HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.8 Patch (wut?!) & Focus Tree Navigation

[ZanderD]

i have an issue with the new launcher. After closing the launcher, HOI 4 still appears as running in the steam library.

The stop button doesn't work.

 

[Dan1109]

Why Is Hitler's face censored? Stalin killed about 5x more than him why is he not censored? I live in the UK and there should at least be an option to turn on censoring.

Mine's not censored. IIRC, its censored based on where you bought the game, due only to legal reasons in Germany. If bought on Steam, maybe Steam is incorrectly censoring you, thinking you are in Germany?? Unfortunately, Russia doesn't carry Stalin's shame, as the German's have carried Adolf's. And there is only one person responsible for that in the 21st Century, the new Stalin, and his name is Putin. And he's a lot smarter than his idol.

 

[Iskulya]

These submarine tweaks look quite minimal. I'm skeptical that they'll make a meaningful different. The MP group of Alex Brunius has experimented with far more wide ranging nerfs to submarines and they're still quite competitive, so I'm doubtful that such small changes will amount to anything. Still, I think some caution is wise as it's hard to unswing that nerf bat once it's gone too hard.

 

[Falkenhayn1]

As a modder I'd like to say that this update is the worst update to the game.
Because of the new useless and breaking everything launcher of course

 

[Dan1109]

As a modder I'd like to say that this update is the worst update to the game.
Because of the new useless and breaking everything launcher of course

Well, installed and quickly uninstalled. The GUI looks nice, although its VERY clunky compared to the original HOI4 launcher. I guess its an example of what suffers when things are "outsourced". I imagine the reason none of the mods work is due to the mods needing to update their tags at minimum, to support 1.8. I'm in the middle of a game, so in the trash can it goes for now.

 

[CrankyRack]

The new launcher looks cool but i have to complain about the mod browser, if you (like me) have alot of mods they are not organized at all... Like before it was alphabetical order but now it's just everywhere. Am i stuck with browsing through my mods like 10 min before i can play?

 

[QuinnMallory]

As Wednesday is upon us so is a new dev diary! Next week we will be back with more espionage, but today is about a small surprise patch as well as improved Focus tree navigation.

1.8 ‘Fork’
Fork you say? I thought you said 1.8 was going to be Husky? Due to technical requirements having to do with updating to the new paradox launcher we had to jump a big number other than going to 1.7.2 like we had planned. This means that 1.9 will instead be Husky which is the big update coming together with La Resistance.

Lets jump straight into the changelog (I know you all skipped straight to here anyway, you can read the stuff above later):

################################################################
########               Patch 1.8.0 "Fork"               ########
################################################################

##################################
# Feature & General
##################################
- Added new Launcher
- Added "/mute <user name>" and "/unmute <user name>" chat commands


##################################
# Balance
##################################
- Reduced number of destroyers needed to cover convoy routes from 1 destroyer per 5 convoys to 1 destroyer per 10 convoys
- Convoys can no longer detect convoys as that just drags down the average detection when escorted
- The amount of convoys in a sub battle is now based on the length of the route, so longer = fewer in a battle
- Reduced total possible torpedo reveal chance reduction to 60% from 70% by reducing wolfpack by 5% and commander trait by 5%
- Slightly reduced sub reveal chance when firing torpedos to account for convoys no longer contributing to detection averages
- Slightly reduced passive sub reveal chance in combat to account for convoys no longer contributing to detection averages
- Added 2 sub detection to radar 4 to make t4 subs not so hard to detect when matched up against modern destroyers
- Aluminium Company of Canada focus now gets an additional 14 Aluminium
- upgraded t4 radar to have sub detection from 10 to 14
- upgraded t3 radar to have sub detection from 5 to 6
- increased IC cost for t3 sub hull from 270 to 320
- increased IC cost for t4 sub hull from 300 to 450
- increased IC cost for cruiser sub hull from 370 to 390
- increased number of convoys covered by each destroyer on escort from 10 to 12
- Lowered t3 and t4 submarine torpedo damage from 23 to 22 and 30 to 28 respectively
- slightly increased the speed penalty on depth charges


##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- Fixed a civil war revolter not getting correct focus tree
- Fixed escaping or sunk convoys from inadvertently affecting damage calculations for the remaining convoys.
- Fixed Diminishing Returns now applying to party popularity changes.
- Fixed lend-lease sender having its convoy sunk instead of the receiver in naval combats
- Prevented subjects from giving units to their overlord as part of a request for expeditionary forces if those units are volunteers or expeditionaries from another country.


