Hello again everyone!
This is a very important patch introducing a whole new full-length campaign, adding new content, and fixing various issues of previous patches.
New Features:
New campaign - Tunisia: Southern Operations.
Expanded on in its own section below.
Vehicle Additions
Added Anti Air Crusader Tanks:
Crusader III AA Mk. I
Crusader III AA Mk. II
Added SPA-Viberti AS-42 and Variants (each comes with an armed variant):
AS42 Metropolitana
AS42 Sahariana
Weapon Additions:
Added Browning M1919A4 with iprovized carrying handle for early-to-late war US campaigns.
Added yellow American Mk. II grenade for early war US campaigns.
Added many new bayonets, as well as reworking old ones.
Bayonets Added:
SVT Bayonet (M1940 Bayonet)
M1905 Bayonet
American early-war bayonet (M1917)
American late-war bayonet (M1 Bakelite)
English spike bayonet (No.4 Mk II)
German late-war bayonet (S84/98 III Bakelite))
German mid-war bayonet (S84/98 III)
Carcano bayonet (M1891)
Carcano folding bayonet (M1938)
Carcano bayonet (M1938)
Late-war Type 30 Japanese Bayonet
Bayonets Reworked:
Hanyang Bayonet (S71/84)
Mosin Bayonet (M91/30)
MAS 36 Bayonet (Mle. 1936)
Lebel Bayonet (Mle. 1886)
M1 Bayonet
K98 Bayonet (S84/98)
FG-42 Spike Bayonet
Type 30 Bayonet
Added a system to both refill Gewehr 43 with magazines and stripper clips. Now Gewehr 43 wielding riflemen will carry 2 spare magazines and the rest as individual rounds.
Added a new system to make open top vehicle crew animations more organic, making units react to acceleration, deceleration and obstacle collision.
Added new Tunisia Mosque building.
Added UK grenade refill box.
Added Japanese rifle attachment flag.
Added a certain new squad type to specific Bastogne missions.
New car enter / idle / exit animations, now available for modders as well.
New modding UI tools to preview animation placement on open top vehicles.
Fixes and Improvements:
Various map and mission improvements in North Tunisia map with the goal of bringing it closer to the new North African standard set by South Tunisia.
Greatly improved game performance on low end devices and consoles: Loading screen times might become a bit longer in order to achieve a much more stable framerate during gameplay.
Reworked Willys Jeep.
Added dynamic camo system to various vehicles:
Supermarine Spitfire
Bristol Beaufighter
C-47 Skytrain
DFS 230 Glider
Bf-109
Bf-110
Ju-87 Stuka
Vickers E Type B 6-Ton
Vickers Carden Lloyd
Panzer I Ausf. A
Reworks to the German Afrika Korps helmets, including now separate M35 and M42 variants.
Reworked animations of several weapons.
Fixed rifles bolt placement in Carcano rifles.
Various Audio Reworks:
Reworked reload sounds for Gewehr 43, C96, PPSh 41, MAB 38, TT-33, Mas 36 and Wz-35.
Reworked low caliber bullet whizzing sounds to be shorter and more "direct".
Shortened shell whizzing sounds to sync better with shell flying by the player.
New Tree falling/breaking sound for better audio clarity and to give importance for other sounds.
Updated smoke artillery explosion sounds.
Reworked Rubble footstep sounds.
Various changes and additions in map props.
Finalized rework of Tunisian buildings for better visual/aesthetic fidelity.
Improved stability of Map Editor when using Vulkan API.
Improved stability of the automatic camo system.
Fixed some bugs with animations while leaving specific vehicles.
Fixed a bug causing maps not to load all grass types.
Fixed a bug causing AI having difficulties on getting inside vehicles.
Changes in Panzer III armor plates.
Changes in Panzer III decals (all variants).
Improved camera lock on melee target (no longer flings camera upward, just towards center mass).
Fixed an issue preventing Nintendo switch from creating cross-play matches.
Finalized main British uniform rework.
Fixed issue causing map props collision not refreshing correctly sometimes.
Small improvements in net code.
