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Developer Corner | Support Companies

Greetings all!

Today we’ll be taking a dive into one of the fundamental building blocks of HOI4: division design, and some changes we’re making to it. This dev corner might be a little less grand than previous dev corners, but division design remains extremely important to the HOI experience, and is a part of the game that’s remained more or less untouched since release.

Those of you with exceedingly long memories may remember in my early roadmap for Hearts of Iron that I mentioned a desire to have doctrines better affect how the player is incentivized to design their divisions. The first step of making this possible is by adding another dimension of choice to support companies.

Support Company Changes
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Here’s a look at one of Germany’s starting templates. Ordinarily, engineers would grant a bonus of 5 entrenchment at their most basic level: here, we’re getting 2 (Ed: 2.25 actually… we’ll fix that in post).
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And here, in a little more detail - is the breakdown of why. Here, Engineers no longer begin by applying a flat bonus of 5 entrenchment - instead, their initial stats will grant a bonus of 0.25 entrenchment per Leg Infantry battalion in their division.
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As you can see, this bonus is not applied to the cavalry battalions I have so wisely placed in my infantry division. We’ll go into the rationale behind this specific change later, but suffice it to say the following:

Support companies can now confer multiplicative or additive bonuses to line battalions of specific categories within their own division.

While it may seem like a small change, this allows us to better represent the effects of certain doctrinal advancements or technologies, and adds a completely new dimension to consider when choosing support companies.

Changes to Existing Support Companies [very subject to change]

Engineers

As you can see above, Engineers will be changing a bit. They’ll retain the flat entrenchment they gain from tech, but by moving entrenchment more towards a per-battalion balancing value, we’re able to flatten the efficacy of entrenchment and devalue it slightly for org-wall playstyles. Entrenchment itself is a multiplicative stat of course, so we take care to ensure that the upper end does not move too far ahead of what was previously achievable.

Recon
The neglected child of the support company family is finally getting some new tools. Recon has always been an underperforming support company, and these changes aim to augment the value of tactical reconnaissance on the battlefield. By default, mounted recon, motorized recon, and armored car recon companies will now confer a [10%] soft attack bonus to all battalions matching the Artillery category.

Note: we’re making the choice to stress the benefits of recon on artillery rather than general infantry here for game balance reasons.

Light Tank recon will confer a [10%] Hard Attack bonus to all Armored battalions.

Recon also gets some other new toys, some of which we’ll cover in doctrines, and others in a later diary on some New Cool Stuff (™).

Field Hospital
A slightly left-field modifier here, Field Hospitals now increase the strength (HP) of all infantry battalions within their division by [10%]. This results in proportionally less manpower (& equipment) loss per damage received.

Flame Tanks
These now increase the breakthrough of all infantry battalions by [5%].

Military Police
A support company with low usage outside of specific garrison templates, we wanted to give these slightly more utility within line divisions. These will now increase the base org recovery rate of all infantry battalions by 20%.

Doctrine Changes

We’re still working on exactly how these will look, but here’s a sample of what we have planned:
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Dispersed Support: Signal companies grant 10% defense to all Artillery battalions in division
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Airland Battle: Standard recon grants 10% air attack to anti-air battalions in division
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Mechanized Wave: Armored Car recon grants 1 max organization to all Leg Infantry battalions in division.
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Central Planning: Logistics Company adds 5% defense to all infantry battalions in division

As mentioned above we have more planned for these, but this should serve as an indicative sample of what is coming. These changes are intended to add an extra dimension to consider when building division templates, accentuating the value of interdisciplinary coordination. They also give us an opportunity to equalize the value of some underperforming support companies in a slightly more realistic way than flat stats.

Of course, the production value of your bonus-granting support companies will be weighted more favorably towards larger divisions - this is something we’re keeping an eye on, but broadly speaking we’re happy with this direction.

As well as being a significant balance change (and modding tool) these changes were necessary for a new small feature we’ll show off in a future diary. I’ll leave you guessing until then ;)

Speaking of dev diaries, we will call you to arms next week for something special… stay tuned, and save the date!

