• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Developer Diary | Summer Open Beta

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.

################################################################
######## 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 ThreshholdCritical Change FactorDamage Factor
221
111
0.750.750.9
0.50.50.7
0.10.10.5
000.3

##########
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

- 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.
 
Last edited:
  • 51Like
  • 16Love
  • 4
  • 3
  • 1
Reactions:
hat is a good point - I do put radar on the 20-or-so destroyers I build as the UK for anti-submarine work.

I was thinking of screen destroyers when I said I'd not put radars on destroyers - I always maximise sub detection on my sub-hunter destroyers.

Ehh, I usually don´t bother with specialized DD models. Since DDs are not good at anything other than finding and sinking subs I usually add Depth charges, sonar, and maybe radar and torpedoes if I am feeling rich. Once war starts I just keep spamming ASW DDs and Convoys. Any spare DD I put them on convoy e-sports duty and they do a good job of killing subs.
 
Congratulations, with 1940 technologies, using planes with 3 armor piercing bomb locks and dive brakes and also torpedo bombers, a mixed fleet with carriers, battleships and screens is now significantly stronger than a pure battleship fleet of same IC cost, taking half of the plane cost into account. That looks historically fine. Only major issue is that torpedoes are still somewhat too weak.
 
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
I think you implemented one fix with submarine torpedoes: going from Torpedoes I to II slightly reduce the speed, I don't recall it has been notified anywhere.

1689208184673.png


1689208207546.png
 
  • 2
Reactions:
Guided Anti Ship missile attack value should probably be similar to the 2nd tier aerial torpedo. The Hs 293 had 290kg explosive mass. most early aerial torpedoes had explosive mass of around 170kg and the more advanced late aerial torpedoes had 350kg+(420kg for the biggest of the type91 variants) So the Hs 293 sits just above the middle of that spread and should probably have a naval attack value similar or slightly above the 2nd tier torpedo. You could also consider 2 tiers of guided ship missiles since the HS 293 was meant to attack lighter ships and the fritz x(technically a bomb i know) was designed for more armored targets. Also the ASM-N-2 bat bomb had almost 500kg explosive mass.

Love seeing more balance changes. Keep up the good work. Thanks for all the fun.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Guided Anti Ship missile attack value should probably be similar to the 2nd tier aerial torpedo. The Hs 293 had 290kg explosive mass. most early aerial torpedoes had explosive mass of around 170kg and the more advanced late aerial torpedoes had 350kg+(420kg for the biggest of the type91 variants) So the Hs 293 sits just above the middle of that spread and should probably have a naval attack value similar or slightly above the 2nd tier torpedo. You could also consider 2 tiers of guided ship missiles since the HS 293 was meant to attack lighter ships and the fritz x(technically a bomb i know) was designed for more armored targets. Also the ASM-N-2 bat bomb had almost 500kg explosive mass.

Love seeing more balance changes. Keep up the good work. Thanks for all the fun.
Yep, that's a great addition. I'd like to see country keeping specialization with some specific armaments (e.g Japan high torpedo efficiency, Germany guided bomb/missile...). If all majors can develop all technologies by mid-game, it's not so funny.
 
Congratulations, with 1940 technologies, using planes with 3 armor piercing bomb locks and dive brakes and also torpedo bombers, a mixed fleet with carriers, battleships and screens is now significantly stronger than a pure battleship fleet of same IC cost, taking half of the plane cost into account. That looks historically fine. Only major issue is that torpedoes are still somewhat too weak.
Yeah, those AP bombs are pretty stronk, especially on CVs who don´t need range.
 
Overall with respect to Air very fine and welcome changes.

The only issue I see is that with the quality techs (engine III, armor, sealed fuel tanks) being pushed to quite late dates the early game airplane designs feel quite similar and offer equal matchups in the air (yes I'm trying to overpower the Lufwaffe as France in 1939). Hopefully this will change with the introduction of MIOs.

Otherwise, has German production AI gotten a revamp? Previously AI Germany struggled with maintaining a fleet of more than 1.5 k fighters. Now they're churning out fighters (albeit not of the best quality) like mad, sometimes having 40 mils on air production). I'm loving it. Previously I could simply outlast and out produce Germany with 20-25 mils on airplanes until I got green air. Now I have to actively wrest control of the skies with plane designs that are slightly better than German but still cheap enough to have a fleet of 2.5 k.
 
  • 3
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Overall with respect to Air very fine and welcome changes.

The only issue I see is that with the quality techs (engine III, armor, sealed fuel tanks) being pushed to quite late dates the early game airplane designs feel quite similar and offer equal matchups in the air (yes I'm trying to overpower the Lufwaffe as France in 1939). Hopefully this will change with the introduction of MIOs.

Otherwise, has German production AI gotten a revamp? Previously AI Germany struggled with maintaining a fleet of more than 1.5 k fighters. Now they're churning out fighters (albeit not of the best quality) like mad, sometimes having 40 mils on air production). I'm loving it. Previously I could simply outlast and out produce Germany with 20-25 mils on airplanes until I got green air. Now I have to actively wrest control of the skies with plane designs that are slightly better than German but still cheap enough to have a fleet of 2.5 k.
That's right, and don't forget the substantial increase in air accidents: air war is doomed in early war.
 
BC armour level 3 has same speed reduction as BB armour 3. For the other levels, the BB armour has 5% less speed than the corresponding BC armour. Looks like an oversight.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I have problems after upgrade my airuntis. I build the new type but he fill not up the wings. And how you can see at the last build he copy the stack but it keep 10. The different weelky proudction comes from the convesion of the stockpile. But this was useless too. And i ask me from where get i in some of my games the Ki-1?

1689252474886.png


1689252499010.png


1689252527797.png


1689252577931.png


1689252721666.png


1689254065886.png



After Destroying Ki-3. With Ki-3 Kai A the same.

1689254160572.png
 
Last edited:
Since Subs were mentioned, could the values on Snorkels possibly be looked into? I am actually not 100% certain if this is true myself, but it is very common perception in multiplayer community that Snorkels are very OP and are usually banned. It seems like something that could be easily nerfed if this is the case.
 
###############
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


This will be the last update short of any hotfixes.
 
  • 6Like
Reactions:
Just had a quick look at the air modules - looks like some good changes, especially for drop tanks and how they were stacking with Extra Fuel Tanks.

Would you be able to look at 'anti tank cannon 1' at some point for CAS and TAC?
Seems like it may have been missed or not updated with other changes as it is worse or equal in every metric compared to the its competitor, Small Bomb Bays.
 
I am glad they have made the CV Torpedo bomber more viable. I am using the Medium Torpedo mounting here.

1689265430496.png


Still has lower stats than the CV CAS but it requires less research and an older airframe also does the job.
 
  • 3
Reactions: