Developer Diary | Summer Open Beta

[vermicious knid]

I've just finished a complete play through as China and the one thing that really comes through is the interaction of the new aircraft ranges with the restricted locations for airfields and the size of air zones. I suspect the range of aircraft is now correct for a realistic operational range, after all Me109s were under a severe disadvantage due to limited combat time during the battle of britain, but when you factor in the extra range you need because you can't build a closer airfield and the extra range you need because you need to be able to fly to "all parts" of an air zone this all becomes a bit restrictive. I'm really not sure what the correct approach should be to address this but it is definitely a major issue for air operations in any theatre with "enlarged" geography (ie large air zones / large state sizes).

Agreed. I think realistic plane ranges are a perfectly fine design goal in a vacuum...but when you pair them with a couple of really game-y abtractions you get some undesirable results.

Honestly I think unrealistically long ranges paired just fine with "all the possible airbases in an airzone are abstracted to a single point on the map" and "you must have range to cover every inch of this abitrary zone or suffer severe penalties". None of those three game mechanics is strictly realistic, but they combine to form something I found fairly workable.

 

[W.W.Heizenberg]

Hi, I saw some new stats for planes and ships. First of all, now jet engines have literally meaningless (regular ones give more agility and without awful debuff to range (-40%)). I'm not sure if it's historically correct, but it looks really strange. Moreover you have decreased range too too too too much. It was 7000 for jet strategic bombers and now it's 2500 (with jet engines 1500). The same goes to other planes. Also, you said that overall you will give us more agility, but you've increased agility reduction from big bomb locker from 10 to 15. That makes all strategic bombers unplayable. But I like new features in the navy (especially that you gave additional slot for carriers). And rebalancing of naval bombers armament was pretty good as well.

 

[W.W.Heizenberg]

I mean Avro Lincoln's range: 4500 (maximal bomb load)

 

[xtfoster]

<SNIP>now jet engines have literally meaningless (regular ones give more agility and without awful debuff to range (-40%)). I'm not sure if it's historically correct, but it looks really strange.<SNIP>

Well, the early jets weren't exactly long-ranged.

 

[DukofDeth]

Came across something that did not make any sense. Played as USA and followed Historical [mostly]. Took out Japan and then joined the fight against Germany as Italy had already split. At the end I managed to get some German states as a supervised state though the UK kept me from getting Schlesweig-Holstein. I got a message that the UK wanted to re-unite Germany and while they did return Schlesweig-Holstein they did not return any of the southern states they had.
I think this needs fixing or at least some manner of whacked explanation.
The autosave may be from before but I doubt it. Not much difference on the time stamp.
While I did use mods I only had ones I can use for Achievement games - the mods only add music or adjust the graphics files [but not 3d models].

 

[FLUX2226]

Came across something that did not make any sense. Played as USA and followed Historical [mostly]. Took out Japan and then joined the fight against Germany as Italy had already split. At the end I managed to get some German states as a supervised state though the UK kept me from getting Schlesweig-Holstein. I got a message that the UK wanted to re-unite Germany and while they did return Schlesweig-Holstein they did not return any of the southern states they had.
I think this needs fixing or at least some manner of whacked explanation.
The autosave may be from before but I doubt it. Not much difference on the time stamp.
While I did use mods I only had ones I can use for Achievement games - the mods only add music or adjust the graphics files [but not 3d models].
View attachment 1007406

Did the UK have Schleswig-Holstein as a supervised state or was it also directly controlled by them like the rest of southern Germany? In my open beta game yesterday where I played as the Netherlands, there was a British, American and Dutch occupation zone. The only country that directly controlled parts of Germany was the Soviet Union (which I find weird that it's not a puppet as well tbh). The event correctly merged all three occupation zones into democratic Germany, so it does work at least sometimes.

 

[DukofDeth]

Not sure if it was supervised or not; I managed to get that and I always thought that only one puppet per faction was allowed. Even if that was the case - that they had a German puppet as well as annexed territory they should still have given it all back.