/Arheo
 
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Yeah, really missing heavy and super-heavy tanks as support companies too. It's hard to imagine certain heavy weaponry being used in line battalions, and railway gun mechanics isn't particularly suitable for inter-divisional fights (and its AoE of 217km is already too bloated to be honest).
 
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Speaking of dev diaries, we will call you to arms next week for something special… stay tuned, and save the date!

/Arheo
DLC announcement?
 
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Strategy used to be one of the core pleasures of HOI4, and thankfully Paradox is finally starting to get it back instead of just adding content to make HOI4 more and more cumbersome. will Ai improve on this?
 
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Have you considered allowing 10 support companies instead of 5? This would be more realistic, since a real-life division would have most, if not all, types of support.
 
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I Hope you Developers also take a look at the AI's division templates, and upgrade them a bit to fit with the changes you are making. and probably upgrade them in general.
 
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Have you considered allowing 10 support companies instead of 5? This would be more realistic, since a real-life division would have most, if not all, types of support.
Exactly, but I think for the sake of balance it is worth making a gradation: you can make X number of support battalion, X number of support company, X number of support platoon. And accordingly, since the battalion is the largest unit in terms of numbers, it has the best percentage of the bonus, and the platoon, as the smallest in terms of numbers, has a smaller bonus.
 
i still think you should completely redesign the doctrine trees, if i'm honest
Aside from Arheo not even ruling out other changes to them here...


...how exactly should the doctrine trees get "completely redesigned" in your opinion and what should be achieved with this undertaking (which would likely eat up quite some extra development ressources)? I'm not opposed to changes where they are good for the game, but honestly doctrines don't feel to me as something that is so broken and/or unbalanced that I would call out for such a drastic move.
 
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I don't see the objective in nerfing Engineers for small divisions. An Engineering Company should help divisions no matter how small, but it'll matter little with the current numbers. AFAIK, with this system, a 40w infantry division will get more attack than 2x 20w infantry divisions, even though the latter is double the cost in support equipment. Engineering Companies are actually very expensive when applied in mass, so usually people don't use them as countries like Germany that will have cheap infantry and good tanks with engineers.
If small divisions were the concern, they should have just reduced the flat stats (like defense) or increased the cost. Even so, I find the idea of supports with flat costs providing scaling bonuses questionable.
make them part of the tank designer, its already possible to design a armoured car in the tank designer making the whole AC tech tree completely redundant
ACs and tank designer are from different DLC. While it would make sense for the game to combine them, I don't see how it could work for the product?
Also, when org-walling entrenchment isn't really a very big factor. You lose your entrenchment when you get cycled out and back in to the combat, which is what org-walling is. Org walling is taking losses, your divisions running out of org and retreating
Between this, hospitals granting HP, and cavalry entrenching apparently being a balance concern makes me think they had a solution before understanding the problems. Things like recon buffing artillery are nice to have. But I've yet to see an application of this new system that really justifies its existence. Maybe in the next dev diarycorner.
 
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I really like the idea of scaling bonuses, although it seems to me like some of the bonuses are quite arbitrary. I am sure though that it would be a really good tool for modders to play around with. Couple points I want to raise:

-Like others have said, it makes sense that scaling bonuses should be coupled with scaling costs
-I would really like to see support artillery/AT/AA actually give stats to line battalions, instead to flat stats, in order to represent things like artillery batteries attached to infantry battalions, rather than standalone artillery regiments.
-As a bit of an out there suggestion, if scaling costs and bonuses can be implemented, it would be wonderfull to be able to split and recombine divisions into individual brigades or regiments, that also keep support elements of the original division. This would both help in situations where there are not enough divisions to cover a frontline and also give more meaning to the vertical vs horizontal design of divisions. I can imagine it would throw the costing of division design a bit out the window, but IMO this is one of the lamest mechanics in game atm.
 
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I dislike the idea of scaling bonuses for support companies because it will just incentivize huge divisions of 40+ width even more. We've already had the rework in NSB to make smaller and more historical divisions more viable but now it seems you're going back on that instead. But I agree that improvements to shake up the support company meta (hospitals, signals and recon being rarely used) are needed.
 
