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HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Access

Diary time! Today, in the 7th diary, we continue showing off features in Man the Guns, but don’t worry - there are loads more coming! The topics for today both concern access.

Sea zone access
With MTG it will now be possible for players to mark sea zones as either Avoid or Banned. A zone marked as Avoid will be treated as dangerous and, well, something to avoid if possible. This goes for all ship routing. So if enemy submarines are decimating your shipping you will be able to route it elsewhere, perhaps somewhere safer and closer to an ally. Ships will still route through a zone marked as Avoid if there is no other way to get where they are going.

route.jpg


A Banned zone won't allow moving through it at all, except by manual player moves, or say if it’s an invasion order triggered by the player. It will for example even shut down trading if there are no other possible paths. Zone markings are shown in the naval mapmode and can both be toggled directly on strategic area alerts, or in the new “state view” for the sea. Here we also show a proper breakdown on the level of naval supremacy in the area much like you are used to for air zones instead of the old sparse tooltip. You’ll have to excuse my sneaky censoring as not to spoil a future topic however ;)

state.jpg


At this point I am sure some aspiring u-boat captains are wondering why the enemy can’t just shuffle their shipping routes constantly to avoid being located and interdicted. Changing your route will put its efficiency at 0, so if you continuously change settings you won’t be able to move things through the route. That said, there might be some good strategy in sometimes changing things up to make it harder for the enemy to concentrate their raiders.


Docking Rights
Asking for or receiving Docking Rights are new diplomatic actions. They function like military access “light” and allow someone access to base out of, resupply and repair in your naval bases. In fact military access by necessity automatically comes with docking rights. Docking rights can give you better reach and avoid troublesome paths. For example, German subs will be able to operate out of Spanish ports (if permission is granted) and threaten British shipping in areas where defending them is trickier and they won’t have to pass through the channel or more guarded waters.

dr.jpg


When it comes to repair and such you will be at a lower priority than the owner of the port, but you will have to wait for a future dev diary for more details on how the new repair system functions in detail. Ships in a neutral port that are there due to docking rights can not be attacked with aerial strikes on the base, so if you want to get rid of ships operating there you will need to draw the harboring nation into war also.

That’s all for this time folks. Tune in next week for a *cough* explosive update.

Rejected Titles:
  • This feature was inspired by the famous documentary Das Boot
  • A pouch of tricks
  • Tuesday Teaser Extended Cut HD
  • Nono, these U-Boats are on holiday here in Spain
  • “Should we be worried that Command is sending us, specifically this ship, into a zone marked as Avoid?”
  • Blockchain for dummies - naval edition
  • This dev diary has probably the worst Dev-Time-Needed to Feature-Dev-Diary-Length ratio
 
what about the length of the route, does it impact the time to deliver lend lease or trade, i think it should, safer route but longer route, seems pretty reasonable for me, what do you think about ?
Does not ferrying stuff require more convoys for longer routes ferrying the same amount of resources over from India takes way more convoys like ferrying it over from East Prussia to western Prussia. Basically accounting for more convoys having to go out to achieve the same frequency as they are en route longer?
I could be wrong though I never really look much at what individual routes take I just look at the total number of convoys and see that I produce enough to have a good surplus buffer,

Anyway if whats not how it works I guess that's how it should work imho :)
 
One thing I'm wondering whether the Devs have got covered, what is the route efficiency for newly started trade routes to other countries?

Because if they start at full efficiency which they do at the moment, you could simply cancel the current trade agreement, block some sea zones, and then start a "new" trade route with the same country, with the new routing in place at full efficiency.

This of course won't work for supply transfers or lend-leasing, but still it's an exploit.
 
Does not ferrying stuff require more convoys for longer routes ferrying the same amount of resources over from India takes way more convoys like ferrying it over from East Prussia to western Prussia. Basically accounting for more convoys having to go out to achieve the same frequency as they are en route longer?
I could be wrong though I never really look much at what individual routes take I just look at the total number of convoys and see that I produce enough to have a good surplus buffer,

Anyway if whats not how it works I guess that's how it should work imho :)

I'm pretty (98.5%) sure it does work that way. I have memories of a game as ENG where I lost Gibraltar, and suddenly my convoy requirements jumped up because everything was going around the cape.
 
I'm pretty (98.5%) sure it does work that way. I have memories of a game as ENG where I lost Gibraltar, and suddenly my convoy requirements jumped up because everything was going around the cape.
Then that is probably working great but maybe worth looking into in a bit more detail.
But if its working then there is a great gameplay consequence to making your routes longer by placing many banned regions. Its all about choices I can have it a little safer but I also use more convoys.
More convoys for routes like if you go around cape instead of suez also means more targets for submarines right?
 
Come on. You are talking about the weight of convoys but not about my post about how incredibly unplausible it is to give docking rights to every war-involved nations?
phhh...

by the way, I really need the option to stop the game after a research or focus tree has finished/broken.
Just for the first 3-4 y3ears, while I#m doing my laundry etc ...

still.. please refer to my last post, I'm really interested in a comment on my suggestion..
 
by the way, I really need the option to stop the game after a research or focus tree has finished/broken.
Just for the first 3-4 y3ears, while I#m doing my laundry etc ...