I'll chalk it up as a quirk due the UK AI still being way too greedy in peace conferences. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Androbey]

Did the Open Beta change the Political Power calculation?
PP After "The New Deal" Focus completion.
Then after selecting Robert Taft.
Them after selecting "Medium lobbying Effort"
The after selecting the "WPA" focus.

As the USA after "The New Deal" focus you would select Robert Taft "The Silent Workhorse" in order to get a small influx of PP, even with an active focus and a lobbying effort.

in the Open Beta, you get a negative PP gain so you will stay at 0 PP.

 

[Herennius]

Anybody else experiencing much improved IA? I had very tough game with Germans and Italians. They use now 9/1 and tanks more efficiently, it seems. Lost quite a bit of tiles.
What's interesting: I ran the same playthrough dozens of times since 1.11.x, maybe once a month, and always get the same good result. Except this one time: I'm curious about your own findings.

My game as historic Romania has now progressed into 1945 - and the differences in AI performance remain visible: So far, neither Japan nor Germany/Italy got sucessfully invaded by the Allies. It is visible that ports now get guarded carefully and I also haven't seen a lot of Germans units wandering into Africa. Italy lost Lybia at some point (thought much later then in games before the beta), Japan is still progressing (though slowly, they still haven't conquered enough of the the DEIs to capitulate them - but before they were as slow and soon got invaded the the US) and Barbarossa has become largely a stalemate with the SU still being far away from capitulating (but also without the counter-offensive having begun yet). For the last thing it has to be said though that the AI is probably hampered by my HI not being aggressive/competent enough (and Germany still fails with resistance managment...I know, I need to mention it once a day )

Bottomline: The AI has learned some tricks again and it is mainly Japan/Axis getting a boost by the changed behaviour. Their progress is still hampered by the AI being worse when attcking then when defending, but a slower progress is preferable over crumbling just because of not being able to defend what has been already conquered. My prognosis for this game is that at some point the Allies will still get the upperhand because of the economy, but it will take longer. So a historic outcome later than in the historic timeline compared to the too short games before. I have to say that I like it

 

[Androbey]

Did the Open Beta change the Political Power calculation?
PP After "The New Deal" Focus completion.
Then after selecting Robert Taft.
Them after selecting "Medium lobbying Effort"
The after selecting the "WPA" focus.

View attachment 1007519View attachment 1007522View attachment 1007523View attachment 1007524

As the USA after "The New Deal" focus you would select Robert Taft "The Silent Workhorse" in order to get a small influx of PP, even with an active focus and a lobbying effort.

in the Open Beta, you get a negative PP gain so you will stay at 0 PP.

I am now forced to conclude that it is WAI, I'll just have to change my opening.

 

[Kanitatlan]

I just noticed that the current open beta setting is now COMBAT_OVER_WIDTH_PENALTY = -1 with COMBAT_OVER_WIDTH_PENALTY_MAX = -0.33. This gives an effective combat width of your force graph as below (grey line) with the cut off roughly at the highlighted data point (effective combat width 89.11). I still think a value of 0.8 would be better as it allows a much longer tail so that (as I suggested earlier in this thread) no division size would ever be blocked from making sure you can establish a full battle width. Having said that, I believer 0.9 would be nearly as good (takes you effective combat width down to about 80

Penalty of -1 cuts off at aggregate unit width 133% with an effective combat width equivalent of 89.11%
Penalty -0.9 cut off at 144% with equivalent 97.25%
Penalty -0.8 cut off at 151% with equivalent 101.9%

My personal preference is to go to 0.8 but 0.9 isn't bad. My primary concern at this point is when you are attacking a general that keeps choosing a 25% combat width tactic at the cut off will interact quite dramatically with a variety of larger divisional widths.

However, given the less harsh curve of 0.9 and 0.8 the MAX figure could be significantly increased. If we target a maximum penalty to combat width equivalent of about 10% then the MAX figures could be -0.48 and -0.6 leaving ample scope for heavy over width numbers on very narrow battlefields.

This is a comparison with the 0.9 version

 

[Federkiel]

Hello there, it's me C0RAX.

