Developer Diary | Summer Open Beta

[GrandVezir]

As a long time HOI player and war history enthusiast, I am freely expressing my opinion. Do you have something against it?

I was asking you to elaborate: do you think Italy and Japan should have fewer research slots? That would model what you seem to favor: Germany/UK/USA on a higher research tier than France/Italy/Japan/USSR.

 

[SumZer0]

I have a few suggestions that will change a bunch of the mechanics in game. I think most of these are in line with paradox's goals, but some might not.
I am mainly a "meta" gamer that plays MP, but i still think some of my suggestions are appealing to SP players.

1. Increase ahead-of-time penalty. Currently it is by far the meta to research necessary equipment years ahead of time to not be behind. I think its unrealistic to get 1940 Fighters in early 1938 (or some cases 1937), and 1944 fighters in 1940/1941. This also causes entire (more like half) countries research capacity to go towards one single tank or plane for several years.
2. Reducing research bonuses. As it currently is, countries are designated to research a specific tech. Now it's somewhat realistic that some countries get it before someone else, but having a country that gets the technology 500 days+ before other countries means that they don't really have a choice. This also destroys some of the historical accuracy, as australia never was the great dogfighting nation. In general, 100% bonuses forces a country to rush it to get the proper technology, but this is really weird to do in real life. BBA somewhat fixes this, but the remaining countries still have sick bonuses.
3. Fix tanks. Because of the stats that modules and tank design choices give, there is a straight forward meta of having the cheapest tank with the highest attack and breakthrough. There is also no need to research better tank chassises, as you won't lose any stats, only reliability. It is also basically impossible to make an unpierceable tank nowadays, especially something that isn't insane. Armor also does less, due to changing the 40% armor bonus when not pierced from the 100% pierced to the 50% pierced point, armor is even worse than it already is. Riveted/welded/cast is completely broken, turret type's breakthrough will always favor the biggest, limited attack modules will cause people to pick small cannon and hmgs. Make better chassises more important, other than only the armor.
4. Reduce upgraded infantry equipment stats. Making infantry equipment 3 having 4x the soft attack of infantry equipment 0 is wild (and unrealistic). The defense is also incredibly high, meaning that proper infantry divisions will never be critted. This also causes that every country in a faction licenses the best infantry equipment from a specific nation. I don't find it rather historically accurate that the entire british army uses brazilian guns in 1941.
5. Change support companies. Having 6-8 max support companies in a division is both more realistic, and more fun. Military police was common in elite divisions (to my knowledge), but doesn't really have any offensive stats in vanilla. Making it give organization, and the bonuses give more is a fitting way. Playing around with recovery rate could also work. In general i think they should look over how support companies currently work.
6. Playing around with HP. Having doctrines affect HP could be really fun. It makes sense that deep battle would have less losses, and have more long term fighting style. Maybe field hospitals could give HP to make it a plausible support company to pick. Tech and national spirits could maybe affect it a bit too.
7. Other specific equipment fixes. Buffing AT 2 so its more in line with the hard attack increase (it is currently 20, 22 and 30 for the different equipments). Buffing armored cars, as they are really weak. Making the production cost upgrade on mechanized weaker, so mech aren't dirt cheap. Make rocket artillery be more unique from artillery, increase breakthrough, soft attack and IC cost. Buff SPAAs, so that they atleast get the air attack bonus from the AA tech (more base air attack is probably necessary too).
8. Doctrine rework. Deep battle having more of an effect, for example making battle out-of-supply penalties reduction, increase HP and recovery rate or increase entrenchment speed. All doctrines should give some bonus to attack, of course to varying degrees and depending on type. Grand battleplan rework, more focus on special forces and infantry/cavalry dominance, better tactics. Make reconnaisance on attack more important, attack counters defense tactics.
9. Fix old focus trees. You don't necessarily need a complete rework, but making the japan and germany focus trees last till 1944 would make sense. They should also be rebalanced (especially japan). TFV and DOD also have some insane research bonuses that forces a specific meta. The mech bonus in canada's focus tree, plane i australias, and plane in romania's makes them all do almost always the exact same thing
10. Reduce combat width of artillery. I believe that having artillery at 1 cw is both more accurate, and more fun. This means that it is easier to get the desired combat width (for your terrain), and that you can better balance your priorities. It also makes sense that they be in line with AT and AA. The only problem is that with the current meta of large combat widths, you are going to have a problem of getting everything into the same division that is also large enough to reach the desired width. If the division designer was changed, this would probably be fixed.
11. Nerf logistics Strike. No-Air builds are currently not viable in vanilla. This is because of how powerful logistics strike is. Paradox probably knows this, as it was heavily nerfed in their own mod, speed5 CiC. No-Air Russia's will never work in vanilla, which is a really sad meta. Most mods/rulesets remove/ban it, because of how powerful it is.

