HOI4 Dev Diary - Future and Cornflakes

[The_Meme_Man]

Did somebody say....Chain of Command!?

Now I will be forced to play this on loop whenever I play HoI IV when these improvements roll out:

and this too

ONLY these

 

[him_15]

This is a truly attractive to-do list, really looking forward to that!
BTW, any chance that you would fix the "Allied doing nothing issue" in the upcoming DLC?

 

[Regaccio]

stuff isnt locked down at all in this list. this is supposed to give you an idea where we are moving, so feel free to discuss and suggest stuff

One (maybe) simple suggestion I'd give is to let us select units from a list the same way we select files from a list in Windows: Clicking a unit selects it, CTRL-clicking selects multiple units, and shift-clicking a second unit after having clicked one selects all the others inbetween. That last one is particularly important because instead of having to manually shift-click every single division, ship, or plane at the start of every game in order to reorganize them, you can just click the beginning then shift-click the end to select all units. This method of selecting things in a list is already well-known so I think it's more accessible as well.

I'd also suggest separate production screen tabs for land, air, and naval equipment. Would help keep things organized instead of just a long list you have to scroll through. Being able to click and drag equipment around the production queue would be amazingly convenient, as well.

One other UI suggestion: Let us click these things to select all of the type of divisions/air wings/ships they represent. They totally look like buttons, but they're not!

 

[Dakka]

Fantastic list. I'm not sure what I want first, it all looks great! Naval stuff and the pacific war I guess.

Wunderwaffen projects

Probably this one last. Mostly because I think it would be cool to have a minor DLC with fantasy weapons like mechs and Panzerhunds and stuff in addition to more plausible ones like ICBMs and Stealth technology.

 

[petertel123]

This list makes me very happy. Too bas most of it is probably a year or further away

 

[man0lo]

Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only

Properly represent fuel in some way in the game

All the improvements of the game I read are really great; but the above two ...are the most important for me.
-National unity or party popularity must be affected by political decisions like war economy's austerity measures and extensive conscription...
-Fuel is a vital resource in the game as it is now too...however I think its not represented realistically.

PS: I ve seen no mention about more 3d models....Please add some airplanes like Ju87 and Fw 190 ... Having only this Bf 109 for CAS and Figther throughout the war makes the game flavorless.

 

[CharlieFox]

Is there any chance there will be improvements in the battle planner and how land warfare information is presented to the player?

The battle planner gets messy (e.g multiple overlapping front lines ) when you attempt to make specialized manouvers (e.g pincers with armor )

And when you are fighting a world war it is hard to keep track on all theatres. Sometimes some divisions might be cut off and destroyed and you will only notice it when you see that an army has less divisions than before. Sometimes your ally will be invaded and (even if you have troops on their territory) the first warning you will get is the pop up saying that they have capitulated. Also the naval invasion warning is helpful but easy to miss among the other warnings (and it would be nice if it would only warn you when the invasion can overwhelm the local garrison)

Edit:

• Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff

Additionally, rather than adding a way to to remove old stuff from the stockpile, perhaps a way to filter out old stuff when selecting equipment would be preferrable

 

[Emren]

Both the soviet counterattacks at Moscow in winter 1941 and Stalingrad in winter 1942 are good historical examples of where massive armored offensives were planned months prior to attack without revealing the tank divisions by putting them on the front.


In fact I challenge you to find historical examples to support that tanks must be put at the border over a month before an attack ( or counter attack ) in order to be able to carry it out successfully with maximum preparation and planning advantage!

I don't think the "trap" part is particularly important here. The game needs the ability to plan an attack while not on the front line. As I understand it, the normal course of events, an attack is planned, units move up to the enemy, and the attack begins. In HoI4, units can't begin to plan until they are adjacent to the enemy. That seems rather constraining. In particular, you probably don't want your mobile divisions sitting on the front line in plain view while you plan.

I think this also applies to mobile reserves. If you keep your mobile reserves on the front line, then they can counter-attack with full effectiveness (assuming they aren't pinned by a spoiler attack). Mobile reserves behind the line are less capable on the attack, for reasons which are hard to understand.

