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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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Personally, I hope that there's more than one type of railway gun available to each country, since the 9.2 inch was the weakest railway gun available to the UK, while the Schwerer Gustav was the most powerful one the Nazis had. For example, the UK had 5 18 inch railway howitzers deployed in Kent to help if the Nazis had tried Sealion. It'd be nice if you could build the various different railway guns, rather than be limited to one design per nation.
 
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Personally, I hope that there's more than one type of railway gun available to each country, since the 9.2 inch was the weakest railway gun available to the UK, while the Schwerer Gustav was the most powerful one the Nazis had. For example, the UK had 5 18 inch railway howitzers deployed in Kent to help if the Nazis had tried Sealion. It'd be nice if you could build the various different railway guns, rather than be limited to one design per nation.
That's just the 3d model, they'll all have the same stats.
 
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By the way, this behaviour of only being able to move in railways, will it also be valid for units which are trying to strategically redeploy?
Would be very weird if you encircle a division by taking the railways around them, and then they just strategically redeploy out of the encirclement even though they have no access to railways.
 
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Thanks for this - really cool new feature :)

Two questions:
Are the map graphics relatively final? Or might we be able to hope for guns lining up with tracks as things develop?
Am I inferring correctly that all railway guns give equal effect? And 10 active in one battle give the same effect as 1?
 
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Maybe reduce the 15% bonus to combat (it's simply too much) and like was said give them a nice bonus against forts, to make them a cool niche weapon and not something you would try to use all the time
 
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It seems silly that the effects don't stack, even with a decreasing modifier, or stack up to a level determined by combat width. France, for example, likely cannot get many out, but they only need 3 to cover their entire border. Germany being able to have 30 will not help them break the maginot because france's 1 will counter 30 of them.
 
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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.
View attachment 754468

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.
View attachment 754469



Will the range of effect be used for naval bombardment as well (so big ships can bombard inland to support combat a few tiles past the beach)?
 
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oh, I for some reason expected different types of railwayguns.

One's that are fast, easy to use and produce but don't deal much damage
One's that take a bit more time and ressources but pack a punch at cost of mobility
One's that eat up ressources and time but are even better bunker busters than Super Heavy Tanks, but are slugish and barley practical.

Let me remind you, that Gustav was not the only one. Only the most famous.

Eitherway, good work! I still hope for some other smaller details though. Maybe another Bag of Tricks for some of the new Trains? I don't know, maybe I got hyped up too much

Some Sources if someone is interested
 
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Shouldn't be about time for a bombardment stance on division with artillery? This could consume supply but cause the enemy losses and attrition?
also shouldn't be possible to bombard without attacking?
 
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By the way, this behaviour of only being able to move in railways, will it also be valid for units which are trying to strategically redeploy?
Would be very weird if you encircle a division by taking the railways around them, and then they just strategically redeploy out of the encirclement even though they have no access to railways.
Strategic redeployment using trucks is basically what the Americans did. Their divisions weren't motorized, their armies had trucks and whichever divisions needed the trucks at any given moment were put on the trucks and sent wherever they needed to go.
 
Very weird design decision :confused:. Weren't the big railway guns mainly intended for stuff like sieges of strongholds, and not for tactical support. There is a reason they weren't often used. That would be like using strategic bombers for close air support. Also if it gets damaged, how does it get repaired?
 
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Hey paradox. Can you also implement similar feature to that combat circle but for planes so they dont have to be assigned to air zones?

Instead, they would just go and support a battle that is within that combat radius like they do now but the efficiency wont be reduced because it doesn't fully cover the air zone. Looks like easy feature to implement. Maybe add battlefield airfields with limited capacity compared to state level airfield (like, lvl 2-3) but they can be built in provinces designated by the player close to the frontline to better support.
 
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This looks really neat, but I do have a question: Will there be a limit on how many guns you can build? I can already imagine meme builds with mass produced Railway Guns. Rail Gun Only challenge when?
 
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this is dumb in my opinion. for all the things that they wanted to abstract but adding “railway” guns was a must.. I dunno. I do like the idea of trains for logistics though that was a big part of the war but rail guns …… really? that was so necessary
 
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Can we have a bit more flexibility for the railwayguns ..... if we have this nifty new system .... lets create Flakzüge e.g. the german flak systems were - in parts - mounted on railway cars or railway-movable in order to move them quickly and to concentrate in certain areas. Modders will love you if you implement something like that. ( In gameterms, add heavy flak points to areas where Flakzüge are present ).
 
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