I'm not sure if I've followed you correctly here (and apologies if I haven't) but there's an option to 'pause on notifications) - and I think there may be some options relating to events in the decisions tab (but need to look to check, I just have everything set to pause when I can, I'm a slow, stodgy player :p) - if you had that set for the first 3-4 years then you shouldn't have issues there. There's no pause if a CIC line runs out, or having extra MIC/NIC, but that can be planned around (by stacking the queue) easily enough.

Apologies if you meant something completely different :).
 
Ah, you want e.g. Allied planes to fly out of Russia while both are at war with the Axis, or Axis planes to fly out of Japan, while both are at war with the Allies. Now, do me a favour and name a single instance that actually occurred IRL, excluding one or two instances of small foreign volunteer squadrons (e.g. the Normandie-Niemen) that cannot be handled through decisions. Actually, even the Normandie-Niemen was in practice a part of the VVS and thus under Russian control.
RAF landed bombers in Russia to attack Tirpitz
 
I'm not sure if I've followed you correctly here (and apologies if I haven't) but there's an option to 'pause on notifications) - and I think there may be some options relating to events in the decisions tab (but need to look to check, I just have everything set to pause when I can, I'm a slow, stodgy player :p) - if you had that set for the first 3-4 years then you shouldn't have issues there. There's no pause if a CIC line runs out, or having extra MIC/NIC, but that can be planned around (by stacking the queue) easily enough.

Apologies if you meant something completely different :).


Hey, not entirley. I know that the game doesn't stop for CIC. That's fine just for the reason you pointed out.
But I couldn't find the option to pause for notifivations/decisions. That kinda always breaks my game a bit. I will have another look - If you say there is one I trust you ;)
I usually need 3 - 4 years before war, before that I do not necessarily sit in front of my monitor and watch the time go by ;)
 
Hey, not entirley. I know that the game doesn't stop for CIC. That's fine just for the reason you pointed out.
But I couldn't find the option to pause for notifivations/decisions. That kinda always breaks my game a bit. I will have another look - If you say there is one I trust you ;)
I usually need 3 - 4 years before war, before that I do not necessarily sit in front of my monitor and watch the time go by ;)

I promise there is :). If you press escape to bring up the menu, and select options, and then 'game', it's a tick-box notification there (just providing info/screenie to make it easier to find). Again, if I've lost the plot and this doesn't do what you're looking for, many apologies.

20180817204832_1.jpg
 
Neato burrito.
 
You know in my dreams, the "explosive" refers to ammunition.
That's actually a very good guess. Fuel doesn't completely solve the current "infinite time on station" problem. Supplies and Ammunition must also be taken into account. However, with fuel/supplies/ammunition, there should be doctrines/technology that allows UNREP (underway replenishment) to occur - this vital (and extremely secret - not shared with allies) process allowed US Aircraft Carrier Task Forces to remain at sea indefinitely (except for moderate/major repairs) once enough forward fuel depots and oilers were available by 1943.
 
Finally ordering my troops to garrison a new area will not have them take the "fastest" sea route as opposed to a land route, and whoops! the Japanese just sank 22 divisions! There goes all your troops as Australia!
 
Hey, not entirley. I know that the game doesn't stop for CIC. That's fine just for the reason you pointed out.
But I couldn't find the option to pause for notifivations/decisions. That kinda always breaks my game a bit. I will have another look - If you say there is one I trust you ;)
I usually need 3 - 4 years before war, before that I do not necessarily sit in front of my monitor and watch the time go by ;)

After launch, select "Options", then "Game" and check "Pause on Notifications"

Hearts of Iron IV Choose Options.png Hearts of Iron IV Game Option Pause.png
 
Oh Sweet. I sure hope this fixes the fact that my convoys always just love to go through the English Channel, despite my complete control of the North sea and Northern Atlantic.
 
So I took a look at that issue for 1.5.4. It was not a planned patch, but something we needed to do to fulfill new data privacy laws to add GDPR, so getting fixes into it was difficult and were done in our spare time because we didnt want to leave people with the china problem. The naval air issue is a big problem which essentially boils down to "rewrite all the air->naval code from scratch". So for our limited patch time it would have been extremely high risk of introducing something worse and dragging out the process (the realities of software development is that if we were to do another patch in between it would mean roughly pushing DLC/big-patch release a month forward which nobody wants. Nothing is free and happens in a vacuum). On top of that since we need to change a lot of other stuff in the naval combat system for MTG we would end up doing the job, then potentially throwing it all out and doing it new again, a huge waste of time. There is also the fact that this doesnt affect that many players (its mainly MP crowd and very naval focused players... who are probably more interested in getting MTG faster), but of course that is no excuse and doesnt make things better for you personally. Its one of those tough choices we deal with all the time. Rest assured we'll solve it for MTG though.
Thank you for taking the time to explain. I'm aware of the realities of software development, in my own work we deal with the same tough choices.

However, the bug became noticeable in WtT. Was all the air->naval code rewritten from scratch for WtT? That seems unlikely, please correct me if I'm wrong.
Or did some small change in WtT cause an existing bug to exacerbate? If so, then why can it not be mitigated with a small change?

Of course the effort would indeed be wasted for MtG, and mitigation is not a solution in any case.
Regarding the impact, this bug has been on the frontpage of the HOI4 forum for a long time, in many different incarnations.