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HOI4 Dev Diary - Man the Guns and PdxCon

Hi everyone! We are now back from PdxCon which was an amazing experience. If any of you were there, thanks a lot for coming! I had a lot of fun and interesting conversations with HOI fans and we had a very cool challenge to as Poland inflict as much casualties as possible on Germany in 1939 in just 30 minutes. The winner (all glory to @Zwireq, AKA Zwirbaum) pulled off 1.8 million using clever tactics and a strong cavalry army! What better way to save Poland than to turn the false myth of the polish cavalry charging German tanks around :)

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The myth itself is something based on reality where polish cavalry performed a successful charge early on in the war vs German infantry at the battle of Krojanty. Something the German propaganda machine tried to falsely portray as the poles being unprepared for meeting modern German armor (there were no tanks there). The myth apparently lived on a long time, notably taught in schools and promoted in soviet propaganda… that said, in Hearts of Iron IV at pdxcon the polish hussars did ride out and win!

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The HOI4 booth where we ran the challenge.

We also announced the next big expansion for HOI: Man the Guns.
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Man the Guns will focus on naval warfare primarily but also redoing UK and USA and giving them more fun options. There will also be other new focuses but those are secret for now. We will also be adding fuel to the game which a lot of people were very excited to hear about at pdxcon :)

The UK and US revamps we plan to handle the same way we did Germany and Japan, e.g the changed trees and historical path in the 1.6 'Ironclad' update and the new alt-history paths (despite my perhaps not so subtle hints people have figured out that there is going to be the possibility of a 2nd american civil war among other cool things).

As for the themes we decided to go with naval for several reasons. One, that it fits very well with USA (and they were on the top of our list of nations we felt needed more fun gameplay). Secondly we have already done big changes to both land and air in previous expansions and updates so it was time for the 3rd type of warfare to get its time in the spotlights. Its also currently in my opinion the weakest part of HOI and something we really want to make shine.

We are currently very early in development so things may change, but here are some things mentioned we are aiming to do (in expansion or free update or mixed):
- Ship design and the ability to refit older ships and keep things up to date
- Naval Terrain: different seas will behave differently and suit different ships and fleet compositions
- Revamped naval combat
- Fleets split up into task forces for better control
- New naval spotting system
- Ability to control naval routes and block areas you dont want units to travel through
- Fuel, obviously going to be a massive balance job for us and a big gameplay change for you :)
- Gameplay rules, particularly to help multiplayer groups out when it comes to manage their games
- of course other stuff as well. to be revealed in the future.

We don't have a release date yet, and most of the above is still subject to change because we are are still early. I really wanted to talk as much as possible about what we are up to at pdxcon though :) Hopefully I will see more of you next year there!

We also announced that HOI4 has hit 1 million sales (wooot), and to celebrate that we have decided to make an anniversary edition that comes with a super cool alt history diorama - Italian soldiers raising the flag over the rubble of Big Ben, Iwo Jima style ;). I felt italy invading London was one of the more hearts of iron things there was when it comes to alt-history :)

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We had the first version for PdxCon in the booth fresh from the maker, and you can see it there in the picture above. The anniversary edition is actually possible to preorder already! Just follow this link.

As have been mentioned elsewhere this doesn't mean we are ready to start up regular diaries yet. You guys are not really fans of filler stuff, so we are going to have to wait a little longer for diaries to start up regularly again. I will let you know as soon as we feel ready to start showing things off proper.
 
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I hope the expansion after MTG hits latin america, african countries, or some of the minor powers that could benefit of new mechanics, like resource market, food, I don't know.
Some alt-history LA fight to make a new Gran-Colombia? Brazil's reconquest of Cisplatina (Uruguay)? Peru and Mexico strike back at Spain during the civil war?
Some National Focuses would make these games much more fun, and make people try out new stuff on HOI4
 
Liquid Ghost said:
Will there be a way for me to scrap ships but keep the experienced crews?

Its always been frustrating when I'm scrapping my Destroyer Is with Veteran crews while putting out Destroyer IIs with completely green sailors as they come out. Why did I just let all those seasoned sailors go?
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I hope hope hope this comes to be.

Then, you don't have to scrap the Destroyer Is.

You can just use the leftover destroyers to train new crews!

G
 
grandad1982 said:
Just had a thought about fuel. If its used on movement unit shuffle by front lines is going to kill your fuel reserves.
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I'd be more worried about the AI, it has enough problems using AFVs :D

I'm not opposed to more micromanagement of units, as I already do that on defense and with armor, but you're right that this system may further expose the flaws of the battle planner.
 
Please make the owner of a certain strait be able to change the rules for who can pass through? It would make straits a lot more interesting and realistic?
 