##################################
# UI & Database
##################################
- The open music player button in settings now has proper size
- Music Player now has proper spelling in tooltip/settings button
- Fixes for Japanese various names (ships, divisions etc).
- Fixed full name for Canadian general Percival John Montague.


##################################
# Modding
##################################
- Added define to allow scaling of ship part of sub detection inside combats
- Enabled some console commands that had previously been developer-only but which did not really need to be locked.
    - add_mines
    - release (country)
    - debug (toggle miscellaneous in-game debug utilities)
    - debug_smooth (toggle within-game-tick frame rendering)
    - instant_prepare (division preparation)
    - reload_textures
    - tag_color (set country color)


##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################
- Fixed a crash when removing certain unit leader traits.
- Added checks to prevent CTD in cases where AI had sent invalid expeditionary forces
- Optimized game rule checks by finding the game rule in the game rule database more efficiently.
- Prevented a crash if a script tries to make a non-existing country declare war on another country.
- Fixed CTD on invalid set_politics usage by failing to set ruling_party, made it write an error instead.
- Fixed pointer truncation in 64bits in ProtectedMemoryAllocate
- Fixed crash reporter to correctly indicate if the program is built for a 64-bit architecture.
- Fixed a CTD related to expeditionary forces that could lock in saves
- Fixed game crashing in weird ways if a mod tries reusing an id

To summarize, the big points here are: Stability, submarine balance and a new launcher

Submarine balance
Later tier 3 and 4 subs were simply too good compared to destroyers designed to hunt them. They have been nerfed a bit and increased in cost and destroyer upgrades improved. Large empires should now also have a bit easier time as we better control the amount of convoys in each battle and have fixed a bug where convoys would actively hurt the sub detection abilities of their escorts making it really tough in big battles.

View attachment 525180

New launcher
We, much like Imperator, EU4 and Stellaris have now also moved to the new launcher.
Since wargamers are a traditional bunch you might be asking why a new launcher is happening. There are several reasons:

• Platform independence. We want to be able to exist on multiple platforms eventually and the current one is limited and not really capable of doing it very well.
• The old one is really limited in how we can communicate with you. Now we can link to multiple news post for example.
• It frees up the dev team (us). We never really had the time to work on the launcher and as the place setting up mods and such there have been a ton of requests for features (such as mod groupings and presets) that we just never have the time to do. With a dedicated team working on a unified launcher across pdx games they will have more time for stuff like this and we can worry about the game itself. I have great hopes for lots of cool improvements in the future and make sure to let them know in comments what kind of features you would like to see.
• We got a neat continue button now directly in launcher so you can save time getting back on your previous session

View attachment 525177

Go here to read details about the launcher changes and what the mean for modders and player.
The tl;dr for players though is that you need to start the game, run it to the main menu and then quit and restart. Without this your mods wont show up. This will clean up old mod configuration and prep everything. Mods will still show out of date until modders have updated the supported version, but we haven't made any changes that will break them so 1.7.1 mods should still be ok, despite them saying they arent - so no panic If you do have issues please post about them in the above linked thread about the launcher rather in here (its still cool to discuss the launcher here though).

If you are interested in more details and plans for the launcher you can read all about it here in a post from the launcher team .

The patch itself releases later today (late afternoon). That is all about the patch, lets move on to highlight some neat stuff coming in 1.9 'Husky'...

Focus Tree Navigation
As our focus trees have gotten larger finding things in them or simply exploring them has gotten harder. To solve this we are adding several things to the national focus screen (btw UI here is still a bit WIP and may change)

• Zoom - You can now zoom in and out to the mouse pointer much like on the map. Its a nice way to get around on big trees (*squints at the spanish focus tree*)
• Filters - toggling various filters can let you easily spot where industry is located, or things related to particular national spirits you are trying to get rid of or modify. These are tagged manually on focuses so its something modders will be able to use also.
• Free Search - on top of filters we also have full free search. It goes through tooltips automatically and picks out focuses. This is a more advanced and powerful version of Filters and quite nice for finding specific things fast when you know what you are looking for.

