HOI4 Dev Diary - Acclimatization and Special Forces

[Idle America]

If I understood podcat right you have the option to raise the limit of the special forces through research as opposed to further improving them. And If I read the DD correct, granted I'm heavily deprived of caffeine atm, the amount of special forces you can deploy depends on the amount of divisions you have in the field so 24 + percentage of your total division count.

Edit: No, I am wrong. It's not 24 + 5% of your regular battallion amount. The limit only starts increasing once you have more than 480 regular battallions.

480?! The game starts choking when five of the majors pass 200!

 

[Idle America]

@joeenochs
To your terrain vs climate point, i think this needs to be expanded to Jungle. Jungle warfare is its own beast and fighting in the jungle is expressly difficult--especially as (generally speaking) imperialist forces (USA, UK, Jap...none of these peoples have inter generational predispositions to resistance to Jungle Diseases...as the defending who has lived there his entire life may).

The Battle of Guadalcanal in a nutshell:

 

[Scronkfinkle]

Hi everyone and welcome to another dev diary where we show off stuff as we work on Waking the Tiger. Today we are going to be talking about a feature I’ve been wanting for a long time - troop acclimatization.
...


Also, don’t miss out on World War Wednesday today at 16:00 CET as normal. Me and Daniel will continue our fight against communism (or the British fleet… we are still arguing about that) as Germany under the rule of the Kaiser.

Hmm.. where is this exactly? Can't find it from youtube or your site.. or here or anywhere.

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Podcat and the extra info Archangel . Most excellent changes, and just in time for winter or summer depending on the hemisphere . Special forces changes also look pretty sharp - having a limit will make them more valuable for sure - I'll have to move away from my US build that involves an army of 24 marine divisions .

As some others have mentioned, Jungle Warfare training/acclimatisation was a big thing as well (and might help model some of Japan's advantages against the Allies early in the Pacific War). There were Australian divisions that transferred from North Africa and ended up in PNG - their experience may be some guide to how easy it was to acclimatise from one to the other, relative to US units coming into Guadalcanal for combat for the first time.

On acclimatisation, is there any thought in the future to extend it in some way to ships and aircraft? It was a bit more technological in both cases, but there were definitely issues shifting air and naval units from Europe to Africa to the Pacific and so on.

Let's pretend that question wasn't a way of introducing this pic (a British destroyer, HMS Inglefield, on an Arctic convoy) in a way that wasn't totally off-topic.....

 

[Idle America]

Cheers for the DD Podcat and the extra info Archangel . Most excellent changes, and just in time for winter or summer depending on the hemisphere . Special forces changes also look pretty sharp - having a limit will make them more valuable for sure - I'll have to move away from my US build that involves an army of 24 marine divisions .

As some others have mentioned, Jungle Warfare training/acclimatisation was a big thing as well (and might help model some of Japan's advantages against the Allies early in the Pacific War). There were Australian divisions that transferred from North Africa and ended up in PNG - their experience may be some guide to how easy it was to acclimatise from one to the other, relative to US units coming into Guadalcanal for combat for the first time.

On acclimatisation, is there any thought in the future to extend it in some way to ships and aircraft? It was a bit more technological in both cases, but there were definitely issues shifting air and naval units from Europe to Africa to the Pacific and so on.

Let's pretend that question wasn't a way of introducing this pic (a British destroyer, HMS Inglefield, on an Arctic convoy) in a way that wasn't totally off-topic.....

View attachment 319344

Dude, I got frostbite just looking at that.

 

[Praetorian44]

Waking the Tiger will be released in 2018.

Oh did they say that somewhere. I didn't know, as the announcement thread just said "available soon."

 

[EltharionDrax]

Can we expect to seen new leader portraits for major and minor nations in the patch/DLC? New fascist portrait for Finland maybe (Viho Annala) ?

At least getting Mannerheim and Oesch to go with the CoC-system would be nice!

