want to present a small part of that update - with more to follow in the next one - in a way that will appear familiar to those that have been following us for years. However, not everything will be “business as usual”, because we’re about to introduce some new elements; keep reading!
New single player & co-op mission
We have finished a mission that will be added to our “Za Rodinu” singleplayer campaign. It will be added at the end of the current storyline; it takes place in october 1944. A co-op version of the same scenario will be included as well.
Historical background September/ october 1944. The Red army has resumed its advance after a pause. They had halted in august, when operation Bagration ended; already it seemed obvious that the next step would be an attempt to cut off German army group north from the rest of the front. The Germans were not very optimistic about their chances, having suffered appalling losses in previous months. To think they would be able to hold on to Courland was not very realistic at all, but evacuation of civilians was not even ordered. Instead, they received orders to dig deep and defend any attempt by the red army to reach the Baltic sea. As far as they were able to, they built a layered defence to consolidate their positions, as illustrated below.
The soviet offensive; note the 4 defensive lines east of Memel/ Klaipeda
After the pause in august- september, the 43rd army under hero of the Soviet Union general Beloborodov advanced to the southwest with the aim to reach the coast south of Klaipeda, or Memel as it was then known. The 43rd was part of the first Belorussian front, whose objective was indeed to isolate the German forces north of the East Prussian border. They achieved their goals in a matter of days, even in the face of fierce resistance from the “Grossdeutschland” and other divisions; the Soviet assault had become seemingly unstoppable.
The mission in Gates of Hell Our mission takes place on the 8th of october. The first two defensive lines in front of Memel have been successfully breached and the 43rd army pushes forward to the next. You’re part of the southern attack pincer and you’re advancing to Baltic sea coast south of Memel. You have been tasked to breach the third defence at the first possible opportunity.
You may have received reports that your opponents are exhausted, short of supplies and outnumbered, but it would be really bad to assume this will be a walkover. One of your enemies is known to be a tough cookie, who has survived Stalingrad; don’t expect him to retreat or surrender!
This German unit was there. The officer in the photo is Oberst Willy Langkeit, who got heavily wounded near Memel on october 15th
Your orders are to lead the assault on defensive positions. Speed is of the essence, the enemy might be moving in some reserves and you have to reach the coast the day after tomorrow. You’ll have to balance aggression and caution, and make sure you do not fail your general - or risk an investigation and interrogation by the NKVD! Fortunately, it’s entirely up to you to hand- pick the units you consider to be best suited for this operation.
New elements This mission, in a way, will pay tribute to where we come from and where we are going. Where we come from - in a nutshell - is a desire to take as much input from the community as possible while developing something that honors the veterans of world war 2. This mission was crafted with a lot of repeated feedback from the community in mind. Maybe this was something you suggested? In any case, this is how we used the input.
It’s a huge battle that can be played in any direction and completed in any order, because “all you need to do” is to complete all of the objectives. Besides being endlessly replayable because of its layout, the mission takes advantage of the recent doctrine selection feature. This new gameplay element allows you to choose a doctrine before starting the battle. It will change the entire approach and unit availability and we expect that it will make for a popular cooperative mission as well. We also plan to add further improvements to the cooperative mode in the long run. Because the mission takes place in late-war, you will experience the tremendous firepower and destructive ability of the weaponry deployed in the last stages of the eastern front conflict.
Other additions
The update will add the odd easter egg too, but most importantly, you will also find nostalgic throwbacks. What kind of throwbacks? Well, that is for you to find out when we release “Content update II”. We’re already edging quite close and we will announce it quite soon.
Did you know?
Content update II will be the second free addition to CtA - GoH
There are easter eggs in other GoH missions and maps as well
We are working on the lend- lease doctrine for USSR
We accept suggestions, ideas and bug reports mostly on Discord
That’s it for this update, we’ll be preparing the next one and publish it as soon as we can. Thanks for stopping by; see you on the battlefield!
Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront - Herr Flick
Hi everyone! We have some good news to share, and it’s not just a little bit; in fact, it’s a lot. This update will tell you all about it; keep reading to find out what we’ve added to Call to Arms - Gates of Hell!
The Update
Basically, this is the news you’ve anticipated: we’re releasing “Content update I” which we announced in July. The update contains a large number of improvements and additions in various areas. So let’s get specific and dive in straight away, are you ready?
Additions
Added a flag-capture indicator which tells you how much you are capping by, and allows you to invest more or less troops to the flag depending on how strong the capturing forces are.
Added all-new squads and infantry types to Multiplayer and Conquest, based on historical squad layouts.
Added recon soldiers: Lower survivability but increased view angle and range.
Added IS-2 Model 1943.
Added T-34 Model 1942.
Added Panzer 756(r).
Added ISU-152.
Added new Tiger I Hunter with animated camo nets.
Added SG-43 stand.
Added SG-43 weapon.
Added Panzerfaust 100 weapon.
Added Faustpatrone 30 weapon.
Added a new interaction code function for modders: {if season "..", It allows to change parameters based on the map season directly.
Added new multiplayer map 1v1 Nevel.
Added new multiplayer map 1v1 Valley.
Added new multiplayer map 4v4 Hills.
Added new multiplayer map 4v4 Shiryayevo.
Added multiplayer (toggleable) mechanic: Loss when reaching zero score. This encourages less waste of units.
Added many vehicle_views.
Added overhead icon for stealth soldiers.
Added bulletproof wheels to german armored cars sdkfz: 221, 231, 234.
Added repair skill to engineers.
