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HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #2

Greetings all, and welcome back for a slightly less content-focused dev diary than our latter soviet efforts. Today we’ll be covering a couple of smaller additions to be added in NSB, some of which have been hinted at before, followed by a small announcement from project management.

Weather 2.0

One of our long-standing goals with the new supply system, was to introduce some changes to the way weather affects the gameplay experience. To give some strategic relevance to weather, we’ve slowed down the system to modulate between potential weather effects on a less frequent basis. This gives a player some time to react to potentially advantageous/disadvantageous conditions, as well as being somewhat more predictable on a larger scale.

In addition to this, we’ve taken a broad look at the combination of stat effects on ground conditions, temperatures, and weather, in order to mesh more closely with the new supply system, and to give a greater impact on campaigns - especially those conducted in adverse conditions:

  • In addition to Org recovery, weather will now affect org loss from movement, and in extreme cases, supply consumption.
  • While temperature has no new modifier effects, we’ve taken a pass on temperature data across the world, with the intention of improving accuracy.
  • Ground conditions now also have the potential to affect org loss on moving divisions. This becomes particularly important in muddy/cold conditions such as the eastern front, where the combination of various conditional effects can severely slow an advance.

New Weather Effects: (WIP)​

ConditionOrg RegainOrg Loss While MovingSupply Consumption
Rain-5%+5%
Storm-15%+10%+10%
Snow+10%
Blizzard-10%+25%+15%
Sandstorm-20%+25%

New Ground Conditions: (WIP)​

ConditionAttritionDiv SpeedDiv AttackDiv DefenseDig InOrg RegainOrg Loss While Moving
Deep Snow+25%-25%-30%+25%
Snow-10%-10%+10%
Mud+70%-50%-40%+25%
Flood-50%+50%+20%+25%

Visually the weather effects have been updated to be easier to spot on the map, with updated particle effects weather will look better than ever. This also makes it clearer when a region is experiencing a weather event so you can react to it faster.

Equipment Management

In NSB, we’re upgrading the ability to manage specific equipment usage by division template. This means you can ensure that your elite breakthrough divisions have everything they need, while line divisions have equipment of a lower priority.

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You can access this feature in the division designer, where you’ll have a comprehensive breakdown of all equipment types currently stockpiled. You'll now be able to allow/deny by category, both in archetype and variant, without the need to manage everything individually.

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We’ve provided several broad methods of manipulating equipment usage, in the form of a togglable setting on whether this division template should automatically have newly researched equipment enabled, and a quick method of toggling the usage of foreign equipment.

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Changing these settings will not incur any explicit cost, though you’ll need to maintain awareness of your production lines when using these settings prodigiously. The update division tooltip, as before, will give you a summary of the scope of your changes, as well as how many divisions are likely to be impacted by this change. Lastly, it is important to note that these settings will affect reinforcement and training only - your existing divisions will not have their weapons immediately confiscated.

Allied Construction

Indeed, as hinted at yesterday, we’re introducing allied construction to the game. This oft-requested feature will allow you to build certain buildings in the territory of members of your faction.

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Unlike subject construction, this will utilize only your own factories, leaving your favored ally to continue with their own constructions as before. We have limited the building types permitted for allied construction to Infrastructure, Railways, Airbases, and Radar, however this setting is easily moddable for those interested in expanding their options. We initially allowed the allied construction of forts, but, well, the office MP proved why that was a terrible idea.

For balance reasons, constructions with levels dependent on technology (ie Radar) will be limited by the tech of the recipient country, not the builder.

Graphical Encircled Unit Icons

We've taken the opportunity with NSB to add some feedback to one of the more serious situations an army can find itself in - encirclement. Whenever an encircled division is destroyed, a short animation will be played to draw some attention towards it. Of course, this animation also plays if you are the one doing the destroying.

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Changing of the Guard

Here, I’ll hand over to @podcat to cover an upcoming change in the HoI development team.

Hi everyone Dan here, I want to let you know that you’ll be seeing Peter more and more as he is now taking over as game director on Hearts of Iron IV.

Looking back I have been working on HOI4 for about 7 years now and before this I worked a few years on HOI3. So it's fair to say that Hearts of Iron will always be close to my heart, but I also feel like it's time for something new to sink my teeth into.