 

[jorishilhorst]

oh I probably should have explained that more. Its visible in one of the screenshots with the tooltip. Being in the area with those effects will see you gain acclimatization. If you are actively fighting it however goes much faster

One more question on this: Does acclimatization normalize/go back to average when fresh recruits are brought in to replace losses, like experience? Do field hospitals help you retain the acclimatized troops?

 

[Axe99]

Dude, I got frostbite just looking at that.

Could have been worse, I could have used this pic instead (HMS Narcissus, a corvette, on Arctic convoy duty) Note this mad lad isn't even wearing a hat! Now that's cold-weather acclimatisation .

 

[jimkoons]

I put around 300 hours into MP between TFV and DOD. I played the competitive scene.

Its okay.

If the players werent arrogant, entitled, "autistic", screeching, racist, xenophobic, rude, misinformed, and probably more harsh words I'm unable to string off I might still be playing.

But after suffering 6 hours for the 9th time with a different hitler apologist white nationalist, someone with an open mic and mouthbreathing, and the inevitable guy who trolls the entire game and is the reason your group added rule 22 sub rule c....it gets old. On top of it, while I did have a few games that went to 1944-45 the majority dont.

**sorry for the disparaging remarks

Someone makes a colossal error and we all lose.

Its nonsense. I sit there and prepare for 2-3 hours and its over before it gets going because UK couldnt hold med, or USSR shits itself (or just as often Germany cant keep it together). That "competitive" scene has adopted a general case strategy of playing an edge case.

No one fights a war like that in real life. No one would over commit like that in real life. but here its the fate of 3 hours not your country.

I hope pds keeps implementing other mechanics to make 40w divisions ill-advised except for possible niche roles. Slowing the flow of recruit-able population may help with this issue. If you cant recruit enough people to fill the needed division count to hold a line with all 40w, you'll have to default to 20w--at least in the early years.

Regarding Army XP exploit, I cant help you if you think an entire game mechanic is "unfun" because you have to progress through it. Its freaking nuts you people think its okay to play that way. And frankly makes any opinions from your crowd irrelevant to the greater balance discussion of the game. You're not playing the real game. Army XP and how you spend it should be really important to your decision making. It can be found on NFs and by consuming your produced equipment (in a variety of forms) and by the minister. It is used for the two of the most important things in the game upgrading tanks and upgrading division templates. And you just ignore it. Thats akin to ignoring dribbling in basketball or breathing in swimming.

You willfully play with and encourage the use of exploits. Its like steroids in baseball....sure you hit a lot of home runs, but you're missing the point.

Your meta is false.

I could not agree more with what you're saying... I tried the MP (without password) for a few games, just to know what it was, and it was a really disappointing experience.

First it's hard to end a game (everyone rage/bored quit or are being lag kicked before 1941), second people frequently insult each other and third there are people who do not care about the rules at all and troll the game.. but the worse is what you point out here: all those gamey technics which simply destroy any feeling of immersion you could have.

For what I've seen:
- Forts construction should be longer and more expensive (it took 12 years to build the maginot - 10 level fort - line).
- It should be impossible to build fort in desert zone, or they should be restricted to a certain level - depending on infra for example, level of infra which would depend on terrain - (Obviously I'm talking about El-Alamein and all the strategic bottlenecks).
- Land xp gain should increase when you have more division training and should depend on the rate of equipment.. In my opinion, if you have only one division training, you should gain nearly no experience, the same if your division are not fully equiped.
- The special forces cap is, in my opinion, a important tweak for those forbidden "space marine" (man I totally hallucinated the first time I saw the no space marine rule, I was really wondering what the hell it was) and all their derivatives.

I can't wait for that too:

• Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups

And if the dev can get rid of the division width at the same time for something less "optimizable" it would be perfect.