Added "no_scavenge" tag to vehicle interaction code as a check for conquest not to keep vehicles in the middle of death simulations that happen over time (burning, drowning, exploding, etc)
Added more Soviet voice acting lines to single player
Added new vehicles and late war vehicles to conquest roster
Updates
Updated all existing squads.
Updated income resources curve for multiplayer. The previous model was an increasing curve until 45 minutes. Now there is a peak at 25 minutes and a shallower climb to it, so there is more income stream at the early stages of the battle to avoid the game opening dictating the result of the entire game.
Updated Russian localization to a much better standard.
Updated fog of war appearance.
Updated 2v2 Blizzard
Updated 2v2 Fall
Updated 2v2 Tikhvin
Updated 2v2 Industry (conversion from 1v1)
Updated 3v3 Barrikadiy (conversion from 2v2)
Updated 3v3 Steppe
Updated many minimaps
Updated armored cars to have bullet resistant tires that had them historically (BA-6, Sdkfz 234, etc)
Updated rocket artillery reload times (rebalancing rocket arty)
Fixes
Fixed multiple crashes
Fixed numerous conquest bugs.
Fixed First person position on many new vehicles
Fixed issue when online players would be out of sync with the game clock
Fixed plane engine sounds not going away after airstrike in Conquest
Fixed units not re-entering vehicles if repair fails.
Fixed spawning of sandbags
Fixed consumption of sandbags
Fixed sniper losing his zeroing abilities when he runs out of ammo
Fixed puma armour layout
Fixed vehicles being damaged when running over cannons (disabled cannon blast damage when being crushed)
Fixed the abandon unit / self destruct to be canceled if vehicle is recrewed before exploding.
Fixed flame particle volumes to face travel direction all the time
Fixed grenade pivot points so their blast damage waves originate in the middle of grenade instead of offset (in rare cases, blast could happen inside a tank instead of outside)
Fixed fire damage from molotov grenades, Ampulomet cannon, and 12cm Mortar - incendiary ammo. All were way too high.
Fixed Icon and description for conquest player airstrikes.
Fixed DSHK_stan and DSHK_aa to work/shoot after the body has been repaired
Fixed vehicles from playing wrong 3rd person MG shooting sounds
Fixed water fx not playing sometimes
Fixed smoke dischargers on Tiger 1H so they empty when firing, and fill when reloaded.
Fixed wheeled vehicles from being able to move with the engine toggled off, after repairing a broken engine.
Other changes
Increased (Equalised) accuracy of AI with direct control, which previously had a +25% accuracy boost. Consequently, the AI became better at shooting and gained capabilities. Now, only third person retains an accuracy boost (+50%) in exchange for tunnel-visioning.
Increased total MP in a mid war game from 2600 to 3500.
Increased total MP in a late war game from 3400 to 5000.
Increased kill point influence on the game. It will penalise spamming of troops.
Increased MP flag income rate when you win by one/two flags.
Increased MP starting game score to 250, to compensate for the greater influence of negative kill points.
Decreased income rate from payback. It will reward a more conservative playstyle
Decreased MP flag income rate when you win by all flags
Decreased accuracy of bazooka/ panzerfaust class weapons when shooting/ aiming at targets beyond intended max range
Decreased tanks being stunned by lower amounts of blast energy
As you can see, we’ve not only added things; we’ve fixed a fair number of issues as well, which we’ll continue to do on a daily basis - and we will keep working to add quality of life elements for players and modders as well.
We will be following up this update soon with new models for soldiers, new environment assets for a much higher graphics fidelity, and additional multiplayer map rework and balance updates.
Promo
Coupled with the release of our content update, we are going to be running our first promotion for Call to Arms - Gates of Hell. It will happen this weekend into next week. We hope to follow our successful release with a growing audience and we are already very happy with our growing community and our fantastic modders!
Did you know?
The screenshots in this update were made by RUSSTG44, who recently won the screenshot competition on our Discord server.
In the Steam workshop we’re already approaching 200 mods for CtA: GoH
Our “best mod” competition will start this fall
That’s it for the moment, we hope you’ll enjoy the update! Meanwhile we’ve already got our heads down to produce the next content update. It will contain more single player content as well as new units, including the much- anticipated lend-lease USSR doctrine.
We’ll tell you when that will happen as soon as we can; until then, stay tuned!
Added enemy airstrike chances in conquest when player is attacker. Chance of airstrike not happening on the initial ~15min mark increased from 25 to 30% and then it would roll over for another 15-20 min before chance can occur again(if battle is still going on)
Added ISU-152 gunner animation (spolier alert...)
Added t3457_41 engine repair animation
Added ground constrain rule for spawn script commands (for modders: allows spawning of objects to read the constraint with constrain_after_dir interaction command).
Updated rocketartillery range to be relative to tank and artillery ranges
Updated some textures
Updated night-light on many fx
Updated Third person infographics texts
Updated 250kg bomb fx
Updated origin of blastwave damage to be higher up the shell for map artillery (should help reduce uneven terrain absorbing the blast damage)
Updated reload times for rocket artillery based on number of tubes and general rocket size
Fixed progression on conquest.
Fixed "resupply all" button in conquest.
Fixed resupply logic in conquest, so that you only have to press it once.
Fixed wins counting as loss in server feed for conquest.
Fixed sandbag orientation when AT cannons build them
Fixed sdkfz221 from having towing button in UI when it shouldn't
Fixed the IS2_44 superstructure armor cheeks to be 130mm thick
Fixed localization for 75mm_leig18 weapon
Fixed lightsIntensity for several weathers
Fixed sound defines on some HE detonation sound fx
Fixed water depth on 2v2_ziborovo and 2v2_balzerweg so infantry and vehicle can walk through and not have to swim