Steel Beasts Installers Removed From eSim Games Website

[Rinix]

The Maps Installer has been reinstated: https://www.esimgames.com/downloads/

[Rinix]

More news:

I'll present a comprehensive list once that we're on the final stretch. Note that there will also be improvements (and a lot of bugfixes, too).

[Rinix]

More information:

Looks like when i mentioned $$$$ the conversation stopped..Will the upgrade be free or will we pay??

I'm having trouble giving a factually correct answer that is meaningful and specific, when the question is relatively unspecific. Also, not all details have been settled yet. But we have every intent to make this easy for you all.

Quantitatively,
$$$$$ - No.
$$$$ - No.
$$$ - No.
$$ - No for most.
$ - still No for most.
- - Yes for many.

Hoping for $$ with some added units. Playable or AI

That would be the upgrade after the coming one. But then you'd have to wait much longer.

[Rinix]

Newest update:

That's actually not too far off. Our current plan is a reopening in mid May. There's one last high profile bug to be stomped, and one major other thing to do.
Right in the middle of all this is a defense expo in Madrid, so please bear with us if this prediction turns out to be a tad optimistic. But we think it can be done.

[Rinix]

Ssnake has stated that details about changes to Steel Beasts will be provided in a few days.

[Rinix]

We are getting closer to more information:

There's a hidden thread in this forum already that I'll make visible as soon as we have thumbs-up from Quality Assurance. Also, expect a few new Youtube clips.

[Rinix]

We have an approximate date and time:

Ugh, didn't think about that. I expect all this to materialize coming Tuesday evening or so. Until then, no need for F5 frenzies.

[Rinix]

And here is the news:

All right, folks, we'll release a week later than originally planned, the beta team needs a bit more time. So, not this Friday, but next - May 23rd.



But you want to know how Steel Beasts will change, and it's time to fill you in:


Heretofore, Steel Beasts shall be recognized as Steel Beasts.

That is, all professional versions remain restricted to, well, professional use. The key differences between Steel Beasts Pro PE as you know it, and the new Steel Beasts, are listed below.

Let's start with version migration and licensing, though:
All new Steel Beasts 4.3 licenses will come with three free secondary licenses.
Everybody with a Steel Beasts Pro PE 4.3 license can get a free license of Steel Beasts 4.3.
Steel Beasts Pro PE 4.1 licenses upgrade to Steel Beasts 4.3 (plus three secondaries) for $30.-
Steel Beasts Pro PE 4.0 and older licenses upgrade to Steel Beasts 4.3 (plus three secondaries) for $60.-
Steel Beasts Pro PE 3.0 and older licenses upgrade to Steel Beasts 4.3 (plus three secondaries) for $75.-
Time-based licenses for SB Pro PE can be used up with Steel Beasts 4.3, but new time-based licenses will not work with legacy SBB Pro PE installations.
You keep your map packages installed.

We recommend uninstalling SB Pro PE installations when installing the new Steel Beasts 4.3 to avoid version conflicts with scenario files. Both are the same version number, and Steel Beasts 4.3 can read scenario files and everything made by and for the Personal Edition, but it won't work in the other direction.

Version differences:
No more Orbat exports to XML files for you, or Reduced Wait Times. Shocker, I know. Neither was ever meant to be in the Personal Edition anyway, and would have been removed no matter what.
The number of network players had to be reduced to four. But we continue our program of free Steel Beasts 4.3 server licenses for community organizers!
AARs can no longer be saved, or loaded. This is the big one. There will still be the AAR to review after the mission's completion, of course. Also, we made those HTML Report files more useful (especially if you open them in a spreadsheed). There'll be an option in the File Menu to auto-save the scenario at mission end for those of you who like to organize community events with some carry-over from previous missions, This, together with the improved Report files, will hopefully provide adequate compensation for the loss, at least for the network game campaign creators among you.
In new scenarios, you may set only one callsign template per party.
New scenarios will come with a time limit - which will be a lot more generous (six hours) than the current max time limit that you can set in the Mission Editor, so in practice the impact on your games may turn out to be negligible.
Earthworks construction times can only be set at varying degrees of accelerated.
The Friendly ID feature is gone.
AI firing smoke grenades can no longer be disabled.
Only diamond-shaped panels for all parties.
Maximum map size per scenario is reduced from ca 22x22 to 18x18km?; the old limit was set at times when the transition at map edges could be ugly monster ridges, and we needed 4km of fog to hide it. These artifacts are long gone. Also, you may pick other map dimensions of equivalent size.
The print function for maps has been removed.
You can no longer save and load the Assembly Hall state.
The Range Rings have been removed from the Planning Phase.

Oh, and Steel Beasts 4.3 comes with a massive battalion sized Operation Idistaviso that's been in the making since 2013. Took a bit longer than anticipated.
Expect some TV news from the frontline in the coming days on our Youtube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/@eSimGamesDtl/featured

[Rinix]

More:

Will we get to know what "The changing geopolitical situation []." is that varants these changes?

No.