A bit of the different DD than you’re used to this week. I'm here to introduce a new thing I will be doing over the summer. This summer for 4 weeks we will be giving you the chance to test some of the balance changes coming with the 1.13 Stella Polaris patch. These changes are hand picked for testing in order to get feedback from the community on specific changes that might have large impacts. These changes will affect all three major combat groups (Army, Air, and Navy), and vary from value changes to some new functionality and behavior so be sure to read the change list so you know what you're getting yourself into.

So let's go into how this is going to work. From July 6th until August 3rd there will be a special Summer Open Beta branch on steam, this branch will have the new changes listed below. Additionally it won't have anything new coming with Arms Against Tyranny just changes for base game and previously released DLC’s. In the last week of the test we will post a feedback form to be able to collect feedback data that we can use to analyze your responses. Of course this doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t post about it outside the form, I want to encourage as much discourse, theorizing and number crunching as possible so give it a try and let us know what you think.

Now lets go over the change log.

Spoiler: Summer Open Beta Changes

################################################################
######## Summer Open Beta ######### Balance
################################################################

##########
Air
##########
- Excess thrust will now increase agility instead of max speed (0.5 AGI per excess thrust)
- airframes now how base max speeds to better represent airframe size speed effects
- major air rebalance pass for airframes and modules
- increased tech date for survival studies to 1939
- Improved aircraft turrets
- slight decrease in agility hit for large bomb bays
- small airframe can only take single turret modules
- adjusted turret stats so they are less powerful for fighters but better for bombers
- rebalanced thrust and weights of modules and airframes,
- added new modules
- Large autocannon
- Large bomb rack
- Armor piercing bomb rack
- 3 levels of torpedo mounting
- Added new techs for plane designer (see above)
- Combat better Agility and Speed has increased effect on air combat

##########
Land
##########
- reduced terrain combat widths slightly, change support widths also
- Super Heavy tanks are now support units. Super Heavy tanks are no longer line battalions
- Armor skirts provide 1 more armor
- Most tank chassis' now grant 10-20% more armor
- Super heavy tanks now cost more overall, but require 20 per support company.

##########
Navy
##########
- added damage reduction to piecing thresholds for naval combat
- convoy hitprofile reduced from 120 to 85 bringing it inline with new hitprofile calculations
- Ship torpedoes accuracy increased to bring them back in line with new hitprofile calculations 145 > 100
- slightly decreased AA disruption from ship AA
- removed visibility effects of super heavy bb armor
- rebalanced, ship engines
- removed visibility impacts from medium guns
- rebalanced IC costs to reflect engine changes
- super heavy armor now part of normal heavy armors
- rebalanced armors
- added cruiser armor to carriers


##########
AI
##########
- AI more likely to upgrade division in the field even with equipment deficits
- added generic AI upgraded infantry template for late game infantry
- added ENG and USA upgraded infantry templates for AI and improved their infantry templates in general

Right now let's get into some explanations.

Thrust and weight:
Let's get the big one out the way thrust and weight for planes. This change requires a bit of game explanation and some explanation of aircraft. So why affect agility, agility previously was a stat that was seldom increased but often reduced by making it something you are rewarded by not using all your thrust budget you can lessen the agility effects of modules by not loading up your entire plane creating a choice between maximizing raw damage or maximizing damage bonuses during air to air combat by bring higher Agility.

Now the aircraft stuff, so power/weight is very not intuitive for aircraft, adding more power will make a plane faster but taking weight off a plane won't make it faster since speed is almost entirely determined by thrust against drag not weight. What less weight does provide is better climb rate acceleration plus some other things. These are abstracted into agility in game. So now if you want your plane to go faster you either use a newer airframe with lower drag (higher base speed) or by putting a bigger engine in the existing airframe.

Combat widths:
Now the next big change, terrain combat widths. This is the change that originally spawned the open beta idea. These changes are generally intended to flatten the efficiencies further for combat widths while also reducing division sizes. There will obviously still be certain numbers that fit better than others but overall these differences should be less extreme.