I also have a strong opinion on the combat width system, but i already have a comment on it in the appropriate thread.
Air and naval rework seems good, but a bit whack. Having such short range favours defenders even more, and makes it impossible for axis to ever get air over egypt/el-alemain. Torpedo module also seems to give less naval attack than the armor piercing bomb lock. I dont think the armor piercing bomb lock is appropriate at all, because it just causes an existantial crisis of what a naval bomber should be (unless you introduce some piercing mechanic to it). I also believe that agility should work in a way similar to the way it works in LW (or how i think it works), where agility fighters in general shoot down other fighters less, but are also less shot down themselves.
I haven't tested the naval stuff yet, but several other people have commented on it already.

Vanilla meta is in general very lopsided, so i think the developers should take some notes on the most popular MP mods, maybe even interview them for a better understanding of how to balance MP. It's definitely not easy, which is why i think the sum of knowledge will probably be the best.

 

[goodcigar]

Some naval edits I would suggest:

Add Sonar slot to Submarines. Sonar (at least the Submarine version) should have surface ship detection. It was used by Subs to detect surface ships.

Sonar should on surface ships should buff Depth Charges.

Fire Control should prob increase reliability not decrease it.

Submarines should have separate slots for Radar and Sonar and Snorkels so they can have all three. At least the later Submarine chassis.

Carrier deck armor should buff defense against CAS aircraft.

Heavy Cruiser batteries should maybe be given Light Attack and piercing making them able to attack Screen ships as in real life they were anti-Screen ships to my knowledge.

A bigger Super Heavy Battleship battery (51cm) should be added to the Research Tree. And/or a second tier of Super Heavy Battleship (Super Yamato Class).

Add a second tier of Cruiser Submarine so they don't simply become obsolete and useless.

Add anti-air slot to Submarines.

Add Fuel Tanks to all Submarine Chassis.

Separate Search Radar from Fire Control Radar.

 

[unmerged(742252)]

Excellent thank you! Do you ever see making certain division templates like mechanized, armored and larger variations of those divisions more of a target for the ai? I feel like I love the expert ai mod just for that. Beefy large divisions like that make pushing difficult especially on harder difficulty. I love a good struggle on the eastern front. I have more hours in this game than I'd care to admit and I would love to see this

Thanks for the awesome game! I cant wait for the next expansion

Previously generics nations were building 7/2's and then upgrading to 14/4's. now it builds just 7/2's but it will be upgrade further to make the 7/2 not the target template, probably something closer to 9/1 but that depends on how the CW changes shape out. majors mostly make 9/1 or 9/2's but also now add AA and AT but its specific to each nation.

you can check out all the target templates in SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Hearts of Iron IV\common\ai_templates

 

[wastednoob]

Plane type classification is only getting more unmanageable with the new changes.

Medium bomb bays are worse in every way for CAS missions than all levels of bomblocks. But theres only 2 options for mediums role defining slot, machine guns or medium bomb bay. Therefore the best medium bomber build is a heavy fighter with bomb locks, but in outliners it looks exactly like a heavy fighter so you can't use the bird sorting icon to have medium fighters+medium fighter bombers in the same air group.

Before it would be reasonable to manage by combining medium cas fighters with a few small fighters specialized for range on the same bird icon but since ranges are so nerfed the only way to get fighters in range is to use medium fighters. So to use a specialized medium bomber and a specialized medium fighter you can either use two separate air army groups on different tags or you have to accept using inefficient generalist medium fighter bomber design. Its a exercise in UI fustration.


