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HOI4 Dev Diary - Scout Planes and breaking the Enigma - and Stream premieres today at 16:00CET!

Hi everyone! Today we are going to start talking about changes to Intel and present some of the tools you will have at your disposal for gaining it in La Résistance. We will also go back to the Agency and talk about code cracking.

Scout Planes
Scout planes is a great way of gaining intel on your enemies. This is a new plane type that comes in two tech levels
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These new planes are not capable of fighting or giving air superiority, but they have a new mission “Air Recon” which can also be performed in peace time. This mission will give you intel on nations under its area of operation, or their navy if covering trafficked naval regions. It also does spotting of ships and divisions so its a great way to figure out what the enemy is up to.

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Other planes types can not do the air recon mission, although in war time other planes will be gaining you intel as well during regular operations.


Code Cracking
One of the things in WW2 that has always fascinated me was the allied efforts to break the axis codes, particularly the work done at Bletchley Park. When reading about this work you usually are told about the tough choices that had to be made, because after the enigma codes had been cracked and german messages could be read the allies were forced to only use this knowledge in limited ways. If they had not it would have tipped off the Germans that they knew and made the whole thing moot. Basically, to save the punch for when it was most needed. This is something I wanted to make sure that we captured when we started designing the new code cracking system.

To interact with code cracking etc you need to form a new department in your Agency. Under it are upgrades both for creating and breaking enemy ciphers.
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The higher your decryption power the faster you can break enemy codes and the higher your crypto strength the tougher you in turn are to break.
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In the above screenshot I have cracked Germany's current cipher. If they end up upgradign to a higher level I would lose some progress and have to continue the work. The 25 shown is your total decryption power and will be shared among all active projects. Right now Denmark is the only active one so gets the full attention and fastest possible code breaking.

Having a cracked code gives you some passive bonuses that are not possible for the enemy to see and confirm, such as air interception. To take full advantage you will need to commit and fully activate. Doing that gives you 30 days of full intel on the enemy as well as an assortment of other bonuses.
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A perfect time to use it when launching naval invasions or starting fighting somewhere because when activated the enemy will know and ciphers will reset within 30 days. After this time you will need to crack their code again,, which probably will have had its strength upgraded.

Outside of just having a bunch of mathematicians working day and night on breaking the enemy codes you can also help them out though clandestine operations
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This diary showed you more ways of gaining intel, next week we will be getting into the details about the intel changes. See you then!

Today we start streaming La Résistance!
Tune in to twitch at 16:00CET to watch us talking about Updated Garrison and Resistance Mechanics! The stream will be available on Youtube later.

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Wüstenbuchs said:
Yeah sure I´m interested in the new features, but when do we get to see the portugese focus tree?
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I am waiting for that as well! I bet they will leave it for the last moment, to prevent us from protesting against it (in case it is really bad), lol.

podcat said:
we dont do the trees in paralell. Its comign after we talk intel if I remember my schedule
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This is what Podcat replied to me in another thread (when I complained that we had seen the spanish focus but not the portuguese one) though so I hope it is useful to answer your question.
 
Enfield_PDX said:
I was going to come in with some rebuke about how peacetime recon flights were a thing (The number of flights going over the USSR prior to Barbarossa was actually quite staggering) and how dealing with them in HOI is a difficult gameplay problem to solve but I feel like a lot of people are missing the key point of this dev diary.

Look at how damn cute the FW-189 is.
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Flying Boats are thicc tho
 
I noticed that the recon plane stat in the screenshot is an exact copy paste of heavy fighter II.
Normally people would assume that with less weight from weapon system and ammunition, the scout plane should be more agile and have a longer range to give it an edge in escaping interception?
 
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marcelo r. r. said:
yeah, and he should complain with Stalin about neglect german pre war air scout, not with the devs lolzzz.

"offtopic": Stalin neglecting the intels about imminent German invasion is still one of war's most debated mysteries.
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Not totally offtopic, but I remember a book I read by a russian author, saying that Stalin was also preparing to invade Germany at the time, it's just that the Germans got him a whole summer before Stalin's plan.
 
I scrolled through the thread to find if that question was asked already. I didn't find it (or overlooked it), so:

For those plane catapults on ships to actually work will you need scout planes? Or are these still handwaved?
 
Ajgurms said:
Why are the people on the hoi4 stream discussing the spanish and agents as if there have not been dev diaries on them??
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It would show something they haven't yet talked about in a Dev Diary. I believe its the Civil War mechanics, which are new. I believe, from Daniel's ever loose lips and mouse pad, mentioned that there are 3 sides to the Civil war, not 2. Maybe a "neutral" ground of some sorts. That is indeed new and wild, so they didn't want to show it. All they've discussed is the spanish focus tree.
 