View attachment 525178
This is me searching for industry related stuff in the Chinese tree. It also shows some of our default filters on the right. Several nations have special filters to help highlight specific mechanics. So China has "Inflation" as a filter, the commonwealth nations have a filter to help spot affecting independence etc. We hope this is going to make getting into new focus trees a lot easier!
Here is an example of zooming out about half way on China:
View attachment 525179
If I place my mouse pointer somewhere I can still see tooltips and zooming will zoom to the cursor.


See you all next week for another diary!

Why is the new launcher making my UI small?

 

[Razor Democracybringer]

Pdx, please allow us to use the old launcher, the clear cache button is not as accessible as it was before, and it's already annoying needing to clear cache after every mp game, specially when as soon as it starts, there's a hacker, everybody desyncs and else, so please allow us to see the button as soon as the launcher is opened, thx.

 

[NilsFabian]

Anyway, sorry for the question, but when will you show the Portuguese focus tree?

Don‘t get to used to it. As soon as they work on South America the portugese tree will change

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Podcat . Very much appreciate the team taking the new launcher patch to squeeze in some naval balancing

- Enabled some console commands that had previously been developer-only but which did not really need to be locked. - add_mines - release (country) - debug (toggle miscellaneous in-game debug utilities) - debug_smooth (toggle within-game-tick frame rendering) - instant_prepare (division preparation) - reload_textures - tag_color (set country color)

Also very much appreciate this - thanks muchly .

Submarine balance

Woot!

This is me searching for industry related stuff in the Chinese tree. It also shows some of our default filters on the right. Several nations have special filters to help highlight specific mechanics. So China has "Inflation" as a filter, the commonwealth nations have a filter to help spot affecting independence etc. We hope this is going to make getting into new focus trees a lot easier!

This looks very helpful . Have been thinking that the new, super focus trees could do with some navigation assistance.

Nerf on U-boats? Were they OP?

The 1940 and 1944 models were pretty tough to beat once upgraded, particularly the 1944 model, even with destroyers with a full ASW kit-out.

so before generally the longer a route the more convoys would be needed. But just because you hit a specific part of that line shouldnt mean that you get all of them in a big battle. So the idea is that on a long route they would spread out, so we limit size of each combat by route length so you dont magically catch all the US convoys headign to UK in one go etc just because its a long route

This change is particularly valuable - great work .

In honour of the convoy route change, here's a thematically appropriate naval/mercantile pic (some ships in convoy, taken from a patrolling Sunderland)

 

[Big Dead One]

@podcat - just curious. really. but I thought I'd figure I'd bring this up since you were talking about minor naval balance changes, and I feel this is atleast partly related, but is the bug known by you all, and being fixed at any point soon that Battlecruisers, such as HMS Hood are Battleships, and not battlecrusers as they should be in game.

I checked my game in the latest version, and it shows that HMS Hood is a battlecruiser, not a battleship.

Spoiler: HMS Hood correctly displayed as a BC

But I do notice an interesting thing though: if you check the design for the Hood, it shows that the ship has battleship-level armour in the armour slot. Which is actually historically accurate, since the Hood was designed after the lessons in the battle of Jutland, where British battlecruisers suffered heavy casualties due to paper-thin armour. After that, the British decided to up-armour the Hood to the same level as contemporary battleships. HMS Hood actually had around the same level of protection as a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship, but with higher speed. Some consider the Hood to be a fast battleship, not a battlecruiser.

Spoiler: HMS Hood having battleship armour

Side note: Devs, please change the hull code of battlecruisers from BC to CC (actual code for battlecruisers, such as the Lexington-class) or CB ("large" cruisers, like the Alaska-class).

 

[H2O27]

I don't mind the change of the launcher for the most part, but putting the mods in alphabetical order or adding a mod search tool would be very nice. It's not too much of an issue for me as I generally play vanilla games, but I'm sure we would all love some sort of organization. There's no way I can sort over 400+ mods...

 

[Kadanz]

I'm so disappointed in this community... ignoring the most important question everyone should be asking..

What's the recipe for the banana pizza???

 

[bitmode]

In our internal dev version everything is really different because of resistance and garrison changes, so this kind of stuff needs to be done in isolation.

