Developer Diary | Summer Open Beta

[69arthurrr]

This CW change isn't solution. This change will literally annoy players instead changing the game. Like you want to fight in USSR, you have mostly forests and plains in Europe part, this can be easy. But you have France, you can't free operate with tanks without getting headache. You won't have time to care about CW, you want to push France as Germany, but France has plains, hills, forests and some mountains, and I have to remember that all these things will be ruined by rivers. Maybe instead changing CW of terrains, could be better change CW of battalions, support companies, maybe give to every doctrine thing like Massive Assault has. I think this idea (make really different numbers for every terrain) can work, but it will require to increase CW on all terrains and change division designer to have more battalions to change, and make finding largest common divisor for certain theatre as I said.

@Corax I don't normally post here, but I'm part of a community of very experienced & active multiplayer players who effectively use the most popular "vanilla lite" mod (elwolf 000s of subscribers) - i.e. we keep things as close as possible as to how you devs set it up outside of some minor quality of life and performance optimisation changes for multiplayer. As someone who has 5,000 + hours (I know, v. sad) I generally don't comment on changes as I love the product your team has built and most things can be massaged for a multiplayer setting.

However, these combat width changes are really grating - you've effectively buffed defensive units which fit into more fungible small combat width sizes and nerfed 40+ width attacking divisons (tanks).

Now the key terrain change is FORESTS!!! they shouldn't be an odious 76 width they are simply to common on barb (eastern front), it simply detracts from the quality of life of players (single player and multiplayer) without adding meaningful strategic depth (its almost feels like the devs are trolling the player-base xD) - please consider revising the forest width up to 80 width to a lesser extent it would be nice to see hills in the 74-78 range.

My other concern is reinforcement width, now you have this arbitrary 76+40 and 82+49, it will make combat in more than one direction extremely ugly, as the way smaller divs reinforce in to the combat will be very difficult to control.

Overall I don't think you should fix something that isn't broken.

The other changes look interesting, I always appreciate attempts to keep the game fresh & improve on the already great product.

 

[Saevynn]

I got scared that flame tank support has been removed but it just didn't show on support companies list untill I made a flame tank template.
Could this be changed to that we can see the light/medium/heavy/modern (idk if there is a modern flame tank) flame support companies as soon as we research engeeners 2, not as soon as we create a flame tank template?

Unless it's been already thought about and it's in the game as it is to not clog the support companies list?

 

[C0RAX]

@Corax I don't normally post here, but I'm part of a community of very experienced & active multiplayer players who effectively use the most popular "vanilla lite" mod - i.e. we keep things as close as possible as to how you devs set it up outside of some minor quality of life and performance optimisation changes for multiplayer. As someone who has 5,000 + hours (I know, v. sad) I generally don't comment on changes as I love the product your team has built and most things can be massaged for a multiplayer setting.

However, these combat width changes are really grating - you've effectively buffed defensive units which fit into more fungible small combat width sizes and nerfed 40+ width attacking divisons (tanks).

Now the key terrain change is FORESTS!!! they shouldn't be an odious 76 width they are simply to common on barb (eastern front), it simply detracts from the quality of life of players (single player and multiplayer) without adding meaningful strategic depth (its honestly feels like the devs are trolling the playerbase xD) - please consider revising the forest width up to 80 width to a lesser extent it would be nice to see hills in the 74-78 range.

The other changes look interesting, I always appreciate attempts to keep the game fresh & improve on the already great product.

As I said in the DD, this beta is about having a discussion, iterating on ideas and improving the balance changes so feedback is always welcome. thanks for the opinion.

 

[69arthurrr]

As I said in the DD, this beta is about having a discussion, iterating on ideas and improving the balance changes so feedback is always welcome. thanks for the opinion.

Understood and congratulations on the update so far.

My advice is to lend an ear to your hardcore player-base, we might not be the most numerous but we really understand your product! We are content creators, game hosts, and community ambassadors who help to keep your product relevant & most importantly, community alive.

 

[LordWahu]

With the Superheavy tanks becoming Support, can you leave the SHTD and SHAA hardcoded in (Even if you can't make them) so modders can make armored cars and mechanized vehicles using the designer?