The deeper issues are:

1. That the game treats a tiny manuverable plane and a big lumbering medium bomber as both being able to dive bomb equally well because a bomb pylon was attached to their wings.
2. Theres no medium cas role
3. Bomb bays being so categorically inferior to bomb locks in the CAS role and bombing sights in the strat role their only purpose is to be able to do the strat bombing mission. It feels bad to put these on your planes.
4. Plane roles are so broad it makes identifying what kind of plane your selecting in the air menus really fustrating.

 

[Znail]

Heavy Cruiser batteries should maybe be given Light Attack and piercing making them able to attack Screen ships as in real life they were anti-Screen ships to my knowledge.

Most realistic would be for Heavy Cruiser batteries to be classified as Medium Guns in between light and heavy. But this can also be done by just giving Heavy Crusier a bonus to accuracy for Heavy damage putting it more in the middle of accuracy of Light and Heavy. Damage would need a downwards adjustment to not make them too good as they shouldn't just be best at everything, but more jack of all trades.

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

Accuracy should be dynamic anyway. It's quite idiotic that a destroyer able to shot torpedoes at a battleship is for some reason as hard to hit for heavy guns as if those were shooting at 20+km away targets. Pure nonsense.

 

[kimidf]

I think the topic should be expanded to add only support brigades for heavy tanks as well, something historically was more correct about the role of those tanks

 

[Znail]

Accuracy should be dynamic anyway. It's quite idiotic that a destroyer able to shot torpedoes at a battleship is for some reason as hard to hit for heavy guns as if those were shooting at 20+km away targets. Pure nonsense.

Well, Japan used torpedoes that had 22km range at max speed or 40km at the slower setting. Destroyers were pretty hard targets to hit with big guns.

 

[WSnova]

Accuracy should be dynamic anyway. It's quite idiotic that a destroyer able to shot torpedoes at a battleship is for some reason as hard to hit for heavy guns as if those were shooting at 20+km away targets. Pure nonsense.

Well, the heavy guns are designed to operate at a range so it should be harder for the BB to shoot to a DD that is close enough for torpedoes. At least with its main battery. Thats why secondaries existed.

Overall I think its modelled Okish, except for Carriers and CAs. Should just be bombing the sea zone and not be in gunnery range(which I suggested somewhere that it could be modelled as a mission called Carrier mission or something) and use their superior scouting and spotting to actually avoid the battle. But of course you won´t get smexy battle screens to post them in reddit.

CAs and CLs I would rework the London Naval treaty so that you have actual caps per ship classso that you have to build CLs once you have your CA quota. I´d make the current Light Cruiser battery the CA battery and make another(no more research, make it unlockable on the small battery tech) CL battery which would be worse than the current CL battery but better than the DD battery. CAs and CLs should be on the screening line.

Cruisers are on a weird position, their roles overlap. The made up role of Poor man BB is useless right now and when it was good it was ridiculous. Cruisers are meant to be good against smaller ships.

CAs, as they were(haven´t tested them yet on this patch) were not very useful, get destroyed by CLs at same NIC, can´t stand up to Heavy ships. They don´t even make for decent cannon fodder for the 2nd line since they die so easily

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

Well, Japan used torpedoes that had 22km range at max speed or 40km at the slower setting. Destroyers were pretty hard targets to hit with big guns.

With the speed of like 48 and 36 knots respectively, yeah. A ship sailing away at 30 knots renders those 22km marching range into just 7. And that thing still had to be actually aimed, to my knowledge. And that was by far the best torpedo by range and speed that we're talking of.

 

[Xiziz]

Having played around a little and myself modded the modules quite a bit this is my spontaneous thoughts after playing with the new air-stats in the designer.

Range is in a very good spot now, it will actually matter most of the game which aircraft you base where. I like this a lot! Also makes the fuel and drop tank modules useful.

Great with splitting the torps and bomb locks!

Excess thrust turning into AGI is a lot better than speed!

