HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.5.2 Update #3 and Telemetry!

[AKAGIxxKAGA]

please add the unit tag for super heavy battleship; torpedo cruiser; and ship stage 1-4 if it is possible, after which we can start working on new models for better navy

 

[Pyro157]

@podcat, two things:

1. If a nation has licensed production of a tank or infantry equipment, can it be given permission to use that licensed equipment's sprite? Only one of my Chinese tank divisions is using the proper Sherman sprite, while all others use the generic medium tank.

2. Is there a way to stop the AI kicking player nations from factions so easily? I tried to join the Allies as Nationalist China. I made non-aligned Ethiopia join the Allies through commands, and the UK never kicked them out, but I got the sack within a week. I know Churchill heavily disliked the Kuomintang, but this is a bit much.

 

[Louella]

solutions to potential multiplayer balancing problems

I think the best approach requires people with good experience in all types of play. I play sp and so have the time to do a fair amount of poking at things to find interesting mod effects, like I found that you can have ships start off with experience which allows more of a difference to be expressed between countries navies, in the earliest stages of a war. Things like that can provide tools to alter balance quite a bit.

I am still not convinced about balance being possible in a way that would satisfy everyone. Consider France and Poland. In some types of multiplayer, house rules mean France is not supposed to resist Germany too hard in metropolitan France, in other types of game, France is allowed to support Czechoslovakia, and in singleplayer, if playing France, you want to have a fun chance to do things your way, if not playing France, you might want them to stand up to Germany pretty well, or you might want them to fold faster than the proverbial Superman on laundry day.

How do you make SP France, historical AI France, ahistorical AI France, strong MP France, and weak MP France all viable and fun to play with or against, at the same time ? With the fairly limited tools of starting numbers of factories, units and templates, national spirits, and focus trees?

 

[marmota]

MP is such a minority of the playerbase, but some MP players have such an overinflated sense of self worth. The MP group who doesn't just play coop is even smaller. Please keep that in mind. The vast majority of the playerbase clearly doesn't care about competitive MP. HOI4 devs should honestly cater to the vast majority here, and not bow to demands from pretentious and rude competitive players.

This MP vs SP things is stupid. There is no need to competition. There is nothing bad when dev listen mp or sp players suggestions. I thinks things suggested by mp community helps in sp too and vice versa.
How you cater to the vast majority when all singleplayers want different things too?

Data is interesting but i think new expansion put players to singleplayer. Not played multi much in month itself because new things and desync issues and I notice fewer games in lobby. But still there seems to be always few +10 players games (and you don't see all games)
But sp I many times have Hoi4 in pause like 5 hours. So data thinks that playing time?

 

[SentosKarum]

Well I would think that a more difficult AI would be more diligent about checking if naval landings or paradrops are viable. So the elite AI might check every other day if an invasion somewhere useful was possible and the lesser version would take weeks or months to reassess.

Likewise an elite AI could be diligent about assuring AI and naval fire support whenever possible whereas lesser AI's would be more sloppy - maybe have them have different odds and elites are just set to always do this.

 

[VincentX]

Well bragging rights is certainly important or people wouldnt care about achivements etc

My impression is that people overwhelmingly don't care about achievements. According to Steam the only achievements that manage to top more than 3% completion are the ones that are basically handouts for sticking around. Even joining a faction, literally the easiest thing in this game, is stuck south of a 1 in 5 completion mode.

Enthusiasts on this forum seem to skew the impression of people completing achievements by quite a bit.

 

[SrgChris]

MP is such a minority of the playerbase, but some MP players have such an overinflated sense of self worth. The MP group who doesn't just play coop is even smaller. Please keep that in mind. The vast majority of the playerbase clearly doesn't care about competitive MP. HOI4 devs should honestly cater to the vast majority here, and not bow to demands from pretentious and rude competitive players.

While true, I think a large portion of the players that actively participate on the forum (hoi4 and otherwise) and comment on these threads and others, as well as make new threads, are either experienced SP players, or MP players.

Also HOI4 more than any other Paradox game, lends itself perfectly to MP gaming. You have 2 (or 3) obvious sides, a few years to prepare for the war, and double that time to actually fight it. Unlike the other games, you can take an MP game to its completion in a single session. Also once you've played HoI4 mp in a decent group, the experience is so good you might as well have discovered the game version of crack cocaine. And at that point, single player just seems like a tutorial level for a much more fun game.

It's like chess on steroids, with self-written wacky characters.

