HOI4 Dev Diary - Future and Cornflakes

[Dimosa]

The only feature i really want to see is a way to prevent troops from using naval transport to get to their destination. This often leads to loses when you dont have full naval control.

 

[Gamer_1745]

I really thought that list was for the next DLC as a whole! I figured you guys hired a dozen new programmers and decided to give the game a complete overhaul!

Maybe you can still hammer out 90% of that list in less than a year for under $30-$40 cost to us?

I look forward to playing seriously again one day and it looks like you guys are seriously preparing to make it happen!

Thanks for all the hard work!

I think part of the reason some of this will not be in the next DLC is that they are working on things they are not ready to talk about because they are far from sure they can make it work. So there might be other big changes not on the list in the next DLC, so they would not have time to get all on this list in.

 

[moscal]

More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)

Manchukuo have more right to get Focus Tree than South America, Turkey or Iran...

 

[PinkBear]

AWESOME LIST. I especially agree on spending more time on the majors. I play Germany, Italy, USSR, and Japan only. I am pumped about you making those focus trees more in depth. Few suggestions:

1. Move the naming of units, and portraits to the community. Allow them to be posted prior to upload and I promise you the community will find the errors and you’ll end up with a great product and waste zero developer time.

2. Factions members have “points” that show how valuable they are to the faction. This can be rated on war participation, casualties, etc. This point system would be used to decide which country gets what territories when countries are occupied but the war continues.

Right now this is a MAJOR problem. This single handedly kills the World War One mod, because when Russia loses Brest-Lovik ruins the game. The MOD developer has no tools to fix this.

Vanilla examples are when Germany goes to war with Portugal but Axis Spain claims Portugal. Then Germany misses out on those resources. Another example is if Japan takes Singapore and Siam claims it and the Rubber there goes to Siam.

(I always click and ask for the lands but I get the “you have taken too much territory” response.) So as Germany or Japan you’re punished by adding members to your faction.

3. Eliminate the 1939 start time. Wasting even a minute of developer time on this is super disappointing and there are so many more places it could be used.

4. We need more controls and uses in Multi-player. Just a few tools would make a massive difference.

5. Division Design. Hard power is too weak currently and should be given more power over soft power. Right now building 14/4 divisions in the game is all you need. Forget tanks or anything else.

6. Battle penalty for no air. No aircraft vs air superiority would get a massive 80% penalty in a war. With just a few aircraft bringing that % up big time. Right now it is plausible to build no air at all and this is something that should be fixed.

--------------------------------------

The multiplayer community is the best place to get information on how to make battles more balanced. Force users into having to think about the entire package and not just spam one main unit. Tanks and air seem under-powered to me and I would love them to get some serious bonuses so 14/4 units cannot roll the entire world.

Having said all this. HOI4 is my favorite game ever. Please keep up the good work!!

 

[Saint Gwynllyw]

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

• Wunderwaffen projects

YES

 

[CharlieFox]

@podcat I know you said the list is not exhaustive, but are there any plans to allow to use transport planes to drop supplies or to transport light infantry between airbases?

 

[supreme]

These are the sort of changes the game needs to become really great, glad to finally see things moving towards a better gaming experience and hopefully less work being done on the focus tree stuff as it just does not add enough value to the game for what the cost of the dlc is.

 

[JerkyJerry]

Wunderwaffen projects

I don't know if I'm historically correct however would something like Mulberry Harbours (or some other form of temporary harbors) be considered a Wunderwaffen project?

I'm just craving a real life like D-Day. I'm thinking that if the Allies could create temporary harbours/docks/ports then possibly a D-Day landing would not have to be in a province with an existing port? Maybe the allies (and the AI) could land anywhere as long as they had the Wunderwaffen project researched and in doing so forcing the Axis to have to guard against the entire coast?
Is this or some form of this idea even remotely possible?