I'm very excited for what's coming next. We really do need a good naval overhaul.
 
PeterX7 said:
Any chance fixing the current issues (borders, DoD nations, Chinese problems, buggy national focueses) for 1.6?
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Those will be fixed. It's more of a matter of when will 1.6 be out now for the bug fixes in the latest version than anything else.
 
Archangel85 said:
We are aware and I would currently expect that we have time scheduled for patch work before 1.6, yes. The China Warlord issue at least is on top of my priority list. I won't promise that it will be fixed, because experience has shown me that such a claim will come and bite me in the behind.
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I should think the chinese warlord bug and the naval air bug should both take top priority. Also while I am talking to you, the naval aircraft thing . . .

Yes, this has been there since the game launched. No Condor for Germany? US naval planes are the exact same as the carrier planes?

Since what is currently in the game are not attack planes, and there were historical naval bombers that were used. The last one, the german 1944 naval bomber was only designed on paper. To me it makes no sense to just use recon planes in their place.

What we have for Germany right now are fleet float planes for doing reconnaissance. These are not naval bombers. What should be in each slot is in my signature link.

- German naval bombers need a complete change.

- UK 1936 CAS should be the Fairey Battle, not the Hawker Hector. You guys have put in a trainer airplane instead of a well used CAS plane in which several thousand were built and used in the west in 1940.

- US naval bombers are the exact same as the carrier naval bombers. This I didn't talk about in my signature, but I do know that the PBY Catalina is not in the game and it is a well known and used naval bomber of the time. I thought they were originally just for reconnaissance but they were used in all roles. "4,000 lb (1,814 kg) of bombs or depth charges; torpedo racks were also available"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_PBY_Catalina

There were other naval bomber types that could also be put into place for the US, the PB4Y -2 Privateer was a 1943 maritime patrol bomber.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_PB4Y-2_Privateer

Please, please make these changes for the game. Especially since the next DLC will be about overhauling naval combat, these naval air changes (And the UK 1936 CAS) will perfectly fit in with the theme.
 
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Archangel85 said:
I would assume that will be fixed in the course of the naval combat rework.
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In fact Archangel85, since I cannot edit my old link since it would be necroing. A look into maritime patrol aircraft shows that Germany had another naval bomber for the 1940 slot that I didn't see when I first made that old thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blohm_&_Voss_Ha_142

This would fit better than what I had proposed since what I knew at the time was simply using a variant of the Ju-188 bombers or one of the later Dornier bombers. I didn't know that Germany had a prototype for the 1940 naval bomber.

The Blohm & Voss Ha 142, would fit fine. German naval bombers should look like this -
  • 1936 - Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor

  • 1940 - Blohm & Voss Ha 142

  • 1944 - Fw 300 (It's in the game but the icon shows a single engine float plane which looks like another recon plane, when the Fw 300 was a four engine non-float plane)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_300
 
Can you please add fuel dump placement when you add fuel into the game.
It was a major gripe I had with HOI3 with the supply system. I should be able to control a fuel point placement and how much is stored there at the risk of losing it to an enemy counter attack.
It should also take time to fill up and to remove.
If I have stored 10000 barrels it should take 10000 minutes to take down (as an example) so it scales with the size of the dump.
It could also be spotted by enemy planes making a paratroop drop a threat or possible tactic to seize fuel dumps to stop an attack for instance.
 
uglyduckling81 said:
Can you please add fuel dump placement when you add fuel into the game.
It was a major gripe I had with HOI3 with the supply system. I should be able to control a fuel point placement and how much is stored there at the risk of losing it to an enemy counter attack.
It should also take time to fill up and to remove.
If I have stored 10000 barrels it should take 10000 minutes to take down (as an example) so it scales with the size of the dump.
It could also be spotted by enemy planes making a paratroop drop a threat or possible tactic to seize fuel dumps to stop an attack for instance.
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That kind of micro management is why I don't believe there should be fuel depots. Abstract it out and design for effect the mechanics.
 
Shaka of Carthage said:
That kind of micro management is why I don't believe there should be fuel depots. Abstract it out and design for effect the mechanics.
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The problem with abstracting it is that it becomes impossible to destroy fuel reserves, removing the ability to logistically hamstring an enemy offensive before it has even got underway.

K
 
Khevenhuller said:
The problem with abstracting it is that it becomes impossible to destroy fuel reserves, removing the ability to logistically hamstring an enemy offensive before it has even got underway.
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Destroy the infrastructure in a province and the supply/fuel cannot flow through. Those mechanics already exist.
 
I always enjoyed putting older ships in for refit when a new development appeared (playing as the UK, HOI1) so pleased to see it again. Does this mean a revamped tech tree though?
 
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