HOI4 Dev Diary - Operations

[Voigt]

@Eogos I recommend modding of the gamerules.

I added an entry looking like this:

    if = {
        limit = {
            has_game_rule = {
                rule = allow_licensing
                option = BARDULON
            }
        }
        custom_trigger_tooltip = {
            tooltip = RULE_ALLOW_LICENSING_BARDULON_TT
            OR = {
                has_government = FROM
                is_in_faction_with = FROM
                AND = {
                    ROOT = { has_government = democratic }
                    FROM = { has_government = communism }
                }
                AND = {
                    ROOT = { has_government = communism }
                    FROM = { has_government = democratic }
                }
                AND = {
                    ROOT = { tag = JAP }
                    FROM = { tag = SIA }
                }
            }
        }
    }

In general in HoI IV there is missing an entry for OR same goverment | in faction. In vanilla you have to choose between these two rules, instead of an option which allows both.
In my mod we also allowed licensing between Allies and Soviet Union, so democractic and comminst nations. This just block India (neutral) from licensing from the USSR.
Since we use AI mods Hungary and Romania turn fascist quite fast, so there were no extra rules required, but Siam takes quite a while, so Japan can license from them even when they are not in the faction yet and still neutral.

 

[Eogos]

@Eogos I recommend modding of the gamerules.

I added an entry looking like this:

    if = {
        limit = {
            has_game_rule = {
                rule = allow_licensing
                option = BARDULON
            }
        }
        custom_trigger_tooltip = {
            tooltip = RULE_ALLOW_LICENSING_BARDULON_TT
            OR = {
                has_government = FROM
                is_in_faction_with = FROM
                AND = {
                    ROOT = { has_government = democratic }
                    FROM = { has_government = communism }
                }
                AND = {
                    ROOT = { has_government = communism }
                    FROM = { has_government = democratic }
                }
                AND = {
                    ROOT = { tag = JAP }
                    FROM = { tag = SIA }
                }
            }
        }
    }

In general in HoI IV there is missing an entry for OR same goverment | in faction. In vanilla you have to choose between these two rules, instead of an option which allows both.
In my mod we also allowed licensing between Allies and Soviet Union, so democractic and comminst nations. This just block India (neutral) from licensing from the USSR.
Since we use AI mods Hungary and Romania turn fascist quite fast, so there were no extra rules required, but Siam takes quite a while, so Japan can license from them even when they are not in the faction yet and still neutral.

I'm aware of the game rule, the fact that you have to use said game rule rather than it just being a more intuitive system where you control what gets put up for Foreign License Production doesn't change my point. It'd be much better if you could manually control what goes up for sale, to whom, and when in the actual game rather than just the very rigid game rule settings.

EDIT: Plus, if there was any a time for this to be updated and changed this is the update/DLC to do it. It is a DLC all about intel, sabotage, and deceit so fixing the LP issue is pretty relevant especially since it was mentioned in this dev blog that stealing blueprints and shit is a thing now.

 

[Civit]

As often, it looks really well developed and i cannot wait for LaR, but will we ever see Ai properly does these Operations?

 

[BlueAndGrey]

Can we get a diary on ai improvements and evidence of it using the new features?

 

[Riekopo]

Wow it looks like you guys are really listening to all the suggestions on here. I've suggested many of these things in the past myself. I hope there are more than a handful of Historical Operations because there were many during the war. Also, sending agents to assassinate enemy leaders, generals, admirals, ministers, etc. should be a thing. How many attempts were made on Hitler? Including from his own military in the 20 July Plot. And the successful assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Operation Anthropoid.

Also, you need to explain how Coordinated Strike will work and allow us to execute a historical Pearl Harbor strike etc. Because the current game mechanics do not allow that at all. Which has been discussed a lot. I've tried to do a Pearl Harbor strike with a historical Japanese fleet and the game mechanics just don't allow it. You say this will be done with Port Strike but doing a Port Strike from your Carrier Fleet with a few hundred aircraft doesn't work at all. In my testing only about 18 aircraft ever actually attack the Port and they can only damage or destroy 1 ship a day. Also, the American AI never seems to station its Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor. It's always on the California coast.

You also said it will work with Strategic Bombing to simulate the massive destruction (which was like thousands of aircraft on the ground) of Soviet Air Forces during the initial phase of Operation Barbarossa. However, as far as I know Strategic Bombing doesn't destroy the aircraft at Air Bases.

Edit: Everything I've stated is fact. No idea why people are disagreeing lol.

Edit: About 21 ships were damaged or destroyed at Pearl Harbor.

Edit: About 3,000 Soviet aircraft were destroyed on the ground during the first 3 days of Operation Barbarossa. About 1,300 or so on the first day.

In my opinion, Strategic Bombing of Air Bases should destroy aircraft stationed there in general. Not just during a Coordinated Strike. Also, we need to be able to raise sunk ships from shallow Ports like Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had to design new torpedoes for even attacking the shallow port.