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Soo ur nerfing small divisons soo that they can never be used? GJ paradox, gj, can we get an applause please! I mean im pretty sure no1 asked for this, every1 asking for logi striking to be removed tho. Like bro, add the focus trees, make the historical path change nothing for every1 else, MIO one is actually good i think, since it adds more buffs and allows them for every country, international market, make it a thing, but disable in base game or add a way to disable it in the base game, revert the supply system and finally update all the focus trees in accordance with BBA (what do naval airframe boosts even do?), nerf a few focuses that flew under the radar (canda for example can get the jet engine in mid 1942, rip axis airforce, fun campaign tho). Game was essentialy finished pre NSB, from which point (with NSB and La shitstance spies and spain, france was good) updates have been mixed in quality, gone are the glory days of Man the Guns and Waking the Tiger, the best focus trees in the game are the ones largely untouched by the oversizing you've done, The USA, The UK, Germany, The allied minors, The axis minors (except bulgaria) have like the best focus tree, the soviet one used to be good, now only works in SP. It has been good to see that after the BftB + NSB + BBA + La Shitstance (sorta, i mean france one is good cuz its in the old style, spain one tho is a bit too big). Tank designer and air designer are good, but pretty ahistorical (less for planes, but def for tanks since secondary turrets are literally meta). Also warehouses still cost 20k ic and not every city has them somehow
 
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The proposal for change here is a mistake if you ask me.

I will be cruel: It almost looks like "let's make some insufficient pointless change that's hard to balance" over something that doesn't need it.

1. Cavalry in WWII is infantry equipped with horses for mobility. Historically it was disadvantageous due to losing 25% of men to horse herders: while the unit is dismounted, someone needs to hold the reins of the horses until the men mount again. That was the reason why motorized became so much more economical from a manpower perspective.

It already is debuffed due to huge supply consumption(0.12 per battalion vs 0.06 per infantry battalion), making it not viable for frontline duty(unless you're up to being undersupplied).

Refusing it entrenchment bonuses is plain wrong. You also may not realize, but it also affects mountaineers, marines, motorized and mechanized infantry.

Instead what should be done to cavalry:
A) Increase manpower requirement to 1250 manpower per cavalry battalion
B) Reduce supply consumption: horses traditionally were capable of feeding off the land since the Franco-Prussian war.

2. Entrenchment is now getting debuffed. You need 20 infantry battalions to reach the old 5 base entrenchment bonus per engineer company (20*0.25 = 5).

I know it has a reason: entrenchment and the "Forts" mechanic are in conflict with each other, but still entrenchment is the only thing that allows to withstand the complete and utter firepower advantage tanks have over infantry.

3. Your changes to artillery are pointless: you should simply lower artillery + SPG combat width back to 2, otherwise artillery is almost always a waste of resources. Adding a 10% bonus to something that has 33% less soft attack per combat width than an equivalent tank has, is not wise. It's a waste of time.

4. Field hospitals: nobody researches them because they cost an extra research slot for 180+ days, a support company slot and valuable resources that can be spent elsewhere.

A Field hospital costs 170 Production Cost. Every infantry battalion costs 50 (using infantry equipment 1). Assume we lose 10% less equipment per battalion.

In order to make a field hospital viable, you need to lose: 170/(0.1*50) = 34 infantry battalions in battles per division, aka 34000 men to break even with the production cost. Do you know a single battle (outside of encirclements) where that happens?

5. If you really want to make a change to support companies; reduce the research time per 1st support company tech to 90 days, and add 30 days to every consecutive technology. Right now support companies are too darn expensive from a research standpoint.

6. Add 0-width supply units as line battalions. Right now, many units are restricted due to limited carried supplies. The tank fuel drum is one of the most important things out there for war in Africa and USSR: all because there isn't any other way to increase carried supply per unit.

7. You are going to be now spending time balancing this. Which is honestly a shame, as there are much better things to do than to create pointless tasks and then limiting their impact.

All in all, this is likely the only dev diary describing a cosmetic change that is an utter waste of time. If you ask me: don't do changes to support companies. The effort will not pay off.
 
