HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Updates

[chenpony]

1) the first is a reference to a joke were-in a brit in a boat yells to a german that he's sinking and the german replies what are you thinking about (the english S sounds like the german TH)

3) depth charges were used to sink subs

4) shipping as in ships but also the act of sending something to someone (free shipping is when there's no subcharge for sending it)

6) finding nimitz sounds a bit like finding nemo

Sank you!

 

[chenpony]

It's all water-related jokes.

"Sinking" sounds almost the same as "thinking". "What were we thinking?" means "why did we do that?"

I don't know about Loveboats, but the Scharnhost was a German WW2 warship, named after a Prussian officer who fought Napoleon.

"Depth" in a litteral sense is (among other things) the distance between the surface and the bottom of a river or sea or ocean. "Depth" in a figurative sense means complexity, with very positive connotations.

"Free shipping" normally means the product will be delivered to your address for no extra cost. Here, the updated "ship" behavior will come for free.

Nimitz was the supreme commander of the US Pacific Fleet in WW2. Finding Nemo is a very successful Disney movie about a fish (y'know, Disney) trying to find his son, called Nemo.

Sank you too!

 

[Whisper9000]

Glad to see some work on navel combat. It is the first step in many for its many problems.

 

[Duke_Dave]

Will we get a DD on the SS-Divisions and how we can form them, especially the foreing = Divisions of the SS?

 

[JSparks101]

I now only read this Dev Diary for the 'rejected names'

 

[walt526]

Thank you. A naval update in the upcoming DLC is both unexpected and much appreciated!

 

[Covfam]

While I appreciate the convoy raiding/submarine tweak, are troops also going to be able to live off local supply/alternate supply caches? Because otherwise a blockade on either the British or the Japanese is going to completely screw a war effort halfway across the world, that should rightfully be supplied from closer bases, .e.g India.

While not perfect i think i remember saying that airbases with aircraft can bring supplies to other locations with airbases, also it was fairly costly to do so but i cant find where that post was but that might help some with nations cut off from supplies

 

[walt526]

While not perfect i think i remember saying that airbases with aircraft can bring supplies to other locations with airbases, also it was fairly costly to do so but i cant find where that post was but that might help some with nations cut off from supplies

I would imagine that there will be a pretty low supply for airbases such that only a handful of divisions can be adequately supplied using airbases alone--much lower than ports. Supply via airbases should also obviously depend on relative air superiority.

 

[Covfam]

I would imagine that there will be a pretty low supply for airbases such that only a handful of divisions can be adequately supplied using airbases alone--much lower than ports. Supply via airbases should also obviously depend on relative air superiority.

Yeah there would have to be counters like air superiority and either supply zone limitations of the airbases to prevent it from being overpowered. Sure post ww2 in 1948-1949 western allies had the massive berlin airlift that flew over 200,000 transport flights of supplies. I shudder to think of the financial, equipment, resource cost it too to do that for a year. So id imagine of trying to replicate a simmilar instance in game would require so much as to take a lot away from other aspects of your nation.

 

[Farquarsen]

Loveboat is a reference to a very bad sick US sitcom in the 70s. Epsiodes centered on a cruise ship. Sink it please!!!

@podcat, thanks for one major naval fix this DLC. I hope this is a foreshadowing of things to come in the next DLC. Perhaps a fix to the Pacific Naval war?

 

[Blitz Dawg]

vielen Dank, Freunde

 

[Sourlol]

• The airlift cost the United States $350 million; the UK £17 million and Western Germany 150 million Deutschmarks

According to the National Cold War Exhibition

Rough conversions would put the US figure at $3.6 billion in 2017 dollars.

I can’t say for sure—because I’m not going to take the time to do so—but I believe as a portion of gdp, military budget in 1949 was larger than 2017.

3.6 billion is .5% of the military spending budget, 7.7% of foreign Aid, or 6.1% of overseas contingency operations (nested within military spending). (Using 2017 budget and the converted 2017 figure) I mention all of those as I’m not certain where the money would come from specifically.

I guess my point is, while a man hour intensive operation and one that used up a lot of physical resources (planes, goods, fuel, pilots) it was not one which came close to breaking the budgets’ back.

 

[Ksyr]

Sank you!

 

[walt526]

Yeah there would have to be counters like air superiority and either supply zone limitations of the airbases to prevent it from being overpowered. Sure post ww2 in 1948-1949 western allies had the massive berlin airlift that flew over 200,000 transport flights of supplies. I shudder to think of the financial, equipment, resource cost it too to do that for a year. So id imagine of trying to replicate a simmilar instance in game would require so much as to take a lot away from other aspects of your nation.