My biggest caveat is that a lot of modules have very steep penalties that make them more or less useless outside very specific applications (Like non-strat materials for reducing alu cost, but the resulting aircraft can't fight because its lost most of its defence) or have odd bonuses(dive brakes increasing defence instead of say a +*% ground attack/+x naval targeting bonus). Bomb sights increasing damage by a flat amount instead of a multiplier(more of the carried ordinance on target) etc. In my opinion modules should be mostly bonuses that are limited by slot/xp/IC or weight, it makes for more fun design instead of "I could take this module but I have to eat this penalty so I better just take the armour as usual". (Also, armour is not limited per airframe, neither by weight nor number, ssft are)

I also think that the jet vs engine 3/4 could be cooler. The early jets that came about during and right after ww2 had abysmal thrust output compared to the advanced prop engines. I played with reducing the thrust of them but adding back agility, so they have lower thrust than Engine 3 but with a +15 agility bonus. So 1Jet has 20thrust and if you want to put a lot of equipment on it you will need that second jet(30 thrust) that the Me 262 and Meteor(and a lot of the various jet prototypes) had, while 1jet having enough to build a simpler small jet like the He 162. (I guess there could be a later more powerful jet 2 for the end of war/afterwar jets like the Shooting star, Vampire, Sabre, MiG-15 etc)

Rocket engines also are in a bit of a sore spot, the range reduction really kills their use, they could at least be a lot cheaper(and probably have less thrust too) and instead reduce reliability.

Floats/flying boats could be made better, increase range and detection etc to make up for the loss of speed(carrier aircraft could probably have been handled the same way with "carrier adaptions module" instead of an airframe)

I'm looking forward to keep playing this beta patch, I've made some modifications myself and will likely keep adjusting them until I'm happy.

 

[FLUX2226]

Strategic destruction, except that we're destroying the fighters directly instead of the factories that produce them.

Spoiler: 1940 and 1944 anti-fighter bomber

Such designs are not very good at bombing fortified targets like the UK, but without static AA the AI will pay dearly trying to stop these flying fortresses from chipping away at their supply lines and airfields. I've finished a game as fascist Hungary today where my main contribution to the Axis' war machine was strat bombers, and I've achieved kill ratios of up to 20:1 in Greece and during the Italian civil war. I don't know how the buffed turrets perform under normal circumstances, but the buff is definitely doing something and I'm a big fan of it

 

[WSnova]

Damn, did a quick test of Torpedo DDs vs unscreened BBs. Before, the DDs won but they took much heavier losses.

Now the Torpedo DDs sink the BBs so fast that they only took 11 ships out of 67. The 6 BBs were sunk to the last.

Even when screened 5 BBs 20 DDs vs the same 67 torpedo DDs. The DDs win, but by a very narrow margin. Torpedo vs BBs sink them too fast. Before, the 2nd battle with all BB DDs sunk the BBs would win because they thinned out herd enough in the 1st battle and then htey could sink the remaining DDs. Now as soon as the screening line loses efficiency the BBs start taking a lot of damage. Even when its a small amount of DDs they start torpedoing them too death. Seems like a bit too much.

Even before Submarines in a big number would overwhelm smaller screens with little detection and no ASW and managed to sink everything. With the new more accurate torpedoes they will be a terror for Roach DDs screens.

Torpedoes seem much more effective now. I wonder if it will become a race of who will sink the screens again so that they can torpedo everything again.

Also armor seems to be much less useful now? Before and this I can be pretty sure since it was something I tested several times. Armored CLs were preety cost effective against DDs beating them with around 30% of the NIC invested. Now I can´t even beat DDs with 50% NIC invested

Look what they did to our boys.

When I tested same NIC values, the DDs damaged heavily the armored CLs(around 50% STR damage), vs the unarmoured ones they barely did damage since the damage was more spread out and I had more Light attack to win the DPS race. Rest in Power Armor CLs.

Or maybe I need to set everything up from a fresh save. Tested armor CLs vs no armor CLs and the armor CLs won,15 vs 12. Only lost 2. I am pretty sure previously they rarely lost ships but I am not too sure and since I don´t take this test seriously I didn´t keep records. But at least for now , to me, it seems like armor is less useful and Torpedoes do much more damage.

I actualy went back to the live version:

1936 Torpedo Boat

1,110.00

67.00

74,370.00

vs

1936 LA CL A	5,881.00	2.00	11,762.00
1936 Roach DD	750.00	20.00	15,000.00
1936 BB	12,014.00	4.00	48,056.00
Total		26.00	74,818.00

Battles:

In the Open Beta:

Torpedo DDs seem pretty powerful. Dunno if something changed regarding DD gun (they had the dual purpose one) but it seems DDs are better at sinking stuff. Even before DD vs DD they took longer to sink them.

