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HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Terrain

Today we are going to talk about Naval Terrain and start talking about some of the core changes to the naval game.

We felt that we wanted to make where you fight more important, and where possible give advantages to people fighting in home waters. The sea in HOI4 has previously generally been either “ocean” or “ocean in range of enemy land based aircraft”, and otherwise mattered little. That’s about to change!

To do this we are introducing several terrain types for seas. These impact what ships work best there, how mines function as well as some other stuff. In total seas are divided into 4 types:
ocean.jpg

Regular Ocean has no special effects, so its similar to plains on land.

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Fjords & Archipelagos come with some hefty penalties to big ships, but make it easier to hide (all numbers still quite work in progress btw!)

Screenshot_3.jpg

Deep Oceans on the other hand are not good for light ships. They are also not good place to mine due to their depth and vastness. Subs like this area (mid atlantic gap = bae) because it is also easier to hide here.

Screenshot_5.jpg

Shallow seas are a bit harder to maneuver well in, and not a great place for submarines.

There is also some possible modifiers on them:

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Arctic Water is a general bad area to operate in, wearing your ships down and causing potential accidents. It also increases casualties if ships sink for any reason. This modifier works much like Extreme Cold on land so it depends on the time of year and temperature.

Screenshot_7.jpg

Some places in the world have quite a lot of sharks and there are a lot of stories of heavy casualties after the sinking of ships due to sharks. The USS Indianapolis is a famous example where due to several reasons, sharks among those, something like 75% of the crew were lost. It is honestly mostly a cool flavor thing though we wanted to have in ;)

Your performance in these are also affected by Admiral Traits. As we have shown a bit before your Admirals can now gain traits for different terrain types.

Screenshot_2.jpg

  • Cold Water Expert reduces the impact of arctic waters
  • Inshore Fighter gives combat bonuses and speed when operating in Fjords and Archipelagos
  • Blue Water Expert gives combat bonuses and speed when operating in deep oceans
  • Green Water Expert gives combat bonuses and speed when operating in shallow seas
You might have noticed some strange colors in the screenshots above. We are adding some more mapmodes, but it’s mostly all pink and full of coder art at the moment, so you are going to have to wait a bit more to see all those. I am pointing it out because I need to show the terrain mapmode a bit to more easily show off the naval terrain across the world
Screenshot_8.jpg


Around the Dutch East Indies several of the terrain types are visible (the colors on land in this mapmode are still in need of some tweaking btw). The brightest there is archipelagos with the other shades of blue being shallow seas and regular ocean and the darker areas is deep oceans.

This is what the Atlantic and Europe looks like:
Screenshot_9.jpg


Notice the deep ocean in the Atlantic and the fjords around scandinavia.


That’s it for this today, next week we are going to start going over some of the more core naval changes. Seeya then!

Rejected Titles:
  • Naval “terrain” is an oxymoron, like “Military Intelligence”
  • SHARKS
  • Fjords, or how to make Scandinavia relevant this DLC
  • Not from the creators of Sharknado, comes SharkBlizzard
  • Podcat read a book about how horrible it was being on a destroyer in the arctic
 
Hope you can make a more detailed naval tech tree and introduce more ship types.

Coastal submarine for coastal and shallow waters, ocean-going submarine for deep oceans.
Add torpedo boats for green-water navy, and archipelago regions like the Solomon islands.

And please seperate the pre-treaty traditional battlecruisers (Hood, Amagi, Lexington) and the post-treaty "cruiser killers" or "large cruisers" (Dunquerke, Alaska) in the current "battlecruiser" tech tree. The former have same firepower as battleships of the same era, but with increased speed and decreased armor. The latter have same speed as battleships of the same era, but much less firepower and armor, which are essentially enlarged heavy cruisers. Maybe we could have a reworked naval tech tree like this:

Have to disagree with this. Battlecruiser distinctions seem a strange sticking point when the Ship Class system is already pretty abstract. The game already treats a Scharnhorst Class (9 11 Inch guns, 31000T) a Kongo Class (8 14 Inch guns, 26952T) and a KGV Class (10 14 Inch Guns 42245T) as the same thing 'Battleship 2' with identical stats. And given the ever changing classification of 'what is a battlecruiser?' the current system works fine.

That said, I'm hoping that the general naval overhaul and refit system will allow for a lot more flexibility and granularity rather than just a few more standardised ship types across all nations (although a bit more difference between nations ships would be nice, it isn't required and I can see the benefits of the current system from a gameplay perspective). I want to be able to refit the Gneisenau with the proposed 6 x 15 Inch main armament, convert a KGV to the rejected 9x 16 Inch main battery design, or cover PoW and Repulse with AA guns and see if they can avert their rl fate. Best case scenario, you can tweak and upgrade to the point where you've ended up with stuff like the pre-treaty proposed G3 (a 'battlecruiser' that was essentially an Iowa class battleship, but in the 1920s) and N3 (a battleship with comparable armament to the Yamato, if not the mass and armour) class ships.

Complete tangent, but I'm surprised the N3 isn't in the game already as the British SHBB1 (while it's not an exact fit, it's at least a close as a Scharnhorst and a KGV/North Carolina), as it was actually a proposed design. I've never even heard of the 'Centurion Class' that's in the game atm.
 