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While overall I love the idea of support companies modifying the stats of battalions, I see a problem with engineers increasing infantry entrenchment as that stat currently functions.

Since, as you note, entrenchment is a multiplicative bonus, it means the power of an engineer company would scale exponentially with the number of infantry battalions in that division. Which I just can't see working; either the bonus would be worthless in small divisions (like, say, 8 infantry) or totally broken in large infantry heavy ones (which could be 20 or more). You seem to be aware of that and it sounds like you plan to balance it so a division with lots of infantry won't be broken, but as the stat currently stands that would just mean there's no point in putting engineers in anything else.

An alternative I can see would be to make entrenchment as a division stat function like org or armor - that is to say, have the division's entrenchment bonus be based on the average of all battalions' entrenchment rather than the total. Honestly I like this idea and think it also works well with things like the dozer blades for tanks in the tank designer, but I guess it would require some code work.

A simpler but more boring change would be to have engineers give a flat entrenchment bonus and then a bonus to the defense of all infantry in the division.
 
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Engineers are not just about entrenchment - they benefit movement as well. Perhaps they could also help with supply range - a division with engineers could perhaps draw supply from further away simply due to having people making an effort to improving & repairing the transportation routes.

Either way the devs have not revealed enough for us to fully grasp what they are doing while some have certainly shown just how deeply dug-in they are about defense stats.
 
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1. Cavalry in WWII is infantry equipped with horses for mobility. Historically it was disadvantageous due to losing 25% of men to horse herders: while the unit is dismounted, someone needs to hold the reins of the horses until the men mount again. That was the reason why motorized became so much more economical from a manpower perspective.

I have read your post and one moment later youtube make me this recommendation from a tank museum to this theme: saber again tanks with good infos why most army use in ww2 still cavalry. Its in german but you can switch subtext to english. Best quote: Horse must not be refuel and can't burst cooling hose.



4. Field hospitals: nobody researches them because they cost an extra research slot for 180+ days, a support company slot and valuable resources that can be spent elsewhere.

Say that not. As Finland or other small nation is in my opinion and playstyle very important.
 
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Yeah, really missing heavy and super-heavy tanks as support companies too. It's hard to imagine certain heavy weaponry being used in line battalions, and railway gun mechanics isn't particularly suitable for inter-divisional fights (and its AoE of 217km is already too bloated to be honest).
In the German case the Tiger/Tiger II battalions were basically independent units with some small support elements (like a few recovery and AA vehicles) which were attached to other units temporarily where and when needed. We don't have an Attach command.

Have you considered allowing 10 support companies instead of 5? This would be more realistic, since a real-life division would have most, if not all, types of support.
Should be a soft cap or a hard cap that can be increased. Not being able to design historical units is a big design problem with the game imo.
 
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While overall I love the idea of support companies modifying the stats of battalions, I see a problem with engineers increasing infantry entrenchment as that stat currently functions.

Since, as you note, entrenchment is a multiplicative bonus, it means the power of an engineer company would scale exponentially with the number of infantry battalions in that division. Which I just can't see working; either the bonus would be worthless in small divisions (like, say, 8 infantry) or totally broken in large infantry heavy ones

Exactly, it is absurd and mathematically the opposite of what you normally want, which is exactly avoiding exponential payoffs. Cant see how they missed this obvious fact?

Another alternative way to fix this besides all other proposals would be for engineers to add 5 +2+2(tech effect) entrenchment but multiplied by the proportion of all infantry (including cavalry, motorized) in relation to all line battalions. So 5 for pure infantry and 2.5 for half inf half tanks. Tanks cant entrench obviously.
 
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Another alternative way to fix this besides all other proposals would be for engineers to add 5 +2+2(tech effect) entrenchment but multiplied by the proportion of all infantry (including cavalry, motorized) in relation to all line battalions. So 5 for pure infantry and 2.5 for half inf half tanks. Tanks cant entrench obviously.
Even then it is a fix to something that was not broken. At least I have not heard of entrenching tank/cavalry divisions with engineers being a go-to strategy. It would just be a "fix" that is less damaging than what they are currently planning.
 
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