 

[Ossiv]

I don't know if this has been asked, but what's the limit of operatives that a nation can have? And I know this has been requested before, so I'll ask about progress in it: have you made it possible to trade intelligence? I'd be more than happy to use my spy network on Japan to tip off the Americans about Pearl Harbor if I'm the UK, but the USA isn't in my faction, and is not my tag anyway. So is it even possible and could it be worth it? Will you ever be able to sell information?

The USA got plenty of warnings about Japanese plans against Pearl Harbor, but they ignored all. One very concrete warning came from MI6 double/triple agent Tricycle (Duško Popov), whom Abwehr (as their agent Ivan) sent to Hawaii to make a report about defences of Pearl Harbor. Popov understood that the mission was to help Japan prepare attack to Pearl Harbor and he met with J. Edgar Hoover in Aug 1941 and warned about Japanese attack plans. Hoover did not like Popov as a person, and disregarded his warning, although the MI6 had told Hoover he was their agent. I saw an old TV documentary where Popov himself told about that meeting and how surprised he had been when his information was totally ignored.

Other ignorations:
Danish government was warned by their own ambassador in Berlin that Germany would surely invade Denmark. The Danish government got similar information from other channels also, but did not decide on any preparations. They knew Operation Weserübung was about to begin, but hoped that Germans would bypass Denmark and only invade Norway. When the Germans came, the Danish military fought for a few hours and lost 16 men before Denmark surrendered. In HOI IV Danish AI fights much harder than Denmark did in real life!
The Soviet Union got a lot of warnings about German attack plans prior to Operation Barbarossa. As far as I know, the Soviet intelligence community believed the German war preparations were real, and they told Stalin the SU must prepare for war. But Stalin decided to disregard all warnings, since he believed in Hitler's (!) promises. In most other countries, a head of state acting that way should probably have been regarded at least incompetent, maybe even a traitor, but not in the Soviet Union.

So, in game a country's leaders should have a chance to disregard intelligence information, as historically happened. How could that be implemented? Maybe rolling dice, do they act according to intelligence information, or disregard it.

 

[Liquid Ghost]

Can I keep doing Infiltrate X operations until their armed forces become an open book for me? Are there any diminishing returns from any of the operations when repeated?

 

[Secret Master]

I very much hope that Virginia Hall is a US operative!

Hopefully, she won't have to go around limping too much as she makes the Gestapo look like a bunch of clowns.

 

[DicRoNero]

Rescue captured operative - Its bound to happen that one of your Operatives get captured while out on mission. If this happens they will be leaking intel to the enemy, but you will have the option to mount a rescue operation and get them out to safety.

Or lose yet more and thus get intel leaking even faster?

 

[Ixalmaris]

Whats a token and how do you get them?

 

[General Von Trapp]

The U.I is great and fits the sleuth theme perfectly.

 

[DukofDeth]

Hopefully the AI will count its phantom divisions as real ones and maybe stop stuffing remote borders that are not really threatened.

 

[adil3tr]

My main question is how much effort and fiddliness does this require? Do we need to be constantly making random orders or is this going to have a feature that makes it a lot easier like the air system (at launch you had to keep changing air zones manually but after that you could assign air groups to armies and forget about it). Also, what if your playstyle doesn't involve a lot of scanning the enemies provinces and seeing how many factories they have for subtle changes in long term planning? How much would we use espionage if we aren't as interested in the kind of info you got from the old decryption system? I saw the ones that affect faction openness and stuff and that looks fantastic because it lets you create soft spheres of influence in a way that didn't exist before.

 

[M.J.]

Hi, will we (modders) be able to add modifiers in spirit form to modify these effects? Say I want to give Germany sight of France's army, is that possible?

 

[ltccone]

Hopefully, she won't have to go around limping too much as she makes the Gestapo look like a bunch of clowns.

I just finished "A Woman of No Importance." A great book on an incredible person. Supposedly a movie is in the works staring Daisy Ridley.

 

[Alexs220]

Will we get historical spies with unique traits? They influenced the war quite a bit. For example Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy in Japan, had let Stalin know that Japan will not attack USSR, allowing Stalin to divert several divisions from East to the West in Autumn of 1941.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

When the Germans came, the Danish military fought for a few hours and lost 16 men before Denmark surrendered. In HOI IV Danish AI fights much harder than Denmark did in real life!

yeah lmao.. one of my "personal challenges" is make danish surrender in 2 days, only possible with a big naval operation to reach their capital. a just normal invasion by land like IRL take 5 days, even with all panzers/CAS might.

 

[Ethereld]

Unless you make changes to how players already collect this information. Players can already inspect available production licenses to see what an enemy has.

That is an exploit, nevertheless it is supposed that after Husky the player will have far less information in the beginning and that with the information war you should be able to have more. For example, naval intel should allow you to pinpoint where USA has its fleet and do your own Pearl Harbor.

 

[Benet0-Mus0ulini]

can you guy rework the Commandos unit too ? they suppose to do some very important and sneaky mission not fighting on the frontline

 

[Emperor Habro]

What about operation Anthropoid ?