@podcat
Not sure it's been mentioned, but "Casualties on sink" literally means that there are casualties on the sink, ie where you do the dishes. It should be "Casualties upon sinking".
Just the grammar nazi in me rearing its head again, sorry!
 
@podcat
Not sure it's been mentioned, but "Casualties on sink" literally means that there are casualties on the sink, ie where you do the dishes. It should be "Casualties upon sinking".
Just the grammar nazi in me rearing its head again, sorry!
If my wife tells me to do the dishes, and I refuse, there will be casualties on sink. Trust me on this.
 
Casualties...
Hmm, I assume that when the UK sinks a German destroyer --> all German sailors either drown or become prisoners of war. --> Regardless of survival, they won't be fighting for Germany for the remainder of the war --> 100% casualty rate

It would only make sense if the sailors are rescued by a friendly vessel which usually happens when the own side is winning a naval battle.
In the German example, historically surface ships acted mostly alone --> no friendly rescue. Or it was submarine warfare and well, submariners usually don't get rescued by their own side. Even working in wolfpacks it wouldn't be likely.

I don't know if this casualty factor makes sense in most cases.

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

PS: Gotta ask this: Will there be a "shark killer" trait that nullifies the shark attrition? I could picture a MacArthur diving into the water with a machete between his teeth, butchering all approaching sharks to save his seamen.
 
PS: Gotta ask this: Will there be a "shark killer" trait that nullifies the shark attrition? I could picture a MacArthur diving into the water with a machete between his teeth, butchering all approaching sharks to save his seamen.

We'll get a new researchable unit to rescue the boys:
MERMAIDS!

6c1a0d8731bc74ecc156e1931fd1ad95.gif
 
I will say though that 2km average is WAY off. You can easily see vessels at 10x that on most days - and the season doesn't matter much except to make fog and rain more common - even in rain you can see much greater than 2km almost always. Of course in fog you can bearly see the other end of the ship.
I grew up in Northumberland and spent a lot of time on the coast, but actual travel over the north sea limited to trips to the Farne Isles and weekend trips to Copenhagen (from Newcastle). The coastal view was very very variable all through the year and it does rain a lot up there :) Pea soupers, remember them well. I agree that the 2km is very short, hence my cautionary tag. But, squalls, full rain, haze, fog etc all limit visibility, and the occurrence of those varies with season and that is without actual storms themselves. But happy to bow to more knowledge and or direct experience.
 
It's obvious you've never been to sea then. Small boats don't do well in the rough seas that are common in deeper waters. In calm waters, sure no problem, but wait until that ship with a 2 foot freeboard gets into a sea state of 3. All hell would break loose. Just look at the USS Wasmuth (DD-338), A Clemson class DD that was sunk because a storm caused two depth charges to explode.

Even larger ships could have a hard time while in storms on the high seas. A good example would be the USS Pittsburgh (CA-72) in this video. I'll grant you 100 foot waves and 70 kts winds arn't common, but a smaller ship would have floundered and sunk like the Edmund Fitzgerald on lake Superior

Right so shouldn't the penalties be predicated on weather? The negatives to "small" ships applies during even calm conditions.
 
I'm not sure if it's been discussed but should it not be brown water. Green water is seawater taken on board such as over the bow in bad weather. Being too fussy perhaps.

From earlier posts it seems that 'brown water' was not used due to the possible out of game misuse :)
 
So we are using the wrong terms cause some people may make poop jokes?! At that rate, we better make sure to call them sailors, wouldn’t want anyone to get a laugh.
 
I do not think that "shark infested water" is a "cool flavor". Instead statements like this cause unwillingness in people to help protect sharks.
No, sharks did not cause USS Indianapolis to have a lot of casualties. The total fatal shark attacks from 1958–2018 is 439.

I highly doubt the shark mechanic in this game is going to sway anyone's perception of sharks. Nevermind the fact that the game itself is a simulation of millions of people dying.
 
For those who seem to be disagreeing....

Blue Water Navy is capable of operating across all oceans and seas.
Green Water navy is capable of operating on a regional sea basis
Brown water navy being coastal and inland waters.

But with no clear borders between them.

According to Wiki - Brown water now means (for USN) inland with Green now including coastal waters.
 
AS an aside - does anyone have any pointers to how the ship designer will work please, as that is a must have to actually use the sea zones fully?
 
For those who seem to be disagreeing....

Blue Water Navy is capable of operating across all oceans and seas.
Green Water navy is capable of operating on a regional sea basis
Brown water navy being coastal and inland waters.

But with no clear borders between them.

According to Wiki - Brown water now means (for USN) inland with Green now including coastal waters.

And the common term for soiled water on a ship is....... Grey Water
 
Please focus more on diplomacy and diplomatic options! We have to conquer the whole target country if we wanted to just take one claimed province from the enemy. If you enter a war like between axis and allies then you're just stuck in it, you can't pull out, you can't do much other than surrender; We should either make all the opposing nations capitulate or be annihilated. Please Bring back Cassus belly and peace options. Why not send an emissary to the enemy to sign a peace treaty where both can swap lands and settle issues; Both sides knowing the continuation of war is not in their favor?! The game shouldn't be all about war and options during the wartime. We should be able to prevent it but what does the game has to offer in peace times?
Options after capitulation of a country or an alliance are so limited. There is just simple ceding provinces and liberating or making them satellites.
Also do something about late-game lags. They are extremely frustrating!