If everything is really different, all the more reason to release those parts like resistance and garrisons early. Trying to release everything in one fell swoop has failed time and time again and the mechanics need to work without the new DLC anyway. If many smaller releases take significantly longer than one huge update, then there are obstacles in the release process that need to be fixed.

 

[Riski]

I was wondering if the civil war AI's have been fixed yet? Seeing a civil war where one side sits on their butts for the whole war is quite frustrating especially when a Russian or a Japanese one happens (On Japanese communist civil war the fascist side and on the Russian civil war the non-aligned).

Oh and regarding the new launcher, a very nice launcher, however would it be possible to move the "Clear User Directory" button to the top as it's something, as we all surely know, have to press before even thinking of playing multiplayer every single time and scrolling all the way down is quite inconvenient.

 

[FOARP]

I think the problem here is China capitulating too fast instead of bogging down 80% of Japan's army in a bloody stalemate.

Although let's be clear that, historically, only about 1/3rd of the Japanese army was deployed in China-proper (i.e., excluding Manchuria) even at the height of the fighting in China during the Pacific War (i.e., Operation Ichi-Go). That is, by the war's end the China Expeditionary Army numbered roughly a million men and included one armoured and 25 infantry divisions, but the Japanese army already numbered more than 100 divisions in 1944, and by war's end more than 200 divisions of various types and had a maximum strength of 6 million men. For comparison, in 1944 during the US invasion, the Japanese Philippines garrison, a garrison for a much smaller area than China, included 11 infantry divisions and an armoured division (or elements of one) and had a strength of 500,000.

The war in China just wasn't the bloody stalemate for Japan that some people seem to believe it was. Instead, Japan's inability to make progress in Japan was the result of 1) seeking to achieve an (impossible) political victory, 2) logistics.

 

[AP Erebus]

If everything is really different, all the more reason to release those parts like resistance and garrisons early. Trying to release everything in one fell swoop has failed time and time again and the mechanics need to work without the new DLC anyway. If many smaller releases take significantly longer than one huge update, then there are obstacles in the release process that need to be fixed.

And then you get 100's of threads about people running into known issues, incomplete work and all the stuff that gets cleaned up during a release cycle. The devs will either have to spend all their time on the forums, getting no work done, or not being on the forums and everyone will be going nuts over no communication (current bug forum is a perfect example)

It's just not practical to do those kind of piecemeal releases in a game like HoI4

 

[Axe99]

Which is actually historically accurate, since the Hood was designed after the lessons in the battle of Jutland, where British battlecruisers suffered heavy casualties due to paper-thin armour. After that, the British decided to up-armour the Hood to the same level as contemporary battleships. HMS Hood actually had around the same level of protection as a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship, but with higher speed. Some consider the Hood to be a fast battleship, not a battlecruiser.

The causes for the losses of the British battlecruisers at Jutland is a little contentious, but last time I looked the balance of opinion was weighing towards poor cordite handling practice, with corners cut to keep up a high rate of fire that left the ship open to catastrophic failure if there was an explosion that set off the charges. Indeed, the initial redesign of Hood & Co (four ships were laid down) focussed on improving flash-tightness in turret trunks, handling rooms, magazines and so on. That said, a more detailed analysis of Jutland did lead to a redesign focussed around improved levels of horizontal protection, which resulted in a belt a little thinner than the QEs, but with greater horizontal protection (you're quite right that its armour scheme had far more in common with contemporary battleships than contemporary battlecruisers). Info nabbed quickly and dirtily from Whitley's Battleships of World War Two, so there may be a few slips - I can also open up British Battleships of World War Two, but there's nothing quick nor dirty about that!

In-game, iirc the way the BB/BC system works it's not really possible to create a Hood with it's historic capabilities, with tech-level appropriate gear (which is a fair enough compromise imo - when I finally get around to it (sadly a long way off) I hope to mod in a system that's a bit more detailed, but it would not be for the faint of heart, and definitely not appropriate for the base game).

 

[podcat]

And EAI doesn't cheat

The last times I have checked it for integrating stuff there have been a bunch of cheating things in it and its tricky to separate out fixes from it to integrate for this reason unfortunately

 

[LeSingeAffame]

Why Is Hitler's face censored? Stalin killed about 5x more than him why is he not censored? I live in the UK and there should at least be an option to turn on censoring.

Do you have a legit version of the game?