Well and during the Berlin Airlift, the Soviets weren't trying to shoot down the transports and so they could land (or drop from very low altitude). During the Battle of Stalingrad, German transports trying to support encircled troops were being shot down, so had to drop from high altitude (which meant supplies wound up in hands of the Soviets) and unable to land. That greatly diminished the efficacy of air supply.

 

[Pyro157]

So during the stream, it was commented by the devs that 1939 was in hindsight, a wasted idea because only 3% of players played it.

However, I'm one of the few who love 1939 mode - it lets the war get into 1945, I've had some of my funnest China games on there and it's better for democratic nations. So please don't remove 1939 mode, Paradox - it's genuinely fun for us, too.

The buildup to war is fun, but 1939 is a greater chance for a closer, "historical", WW2, which the history buffs like me really enjoy. I'm a sucker for the war lasting as long as it historically did, myself.

 

[Covfam]

• The airlift cost the United States $350 million; the UK £17 million and Western Germany 150 million Deutschmarks

According to the National Cold War Exhibition

Rough conversions would put the US figure at $3.6 billion in 2017 dollars.

I can’t say for sure—because I’m not going to take the time to do so—but I believe as a portion of gdp, military budget in 1949 was larger than 2017.

3.6 billion is .5% of the military spending budget, 7.7% of foreign Aid, or 6.1% of overseas contingency operations (nested within military spending). (Using 2017 budget and the converted 2017 figure) I mention all of those as I’m not certain where the money would come from specifically.

I guess my point is, while a man hour intensive operation and one that used up a lot of physical resources (planes, goods, fuel, pilots) it was not one which came close to breaking the budgets’ back.

Well thats actually interrstings so less of a financial hit and more of a resource equipment and manpower hit...thanks

 

[Covfam]

Well and during the Berlin Airlift, the Soviets weren't trying to shoot down the transports and so they could land (or drop from very low altitude). During the Battle of Stalingrad, German transports trying to support encircled troops were being shot down, so had to drop from high altitude (which meant supplies wound up in hands of the Soviets) and unable to land. That greatly diminished the efficacy of air supply.

As a retired infantryman my experience is even the simplest of tasks are harder when getting shot at and supply drops werent simple

 

[Enriador]

some neat new UI changes.

Colored buttons, finally?

 

[Axe99]

Woot! Not much makes me smile like a naval-related DD, cheers for the update Podcat, and the team for all the work . In the context of things to make the current system work better, this DD is all win . Thanks for the wake-up call @Meglok .

In honour of an update with some sub-loving, here's a pic of an Italian fleet review in 1938, that involved eighty submarines surfacing simultaneously

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.

This is soooooo good - as someone who, when testing tweaks to naval mechanics, has had to tag switch and count up individual ships of types from the current screen, this will make life much, much easier . Love the tooltip info too

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.

This sounds like a very good change, and may help focus the naval war on an area rather than on specific convoy routes, on top of the benefit of making the impact of raids more noticeable to the nation defending its sea lanes .

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.

This is very welcome indeed . There's an awful lot of space in sea zones for UI elements to give players a better idea of what's going on, and this sounds tops .

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.

Philosophical destroyers are the best destroyers . Great news to hear naval will be a higher priority in the future .

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.

In the context of the current system, this seems to be the best way to handle it, but that this is the best fix does highlight the weaknesses of the current system (where things are focussed around 'one big battle' in a sea zone, but the actual battle is set up as a 'tactical' battle, but moving at super-slow speed). Suspect some risk of transporting troops getting mauled a bit in specific situations, but appreciate that these are things 'fitted in' around a DLC/patch with a focus on China and Japan, and that there's only so much can be done at once .

@Axe99
What do I think about this?

I'm just another punter, albeit one who may have an unhealthy obsession with warships, but my thoughts for what they're worth are above . I would, however, never recommend anyone whole sale taking my thoughts and using them without critical examination, or all sorts of strange things might happen (you might suddenly find yourself tracking down earlier editions of Warship, for example ).

I'm not going to respond to this thread so my mail doesn't get spammed.. oh shit...

It's possible to adjust both your 'watch' settings for a particular thread, and what you 'default' settings are when you respond to a thread. Thread-specific notifications can be adjusted through the 'watch thread'/'unwatch thread' in the toppish right-hand side. Default settings are in the profile settings somewhere, let me know if interested and you can't find them and I can have a look.

So... not adding Pre-Dreadnought as a Battleship class? So Schleswig-Holstein is still evenly matched to Fuso?

There's only so much anyone/team can do at once. As someone who modded in ship tech-year models for 1896, 1908 and 1916, I can confidently report it's a fair bit of work to adjust the tech trees and the various OOBs and country files when adding in new ship tech year models (and that's not counting the necessary research beforehand).

 

[anastiel]

Great work paradox