Below are a selection of images highlighting some of the new content, changes, and improvements introduced with this update. In order of appearance: New Stuka camos, new AS-42 Metropolitana and Sahariana, Willys Jeep reworked models, a showcase of some of the various aircraft given a new dynamic camo system, two slides of some of the bayonets added/reworked, and finally the new Tunisian Mosque.
South Tunisia
The long-awaited Southern Tunisia campaign is finally here. Experience the semi-arid deserts of Tunisia and experience possibly the most iconic American defeat in the early stages of world war 2— the Battle of Kasserine Pass.
Southern Tunisia features harsh landscapes not seen before in Easy Red 2. Here, various desert towns, coastal cities, open terrain and specific key defensive points host the locations of some of the most intense operations of the North African campaign. Here you'll act in engagement dynamics not officially depicted in Easy Red 2 before, including mass scale armored combat and two wave defense missions, all inspired by historical engagements that occurred.
The new Tunisia: Southern Operations campaign follows the final Axis offensive of North Africa, hosting a prologue of the American paratrooper raid on Gafsa in 1942, but truly beginning with Operation Frühlingswind, where German forces assaulted unprepared and inexperienced Allied defenses in effort to dislodge their rising presence in the region. The earliest stages of the in-game campaign features the Axis assaults on Faid Pass, Sidi Bou Zid, Kasserine Pass, Sbeitla, Sbiba, Tebessa, and decisive hold-of-the-line at Thala.
After this, experience the Axis attempt to delay an assault on the Mareth Line to the south, encompassing the Battle of Medenine and the later Operation Pugilist and Supercharge II where English, New Zealander, French, and other Commonwealth forces encircled the historic line. Shortly after this encirclement, Allied forces retake lost ground, and with the hard-fought Battle of Wadi Akarit they force Axis forces an all-out-retreat along the coast to Northern Tunisia and the Enfidaville line, leading the events of the Northern Tunisia campaign.
Set across the desert plains, mountain passes, fortified lines, and strategic towns in whatever contraption of war of your choice. This campaign emphasizes mobile warfare, combined arms combat, and harsh environmental conditions that defined the North African theater.
Performance and Stability Fixes
This update includes a broad set of optimizations aimed at improving overall stability, editor reliability, and gameplay smoothness across all platforms — with special attention to low-end devices and consoles.
Game performance has been greatly improved on low-end hardware and consoles, resulting in a noticeably more stable framerate during gameplay. To achieve this, some data processing has been shifted to the loading phase, which may cause slightly longer loading screens, but this significantly reduces stutters, frame drops, and performance spikes once in-game.
The Map Editor has been made more stable when using the Vulkan API, reducing crashes and unexpected behavior during editing sessions, especially on complex maps or long workflows.
The automatic camouflage system has received stability improvements, addressing rare errors and inconsistencies that could previously affect vehicle visuals or cause unexpected camo selections.
A bug that caused maps to not load all grass types correctly has been fixed, improving both visual consistency and performance predictability on larger maps.
Overall, these changes result in smoother gameplay, fewer interruptions, improved editor reliability, and better performance consistency, especially on lower-end systems and consoles.
Coming Up...
Now we're full-speed ahead on the upcoming Hungarian DLC, featuring the siege of Budapest and battles at Lake Balaton in March of 1945. You'll be sure to get further previews of it here in the coming months as we develop it further, and you get get ahead of these Steam posts by being up-to-date with the work in progress page in our official Discord Server!
Check out the Shanghai-Nanking DLC if you haven’t yet!
In Easy Red 2: Shanghai-Nanking, you fight for control of Shanghai, and the conflict will spread to locations such as: Luodian, Baoshan, Wusong, Jinshanwei, Hongkou, Suzhou creek, Chunhua, the Yuhuatai hills and the city of Nanjing.
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499380/Easy_Red_2_Shanghai__Nanking/"]
We also have many new features and content planned to come in next many months!
Hungarian campaign, dynamically deployable MGs and mortars, the ability to reconstruct destroyed defenses and sandbag walls, and much more.
You can read about all of our plans on our new Roadmap here:
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1324780/view/753916171125786050"]Thank you for reading... see you next update!
Marco and the Easy Red 2 Development Team
