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Developer Diary | Plane Designer

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Hello, and welcome back to another Dev Diary for the upcoming By Blood Alone DLC and accompanying Patch 1.12! The team has returned from the summer vacation, and we are now back fixing bugs and tweaking the balancing of the new features and focus trees.

Today, we are taking a look at the Plane Designer. As always, any number value that you are going to see in this DD is subject to change.

The Plane Designer became a subject of discussion, both inside the team and in the community, almost as soon as we announced that No Step Back would feature a Tank Designer. We felt that it would mesh well with the rework of the Italian focus tree, not least because the Italian aviation industry was very well developed and produced some of the best combat airplanes of the war - hampered mostly, as Italy so often was, by lacking production capacity.

We also felt that a Plane Designer would help plug some gaps in the lineup of available aircraft. Over the years, many players have commented on the fact that many nations modified their fighters to also be able to carry bombs, or their tactical bombers to also carry torpedoes. One of the big goals of the Plane Designer was to allow for these types of multi-role aircraft.

At the same time, we didn’t want to make these multi-role planes too powerful. Instead, a plane design optimized for a single mission should still be more effective than a multi-role plane. Where multi-role planes offer flexibility, optimized designs offer top performance, if you can afford them.

The basics of the Plane Designer are probably not a surprise for anyone who is familiar with the Ship or Tank Designers. The base is called an airframe, which roughly corresponds to the hulls and the chassis of the ship and tank designers. The Airframes have a number of module slots, where you can put the modules that give the final design its actual stats. There are three different size classes of airframes: Small, Medium, and Large. Small planes also come in a carrier-capable variant of the airframe.

The types of module slots in the Plane Designer are slightly different from the Tank Designer. There are effectively only three types of slots: Engines, Weapons, and Special modules.

Engine modules are perhaps the most straightforward of them. Unlike tanks, where this slot dictates what type of engine the tank uses and a separate stat determines what its speed is, engine modules in the plane designer determine the number and power of the engines mounted on the aircraft. These engine modules produce a new stat called Thrust, while all other modules have another new stat called Weight. These two stats are effectively the limiting factor of what and how many modules you can put on the plane. A design is only legal if Weight does not exceed Thrust (some people might point out that the only planes with a Thrust/Weight ratio of 1 or better in reality are modern, high-performance fighter jets, but these people will be summarily ignored).

Any excess Thrust is converted into extra speed, which is intended to provide a reason not to fill every module slot.

One thing to note here is that jet engines (and rocket engines, for that matter) are part of these engine slots, which means that they are available for all types of planes. This, by necessity, means that Jet Fighters and other jet-powered airplanes are no longer their own unit type - they are now simply fighters with jet engines. Jet fighters will therefore reinforce regular fighter wings, and also that you can now effectively make jet carrier planes, jet CAS, jet heavy fighters etc.with the plane designer.
Or Rocket Naval Bombers, one supposes, if you really hate your pilots on a personal level.
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Weapon modules are also fairly self-explanatory. But beyond providing offensive stats like Air Attack, weapon modules fulfill two other major functions. The first is that the weapons define what type of plane a design ends up being. For this the designer has a Primary Weapon Slot. The module in this slot defines the role of the final design, i.e. Fighter, CAS, Naval Bomber etc.

This is relevant because the weapon modules also unlock what missions a design has available. That means that the strict separation of mission by type of aircraft will be gone. You can now create fighters that can provide ground support, or Strategic Bombers that can do naval strikes, depending on the modules you put on the plane. There are, of course, some restrictions - strat bombers can never mount the modules necessary to unlock air superiority missions, for example.

