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Developer Diary | Small Features #1

Hello there, it's me C0RAX.

This week we are going to talk about some of the small features coming with Arms Against Tyranny, these are small things that add or change the game to increase the QoL or add to the game.

So this week we have 3 main groupings;
  • Division structure
  • Economy
  • Presets

Division Structure
First up we have division structure changes. The way you make a division has been fairly static for quite some time. With this update there are some new changes that increase the challenge and compromises you will have to make when designing your divisions.

First up we have some changes to the categories for each brigade that you choose when you pick the first battalion for each vertical column. Previously we had both artillery, AA and AT in the same category as maneuver units like infantry and tanks. This is no longer the case; artillery, AA, and AT are now in their own category meaning you need to choose how many support brigades you have and how many maneuver brigades you have. This extends to mobile battalion and armored battalion categories.

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Previously there was never any real scarcity when it came to a division's battalion slots, you could generally always have whatever number of battalions you wanted in generally any mixture. Now your brigade also starts with the bottom slot locked making a 5x4 grid.this is the default state of divisions and you can unlock this 5th slot by unlocking doctrines giving you a 5x5 grid. When this is combined with the category changes you will need to think about how much combat support battalions you can bring vs vs how many maneuver battalions you you need if you want to make that large division with lots of tank and infantry you will be significantly restricting just how much Artillery, AA and AT you bring to boost your unit.
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Economy
Now we are onto something many of you have seen in the focus tree dev diaries is the new modifier “Consumer Goods Factories Factor” . This new modifier exists because the Consumer goods calculation and its associated modifiers have changed.

Previously the calculation of consumer goods was calculated by adding all the consumer goods modifiers to get a percentage; it then worked out the number of factories that percentage represented against your total factory count. So if you had 5 civs and 5 mils for 10 total factories and your consumer goods modifiers total was 10% you had to pay 1 civ for consumer goods. You were then “taxed” that number of civilian factories.

This had a nasty problem in that it was very easy to first reach 0% consumer goods which was a considerable balance consideration due to it allowing faster snowballing of the economy. This easiness of reaching 0% consumer goods was then a problem because once you reached 0% other parts of the game where the reward was a further reduction of consumer goods were rendered useless since you cannot go below 0% consumer goods.

This is now done a little differently, firstly there are now 2 steps to the calculation of the percentage. First we have the base value(expected consumer goods), this works the same as the old percentage calculation; it's a simple percent value that is added up together. This generally is only set by laws so it acts as a base value that everything else modifies. We then have the consumer goods factor (the new modifier) which multiplies this value and if there are multiple factor modifiers they are multiplied together meaning that you will generally never actually reach 0% consumer goods from just the factor alone and the effect of each additional consumer good factor modifier has diminishing returns.
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We have also as part of this made the consumer goods calculation round down consumer goods factories which should help minors a bit while not really being highly noticeable for majors.

For those who want a detailed copy of the calculations it's like this:

ConsumerGoodsPercent = (Base1 + Base2 + ….) *((1+Factor1) * (1+Factor2) * ….)

ConsumerGoods = Max(ConsumerGoodsPercent , MINIMUM_NUMBER_OF_FACTORIES_TAKEN_BY_CONSUMER_GOODS_PERCENT ) (ConsumerGoods * Total factories).RoundedDown



Presets
And finally I kept the most exciting one till last, and that is presets for your equipment designers. Ever since the introduction of the equipment designers we have known that some players don't want to or struggle to interact with the complexity of them especially when they are new to the features or game. This was for many off putting and something they would shy away from or be continuously frustrated with, Since the game didn’t really teach you how to make a well rounded design for each role. This was doubly true if they wanted to recreate a historical vehicle that they know from their own knowledge of WW2 but didn’t understand how to translate that into the game with the designer.

What these are are premade designs for your equipment designers that are stored in the game files. When you create a new variant from a blank chassis you can press the presets button and will get a list of all the presets made for that chassis/hull/airframe. So should you open up the improved heavy tank chassis presets you will find an entry called Tiger I and you will see the picture of the Tiger I tank and if you click it all the modules and roles and values will be set for you. Should you be missing modules or upgrades the preset entry will tell you what you are missing in order to make it, then all you have to do is research those modules and then create the variant.

So now if you don't understand or want to understand the deeper workings of equipment design you can still make good use of the equipment designers just pick the tank you want and the game will make it for you. Of course if you want to try out tweaking the designs to edge your way into the world of equipment design you can do that too. Once the preset is loaded you can adjust any part of the design as normal, and if you feel lost at any point you can just load the preset back in.
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Some of you may wonder why we’re not allowing you to add your own presets or saved templates. In short, this is something we’d like to do and are not ruling out for the future - historical presets are an important step towards making custom presets a possibility.