I’m going to be working with a Secret Project which I can't tell you very much about - except that I am super pumped about it, and that it isn't HOI5. While I’m sure the time will come for that, right now we feel that HOI4 still has room to be developed with content and cool stuff.

Timing wise it fits well for me. No Step Back was the last expansion step I had penned down back when the original game released in 2016 so it's time for another 5 year plan (heh). It takes the game full circle as with NSB we will have touched on all the major systems in free updates and expansions at least once. It's also a perfect time to get more fresh perspectives to help evolve the game when most of my original ideas and plans have now been done.

Of course you will still see me around and I expect I’ll be poking around here and there in HOI (one does not simply let go of their baby so easily!), but I am confident in Peter and the team to take the helm and keep steering the ship now, and I am sure No Step Back will be awesome and that you will all love it.


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Et tu, Peter?! Game development is serious business!

Peter here again - I’m honored to have been asked to take the reigns on HoI. I’ve been working closely with Dan and the team over the last months, and feel confident that we can keep on building HoI in the right direction.

As some of you will be aware, I’ve come to HoI by way of Imperator, having previously worked on several PDS projects as a content designer. Prior to that, I had a long and entirely unrelated career in classical music. Historical PDS titles are something I’ve been an avid fan of from long before I worked here, and I’m super excited to take my experiences forward from Macedonian nation-building to the 20th century.

We have many plans for the future of HoI so after NSB is safely out of the door, you’ll get a chance to see my take on the future of the game. This said, I’ll point out that Dan and I are very much aligned on the creative direction of HoI 4, so to pre-empt some questions, a switch in game director does not mean lootboxes, mana, or any radical shift in core design philosophy.

What does it mean? Well, it’ll take time to see that properly. We’ve made no secret of the intentions around future dlcs and content (see last PDXcon for more details!), so the best answer I can give you there is that we’ll be doing our utmost to meet this potential roadmap while I begin to put my personal spin on the game. I’m more than happy to try and answer broad questions about my thoughts on the future of this excellent game, my industry experiences thus far, or myriad other topics, but please be aware that (beyond what I’ve already implied) we will not, as usual, be able to answer qualitative questions on future releases.

In general, you’ll find me present and willing to engage in polite discussion on the forums and other media inasmuch as my time allows, so I expect to begin interacting more with this passionate community in the near future!

/Arheo
 
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Nice Dev Diray. Couldn´t be long anymore to get the Version 1.11 "Barbarossa" incl. DLC "No Step Back"-Base-Game-Refit and play it.

Since waiting an very good Big Mod (Hoi 4 Ultra Historical Industry Project) will fill the Gap with the 1.10.x-Version.

Sadly Podcat goes, he and the Team make a very good Job for Hoi 4. They brought it from an 32 Bit-Game, where the Player loose in the beginning Wartime with AI-Rushes in the Base-Version (1.00 to 1.6.2) incl. all DLCs (TfV, DoD, WtT and MtG) to a full playable Game on 32 Bit.

With the Modernisation-Groundwork from the Base-Version in 32 Bit to 64 Bit (1.7 to 1.10.8) as well as brining in much cool Stuff like Lend-Lease, Autonomy, Equipment Conversion, Traits and Abilitys for Generals / Admirals, Decissions and Missions, the long awaitet Ship Designer to make the Navy useable, Espionage as well as many more small, medium and big Features, they did the best Groundwork for an Base-Game-Refit.

With 1.11 "Barbarossa" incl. the upcomming DLC the Team made with Podcat as Leader an second big Step forward for many Reasons. Existing Features get an Refit / Rework or other Modernisations to make the Game more interessting. In every Version of the Game the Devs work together with the Modders and notice what the Community tells.

But not every Notice from the Community can be done at once, like the Navy-, Army-, Espionage-, Resistance- and Focusses-Integration and Modernsisaton. The To-Do-List for Hoi 4 isn´t done yet, there are several Country-Packs open (Skandinavia, Afrika, forgotten Major-Colonies in the East-Indies, South-America) and other Features which can only get Reworked / Refited, Integrated etc. after the 1.11-Restart.

I hope too, that we get in the Modernisations 2 more Start Dates (1930 and 1933) with more previous Focusses for the Major and Minor-Major Countrys. If no Focusses in that Timeline are possible to bring in a Focus-Brake, which Start the existing ones first 1936.