We still wanted to give you an easy way to classify your designs on a high level and it also makes it a lot easier to tell the AI what a design actually is and how it should be used. Without accounting for doctrines, there are no stat differences between, say, a fighter that has a set of 4 Heavy MGs in the Primary Weapon Slot and bombs in a secondary weapon slot, and a CAS that has the bombs in the primary weapon slot and the MGs in the secondary slot - but one goes into Fighter Airwings and the other goes into CAS Airwings.
CAS planes have a large variety of weapons available to them to attack ground targets.
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There is a full list of weapons, the missions they unlock, and what they classify a plane as if mounted in the primary weapon slot, below (stats omitted because balancing is still ongoing):

ModuleMissions UnlockedType
2x Light MGAir Superiority, InterceptFighter, Heavy Fighter
4x Light MGAir Superiority, InterceptFighter, Heavy Fighter
2x Heavy MGAir Superiority, InterceptFighter, Heavy Fighter
4x Heavy MGAir Superiority, InterceptFighter, Heavy Fighter
Cannon IAir Superiority, InterceptFighter, Heavy Fighter
2x Cannon IAir Superiority, InterceptFighter, Heavy Fighter
Cannon IIAir Superiority, InterceptFighter, Heavy Fighter
2x Cannon IIAir Superiority, InterceptFighter, Heavy Fighter
Rocket RailsClose Air Support, Logistics StrikeCAS
Bomb LocksClose Air Support, Naval Strike, Port StrikeCAS
Small Bomb BayClose Air Support, Logistics Strike, Port StrikeCAS
Tank Buster IClose Air Support, Logistics StrikeCAS
Tank Buster IIClose Air Support, Logistics StrikeCAS
Torpedo MountingNaval Strike, Port StrikeNaval Bomber/Maritime Patrol Plane
Guided Anti-Ship MissileNaval Strike, Port StrikeNaval Bomber/Maritime Patrol Plane
Fixed Explosive ChargeKamikaze StrikesSuicide Craft
Medium Bomb BayClose Air Support, Logistics Strike, Strategic BombingTactical Bomber
Large Bomb BayStrategic Bombing, Port StrikeStrategic Bomber

While some of these weapons are unlocked in the (reworked) Air Tech Tree, some of them are also found outside of it, in a similar manner as the tank weapons are found in various trees. I will note that the total number of techs in the Air tech tree has actually decreased.
A view of the Air Tech tree. It has a total of 28 techs, compared to the old tree’s 38 techs.
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One notable aspect is that a lot of these modules provide different stats only for specific missions. For true multi-role planes to make sense, we wanted to make sure that building a design with a mixed set of missions didn’t make the plane useless in some of them. Hanging bombs off a plane should make it less agile and slower, but a fighter that was able to do CAS missions shouldn’t be useless in air superiority missions. Thus, the weight and agility penalties only apply to the fighter if it is actually on a CAS mission, not if it is on an air superiority mission.

Modifiers only apply to certain missions. Here, the bombs the Stuka carries make it less agile, but the dive brakes give it better air defense
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Finally, we have the so-called “Special” module slots. These are effectively a catch-all term of various different items, a list of which you can find below:​

Armor Plate: Increased Air Defense, reduced range
Self-Sealing Fuel Tanks: increased Air Defense, costs Rubber
Drop Tanks: increased range (small airframes only)
Extra Fuel Tanks: increased range, reduced air defense
Dive Brakes: increased air defense, increased naval strike hit chance
Radio Navigation I: reduced night penalty, increased strat attack
Radio Navigation II: reduced night penalty, increased strat attack
Air/Ground Radar: reduced night penalty, increased strat attack, increased naval detection
Air/Ground Radar II: reduced night penalty, increased strat attack, increased naval detection
Air/Air Radar: reduced night penalty when on intercept mission
Air/Air Radar II: reduced night penalty when on intercept mission
Floatplane: increased naval spotting (small airframes only)
Flying Boat: increased naval spotting (medium+large airframes)
LMG Defensive Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility
2x LMG Defensive Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility
HMG Defense Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility
2x HMG Defense Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility
Cannon Defense Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility
2x Cannon Defense Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility
Recon Camera: unlocks recon mission (LaR only)
Demining Coil: unlocks demining mission (MtG only)
Bomb sights I: increased strat attack
Bomb Sights II: increased strat attack
Non-Strategic Materials: reduced Aluminum cost, reduced air defense

Special Modules are primarily intended to help optimize planes for various missions or give them different niches.