However, this feature is entirely moddable so if you want your MP mods to have all the latest meta builds there as presets you can do that, or if you want even more templates for your super in depth history mod or maybe a totally different world you can do that. These presets are defined by the templates you make normally for the AI with some new additional fields, you can now define the art and the name of the template.

That's everything for this dev diary, I hope you will enjoy these changes as much as we have. As always feel free to let us know your favorite parts.

Next week we will be bringing you more information on a new system for content along with how it will be tied into the stories you can tell with this expansion and beyond. See you next week.
 
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I had to think about this one a little.

There is really no uniform standardization of the structure of a Wehrmacht Division for example (and I apologize - I do not know if this applied to other countries).
Germans raised their divisions in waves (Aufstellungswellen). While the divisions of each wave were identically structured, the composition of different draft waves could vary significantly.
Wikipedia has a very interesting article on this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aufstellungswelle (English), but are more detailed description is available in German here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aufstellungswelle, and it really highlights the details.

It gets even more confusing when a division was re-categorized, say from an infantry division to a motorized or armored division.

As mentioned, I do not know what the situation was in other countries, but it certainly does not make the game designer's job easier, as certain things would have to be more generalized.
If you look at this diagram, you will see that regimental units are much more important in strategy games than company units, and this is the German infantry division structure during Operation Barbarossa
 

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What's even more funny is that the Dutch Battlecruiser version of Scharnhorst (design 1047) a has BB armor 1
Even funnier when it was only supposed to have 9"/229mm of belt armor. Also, aside from the guns from the Scharnhorsts it has more in common with the planned O-class German battlecruiser since Germany refused to share the design for Scharnhorst.
 
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Would love to see further expansion of the SOF branches. There's a few mods that have added new unit trees, such as dedicated desert, jungle, tundra, forest and urban troops. With the introduction of SOF trees, I think it would be awesome to see sub-branches and specializations added, either as separate units with trees or just sidegrades to the existing branches.
 
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Don't forget that Strassbourg was upgraded to 283mm belt armor in response to the Scharnhorsts, similar thickness to the North Carolina-class. Strassbourg is definitely a fast battleship.
I guess it depends on what you may face.

An 11-inch belt (Strasbourg) vs 8-inch belt (Kongo) doesn't mean much when facing 406mm AP.

Might be a difference for 203mm, though.

At short ranges, the US cruisers at the 1st Battle of Guadalcanal were penetrating Hiei at short range. A 283mm belt might have made a difference.
 
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All in all I think that doctrines and divisions should be more closely connected. And all in all there should be les meaning how division is stuctured and more about training and equipment and battle tactics.
Dividion changes… Och, we need anti tanks to stop enemy tanks. Add some to division and we are good to go. Enemy air forses are really good. Maybe we should put AA to our division. So it should not be very demanding IN XP wice to do those changes, but it should cost XP to learn to use those new addtions efectively. Maybe XP cost are related to that?
Just wondering…
 
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I guess it depends on what you may face.

An 11-inch belt (Strasbourg) vs 8-inch belt (Kongo) doesn't mean much when facing 406mm AP.

Might be a difference for 203mm, though.

At short ranges, the US cruisers at the 1st Battle of Guadalcanal were penetrating Hiei at short range. A 283mm belt might have made a difference.
At a range as short as Guadalcanal armor kind of becomes rather irrelevant, had Hiei had the correct ammunition loaded (I believe she was preparing for shore bombardment, correct me if I'm wrong) and landed any hits at range that short she could probably have caused a fair bit of damage beyond the damage to electrical systems on South Dakota.

Strassbourg and Dunkerque both have their armor inclined at -15 degrees which increases its effectiveness a fair bit. Seeing at North Carolina was designed with a similar belt (albeit slightly less inclined) and designed to be protected against her own guns, and initially meant to be armed with 3x4 14" guns, 283mm inclined should withstand 14" guns at normal battle ranges at the very minimum. Probably even manage larger shells to some lesser degree but not really a fight you'd want to take.

That said the Kongou's are a bit underarmored even for battlecruisers. Most designs want at least 9" belt for reasonable protection against heavy cruisers if you look at for example large cruiser/battlecruiser designs of WW2. But again, at point-blank range that's no longer the case either way.
 
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All in all I think that doctrines and divisions should be more closely connected. And all in all there should be les meaning how division is stuctured and more about training and equipment and battle tactics.
Dividion changes… Och, we need anti tanks to stop enemy tanks. Add some to division and we are good to go. Enemy air forses are really good. Maybe we should put AA to our division. So it should not be very demanding IN XP wice to do those changes, but it should cost XP to. Lear to use those new addtions efectively. Maybe XP cost are related to that?
Just wondering…
Just putting my two cents in:
If you add a new technology to anything, people need to gain experience first. Not only training in using the equipment, but also experience for the designers what works and what doesn't.

Compare the designs of the first tanks and planes in WWI to what they became in WWII - that is gaining experience: by design, by doctrine, by inter-arm use, by technology advances. You get the idea.

