Developer Diary | Summer Open Beta

[HmJ_JP]

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

Attrition + air accidents mean that you constantly need to keep producing, while stocks aren't great. It seems it solves one problem for those having slow PCs, but that was not needed for everyone.

 

[Kanitatlan]

@C0RAX A few questions triggered by the super heavy tank change

• Has there been any consideration for making heavy tanks an attachment in the same way as the super heavies?
• With the increase in support company types, has there been any consideration for increasing the maximum number (in vanilla)?
• How about having some support companies be support battalions simply as a way to regulate that a division can only have one of them rather than having any other properties?

I'm interested in what the team may have thought on the subject.

 

[goodcigar]

So there's now an air speed cap for airframes. So max speed is pre-determined by the airframe and can't be increased. I don't think that's a good idea. Also extra thrust now converts into agility which doesn't make any sense to begin with, but also agility doesn't do much for a plane's combat ability in general. Also air range is significantly reduced across the board now. I don't think that's a good idea either. They should add a new "Drag" stat to airframes and connect speed/agility to that.

 

[C0RAX]

So there's now an air speed cap for airframes. So max speed is pre-determined by the airframe and can't be increased. I don't think that's a good idea. Also extra thrust now converts into agility which doesn't make any sense to begin with, but also agility doesn't do much for a plane's combat ability in general. Also air range is significantly reduced across the board now. I don't think that's a good idea either. They should add a new "Drag" stat to airframes and connect speed/agility to that.

The maximum speed of a plane is the combination of the base speed of the airframe + the engine and any other speed modifiers from design companies/MIO's or national spirits etc... in this case the base speed of an airframe is functionally a representation of drag since its the only additive value with all others being factors on that base.

So an engine 4 on a modern airframe will give you a higher speed than an engine 4 on an IW airframe, and a 2 engine small airframe will have a different speed than a 2 engine medium airframe of the same tech level.

 

[styroler]

I did a write up of my thoughts on some of the changes a while ago on the suggestions forum not realizing I was meant to post them here. The others were minor but I think this problem I identified is significant enough that it still needs to be addressed:

Jet Engines seem to have received a huge nerf recently. They have reduced range and reduced thrust. I understand this is meant to boost late game aircraft engines, but honestly I feel like this may have gone a little overboard. First off Jets dont really seem to have enough thrust to add all the late game modules (which feels odd when you're talking about what is supposed to be a next-gen plane) and the range reduction, particularly on small aircraft which already received a huge range nerf, really hurts. All they get is speed, which isnt as important of a buff particularly in this later patch. This makes them feel less like futuristic techs and more like novelty weapons, which seems like a mistake since a) they are a late game "wonderweapon" tech which literally requires you to go through multiple techs to get anyway, so should be a little more rewarding, and b) they won out in real life - yes the earliest generation didnt compete in every level with the latest generation of prop engines, but overall they did win out and the game should make it feel much more of a question of when rather than if that transition occurs (instead of a novelty weapon which truly does feel like a question of if). The Novelty speed engine is already filled by the rocket engine anyway so it’s really not necessary to have that niche filled twice by what is supposed to be the future of aircraft. I am keeping in mind the intention to not make obsolete final tier regular engines though so I have two possible solutions to fix it:

A. Reduce the nerf somewhat in one of the categories. Give it slightly more thrust or slightly less range reduction, so players arent left questioning if they even want Jet engines. Right now they just feel too nerfed and feel like a downgrade when you add, which seems really odd when the late game is supposed to transition into the Jet age.
B. Add a second tier of Jet engines which is a total upgrade but is a post-ww2 tech. This would essentially be a Jet Engine II which has equal (or even greater) thrust than the final tier of regular Engines and reduced range reduction but is a super late game tech whos year is like 1948 or something. This solution would be great for a number of reasons. First it would really make the player feel like they are transitioning into the jet age as theyre moving away from the experimental Jets into the more advanced Jets of the post war. Second it would still give late regular engines plenty of time to stay relevant while still giving them a sort of post war expiration date. Third it would add another Jet technology, which would be great since alot of nations get Jet research bonuses and By Blood Alone eliminated a couple of Jet Techs which were meant to be super late game Jet upgrades anyway so this would rectify that a bit. This would eliminate the odd scenarios where you're still better off adding a prop-engine to an a modern air frame than an actual Jet (which in my experience is generally what you do even in the super late game).

Also one other suggestion not related to this. Since carriers have armor now, wouldn’t it make more sense for Converted battle ships to have battleship armor rather than cruiser armor (maybe with a debuff to maximum air wings). It just seems kinda odd these ships loose their main armor with the transition.

 

[goodcigar]

This mod "GSP's US General to China Fix" fixed an oversight. Not sure if the game still has the bug or not. Bringing your attention to it.

Steam Workshop::GSP's US General to China Fix

steamcommunity.com

 

[Gort11]

Oh, I got booted back to the regular branch from the beta branch. Guess the beta's over?

 

[HmJ_JP]

Oh, I got booted back to the regular branch from the beta branch. Guess the beta's over?

Really? Seems ongoing to me:

 

[Ringwraith_JP]

Yup, its gone.