Tldr; if there is a Paradox Game that should focus on MP aspects (and as such, listening to the MP community) it's HoI4.

EDIT: Also as a fortunate side effect of playing the game so frequently at a competitive level, MP players tend to know the game inside-out. They could be less arrogant about it, true

 

[chrnno]

My impression is that people overwhelmingly don't care about achievements. According to Steam the only achievements that manage to top more than 3% completion are the ones that are basically handouts for sticking around. Even joining a faction, literally the easiest thing in this game, is stuck south of a 1 in 5 completion mode.

Enthusiasts on this forum seem to skew the impression of people completing achievements by quite a bit.

And you are now skewing it the other way. While most players don't care about achievements for Paradox games given the requirements the overwhelming majority of people with games on Steam simply don't play them at all.

 

[Vohen]

Well I would think that a more difficult AI would be more diligent about checking if naval landings or paradrops are viable. So the elite AI might check every other day if an invasion somewhere useful was possible and the lesser version would take weeks or months to reassess.

Likewise an elite AI could be diligent about assuring AI and naval fire support whenever possible whereas lesser AI's would be more sloppy - maybe have them have different odds and elites are just set to always do this.

Yeah, but the paradrop and naval invasions are really not the best implementations for a more complex AI, given how situational they are.

When I stop myself to look at how the AI is going, it baffles me how bad their army composition and general strategy are.
I always see their main armies being composed by mainly infantry, with a few armor and maybe mot sprinkled around.
Then they assign them to a general frontline and tell them to simply push forward, grinding towards their objective.

I don't know how hard this would be to implement, but couldn't they apply the "role" system, already used by divisions, to armies as well?
Having a main army composed only of common infantry units, having a push army with more elite infantry, and armor/mot army for the encirclements (besides the already present garrison/suppression armies).
Then, of course, using that on a strategic level, checking terrain and concentrating their tanks on two spots for the pincer movements, followed by that elite infantry to close the pocket.
Also, assigning frontlines by value and threat, so that Britain wouldn't leave most of their troops guarding their many colonies that won't see much action or don't have anything of value in them, or the Soviets won't put many troops in central Asia and the Caucasus, would really come a long way to have the AI possibly on a level field with the player.

So an stronger AI would be more aggressive in pursuing those strategies, doing them more frequently, while a weaker AI would be more lax, doing it more sparringly (or, maybe, not at all for civilian).

Your paradrop point wouldn't really work imo because it would result in the AI suiciding a lot of their troops.
A better idea would be the AI always combining a naval invasion with paradrops, if possible, or if it couldn't get naval superiority, use a scouting fleet to spot good paradrop points to try and capture a port prioritarily.

 

[VincentX]

And you are now skewing it the other way. While most players don't care about achievements for Paradox games given the requirements the overwhelming majority of people with games on Steam simply don't play them at all.

Sure, but a less than 3% completion rate for 6 out of 7 achievement is still abysmal. And that's being generous. Half of them don't even top 1%.

 

[Robosoldier1]

I think the best approach requires people with good experience in all types of play. I play sp and so have the time to do a fair amount of poking at things to find interesting mod effects, like I found that you can have ships start off with experience which allows more of a difference to be expressed between countries navies, in the earliest stages of a war. Things like that can provide tools to alter balance quite a bit.

I am still not convinced about balance being possible in a way that would satisfy everyone. Consider France and Poland. In some types of multiplayer, house rules mean France is not supposed to resist Germany too hard in metropolitan France, in other types of game, France is allowed to support Czechoslovakia, and in singleplayer, if playing France, you want to have a fun chance to do things your way, if not playing France, you might want them to stand up to Germany pretty well, or you might want them to fold faster than the proverbial Superman on laundry day.

How do you make SP France, historical AI France, ahistorical AI France, strong MP France, and weak MP France all viable and fun to play with or against, at the same time ? With the fairly limited tools of starting numbers of factories, units and templates, national spirits, and focus trees?

Fundamentally yes Balance is a hard thing to achieve. No ones disputing that. However the direction balance is directed towards and pertains to does. If balance is catered to a group that prioritizes individual play then how does that at all improve play for scenarios that extends to larger groups? In essence it doesn't so thats why people within the MP community are adamant to have Paradox consider changes to pertain to both sets of play. Which they have begun to do, but only because the MP have begun making such a fuss about it. Theres an obvious reason most MP communities at this point are heavily dependent on mods to ratify or mitigate the impact of changes made by paradox.