Basically setting it up so that modders can make "SHTD" equipment required for mechanized companies, allowing you to design your own half-tracks and the like

 

[Rafomom]

The big point with this is the efficiency difference is very low from one CW to another so you don't need to care so much so long as you in are in the "good" range of CW's somewhere between 10-45cw. of course you can specifically design for a terrain type but this is a rare case.

I think this is a trouble, which should be fixed, but the real solution could be make average base CW as 150-190 with decreasing infantry battalion to approximately 500 manpower, and make possibility to put 50 battalions in the division, this can give:
1. Range of CW 2-100, which could help with N CW meta
2. More range of CW for terrains
3. More varieties of the greatest common divisors for divisions, because the main trouble of 40-45W now, because these divisions can fight anywhere except mountains.
As 69arthurrr said earlier, this iteration of changes will ruin Barbarossa very much. Increasing CW number for terrains and divisions can help to decrease "good" range for a lot of war theatres, without making players to have math PHD for playing HoI4. With things I said earlier to give several support corps CW and make all doctrines to change CW of division, this can increase fun of warfare.

 

[C0RAX]

Do the 3 new Torpedo Mount modules fix the issue of Torpedoes being the only plane weapon that only lose their weight when not mounted, but still keep their agility penalty on non-naval missions?

no agility or weight effects when not on mission

 

[C0RAX]

If Super Heavies are now support companies, are there any restrictions on what they can do/be in? Paradropping Super Heavy Tanks would be really stupid for example.

Super Heavies should not be airdroppable

 

[Crecer13]

Transport aircraft persistently continue to be ignored.

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

I get the feeling a lot of HOi4 devs think players are microing everything at speed 1 for the entire war.

But I am...

 

[Rafomom]

@Corax I don't normally post here, but I'm part of a community of very experienced & active multiplayer players who effectively use the most popular "vanilla lite" mod (elwolf 000s of subscribers) - i.e. we keep things as close as possible as to how you devs set it up outside of some minor quality of life and performance optimisation changes for multiplayer. As someone who has 5,000 + hours (I know, v. sad) I generally don't comment on changes as I love the product your team has built and most things can be massaged for a multiplayer setting.

However, these combat width changes are really grating - you've effectively buffed defensive units which fit into more fungible small combat width sizes and nerfed 40+ width attacking divisons (tanks).

Now the key terrain change is FORESTS!!! they shouldn't be an odious 76 width they are simply to common on barb (eastern front), it simply detracts from the quality of life of players (single player and multiplayer) without adding meaningful strategic depth (its almost feels like the devs are trolling the player-base xD) - please consider revising the forest width up to 80 width to a lesser extent it would be nice to see hills in the 74-78 range.

The other changes look interesting, I always appreciate attempts to keep the game fresh & improve on the already great product.

Got some thought, not only players will have troubles with changing CW to this, but AI too, because without having universal CW, AI can't fight, this can ruin vanilla experience, ruin Expert AI mod with other cool mods, which really got a good AI, like Equestria at War.

 

[C0RAX]

With the Superheavy tanks becoming Support, can you leave the SHTD and SHAA hardcoded in (Even if you can't make them) so modders can make armored cars and mechanized vehicles using the designer?

Basically setting it up so that modders can make "SHTD" equipment required for mechanized companies, allowing you to design your own half-tracks and the like

all the super heavy variants will remain

 

[Agiknight]

Got some thought, not only players will have troubles with changing CW to this, but AI too, because without having universal CW, AI can't fight, this can ruin vanilla experience, ruin Expert AI mod with other cool mods, which really got a good AI, like Equestria at War.

Expert AI mod & others will adapt just as they did to the first round of combat width changes. Prior to this beta, the old 20w/40w meta was replaced by slightly less optimal 21w/42w meta with a little bit of room for other widths but really that was the main 2.

This new batch makes it far less important to have the "correct" width, so this should help AI and "historical" designs some. There are still good widths and bad widths, but no more "correct" widths.

I do share the concern others have shared about Barbarossa & Forest width. I think it is important that a 40w-45w tank can work in Plains & Forest & Urban. It's effectively a giant nerf to tanks making a 40w+ division have really poor width usage in forest, which I don't think was exactly the goal.

 

[pheonicia]

Press f to pay respects to the 25 battalion super heavy tank destroyer division.