[Rinix]

More info:

Commercial aspects did not form our decision.
I could very well imagine that we hand out more server licenses. We can't make that number "unlimited", of course. Still, we want you to continue to have fun.

[Rinix]

Further info:

Some of our customers are increasingly concerned about what I'd call the "War Thunder Alpha Nerd" phenomenon, that some people post classified information to win an internet debate about the properties of any given piece of military equipment. While this has never been a problem here, their willingness to take chances is diminishing, entirely without our fault, or anyone's on thie forum.
In addition, there are cases where we rely on unclassified but still proprietary data and are bound by NDA to make available a model of some weapon system or other equipment exclusively to the military customer for which it was contracted.
Whether that constitutes a newer, generally more restrictive policy or whether such cases will remain the exception istoo early to say.

That being said, there is no inherent desire by eSim to be any more restrictive than we absolutely have to be. Future Steel Beasts and Steel Beasts Pro versions will still share a common code base.

I decided to call the new version "Steel Beasts" again for simplicity alone. "Steel Beasts Professional, Personal Edition" always was a bit more baroque of a title than I personally liked. But there is no hidden agenda behind this. It's just intended for clarity, that "Professional" in the name indicates that the product is designed for military training purposes.

Any potential to increase the network limit to more than 4 players?

I'm afraid not. We were painfully aware of the implications when this decision was made.

[Rinix]

More:

Well, it's still "version 4.3", and it's free for everyone who already upgraded to 4.3 when it was still "Steel Beasts Pro PE". What we have here is the final patch for version 4.3 as it was planned since last November, and scheduled for mid March/early April. Sure, we considered releasing a 4.4 version, but that would have meant to keep the shop closed for half a year or longer.
There will be a 4.4 (possibly 4.5). We just think that we want to wait for a few more new things that are still in development, and then you'll get a "real upgrade".

You have a bit more, really. First of all, we at eSim like having consumer customers.
We want to popularize tank, and tactics, because we think that they are important topics that should be treated more seriously than as a mre Quake on Tracks.

Our own motivation aside, there are other, objective reasons. The fact that you exist forces us every day to not be lazy about user interface design, but think of it from the perspective of someone without military background. Als, you are much better at finding bugs than the military. Without you, we'd probably at maybe 3,000 known/reported bugs and we'd feel pretty good at having fixed most of them, being completely oblivious to the other more than 9,000 undiscovered bugs. So, even armies should have an interest in keeping you supported, as we keep telling them. Having you eats away some of those precious development hours, but the return on investment is tremendous.

[Rinix]

There remains the question of why these changes were made:

Well a year ago I would have said there is no way esims would remove features and actually take a step backwards.  I have a hard time convincing myself that the consumer market was demanding that.  That leads me to either a technical reason or your other market that was driving it.  But here we are with no explanation for removing features.  Other than trust us, its for your own good.

[Rinix]

And more:

Regarding the player limit, perhaps it isn't being stressed enough (it is briefly mentioned):

The Server version of the EXE will still be available (for free to owners) to community organizers that request it, like before, as usual. The Server version allows unlimited participants in Network Sessions. So for the most part, unless someone is playing without a Server license and EXE, and playing that non-Server version with 5 to 8 players, then it won't affect anything.  If you are playing without the server version, you could request the server version and license.

Additionally, there are some new features added to help campaign designers coordinate campaigns better, to minimize the reliance of saved AARs (which is one of the primary reasons people save AARs (nostalgia, and campaign designers to see the end state of a scenario), but it isn't quite elaborated on here enough, perhaps.

Perhaps the calm thing to do is keep your SB Pro PE installed, then install the coming SB into a separate place. Use both, try the new one out, give it a chance, and figure out if you really do need these features after all, or if the new SB might be better off with its bug fixes and elongated maps (maps can be longer than 22km now calculated by square area), new features, etc.

[Rinix]

More from Ssnake:

At no point did I say that it'd be for your own good. That's just a gross misrepresentation.
We have always said that there would be a loss of functionality.

I will concede that I'm unwilling to discuss the details of our decision in public ... simply because it would only invite more discussion - like, whether the reasons were valid, even if people have a poor understanding of the context. Then I provide the context, and it starts the next round of questions, and suddenly we find ourselves in a situation where some get the idea that they are making the strategic decisions for eSim Games now. I'm running eSim. The buck stops with me, I have to bear the consequences of all the decisions we make.

SB 4.3's new feature set is the best compromise we could come up with, where we hope that the impact, while substantial, will still be minimal. So, what we've been saying is, "trust us, it was necessary". I hope you can accept that not every topic is meant to be discussed in public.

Governments have privileges and powers that we all don't.
Our government users are chill with what we're doing.

We certainly didn't intend to create a hype, and I don't think that anything we did could objectively seen as an attempt at hyping. Suspense, I get that.

We wanted to just release a quick patch with no fanfare in March, and a major upgrade by maybe the end of this year. Then things happened, and we had to make difficult decisions in a short time. One factor was that we wanted to release a stable version, the other that we didn't want to keep you waiting for long. So, this is the best we could come up with.