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HOI4 Dev Diary - Railway guns never tire

Hello there, C0RAX again.

It’s time again to reveal some more secret information that was hinted at in the last dev diary. Specifically this week will be revolving around the final part of railways and trains. So without any more need for introduction here are our stars of the show today.

The railway guns.

So to start off I'll go through how you get a railway gun on the map because it’s a little different to normal land units. First of all you are going to want to research railway guns which comes after armoured trains.
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Then you can find it in your production tab just like building normal equipment. But unlike other equipment you build, these production lines are limited to 5 factories and the railway gun won't be added to your stockpile.
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Instead, once completed, your brand new railway gun will appear in your capital, in this way they are built similar to capital ships.
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Moving your railway gun is limited to provinces with railways, and so to get to the front you must have a rail connection. Taking into account the rail conversion time when capturing territory is important as you will have to wait for the big guns to be able to help you out.
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You can also attach railway guns to armies just like with planes and they will attempt to place themselves relative to the frontline. If you have several, they will be distributed where possible to support your army. There is also a quick select button on the army to select all railways guns attached to an army should you need to.
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Finally, the last bit of control understanding is range. Railway guns have a range in which they can support and so from any one point are limited in which provinces they can support. This range is shown by hovering over the unit icon.
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On to combat now, here we can see a combat with a supporting railway gun, we have added the useful icon on the combat progress indicator that there is a supporting bombardment. This new icon will also show if there is shore bombardment happening in the combat.
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The combat effects of railway gun bombardment work just like shore bombardment, causing negative combat stat modifiers to those on the receiving end of the big guns. These modifiers affect both soft and hard attack as well as defense values. Notably, these effects do not stack - it becomes more important to spread out your railway artillery than to concentrate it.
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Finally we need to talk about capture and damage, railway guns can be captured via encircling them and damaged by damaging the railway they are placed upon.

Now railway guns are the biggest guns by far used on land and so it's important that we have representations of those built by the major powers. So now we look at the unique guns for the major powers.

This is the German Schwerer Gustav model you will see when playing as the Germans. It's perhaps the most famous railway gun and definitely the biggest and so had to have a part in this feature.
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This is the BL 9.2inch railway gun, a relic of the first world war but these big guns were kept in service until 1945.
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Following that we have the French Canon de 305 another veteran of the first world war.
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Next up is the USA’s 8-inch Mk. VI which remarkably first entered service as late as 1941!
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Type 90 240 mm railway gun whose claim to fame is being destroyed by the retreating Japanese in the soviet invasion manchuria.
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And finally the TM-3-12, three of these were made in 1938 and were used in the winter war against finland, unbelievably these where in service until 1999 (a whopping 61 years of service)
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Finally here's a cool clip of the Schwerer Gustav firing in game.
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I'm already a bit iffy on how railway guns are going to work.

It seems that their "debuff", as it were, applies to every single combat within their range, which makes absolutely zero sense.

Making them not stack is definitely good if that's the case, but it also doesn't make sense that 2 guns cannot fire at the same target
Idk. The whole railway gun system flyes right in the face of their irl actual use.

Considering that railway guns had questionable effectiveness at best, and a very specific siege role most of the time, I have no idea why on earth are they having an active effect on every single combat in their range.
A great solution would be to have them affect only combat that happen on a fort or urban tile.
 
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Also, I wanted to ask if trains, motorized and mechanized need to be in the same tab as infantry equipment and artillery or if they could go in their own tab for production.
 
Very interesting, id like it.

I really hope that the production time of railway guns and its price will be included correctly . I really hope so.

Example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav

Weight: 1350 tonnes

please compare to a Tiger tank weight 55 tonnes. So 1350 / 55 = 24,5 . That would mean to building 1 schwerer Gustav railway gun you could build 24 tiger tanks. Or need 24,5 times more time to produce just 1 Gustav than to produce 1 Tiger tank. 250 + 2500 manpower needed,too(maybe 4000 manpower or more were needed for the real gun usage). Same with price 250k for a Tiger , 7mill for 1 Gustav.

Loosing some of these railway guns could cause stability loss

In order to produce and build these cannons quite a bit(or huge number) political power must be spend

Theyre so expensive

View attachment 754549

also important please dont forget the italy railway gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannone_da_381/40_AVS (in real war it was NOt mobilized, but it could be? couldnt it?)
Which is why Gustav shouldn't be a railway gun. It was a crazy project that didn't make any sense and was literally mothballed because it wasn't economic to use it at all. The cost you calculated is not exactly correct it cost just 17 Tiger tanks when calculating the marks it took to build one but that doesn't factor in the cost of setting up the production to make this monstrosity, stockpiling resources and then the ginormous upkeep cost. To even move it Germans had to modify the railways, then build those 800 mm shells and then swap the barrel which is one of the more expensive parts in the gun every 200 shots. It makes a big bang sure enough but it doesn't do anything for the war other than get you some cheap propaganda photos.
 
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Artillery trains will have the ability to use nuclear weapons once atomic weapons have been investigated and developed in the late game.

Let us historically recall these devices in the postwar period were used to test nuclear weapons but also in case of conflict they could be used to launch nuclear weapons.
 
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Really happy Railway Guns are being added. I'm curious though. Weren't Railway Guns mainly used to destroy enemy Forts? I feel like that should be one of their specialties. It would even be cool if you could order a Railway Gun to bombard an enemy Province or State or Fort and do accumulated damage over time.

The German Coastal Guns in Northern France also did very long range bombardment of England.
 
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Railway guns shouldn't provide tactical support during battle.They should be for strat bombing cities , forts and fulfilling coastal artillery mission.I'm disappointed.
 
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Seeing the Japanese example. It makes me wonder. How will railway guns work for Island nations like Britain and Japan? If the Railway Gun will spawn in the capital. Then does that mean it's locked to the island? Will we be able to just move it across seas as we do with regular units?

I do hope railway guns are actually effective. If we have a limit to how much they can affect a battle, then I think this will be a disappointment. If I invested 4,000 Production points on building 5 Railway guns, but the combat effectiveness is capped off at something like 25% then it won't be worth it. Not only are these things incredibly expensive. You are also limiting us to only 5 of these at once. I have always thought this was a bad idea for Capital ships in the navy. I don't think this is gonna be a good idea for Railguns.

Though I would love to see a game where Germany just decks itself out in railways and builds an absolute ton of Railguns. Artillery only 2.0
 
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Seeing the Japanese example. It makes me wonder. How will railway guns work for Island nations like Britain and Japan? If the Railway Gun will spawn in the capital. Then does that mean it's locked to the island? Will we be able to just move it across seas as we do with regular units?

I do hope railway guns are actually effective. If we have a limit to how much they can affect a battle, then I think this will be a disappointment. If I invested 4,000 Production points on building 5 Railway guns, but the combat effectiveness is capped off at something like 25% then it won't be worth it. Not only are these things incredibly expensive. You are also limiting us to only 5 of these at once. I have always thought this was a bad idea for Capital ships in the navy. I don't think this is gonna be a good idea for Railguns.

Though I would love to see a game where Germany just decks itself out in railways and builds an absolute ton of Railguns. Artillery only 2.0
It is pretty much hardcoded for RGs. They can, however, be navally transported if you want to bring some on your invasion holidays.
 
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It seems to me that the developers have not understood this type of unit, it is not intended to directly support the troops but rather a strategic outburst against cities, large fortifications or coastal defense
 
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