 

[Duke_Dave]

Thanks for this DD its good to see, what we can expect in the next few DLCs, makes me want to buy a new expansion pass
Also nice to tell us when we can expect DevDiaries on the DLC (if all works as planned of course). Really looking forward to the rework of the occupation system and the limits to standing armies post war, sounds like the stuff I have seen being disscussed with quite a few people in the last months.

 

[Picard 359]

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.

Paradox I really hope that you will made resources expansion for HOI IV in future in way!

1. Introduce strategic resources like Uranium, Heavy Water into HOI IV Is stupid that every Country can build Nukes without access to these resources and that every country have access to nuke tech even semi native countries in Africa and Asia (no offense)...

2. Add coal into game. Apart for producing electricity, coal is important in steel production, even in production of synthetic oil on which relay German war machine in WW2

3. Add Food resource and its effect into game: EXAMPLE if population is hungry food shortage will boost unrest and partisans/opposition activity in player county, partisans get more man power in that country while player losing man power. + on this way convoys with food will become vital example for England and if U-Boats can cut down England from food supplies and people starving there will much harder to continue of fight...

4. Even some type of money/gold and tax system will be interesting addon into game (solders must get payment and for building construction every building have construction costs), but for but for vehicles I don't add money costs, resources is enough just for army upkeep/salary and buildings construction - that money isn't important in War Nazi will not that hard steal poor Jewish people gold!

5. Remove half of iron deposits from Germany and add more of it into Norway so Norway will become more strategical important to Germany than now + due heavy water. Now I don't see good reason for risk Krigersmarine ships and time on Norway in game + remove requirements that Poland must be conquered for begin of Operation Weserubung national focus...

6. Add U-Boat Type IX

 

[moscal]

5. Remove half of iron deposits from Germany and add more of it into Norway so Norway will become more strategical important to Germany than now + due heavy water. Now I don't see good reason for risk Krigersmarine ships and time on Norway in game + remove requirements that Poland must be conquered for begin of Operation Weserubung national focus...

Generally - resource map should be reworked

 

[Masoud22volk]

That all sounds awesome

 

[Lothos]

How about putting something like LUA back in the AI so myself and others can help as we have the previous 10+ years.

Been watching the paint dry since HoI 4 was released, hence one of the big reasons I have been MIA.

 

[Had a dad]

How about putting something like LUA back in the AI

I would love it

however.... there are some that probably think I'm the guy with the branch below

 

[gossamer]

It worries me that I see nothing specifically related to sueing for peace during wars/separate peace like every single HOI game before this one.

If I'm playing Brazil, I don't want to get dragged into WW2 because the US backed Bolivia (or whatever other minor I invaded). I also don't want to have to fight them literally forever because they cannot invade me well enough and I'll never make them capitulate.

Please correct this.

 

[MaximillanVoss]

I hope you implement all these things, it would make the game much more immersive and more in depth like Hearts of Iron III. And would get rid of the games over simplification. And could overshadow the games weaker start.
High hopes guys.

 

[AliChallab]

Plz add a focus tree for Iraq plz!. Iraq is the birth place of civilization.

 

[Constans]

@podcat Since you mentioned immersion, will the NF mechanic get a bit of an overhaul or will NF durations be looked at in the future? It seems a little immersion breaking that remilitarizing the Rhineland takes exactly as long as building 4 cic factories. It's not a big issue, but it would be nice to see some variance and maybe a little less determinism.

This. On a similar vein, NF's in general need to be more dynamic and have better parameters for the AI choosing them then just a "list." The current set-up means its impossible to puppet certain nations if they've progressed far enough down one side of their tree.

 

[jackda]

• 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

Awesome!

 

[mattpilot]

• Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc

This is basically the reason i am not playing anymore. Some people don't like limits, but i feel like not having them is ruining my ahistorical gameplay (also, National Unity needs to change during gameplay). I don't care for history and replaying it. I want dynamic, ever changing, gameplay. That includes periods of peace and managing aspects other than war. While probably not within the design scope of HOI4, there really is no alternative to consider (like EU4) because they are simply different games and what draws me to HOI4 is the unique way combat works.