 

[The Colonel]

I'm just curious what the goal was with the air changes, esp. reducing ranges and engine thrust. It just seems like it nerfs a lot of the effectiveness of air as you basically must have drop tanks and extra fuel tanks to have usable light airframes, which I guess could sorta make sense with adding more powerful techs for CAS and NAVs, but it seems to me like it would make air less worth interacting with overall when you have to sacrifice so much to achieve range. Outside of Europe, I bet AI will never get more than like 20% efficiency on missions against me, so why even bother making planes when you can just make more land units and run over them faster.

I'd say it's annoying for MP as a primarily MP player (because projecting air superiority to push is very important), but I don't really expect balance to be purely MP-compliant and we can mod anyway if necessary.

Also I will second the opinion that I really hope y'all are working on carrier mechanics in the background. Carrier fighters not stopping land-based planes at all makes them basically useless, and land-based bombers striking a carrier task force with impunity outside of naval combat, which can easily sink carriers due to how targeting priority works, feels really bad and ahistorical. They're also not even good vs. enemy carrier bombers, better to just stack your own bombers and hope to kill the enemy faster.

 

[punnykobold]

Until the core combat math of the game (breakthrough, crits, coordination, targeting) changes, bigger divisions will always be better for attacking, so any decrease to effective combat width just makes offense harder, it doesn't shift the meta with regards to division design. I want to echo what Arthur said above - forest tiles are some of the most decisive terrain in the game, and leaving them below 80 width is significantly hindering the ability of players to attack them, producing slower, less satisfying games.

There's another important effect of these changes that I think is worth mentioning - newer players rely on google searches to figure out what divisions to make. For the entire post NSB period, 21 and 42 have been some of the most ideal widths - new players will see those recommended in almost every thread here, every thread on reddit, and in the vast majority of YouTube videos created by knowledgeable players. Those widths are now incredibly subpar compared to their numerical neighbors. I don't know if these tweaks, even if they do result in good outcomes, are worth potentially disorienting learning players to this extent. Knowledge in this game is hard enough to acquire - I don't think it makes sense to invalidate past guides for what seems like a poorly defined reason.

On another note, why are reinforcement widths so awkward? Ever since hoi3, I've been mostly used to reinforcement frontage being half of the width a single tile attack gives you - obviously that currently isn't the case for mountains and urban tiles, but fully scrapping that rule of thumb confuses me more than a little bit. It seems like the only effect will be to create really confusing over/understacking situations in multiple-combat scenarios.

 

[TheNoobNoob]

My SHBB lost 4 knots out of nowhere under the same design. I'd hate that alone already. The rest of ships seem to be intact.

(It's nice things are finally set in motion, though, and at least having some options is good.)

edit: base ship_hull_super_heavy_1 speed is now 24. Oh, boy...

edit2: @C0RAX and also speed penalty from ship_armor_shbb is inconsistent with those of bb/bc, hence such a drastic drop in speed I observe for the class. (And it also misses HP, haha). If you insist the hull to be that slow in its base, the ship needs a new set of engines, then. Propelling a far larger and heavier ship with a stock BB engine is unrealistic, everyone would utilize that space to install more boilers.

I now tag-switched to JAP and their historical Jamato design is... 20.6 knots. That's unreasonable.

It's also missing an entire gun, and because of the stupid base refit cost (gj on another math error paradox) u cant give it the later refits that gave it more AA

 

[coffeelingfine]

what happens to the super heavy 3D model? Will it still be a selectable model in the division designer?

 

[.Raptor.]

yep the current change is just moving SH tanks to support, based on the feedback we will move them all over to support in future

Please do that

I’d enjoy a Super Heavy Self Propelled artillery support unit quite a lot I imagine.

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

It's also missing an entire gun, and because of the stupid base refit cost (gj on another math error paradox) u cant give it the later refits that gave it more AA

IRL it's even 3 guns, provided a main turret featured 3 guns each (and that was the first time the Japanese Navy did that ever), but yeah those excuses "2 batteries are 3 turrets by design" were getting old even by the time of MtG release, let alone now when both tank and air designers specify in plain words what your modules are supposed to represent and how many of those (e.g. 4x light machine guns) you're actually about to fit.

I'm a simple man: I see a turret, I consider it a turret.