From that what Podcat said, it will be a complete new Frenchise. All other Games (Stellaris, Hoi, Survining Mars, EU and whatever) are all in Refits and Upgrades since they came out 2015 or later.

The same I have heard as well as read from an other Company too (Firaxis), which make the Civ- and XCOM-Rows.
Hoi4 is not 64 bit. Its fluff.
 
BotB wasn't outsourced in the way that everyone thinks it was, 2 of the Focus Trees were created by the Freelance Content Designer who for all intents and purposes is part of the team but remotely and 1 created "in-house". Completely "outsourced" DLC is more akin to the Great Wonders from Imperator and PDS titles already use multiple parts of outsourcing to complete work like almost every company in the industry does now with partners such as QLOC.

Ah okay I wasn't aware of that, thanks for clarifying!
 
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Thanks for all the work on HOI4 @podcat.

Kinda weird because you are essentially HOI4... maybe even HOI... the whole game systems was all your ideas (the focus on production really paid off). I remember this demo and being very excited back in the day.


I think we’ll be alright with @Arheo at least. He will have to do I guess... j/k.

The end of an era and the final offensive until someone starts secretly working on HOI5 but does not tell anyone... a common Paradox tactic.
I think it is still too early to say they are working on the HOI V when there are still many things planned for the current HOI it would be more plausible to think that it could be a spin off of this based on the cold war or the I GM
 
By any chance, could you perhaps implement some kind of auto-occupation mechanic for encircled areas which do not have any enemy troops defending it? It would be an amazing QoL improvement!
 
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since youre playing with terrain again, it'd be cool if there were modifiere that accounted for the mecator distortion ....
Cause it's hella annoying how big the northern sea zones and how small the equatorial ones are. Also, a map that goes further north and south with changing amounts of ice coverage during the year - not sure how much sense this makes from a gameplay perspective however.

The equatorial distortion is bad because it messes so strongly with the range of ships
 
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Allied Construction, huh? Finally, I can build up my AI allies when they need it most. No really, I am wondering how that could change up gameplay and how the AI acts. Sure, it might not change much, but it would be interesting to watch what happens when you say give France a little extra boost to their mils via England or USA. It would be interesting to see, my only question is this though. Will there be a way to disable AI from building in YOUR territory so you don't find yourself with odd factories here and there in places you don't want them?
 
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Late game, it is really difficult to select the types of planes I need to deploy when I have to scroll through all the different models of fighters and bombers etc when I have captured so many foreign aircraft. Would be really nice if we could filter out all the foreign or obsolete aircraft. Also could we get a warning and an arrow that points to the edge of the map whenever our units are encircled or about to be encircled, if we follow the arrow then it would eventually lead to the encircled units. That would be really helpful when im fight a two front war and sometimes my really expensive tank division gets encircled without me knowing.
 
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So no answer on the received under previous post critique? Is it supposed to mean that there won't be any changes made to the soviet non-communist focus tree?
Why the assumption? Bratyn said he'll potentially do some tweaks here and there but it takes some time. For example in Polands case it was 3 dev diaries after the 2nd Polish dev diary.

We have to give it some time.
 
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I find it funny that flooding improves entrenchment. I would imagine that flooding would, you know, flood the trenches so no one could dig in lol.

Great dev diary altogether, I'm really glad you guys didn't allow fort and port construction for allies. When I saw the teaser my first thought was a line of ports from Bordeaux to Calais and how you couldn't ban people in mp if you didn't know who broke the rules, since anyone could have done it. Good to know that's already been considered, a lot of times things like that slip through the cracks.
Can't kill the enemy when he's already drowned!
 
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Within reason, possibly. The perspective is very different between the two games. Whereas Imperator needed a firm course to be set, HoI already has a successful one - I have no plan on changing that.

That's fair. I feel like a lot of the depth to managing democracies in HOI4 is very... passive? I don't expect this to become Imperator but something a bit more dynamic that made me feel like I have to juggle my country would be great.
 
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Well it will need a lot of time, because no non-communist path makes sense at least a little
Well, i have no answer on whether you'll like the changes or not. However you asked if not getting any news now is going to mean there wont be any changes, which i said is probably not true. But again, i don't know what these changes are going to be.
 
Its never too soon for memes
If you make a March of the Eagles 2 with focus trees and an option to restore the ancien regime in France, I'll buy it.

Though let's face it, I play all Paradox games...
 
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