• Terrain = CW+Reinforcement Width
• Desert = 82+49
• Forest = 76+40
• Hills = 72+36
• Jungle = 74+34
• Marsh = 68+22
• Mountain = 65+25
• Plains = 82+49
• Urban = 86+28

Ship penetration:
Finally the last change I want to discuss is the new penetration effect for ships. To put this imply they now reduce damage directly on top of reducing critical chance. The damage reductions are smaller than for land combat but that's because they have a much greater effect on the combat but be careful defeating an armored foe with just small guns should be much harder now.

Thresholds and damage are as follows

Pen to Armor Threshhold	Critical Change Factor	Damage Factor
2	2	1
1	1	1
0.75	0.75	0.9
0.5	0.5	0.7
0.1	0.1	0.5
0	0	0.3

Spoiler: HOTFIX Changes

##########
HOTFIX
##########
07/07
- hotfix for legacy damage reduction for ships was conflicting with new system (they will now add to each other) set legacy value to 0
- hotfix for missing agility mods for bomb bays

10/07
Naval Combat:
- fixed damage reduction happening before stat initialisation
- fixed +1 to threshold values for ship penetration
issues reported here

Spoiler: Mid beta update

- updated combat width defines as per
- implemented type 2 combat widths as per
- improved some templates for planes
- balance pass on new modules
- rebalanced dismantle and conversion costs for BB engines
- adjusted damage reduction thresholds for ships

That concludes the run down of the upcoming “Summer open beta” and it's coming to you tomorrow!. I hope to see you try it out and give feedback on the changes. See you next week for more Arms Against Tyranny content coming your way. It's going to be a pretty one.

Finally found a time window to evaluate some aspects of the beta patch.


General base game:

-> Without any expansion active, puppets still do not give their masters any discount on resource trade. I think that this should be changed to fit the wiki values of a regular 'puppet'. This is especially disastrous for (AI) JAP early game which lacks both resources and industry to grow while having to wage a costly land war.

-> Vichy France should not freak out on the very moment it gets created. It thus draws AI Axis into additional African adventures which further hamper AI behaviour. It should instead start out in a neutral status like it does with LaR enabled.


Base game navy:

At first i'd like to thank @C0RAX for having a look at base game ship speed values and correct the BC II in comparison to BB II / III. That seems to fit fine now!

-> Please also accomodate the base game CV deck sizes - they still are at the whopping values that make it possible to reach (130/150/190/210 without the pacific fleet designers).


MtG navy:

-> CV conversions (cruiser) do not have any differing speed between cruiser engine I and II

-> CV conversions (cruiser) should definitely not require as much fuel as their larger siblings which have twice to three times their tonnage. The engines do also have much less horse powers to be fed. Those weak escort carriers should be much more fuel efficient than they are now.

-> The engine refits for heavy hulls have become even more expensive so that a refit of only the engine alone is almost as expensive as the whole fully equipped ship. Now an engine refit NEVER is an option any more. It was very expensive before but now it entirely expired.

-> Please reconsider AA effectivity on planes. Seems too strong ATM, making pure surface fleets way superior to carrier based ones.

-> on Japan: The Mogami cruisers stil are CL templates while the task force UI shows them depicted as CA (capital ships). Please finally decide what class they should have. If there's any reasoning behind it instead, i'd like to know about it.



Thanks for reading and please continue the good effort on improving the game!

 

[Graphite_66]

Something about equipment that should be addressed a long time ago:

Since NSB mechanized are upgradable with army exp. Why are amtraks not upgradable in the same manner? Amtraks are already more expensive (10 vs 8ic) and more ahead of time than their equivalent level mech, which is reasonable. But the lack of upgrades is not reasonable. Amtraks and mech should be upgradable in the same manner.

 

[HmJ_JP]

Something about equipment that should be addressed a long time ago:

Since NSB mechanized are upgradable with army exp. Why are amtraks not upgradable in the same manner? Amtraks are already more expensive (10 vs 8ic) and more ahead of time than their equivalent level mech, which is reasonable. But the lack of upgrades is not reasonable. Amtraks and mech should be upgradable in the same manner.