The eagle-eyed amongst you have already spotted that planes now have a surface and sub detection stat. Up until now, planes that were active in a sea zone always provided a flat bonus to the spotting speed of any navies active in the seazone. This will now change, with planes having dedicated spotting stats that determine how well they do with helping the navies spot. There are modules, like the Air-Ground Radar and the Flying Boat hull, which give bonuses to naval spotting.

Vanilla planes have those stats already baked in, with some being better than others - carrier planes are better than their land-based counterparts, naval bombers are better than fighters etc.

To further support this, we are adding two more things: Maritime Patrol Planes as a dedicated unit type and a special Naval Patrol mission for planes with the right modules.

Maritime Patrol Planes are built on the Large Airframe, giving them exceptional range. They are able to mount the whole array of naval bomber weapons, but naval strike is really not intended to be their primary role. Maritime Patrol Planes are meant to help with spotting raiders in the deep ocean, where smaller planes with shorter ranges struggle to provide much mission efficiency.
You can run naval patrol missions with many different types of planes.
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Finally, let’s talk a bit about art! While we already have a large amount of historical art for various plane types, we also wanted to give you more options to visually distinguish your designs, even if it is just to find the plane design more easily in the production menu. For the tank designer, we split up the existing art and recombined it into various combinations to quickly generate a large number of assets. We realized early on that this wouldn’t work for the plane designer. So instead, we decided to fill in some gaps in the existing art as well as add some art for a number of prototypes that flew but were historically passed over for mass-production.
Here is a partial list of new plane icons coming in BBA. Which one’s your favorite?
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We also decided that we wanted to add more 3d art. Much like the tank designer, you can select these assets when you design the plane. We are adding about 80 new 3d models for planes to the DLC, but more on that in the future!
Here is just a teaser of some of the new assets coming in the DLC:
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That is about it for this week. We hope that you will enjoy playing with the Plane Designer as much as we enjoyed making it. To end this DevDiary on a personal note: The Plane Designer will be my final contribution to Hearts of Iron 4. After close to 6 years on the project, all the way from the early days on Together for Victory, the time has come for me to leave the company and move on to greener pastures. It has certainly been an eventful and productive couple of years, and there are many things that I am very proud of (and a few that I regret - like adding Austria-Hungary as a joke and then finding out that people love monarchism). Working on the Hearts of Iron series has always been a dream for me, since the day I launched Hearts of Iron 1, almost 20 years ago now. Few people can say that they had an impact on a piece of entertainment that has had a similar impact on themselves. But the thing I am most proud of is the team we have built. Hearts of Iron is in very good hands, and there are years of content still to be released. I’m looking forward to it - but, once again, as a player.​

Weird designs that QA came up with:
This single plane outguns an entire tank platoon, unfortunately it can’t ever turn:
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And then we restricted the number of bomb bays you can have on a plane:
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6 engines, 8 cannons, 4 cannons in turrets, and a production cost 50% higher than a strategic bomber. Needless to say, this combo is no longer possible:
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When you look at the Spitfire Mark I’s armament and wonder: but what if…more guns?
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Since the air designer will inevitably use air xp will there be changes to the way air experience is gained? As it currently stands it's the hardest to get while in peacetime and extremely easy to get during wartime; maybe a little buff on air xp gain for drills?
 
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I don't know if I missed something but can we PLEASE have default templates if we may not feel like dealing with the plane designer? Sometimes I'll just want a normal Fighter II, not have to design one from the airframe.
 
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The real question is, will there be a rework to how naval AA works so it can now covers for other ships? Right now historical AA ships (like the famous Atlanta-class cruiser) are useless because they can't cover friendly ships and planes don't target them first.

I don't know if I missed something but can we PLEASE have default templates if we may not feel like dealing with the plane designer? Sometimes I'll just want a normal Fighter II, not have to design one from the airframe.
If you have used the Ship or Tank designer before you'll know they always give you an auto-design button based on modules you have researched.
 