$ilent_$trider said:
We still don't know.
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They won't behave as scout planes. But, from what Podat said, they will seem to offer some type of Intel bonus to the sea zone, during combat. During battle they were used for gun spotting as well, so their affect appears to be in combat. Anyways, its definitely not a "scout" plane, like the ones described today, and he said it would be discussed and make sense next week when they go into Intel.
 
Ajgurms said:
Why are the people on the hoi4 stream discussing the spanish and agents as if there have not been dev diaries on them??
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Not everybody reads the dev diaries. The people on the forums tend to be just a small subset of players and you'll catch a different crowd on stream.
 
$ilent_$trider said:
Not totally offtopic, but I remember a book I read by a russian author, saying that Stalin was also preparing to invade Germany at the time, it's just that the Germans got him a whole summer before Stalin's plan.
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it's Icebreaker by Suvorov, but it is not taken seriously nowadays, because we know from the state of (im)preparation of the soviet forces in the summer 1941 and the diplomatic efforts of Stalin at the time that there is no way that the red army was going to attack Germany then.
 
Dan1109 said:
They won't behave as scout planes. But, from what Podat said, they will seem to offer some type of Intel bonus to the sea zone, during combat. During battle they were used for gun spotting as well, so their affect appears to be in combat. Anyways, its definitely not a "scout" plane, like the ones described today, and he said it would be discussed and make sense next week when they go into Intel.
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I wasn't talking about their behaviour but about the question if you need scout planes for the plane catapults to provide their bonus to the ship.
 
valentin4 said:
it's Icebreaker by Suvorov, but it is not taken seriously nowadays, because we know from the state of (im)preparation of the soviet forces in the summer 1941 and the diplomatic efforts of Stalin at the time that there is no way that the red army was going to attack Germany then.
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Yes, that's the one. Thank you. Yes, I think the point of the book was that Stalin wanted to break the pact, but in 1943. It's been 20 years since I read the book.
 
elektrizikekswerk said:
I wasn't talking about their behaviour but about the question if you need scout planes for the plane catapults to provide their bonus to the ship.
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I highly doubt that mechanism will change at all. We'll see next week.
 
Dan1109 said:
It would show something they haven't yet talked about in a Dev Diary. I believe its the Civil War mechanics, which are new. I believe, from Daniel's ever loose lips and mouse pad, mentioned that there are 3 sides to the Civil war, not 2. Maybe a "neutral" ground of some sorts. That is indeed new and wild, so they didn't want to show it. All they've discussed is the spanish focus tree.
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This doesnt explain the espionage part though and they did show the 3 person conflict already https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-¡viva-españa-nationalist-spain-focus-tree.1249877/
They talk about the third tag and everything about the dev diary. It really confuses me why they are acting like this information is not already out there
 
cools0812 said:
I noticed that the recon plane stat in the screenshot is an exact copy paste of heavy fighter II.
Normally people would assume that with less weight from weapon system and ammunition, the scout plane should be more agile and have a longer range to give it an edge in escaping interception?
Click to expand...

IRL scout planes were often faster than their combat plane counterparts, and so it should be in game also. Mostly all excess weight was removed, sometimes even armament, to allow scout planes fly faster and higher than the planes normally could. They were about to avoid contact and escape after reconnaissance mission was accomplished, not to fight.
 
Cheers for the DD Podcat and the extra info Cranium Muppet :) (and the cuteness-highlighting, Enfield :) ). Intel sounds phenomenal, and something that should add oodles of depth to the game. This is a far, far stronger implementation of intel than in HoI's prior - a real leap forward for the series :cool:.

podcat said:
Scout Planes
Scout planes is a great way of gaining intel on your enemies. This is a new plane type that comes in two tech levels
Click to expand...

Love it :D. Am a big fan of scout planes. Of course, my favourite scout planes tend to be launched from catapults situated amidships or at the stern, and can also be used for spotting of gunfire :cool: (I don't expect catapult-launched scouts to be in the game, but of course don't let me stop you :) )

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(with bonus colour video of it if anyone wants to watch it in action
)

podcat said:
Having a cracked code gives you some passive bonuses that are not possible for the enemy to see and confirm, such as air interception. To take full advantage you will need to commit and fully activate. Doing that gives you 30 days of full intel on the enemy as well as an assortment of other bonuses.
Click to expand...

This sounds very cool, with the two-tiered use of the bonuses, most impressive mechanics :cool:
 
Sexytron3000 said:
You will never decrypt our pastry recipes, you filthy swedes!!!
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It's 2019 and we still have not deciphered your strange language. No worries.
 
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