Good idea. But I would also see a mechanized designer coming soon and adopt the same language as the tank designer: specify which "hull" (normal, amphibious...) and maybe light defense + engine power. Then of course modules to add reliability/reduce production cost.

 

[Herennius]

Good idea. But I would also see a mechanized designer coming soon and adopt the same language as the tank designer: specify which "hull" (normal, amphibious...) and maybe light defense + engine power. Then of course modules to add reliability/reduce production cost.

Can't find the statement ATM, but I'm pretty sure someone from the dev team said that extending the tank designer in that direction isn't of the table (and it is something which would me personally very happy). However, doing it isn't trivial, as @CraniumMuppet pointed out here:

Designing Mot/Mech?

Looking on the dev diary, Mot/Mech will be upgradable, but not fully designed. But what if they could be fully designed in the tank designer? Everything to make a vehicle is there.

forum.paradoxplaza.com

In the DD about the tank designer, it was also mentioned that this was initially already planned (thats why we have wheeled/half-tracked suspensions for the light chassis at all):

HoI4 DevDiary - Tank Designer

Hello, and welcome back to another DevDiary about content coming in the 1.11 “Barbarossa” patch and its accompanying DLC. As always, keep in mind that the things shown in this DevDiary are still under development, so the numbers and UI might...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[HmJ_JP]

Can't find the statement ATM, but I'm pretty sure someone from the dev team said that extending the tank designer in that direction isn't of the table (and it is something which would me personally very happy). However, doing it isn't trivial, as @CraniumMuppet pointed out here:

Designing Mot/Mech?

Looking on the dev diary, Mot/Mech will be upgradable, but not fully designed. But what if they could be fully designed in the tank designer? Everything to make a vehicle is there.

forum.paradoxplaza.com

In the DD about the tank designer, it was also mentioned that this was initially already planned (thats why we have wheeled/half-tracked suspensions for the light chassis at all):

HoI4 DevDiary - Tank Designer

Hello, and welcome back to another DevDiary about content coming in the 1.11 “Barbarossa” patch and its accompanying DLC. As always, keep in mind that the things shown in this DevDiary are still under development, so the numbers and UI might...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Sure, it's in the air, but not yet for AAT release.

 

[Znail]

Sure, it's in the air, but not yet for AAT release.

That makes sense, even if they plan to do it as it's an enhancement of another DLC and have nothing to do with AAT, so would make more sense to add to a regular patch.

 

[HmJ_JP]

That makes sense, even if they plan to do it as it's an enhancement of another DLC and have nothing to do with AAT, so would make more sense to add to a regular patch.

Aren't they releasing a major patch every time a new DLC is out? I guess we'll all soon get a 1.13.x.

 

[HmJ_JP]

Two questions about the Summer open beta:

• there have been only 2 patch, right? I was expecting maybe some fine tuning along the month of July, but only the CW has been updated along the way.
• can I ask some feedback from the community if you tried to play as a Europe democracy (UK/France...) on historical path? I found Germany to be much more aggressive. As noticed earlier, this delays my victory by about a year compared to normal branch. Is it only due to my play style?

Replying to myself about the second question. I played even more games as the UK and France: as mentioned before, the opposition is getting fierce.
Very humbling: I used the same 1939-end game save as starting point, file attached above. The last playthrough was successful, but probably because IA was less aggressive (= I'm lucky). I'd say 60% of the runs were nearly disastrous, while the remaining 40% went well, but not as fast as usual.

About CW: 7/1, 8/1 and 9/1 have not much difference against Germany: if they pierce the front, you're done (Germany is mostly using 9/1).

Last comment, about air accidents: please look into that, even though it's not specific to this Summer Open Beta. It's suspicious how many planes I lose, especially in early game, but that's probably because all my wings are not concentrated on one air field, so accidents are multiplied.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

anyone noticed attrition hitting hard? i never did pay attention to attrition before, just noticed some divisions losing til 20% of strength just by walking on 'harder areas'