Edit: Oh yes, and the enemy adapts too, so you constantly have the need to update your equipment or come up with something new.
 
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At a range as short as Guadalcanal armor kind of becomes rather irrelevant, had Hiei had the correct ammunition loaded (I believe she was preparing for shore bombardment, correct me if I'm wrong) and landed any hits at range that short she could probably have caused a fair bit of damage beyond the damage to electrical systems on South Dakota.
2 Minor corrections
1) South Dakota was part of 2nd Guadalcanal, while Hiei was sunk during 1st. You're probably thinking of Kirishima
2) The electrical damage was internally caused. An engineer flipped the wrong breaker, causing (among other things) her power steering to go out, which is how South Dakota ended up getting stuck in the middle of the Japanese formation
 
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There Should be a Feature even in historical Games, when you Take an alt-history Path, big Nations or Nations around you are Influenced by that. For example, usa goes communist, than Canada and Mexico go fascist so to Balance Out the game.
 
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There Should be a Feature even in historical Games, when you Take an alt-history Path, big Nations or Nations around you are Influenced by that. For example, usa goes communist, than Canada and Mexico go fascist so to Balance Out the game.
IIRC they did that with Germany and France. I guess it could work in HF, but for NHF everything often winds up into crapshoots anyway it wouldn't matter much.
 
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Even funnier when it was only supposed to have 9"/229mm of belt armor. Also, aside from the guns from the Scharnhorsts it has more in common with the planned O-class German battlecruiser since Germany refused to share the design for Scharnhorst
It was probably a Scharnhorst design revised to incorporate some solutions from the O-class design, as you said Germans weren't keen on giving Dutch plans for the Scharnhorst, but you also don't want to give them your "modern" battlecruiser design which you plan to build
 
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It was probably a Scharnhorst design revised to incorporate some solutions from the O-class design, as you said Germans weren't keen on giving Dutch plans for the Scharnhorst, but you also don't want to give them your "modern" battlecruiser design which you plan to build
Yes, whatever advice they received seemed to have been very broad and general since they went to the Italians next for further advice. Other than sourcing the main armament and power plant from the Germans idk how much else they contributed to the final design bar general advice.
 
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2 Minor corrections
1) South Dakota was part of 2nd Guadalcanal, while Hiei was sunk during 1st. You're probably thinking of Kirishima
2) The electrical damage was internally caused. An engineer flipped the wrong breaker, causing (among other things) her power steering to go out, which is how South Dakota ended up getting stuck in the middle of the Japanese formation
Ah, my bad then, I keep getting those two Kongous mixed up. Anyhow, armor is of little use at such a short range, in particular if was rather thin to begin with.
 
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Well, features sound interesting. However, I've got a question about research slots. Currently, you can get 6 research slots as New Zealand, but can't as UK or historical USSR. It's quite strange. So, are you going to change balance of research slots (I mean why don't you set maximal research slots for minors to 4 or 3; for majors to 5 and for USA, UK, USSR and Germany to 6)? I speak not about the exact number, but about idea. Hope, you will answer and thanks for your work)
 
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Well, features sound interesting. However, I've got a question about research slots. Currently, you can get 6 research slots as New Zealand, but can't as UK or historical USSR. It's quite strange. So, are you going to change balance of research slots (I mean why don't you set maximal research slots for minors to 4 or 3; for majors to 5 and for USA, UK, USSR and Germany to 6)? I speak not about the exact number, but about idea. Hope, you will answer and thanks for your work)
The top 3 in science/technology were the USA, Germany and the UK. The Soviet Union was not in the same league during WWII, but only after the war, when they had got access to latest German techology and the nuclear spies had brought nuke secrets from the USA.

The top 3 should have 6 slots, if any, if the game was historical. Definitely not any others.
 
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The top 3 in science/technology were the USA, Germany and the UK. The Soviet Union was not in the same league during WWII, but only after the war, when they had got access to latest German techology and the nuclear spies had brought nuke secrets from the USA.

The top 3 should have 6 slots, if any, if the game was historical. Definitely not any others.
Well, I've read about the Soviet Science during WWII and I think you right. The most revolutionary Soviet inventions were made after the war.
 
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Finally a way to make historical units again, this has been the real bane of the designers, I hope they do this for Naval and Air as well. Frankly I wouldn't mind see historical division presets just being default (if at nothing else what they were in 36 or 39). But I am realizing their revisions to supply really crap on the larger less historical division sizes already
 
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I love the templates ideas, can we get it for Aircraft & Navy too with the relevant 3D model. So as UK I can select from pre designed templates the different hurricanes and spitfires, USA: P-40 Warhawk, P-51 Mustang flying fortresses, Germany: Dornier, Focke-Wulf, Heinkel, Messerschmitt etc.. obviously estimated for HOI IV, this would add some badly need flavor into the game.
 
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