Take France for example they have inherently gutted Free France's ability to fight on after it capitulates and Vichy gets established, which we certainty can say affects both MP and SP forms of play. In our mod we have enabled the French player to adamantly fight for its mainland but also have the opportunity to rebuild and retake the fight where ever possible with the addition of a new "capitulation branch" to their focus tree. Yes there not on the level they were as compared to when they had their mainland but they now at least have something to work towards instead of remaining in a perpetual state of ineptitude and obscurity.

Yes there is radical differentiations between communities in how they want to handle certain scenarios but thats why I want Paradox to involve themselves directly. To see the take on how various communities have decided to handle the changes and the solutions they come up with. Whether it be by rules, mods, community set up and so on. In essence so they can take note, consider and produce something that can satisfy both sides of the community. Instead of just catering to the one and expect the other to deal with its own problems even though it inherently is the same game just played where more people and thus the problems that stem from the game get amplified. Its like turning 1v1 basketball into 4v4 more observation and demand is required to keep the 4v4 game respectable as compared to 1v1 but that doesn't mean the official can just call it quits and make the excuse "i'm only a 1v1 referee officiate it yourself."

 

[Dhjaru]

I think you should add how much the army has trained even when its in collapsed mode on the training sreen.
The first slot the other show how it is.

It should show the unit that is most trained and if hoverd over it should show in a rundown list from most trained to least trained.

Its just an idea.

 

[Leutnant Walker]

The 3D thing is incredibly grand. Thank you Paradox

 

[Blastaz]

Sure, but a less than 3% completion rate for 6 out of 7 achievement is still abysmal. And that's being generous. Half of them don't even top 1%.

Because so few people play ironman. They should remove that.

 

[safe-keeper]

Changing our 3D models at will will be incredibly useful.

I wonder how Paradox still doesnt understand how difficulty supposed to work in games.Higher difficulty supposed to mean better AI,not unfair and useless negative modifiers.

Podcat and his team leaders in the office, over smörgåsar and glögg:
"Vad fan, Podkatt, here is a kille who suggests we should make the AI better!"
Podcat: "Oooooooooh my gods! Improve the AI! I would never have thought of that in a million years! Give this here kille a free copy of CK2! In fact, give everyone a free copy of CK2! This calls for celebration! Someone order Surströmning from IKEA!"
AI dude, who had been sitting in an IKEA puff listening to a progressive podcast: "Improve the AI?! For fan, what an jätta-ingenious idea! I will do it right away! Maybe I'll teach it encirclements and not to send Axis convoys through the Graveyard of Troop Ships!"
Podcat: "You have until lunch break!"

 

[SwordOfTheStars]

Anyone else have issues where commanders route troops into the ocean to redeploy, but that ocean is super patrolled by enemy navy? I had 1/5th of my army killed like this. The nerfs to troop transport are ridiculous, you can't ever evade the enemy fleet once contact hits. Please fix this so that both the ai doesnt throw troops in the trash, and so ships can actually evade enemy fleets. They need to be able to retreat.

 

[Gort11]

Anyone else have issues where commanders route troops into the ocean to redeploy, but that ocean is super patrolled by enemy navy? I had 1/5th of my army killed like this. The nerfs to troop transport are ridiculous, you can't ever evade the enemy fleet once contact hits. Please fix this so that both the ai doesnt throw troops in the trash, and so ships can actually evade enemy fleets. They need to be able to retreat.

It's pretty much fine that German troops boarding ships into the English Channel get wiped out pretty much instantly - that's a suicide mission, and even a few old destroyers in amongst the troops would produce horrendous casualties.

What's not fine is that it can happen without specific orders to do it. If you can't order a naval invasion through a sea zone because it's full of enemy ships, your troops absolutely should not be automatically attempting to travel through it.

 

[Meglok]

Always SR troops to near where you want them, THEN assign them to orders. Never give the ai a chance to send them by sea, which it will always do if that is equal or faster than land movement.

 

[Axe99]

It's pretty much fine that German troops boarding ships into the English Channel get wiped out pretty much instantly - that's a suicide mission, and even a few old destroyers in amongst the troops would produce horrendous casualties.

I know you're talking in-game, rather than historically, but for some context, Germany convoyed 5.7 million tons of shipping through the Straits of Dover in 1942 - both sides were able to run coastal convoys fairly successfully, even though the waters were definitely contested.

 

[CrazyZombie]

Am I the only one so lucky to get Germany honor M-R pact and at the same time do not give Eastern Poland?

That has just completely broke my successful game.