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HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Updates

While Waking the Tiger and Cornflakes were not supposed to focus on the naval part of the game, we actually ended up doing a few things anyways :D So today’s diary is going to be about that!

First up: We got a new screen in the Navy Overview Screen that gives you a breakdown of losses and kills. These can be filtered by nations and faction.
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You can for example see that France has lost 42 destroyers and sunk 67 Italian destroyers during the last year. The interface also lists convoys, so it’s much easier to keep track on how much of the enemies shipping you have taken out and to see how its changed between current and last month. If you click on an entry here it will give you a detailed breakdown of the ships:
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Speaking of convoys: we have changed how raiding works and how losses in convoy efficiency is handled. Convoy sinkings is now tracked by strategic area rather than route, meaning that if several routes go through an area that is being raided, they will all be affected rather than single routes randomly being hit. This makes things much more predictable and you can’t get around efficiency hits by suddenly stopping a trade or a change in supply situation. The actual effect of a sunken convoy depends on how many are active (so if there are two convoys shipping stuff and one gets sunk thats a big impact, but if it’s 50 then it is pretty minor). The efficiency itself reacts slowly a bit per day to avoid jumps and weirdness. This solution means that it’s possible to keep convoy efficiency for the enemy low as long as you raid enough.

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To help illustrate this to the owner of the convoys, we color routes that end up with lower efficiency due to raiding orange. Any area that is hit badly enough gets a special texture and is colored red. You can then focus your anti-raiding efforts on these areas.

We have also been tweaking the detection logic of submarines and how fleets engage. Fleets usually had a really easy time to find submarines due to some strange code thats now been keelhauled (a destroyer could more easily find a submarine that could find itself very easily...it was very philosophical), so we hope that part of naval warfare is going to feel better. Naval combat is an area that has been a bit neglected since launch, so we will be giving it some higher priority in future development.

Development wise the team is now in full polish and bugfixing mode, which means pet peeves like this one get addressed. I bet everyone who has played China or Japan has noticed this at least once:
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Ships no longer go across land in the Yellow sea (and other tricky places) :)


We have also changed how transports interception is handled. Before it was possible to send a sacrificial transport first, and have it get caught by the enemy fleet as the rest of your transport fleet sailed past to invade the enemy. Now ships in combat are still able to detect transports for this case and “suck” them into the same combat. This should fix multiple exploits :) The way it looks on map (as the later transports may get caught in a different location) is that we show a special combat indicator over them and clicking on that sends you to the main combat in the zone.
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Next week we will be taking a look at achievements and nation forming, and some neat new UI changes.

Don’t forget to tune into World War Wednesday at 16:00 CET. Today we are going to start a new session (because Daniel was losing so badly vs Japan >:-D) as historical Germany, to show how it plays differently now.

Rejected Titles (due to popular demand):
What were we sinking!?
Loveboats II - The sinking of the Scharnhorst
Adding depth to the naval game
This DLC comes with free shipping
So the DLC is the Titanic and this bug is the iceberg...wait
Finding Nimitz: The Game
 
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Blockade system (to prevent supplies from going into a region/prevent them from going out and to prevent eny soldiers from leaving the port to greener pastures).

The fuel system could simulated with time:

Each ship in a fleet has a enough fuel to operate for a certain amount of time before they need to refuel - so find out roughly each ship class fuel time and then take the average of that and make that the operating time of a fleet.

Then, give the ability to extend that time by allowing the player to build fuel barges that could sail with the fleet. The more fuel barges, the bigger the operating time.

Make a naval bomber interface allowing them to prioritize certain ships (maybe the same for ships themselves?) so that your naval bombers don't waste their time attack a full health screen when a battleship is limping away.

Make a fight interface along similar lines (protect battleship/protect carrier etc).

Wald
Modernizations and Mothballings systems would be nice as well.
Small craft such as Frigates, Torpedo boats, Corvettes, ect.
actual landing ships ship for troops and not just using transports which is silly
alternate supply like Mulberry Habors, actions like the Tokyo Express (similar to the additional supply transport planes give) and wierd stuff like transport submarines
And, as a small personal want, manpower losses when ships are sunk or damaged.
 