I wonder how much it has affected Submarines, they were p. powerful before when massed...

 

[goodcigar]

Strategic destruction, except that we're destroying the fighters directly instead of the factories that produce them.

Spoiler: 1940 and 1944 anti-fighter bomber

View attachment 1003800

View attachment 1003801

Such designs are not very good at bombing fortified targets like the UK, but without static AA the AI will pay dearly trying to stop these flying fortresses from chipping away at their supply lines and airfields. I've finished a game as fascist Hungary today where my main contribution to the Axis' war machine was strat bombers, and I've achieved kill ratios of up to 20:1 in Greece and during the Italian civil war. I don't know how the buffed turrets perform under normal circumstances, but the buff is definitely doing something and I'm a big fan of it

They really should have added more distinction to aircraft turrets. As well as added actual physical locations for the modules on aircraft imo. Big difference between basic fixed turrets and rotating ball turrets and remote control turrets.

 

[WSnova]

Such designs are not very good at bombing fortified targets like the UK, but without static AA the AI will pay dearly trying to stop these flying fortresses from chipping away at their supply lines and airfields. I've finished a game as fascist Hungary today where my main contribution to the Axis' war machine was strat bombers, and I've achieved kill ratios of up to 20:1 in Greece and during the Italian civil war. I don't know how the buffed turrets perform under normal circumstances, but the buff is definitely doing something and I'm a big fan of it

Noice. 1600-1800 range is not enough to reach the caucasus to bomb the soviet oil. use 1 extra fuel tank instead of 1 turret and you can reach from ROmania. I actually like that there are many builds to play with.

 

[HmJ_JP]

I've been playing 3 complete games over the weekend, until 1949. So, first thing first: great initiative, thank you for opening the beta, it's fun to see this familiar game, albeit with slightly different parameters.

About the air balance: seems good, I'm satisfied especially with turrets & range.
About the naval balance: I had strange battles were I lost many screens that I couldn't replicate. All in all, seems in line with expectations, as does naval bombing.
About Research: this I'm more mitigated. Having more slots to be searched isn't a bad idea, but it shifts too much into middle game/end game. For countries with 5 slots by 1938 it's ok, but for others it's a real pain. I'd see some rebalance so that base cost of air/naval modules get cheaper. And/or that we can spend our XP to accelerate development. Or better discount when countries in same faction have found the research.

Last point: it's good to push Survivability studies to 1939, but in general I have a hard time seeing which year comes which module. Infantry/Air especially are complex to read: I prefer the Infantry tab, showing more years for each coordinate. Looks stupid, but helpful.

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

Torpedoes seem much more effective now. I wonder if it will become a race of who will sink the screens again so that they can torpedo everything again.

One wonders what was the rationale behind boosting torpedoes in the first place. All those synthetic tests of torpedo DDs vs unscreened capitals couldn't have ingnited much zeal, given how screening provides an unrivaled +40% hit chance regardless of any naval terrain and other tactical considerations, such as speed or range (oh wait, we don't have any), and one would want to be screened at all times. So it must have been something else.

This all looks grossly unhealthy. Torpedo tech, DD admiral perks and SS tech all spiral up significantly quicker than corresponding boosts to heavier ships (not to mention them taking ages to produce, thus always lagging behind in tech against small craft), so the inclusion of 1940/44 tech and all the beefy stuff might show particularly spicy outcomes.

I can't help adding that the Japanese torpedo runs (featuring those omnipotent Type 93 mentioned above, yes) were marred by friendly fire in a battle listing as little as 9 DDs (plus few cruisers) against just two cruisers of the enemy (Sunda Strait). Torpedoes are not shells, and they need unobstructed access to their intended targets, lest [not so] funny things happen. Coordinating dozens of suicide-minded DDs in the way HoI4 allows it might have been quite a task IRL, provided the Decisive Battle had actually happened.

 

[Umbosch]

I think there is a prob with the airfield.

 

[HmJ_JP]

Yep, it often happens with air regions.