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The British executed like three raids on this scale, and they could barely scrape together enough planes to do it. Then there's the whole idea of managing all those planes in a confined air box to be able to hit the intended target. Just because you manufacture near 20,000 aircraft does not mean all of them were used at one time. How many were shot down, how many were out of commission needing maintenance or repair? This argument of 1000 bomber raids is ridiculous fanboyism and if you want historical accuracy it might be wise to first know the actual history.
The original point I was responding to was that producing 1k bombers was “insane number”, I merely brought up the thousand bomber raids to show that it really wasnt a massive number in terms of total bombers produced during the war, especially since that was just one theater of the war
 
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I am curious about the 1950 jets. Are they still in the game? I haven't seen them in the pics you showed. Will they have their own airframe? Will there be some 'Jet engine II' that is unlocked very late in the game?
 
Looks great! But shouldn't there be an armor stat?

The trade off between things like armor and range+agility was very important during the war (think of the Zero forgoing armor for range) and should be represented.
 
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I'm not a huge fan of losing the "armor/agility/reliability/range" stat choices, honestly. I know they'll probably be covered to some degree in the modules but that's always a lot more finnicky.

Also bothers me that we'll never be able to build a plane that has better agility than the airframe default, as I'm understanding it? Will that be an absolute cap?
 
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Any chance we could see the turbo-prop make an appearance as a late-game alternative alongside the jet engine?

Would be a nice nod towards the Hungarian György Jendrassik who developed the first flawed but working ones in 1940.

I want to build me some Westland Wyverns ;)
 
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Without accounting for doctrines, there are no stat differences between, say, a fighter that has a set of 4 Heavy MGs in the Primary Weapon Slot and bombs in a secondary weapon slot, and a CAS that has the bombs in the primary weapon slot and the MGs in the secondary slot - but one goes into Fighter Airwings and the other goes into CAS Airwings.

I like this bit a lot - it means that to model countries that abandoned the "light bomber" concept in favour of fighter-bombers, (i.e. the UK & Commonwealth), then designing the fighter-bomber with the bombs as primary, means you'd retain the XP of any CAS air wings you had, and there wouldn't be a problem with air wings that continued to use obsolete aircraft. A really nice feature. :)

Transport planes will become cheaper, and the connection of one plane - one paradrop division will be removed. Transports will need a full airwing to be able to paradrop.
Is this a statistic that can be modified ? Like, the most common paratrooper transport was the Dakota, which carried 28 paratroopers. So to drop a battalion in a single drop, would be 35 or so aircraft. Which would be.. 4 wings per paratrooper battalion. Will the number of transports required to drop an airborne division scale by the number of battalions in that division ?
 
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I like this bit a lot - it means that to model countries that abandoned the "light bomber" concept in favour of fighter-bombers, (i.e. the UK & Commonwealth), then designing the fighter-bomber with the bombs as primary, means you'd retain the XP of any CAS air wings you had, and there wouldn't be a problem with air wings that continued to use obsolete aircraft. A really nice feature. :)
Well, the Typhoon just so happened to be great at hauling rockets when its intended air superiority role didn't quite pan out due to the Sabre engine being a bit shit at higher altitudes. Tempest just followed suit in addition to be better at both roles. I don't think that many of them were purpose designed with fighter-bombers in mind so much as they had enough carrying capacity and good enough handling to deliver ordnance accurately when not clearing the skies.
 
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This is everything I wanted out of a plane designer and then some! Wonderful work. Especially like how bonuses and penalties from certain modules are only applied when flying relevant missions.
 
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Will strategic bombings and interceptions mechanic be changed?

Currently this is the most annoying feature of the game, in terms of having to more your interceptors in regions. Make planes settings so they can intercept strategic bombing missions in all all regions within range.
 
I love the expansion of the air game.
Looking forward to experimenting and playing with them!
(I still need to mess with tanks and ships).
Will the DCL also come with a 25th hour per day so we can play more? :p