We have also changed how transports interception is handled. Before it was possible to send a sacrificial transport first, and have it get caught by the enemy fleet as the rest of your transport fleet sailed past to invade the enemy. Now ships in combat are still able to detect transports for this case and “suck” them into the same combat. This should fix multiple exploits :) The way it looks on map (as the later transports may get caught in a different location) is that we show a special combat indicator over them and clicking on that sends you to the main combat in the zone.
I'd assume it's related to this, but I've noticed recently that convoy raiding is a lot more effective, or at least is managing to grab and sink far more convoys each battle.
 
Modernizations and Mothballings systems would be nice as well.
Small craft such as Frigates, Torpedo boats, Corvettes, ect.
actual landing ships ship for troops and not just using transports which is silly
alternate supply like Mulberry Habors, actions like the Tokyo Express (similar to the additional supply transport planes give) and wierd stuff like transport submarines
And, as a small personal want, manpower losses when ships are sunk or damaged.

I'd like naval leaders to have traits as well, related to what type of command they have.

a) Do they command mixed fleet groups? Carrier heavy? Battleship heavy? Only submarine wolfpacks?
b) Do they engage mostly in convoy raiding? (trait bonuses that give convoy raiding efficiency)
c) Do they engage mostly in convoy/supply escort? (trait bonuses that give escort efficiency)
d) Do they engage most in search and destroy? (trait bonuses that give surface detection bonus/gunnery accuracy)
e) Do they engage mostly in patrol (hypothetical fourth mission which gives small detection bonuses to ships + aircraft overtime and allows friendly navies/aircraft to better find and pull eny ships into engagements) Give them sea zone detection bonus
f) Do they have a huge amount of fuelers? (traits that give operating time bonus)

There should be a training mission that costs fuel or supplies of some sort to run. The higher the rating of a naval officer, the faster and better he can train ship crews.

Wald
 
I'd like naval leaders to have traits as well, related to what type of command they have.

a) Do they command mixed fleet groups? Carrier heavy? Battleship heavy? Only submarine wolfpacks?
b) Do they engage mostly in convoy raiding? (trait bonuses that give convoy raiding efficiency)
c) Do they engage mostly in convoy/supply escort? (trait bonuses that give escort efficiency)
d) Do they engage most in search and destroy? (trait bonuses that give surface detection bonus/gunnery accuracy)
e) Do they engage mostly in patrol (hypothetical fourth mission which gives small detection bonuses to ships + aircraft overtime and allows friendly navies/aircraft to better find and pull eny ships into engagements) Give them sea zone detection bonus
f) Do they have a huge amount of fuelers? (traits that give operating time bonus)

There should be a training mission that costs fuel or supplies of some sort to run. The higher the rating of a naval officer, the faster and better he can train ship crews.

Wald
That would be wonderful, and it could have it's own upgrade system similar to the generals we have now. A tree of sorts where they could focus on certain types of battle. And even have a similar tree to the terrain traits for things like Shore bombardment, Night battle, strong weather operations, ect.
 
One thing I thought of (and I've brought it up as a suggestion before) was that a certain amount of oil needed to be owned/purchased that was above and beyond what was required to build the vessel in order to keep fleets/aircraft/tanks running.

I'd also like a two dimensional layout for the battles in order to allow for formations and such to keep things more realistic, without too much additional workload.
 
One thing I thought of (and I've brought it up as a suggestion before) was that a certain amount of oil needed to be owned/purchased that was above and beyond what was required to build the vessel in order to keep fleets/aircraft/tanks running.

I'd also like a two dimensional layout for the battles in order to allow for formations and such to keep things more realistic, without too much additional workload.

Imagine Stellaris style naval combat and ship customization?!

*drools*

Wald
 
I like their system now (sorta), but it should be in from the beginning: as soon as you research a new hull, you set what you want it to do (AA, big guns, torpedo, armor, speed, etc) before you put it into production. Then the variant system feels more realistic through a revamp of adding experience through construction of the hulls themselves as well as fighting the hulls.
 
Where is that Naval Losses screen exactly? I must be blind.

It's in the Navy screen (shortcut 'P'), and it's the skull on the page to the right of the words "Navy Overview" :).

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