 

[HmJ_JP]

Really? Seems ongoing to me:

View attachment 1010343

Oh sh... I restarted Steam and yes, now it's gone

 

[C0RAX]

The 4 weeks are over, glad to see how much interest was shown. We will be sending out a feedback form if you want to have any final say. the changes will now be refined for the full release of 1.13 alongside Arms Against Tyranny

 

[Masterbobli]

The 4 weeks are over, glad to see how much interest was shown. We will be sending out a feedback form if you want to have any final say. the changes will now be refined for the full release of 1.13 alongside Arms Against Tyranny

Is that the reason why the QAs appear to be paying much less attention to bug reports this week?

 

[Harin]

Is that the reason why the QAs appear to be paying much less attention to bug reports this week?

Even though we have seen developers on the forums, most of the HOI4 team (and much of Sweden?) has been on summer vacation.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

Any predictions for the release of the AAT?

 

[C0RAX]

Any predictions for the release of the AAT?

autumn

 

[Lamartine]

This mod "GSP's US General to China Fix" fixed an oversight. Not sure if the game still has the bug or not. Bringing your attention to it.

Steam Workshop::GSP's US General to China Fix

steamcommunity.com

I'm not playing the open beta, but I got this bug in a game this week. So it's still there in the main version.

 

[Znail]

I did a write up of my thoughts on some of the changes a while ago on the suggestions forum not realizing I was meant to post them here. The others were minor but I think this problem I identified is significant enough that it still needs to be addressed:

Jet Engines seem to have received a huge nerf recently. They have reduced range and reduced thrust. I understand this is meant to boost late game aircraft engines, but honestly I feel like this may have gone a little overboard. First off Jets dont really seem to have enough thrust to add all the late game modules (which feels odd when you're talking about what is supposed to be a next-gen plane) and the range reduction, particularly on small aircraft which already received a huge range nerf, really hurts. All they get is speed, which isnt as important of a buff particularly in this later patch. This makes them feel less like futuristic techs and more like novelty weapons, which seems like a mistake since a) they are a late game "wonderweapon" tech which literally requires you to go through multiple techs to get anyway, so should be a little more rewarding, and b) they won out in real life - yes the earliest generation didnt compete in every level with the latest generation of prop engines, but overall they did win out and the game should make it feel much more of a question of when rather than if that transition occurs (instead of a novelty weapon which truly does feel like a question of if). The Novelty speed engine is already filled by the rocket engine anyway so it’s really not necessary to have that niche filled twice by what is supposed to be the future of aircraft. I am keeping in mind the intention to not make obsolete final tier regular engines though so I have two possible solutions to fix it:

A. Reduce the nerf somewhat in one of the categories. Give it slightly more thrust or slightly less range reduction, so players arent left questioning if they even want Jet engines. Right now they just feel too nerfed and feel like a downgrade when you add, which seems really odd when the late game is supposed to transition into the Jet age.
B. Add a second tier of Jet engines which is a total upgrade but is a post-ww2 tech. This would essentially be a Jet Engine II which has equal (or even greater) thrust than the final tier of regular Engines and reduced range reduction but is a super late game tech whos year is like 1948 or something. This solution would be great for a number of reasons. First it would really make the player feel like they are transitioning into the jet age as theyre moving away from the experimental Jets into the more advanced Jets of the post war. Second it would still give late regular engines plenty of time to stay relevant while still giving them a sort of post war expiration date. Third it would add another Jet technology, which would be great since alot of nations get Jet research bonuses and By Blood Alone eliminated a couple of Jet Techs which were meant to be super late game Jet upgrades anyway so this would rectify that a bit. This would eliminate the odd scenarios where you're still better off adding a prop-engine to an a modern air frame than an actual Jet (which in my experience is generally what you do even in the super late game).

Also one other suggestion not related to this. Since carriers have armor now, wouldn’t it make more sense for Converted battle ships to have battleship armor rather than cruiser armor (maybe with a debuff to maximum air wings). It just seems kinda odd these ships loose their main armor with the transition.

The rules does capture the essence of what Jet engines do. What might be a problem is if speed is not the advantage it was in real life.

 

[Kanitatlan]

autumn

Can I just point out that where I live it feels like autumn has already arrived but I suppose release dates aren't affected directly by climate change are they?

 

[styroler]

The rules does capture the essence of what Jet engines do. What might be a problem is if speed is not the advantage it was in real life.

The penalties aren’t really that historically accurate though. The game presents a huge range penalty, but the reality is Jet Aircraft never really had a range penalty compared to their Piston counterparts. Even though they burned fuel faster, the fact that they were much smaller and lighter and gave more thrust (which the game shows less which is completely wrong) meant that aircraft could carry much more fuel and thus maintain the same range. In fact modern Jets have much more of their aircraft devoted to fuel than a WW2 plane because a WW2 plane wouldn’t be able to have gotten off the ground while a modern Jet can produce much more power. This isn’t really possible to replicate in the game though because for some reason Jet Engines now have less thrust so you can’t even add enough extra fuel tanks to compensate. The point is it turned Jet engines from a reasonable choice to a novelty engine which is definitely not accurate and not a good change.

 

[HmJ_JP]

Funny, about the beta: loading a save game now disables Ironman, even though the very same save was made in Ironman.
For the sake of curiosity, will the next patch (whichever 1.12.x or 1.13.x) enable this save to work again in Ironman, or is it a lost cause?

I like to revisit some game saves when AI did some smart moves/caused good challenge.