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

These forces are not special forces in the sense of commandos. Its a term the swedish developers have adopted. If you have served a day, you would recognize these forces as specialized infantry. And yes, the US has about 20% of its land force in these specialized infantry roles from WWII on. Again back to my original mathematical analysis. 6 marine divisions plus an equivalent US Army amphibious trained force of 6 divisions, one mountain division and 5 airborne divisions ( the 11th Airborne, 13th Airborne, 17th Airborne, 82nd airborne and 101st airborne) equals specialized infantry of 18 divisions out of 97. (91 US Army active divisions and 6 Marine divisions) 20/97 = 20%

We can debate your numbers (ie 18/97 = 18.6%, assuming you agree that 6 Army divisions are amphib infantry, otherwise 12/97 = 12.4%) but rather, lets just agree that the US numbers represent the max SF percentage you can obtain. Not the starting value.

I am surprised the 1st marine division is not present in the game in 1936.

Totally agree.

... US Army units made several amphibious landings without the USMC...
Now to the game, these amphibious functions are tied to battalions the game calls marines, they really should be titled amphibious specialists.

You are also correct here. But that brings up a design issue (and the reason I don't agree with including the 6 US Army divisions in the above calculation). Should the Japanese SNLF be considered equivalent to the US Marines? Of course not. But do we want the game to have another classification for Naval Infantry to differentiate from US Marines? I suspect that debate will come about when the naval fixes for the Pacific War are being discussed.

MP players are focused on Marines because as the game is now played, its the only hope you have of breaking the Atlantic wall when you are not facing a very dumb AI. I really do not want the terrain bonuses to decrease as I build out the marine force required to dig out a very experienced German player when I am the US.

You are also right here. But from a historical MP perspective, I want a solution that doesn't require massive numbers of "marine" units. So if the balanced MP players need that option, I say let them mod it if the base number isn't sufficient for them. No different than if the base number starts off as 20% or so, I would then say the historical MP players would have to mod it to get the number they want to play the game with.

Summary: Most MP Modders do not think big enough with the tools they have available to them. Most want slipshod solutions instead of trying to address the real issues. Also most have differing definitions of fun and competitive. ... People in it dismiss people like @Axe99 , @Alex_brunius ,@Secret Master , or @Had a dad with out forethought and without looking through a lot of the tests and conclusions that they reach on the basis of anecdotal personal evidence, in spite of understanding the game mechanics far less than those four.

It would be most modders, not just MP modders that don't think big enough with the available tools. Yet there are some lessons to be learned from the balanced MP community as well. So dismissing what there concerns are is no different than dismissing what Axe99, Alex_brunius, etc say (just look at the recent strategic bomber thread).

Disclosure: Based My mod off of PFU, then started tweaking a lot of things from there, incorporated with @Axe99 's TWAS for the Naval changes. Group is very pleased with the changes (12 man group)

Creating my own historical MP mod is the path I seem to find myself on as well (you can blame Axe99 for that, cause if it wasn't for his personal help, I would have given up on some of this modding stuff). As well as "creating" my own play group (from my own group of wargamers). Is your mod on Steam? I would like to take a look at it and possibly do as you did with PFU.

Edit: I looked at the Terrain spreadsheet and the changelog you posted. I've come up with some of those same conclusions in the mod's I'm working on. So even more eager to see your mod.

 

[bERt0r]

I could not agree more with what you're saying... I tried the MP (without password) for a few games, just to know what it was, and it was a really disappointing experience.

First it's hard to end a game (everyone rage/bored quit or are being lag kicked before 1941), second people frequently insult each other and third there are people who do not care about the rules at all and troll the game.. but the worse is what you point out here: all those gamey technics which simply destroy any feeling of immersion you could have.