Well I think you both take 'the border' too litterally here. The troops 'on the border' are, in fact, in the border province, not necessarily within plain view of the enemy. As for Moscow in 41 and Stalingrad in 42, I agree that high-level planning took place in advance. But I doubt that division orders were put in place that were detailed enough for divisions to actually start issuing plans and orders to battalions and regiments. Maybe I am wrong, but that is the kind of planning I believe HOI4 represents when it comes to building up the planning bonus.

Besides, you are free to create an offensive plan from a front which is retreating.

 

[Dakka]

I ve seen no mention about more 3d models....Please add some airplanes like Ju87 and Fw 190 ... Having only this Bf 109 for CAS and Figther throughout the war makes the game flavorless.

I agree. More sprites is another constant update need. It impacts the presentation of the game considerably and it's cool seeing your units represented by what they actually are

 

[Gousman]

Codename Cornflakes huh?

Does this imply you will make changes to the National unity system, with perhaps the ability to use bombers for propaganda? (like actual operation cornflakes).

I once suggested this kind of thing, hopefully paradox will implement such a system
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-diverse-national-unity.976909/#post-21996777

 

[PK_AZ]

Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.

My biggest problem with naming system is that auto-names doesn't work well with predefinied names. For example, when I play as Poland, I start with '1 DP Legionów im. Józefa Piłsudzkiego'. When I build additional infantry division, it will be called '1. Dywizja piechoty'. The point is, I ALREADY HAVE '1. Dywizja Piechoty' (i.e. infantry divison holdind the number '1'). Will it be repaired?

 

[Marine]

Awesome news all of this, that is going to be in the game in the future in some way or another

 

[Domo230]

Thanks for taking the time to explain the long-term plans. Likewise, I appreciate that you are honest saying you are just back from vacation and that these are all early-stage plans (which most games companies would not let their playerbase know about—I know we don't!). I know that it's risky to do, because there's always the risk of players interpreting this as a definite to-do list—despite you clearly stating otherwise—but I am glad you shared what you would like to implement into the game.

Personally, I would be really excited to see the things on this list implemented and would happily continue to pay for content if this is the type of things intended for the game.

Hi everyone, this week I'm going to take some time and talk future plans with you all.

• Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
• More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
• A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
• A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
• Improved naval combat interfaces with good transparency to underlying mechanics (give it the 1.4 air treatment)
• Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
• Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
• Every starting nation has a custom portrait for historical leaders
• A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Somethign that fits between events and national focuses.
• Spies and espionage
• Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only
• Improving peace conferences
• Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan)
• Wunderwaffen projects
• Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
• Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff
• Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems
• More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
• More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
• An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
• Make defensive warfare more fun
• Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
• Allow greater access to resources through improving infrastructure
• Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups

 

[ltccone]

Hm. That sounds like a gamey sort of "gotcha" strategy, and not one that you can find any historical basis for I think?

Manstein's backhand blow, the 'miracle on the Donetz' is an example.

 

[leeuw]

Hi everyone, this week I'm going to take some time and talk future plans with you all.

Right now
With the "Oak" 1.4.2 patch out the door and the team back from vacation its time to start looking at the future. This week we started work on the next DLC which is going to be a full-sized expansion. A lot of people have been asking for more mechanics and larger changes, and this will be it. As normal the expansion will arrive together with a free update we've dubbed 1.5 "Cornflakes".

As for exactly what these will contain you will need to bear with us a bit. As I said with us getting started on it now we need some time to actually make and test stuff before we start showing it off to you. This will mean that the next two diaries (if all goes according to plan) are going to be covering other stuff while we get ready. My plan there is to get some guest writing in from people who can talk about the business and process side of the company and team.

The five year plan
Not actually a five year plan, but I want to share with you some form of roadmap on what to expect in the future. Some of you may have seen me talk about some of this in my PdxCon talk earlier this year.

Just to be super clear, this is not any form of exhaustive or final list and unless we have already done it we can't promise anythings. Priorities change etc. The point of this is to give you an idea of things we would like to do. The order of things is also not in any kind of priority order, or order we would do them.

• Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
• More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
• A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
• A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
• Improved naval combat interfaces with good transparency to underlying mechanics (give it the 1.4 air treatment)
• Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
• Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
• Every starting nation has a custom portrait for historical leaders
• A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Something that fits between events and national focuses.
• Spies and espionage
• Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only
• Improving peace conferences
• Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan)
• Wunderwaffen projects
• Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
• Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff
• Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems
• More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
• More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
• An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
• Make defensive warfare more fun
• Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
• Allow greater access to resources through improving infrastructure
• Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups

You'll notice that some of these are small and some of them are huge. I can't really talk too much details about this stuff though. That is stuff we will do once/if it makes it to dev diaries with feature highlights and has been implemented. Oh yeah, and before someone goes "why isn't improving AI on this list" the answer is that its not really something you can ever check off as done. We'll keep working on that in parallel with other stuff as we have since release.

There is no World War Wednesday stream today since the channel is all streaming from Gamescom today, but you can now check out last weeks episode on youtube to see me run the dev team as generals in a massive co-op.

It should be noted that this isn't a "this is what will be in the next DLC"-list. It is a list of things we want to do eventually, spread over several DLCs.

...
...
...
Where can I buy the next expansion pass?

 

[Uglyr]

Hope you would continue to improve unit roles system. So you (and AI) can create different templates for defensive, slow offensive, fast offensive, reconnaissance and so on units and AI would use them based on their role.

 

[jkchart]

Hi everyone, this week I'm going to take some time and talk future plans with you all.

Right now
With the "Oak" 1.4.2 patch out the door and the team back from vacation its time to start looking at the future. This week we started work on the next DLC which is going to be a full-sized expansion. A lot of people have been asking for more mechanics and larger changes, and this will be it. As normal the expansion will arrive together with a free update we've dubbed 1.5 "Cornflakes".

As for exactly what these will contain you will need to bear with us a bit. As I said with us getting started on it now we need some time to actually make and test stuff before we start showing it off to you. This will mean that the next two diaries (if all goes according to plan) are going to be covering other stuff while we get ready. My plan there is to get some guest writing in from people who can talk about the business and process side of the company and team.

The five year plan
Not actually a five year plan, but I want to share with you some form of roadmap on what to expect in the future. Some of you may have seen me talk about some of this in my PdxCon talk earlier this year.

Just to be super clear, this is not any form of exhaustive or final list and unless we have already done it we can't promise anythings. Priorities change etc. The point of this is to give you an idea of things we would like to do. The order of things is also not in any kind of priority order, or order we would do them.

• Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
• More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
• A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
• A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
• Improved naval combat interfaces with good transparency to underlying mechanics (give it the 1.4 air treatment)
• Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
• Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
• Every starting nation has a custom portrait for historical leaders
• A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Something that fits between events and national focuses.
• Spies and espionage
• Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only
• Improving peace conferences
• Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan)
• Wunderwaffen projects
• Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
• Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff
• Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems
• More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
• More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
• An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
• Make defensive warfare more fun
• Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
• Allow greater access to resources through improving infrastructure
• Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups

You'll notice that some of these are small and some of them are huge. I can't really talk too much details about this stuff though. That is stuff we will do once/if it makes it to dev diaries with feature highlights and has been implemented. Oh yeah, and before someone goes "why isn't improving AI on this list" the answer is that its not really something you can ever check off as done. We'll keep working on that in parallel with other stuff as we have since release.

There is no World War Wednesday stream today since the channel is all streaming from Gamescom today, but you can now check out last weeks episode on youtube to see me run the dev team as generals in a massive co-op.

this is an awesome list of things that you guys are coming up with for future content! Thanks so much for everything! Love the game!

Idea: is there any way you could implement proper governments in exile that can coordinate resistance and raise "free" soldiers to continue fighting? For countries such as France who get forced into exile to their colonies when the homeland surrenders. That would be awesome, and a fun feature for multiplayer too if it could be figured out, allowing you to fight the good fight while still being "capitulated" in an attempt to support your allies to regain lost territory.

 

[Einar Matveinen]

Great news!.

I think logistics should be improved in the next patch or as soon as possible.

 

[Omiyackhi]

It's good to see new national focus trees for China,Turkey and Spain. Many players waited for it, so good work! I believe in HOI4 will be greatest game in the next 2 DLC. ( with the hope of better AI )

 

[Metz]

A suggestion while talking about changing units is that if you retrain a unit, you should get the option to rename it and it will follow the current number sequence of infantry or whatever division its being converted to.