For what I've seen:
- Forts construction should be longer and more expensive (it took 12 years to build the maginot - 10 level fort - line).
- It should be impossible to build fort in desert zone, or they should be restricted to a certain level - depending on infra for example, level of infra which would depend on terrain - (Obviously I'm talking about El-Alamein and all the strategic bottlenecks).
- Land xp gain should increase when you have more division training and should depend on the rate of equipment.. In my opinion, if you have only one division training, you should gain nearly no experience, the same if your division are not fully equiped.
- The special forces cap is, in my opinion, a important tweak for those forbidden "space marine" (man I totally hallucinated the first time I saw the no space marine rule, I was really wondering what the hell it was) and all their derivatives.

I can't wait for that too:

• Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups

And if the dev can get rid of the division width at the same time for something less "optimizable" it would be perfect.

I'm pretty sure the Italians did build a "fort" in Tobruk, they just forgot to put soldiers there when the British came.

 

[paranoidsteve]

If a limit is going to be applied to special forces numbers, can we be forced to have other types of forces by game design? There seems to be a lot of complaints that there will be not enough marines to do a D-Day, what if, for every frontline (40 or 20 width) division you have to have a 2nd rate formation...(say 7 width) for use as garrison/coastal defence duties, and the 2nd rate formations should be at the lowest priority for new equipment. This would even apply to the USA and represent their vast supply/support train. For the Russians these could even be militia formations as partisans, deployable behind German frontlines when in Russia with sensible limits.

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

If a limit is going to be applied to special forces numbers, can we be forced to have other types of forces by game design?

Sure. But what other type of specialized units are currently in the game that need a restriction? I currently don't see any other candidates.

... what if, for every frontline (40 or 20 width) division you have to have a 2nd rate formation...(say 7 width) for use as garrison/coastal defence duties, and the 2nd rate formations should be at the lowest priority for new equipment. ...

Players can already build units like this if they choose. And with a SF limit, may do so simply to increase the number of SF units they can build.

... This would even apply to the USA and represent their vast supply/support train.

Agree that we need to represent the supply/support train nations had, but they are mainly non-combatants and should not be represented by combat units. The existing Service Manpower, if extended to ground units, would perform that function quite well.

 

[Had a dad]

What determines the force limit of 24? or is that just a hard cap?

typically something like this is softcoded into the defines file

 

[Flavius Belisarius]

Even more welcome changes, great to see!

 

[Nodfor]

You are also right here. But from a historical MP perspective, I want a solution that doesn't require massive numbers of "marine" units. So if the balanced MP players need that option, I say let them mod it if the base number isn't sufficient for them. No different than if the base number starts off as 20% or so, I would then say the historical MP players would have to mod it to get the number they want to play the game with.

Why should MP players be forced to mod (and split up the MP community) if those playing single player want a limit? If you are playing single player and don't want too many SF running around, well, just don't make that many. Nobody is currently forcing you to mass train them in your single player games.

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

Why should MP players be forced to mod (and split up the MP community) if those playing single player want a limit? If you are playing single player and don't want too many SF running around, well, just don't make that many. Nobody is currently forcing you to mass train them in your single player games.

Because it isn't just about single players wanting a limit. I would just about guarantee that everyone in the historical MP "community" would agree that a SF limit is welcome.

 

[EltharionDrax]

Allow Allies to land lease China? It's locked behind World Tension YOU DUMB FUCK. You only get 50 WT when Germany is almost going to war already. Yea go ahead put your fleet in eastern med, and I, as Italy will be laughing my ass off as your navy is dead in 3 days due to naval bombers.

Next time don't join "all welcome" lobby, these lobbies focus on fucking around and doing w/e the fuck they want to. Look for a game where Major country players get vetted in order to play the said country, and the lobby has rules, then you'll get way different experience.

You might want to improve your attitude or you won't be around here for very long.

 

[Nodfor]

Because it isn't just about single players wanting a limit. I would just about guarantee that everyone in the historical MP "community" would agree that a SF limit is welcome.

You base that assumption on what evidence exactly?
If that was the case there would already be a rule limiting numbers of SF in most rulesets.