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HoI4 Dev Diary - Ship Designer

Hello, and welcome back for another look at what is probably my favourite feature of Man the Guns: the Ship Designer. It has cost us a lot to make - sweat, tears, sanity (several members of the team now understand the “Poi” meme).

The stated goal of Man the Guns is to make the naval gameplay more involved and adding more depth to it by adding more roles that need to be covered and giving the player new tools to fill these roles. We also wanted to make sure that we had a system that could represent a wide variety of ship types with a minimum of clutter. Finally, we wanted the system to be as moddable as possible.

As many of you have concluded from Daniel’s little accident on stream last week, we have overhauled ship types to be ship hulls instead. The ship hulls themselves are basically empty containers with no combat stats. For simplicity’s sake they do contain stats like cruising range and HP (although they don’t have to!), but the rest of the stats come from modules.

(It should be noted that a lot of the numbers and the GUI you are about to see are not completely final so please keep your pitchforks pointing downwards and your torches unlit)

britain_cruiser.jpg


Every hull type has a limited number of slots in which you can fit these modules, and also restricts what type of module you can fit. So a Destroyer - now called a Light Ship Hull - can’t mount heavy guns or airplane launchers but can mount depth charges, whereas a Battleship - now called a Heavy Ship Hull - can mount airplane launchers and heavy guns but not depth charges. These slots come in two flavors - fixed and custom slots. Fixed slots are things that are either mandatory - like the engines - or shouldn’t compete with other things. All ships except submarines have a fixed AA slot, for example. You don’t have to fill that slot if you want your ship to be completely helpless against air attacks, but you can also only ever mount AA guns in that slot. Custom slots are much more flexible and allow you to tailor a ship to a specific role. Higher levels of ship hulls generally have more custom slots available.

ENG base hull destroyer.jpg


Say you play Britain and have somehow ended up in a war against Germany. Submarines are raiding your convoys and you are desperate for new escorts. Under the old system, you built a bunch of destroyers at a fixed cost, maybe spent some naval XP to upgrade their ASW capabilities and that was that. Under the new system, you take an early (read: cheap) light hull and strip out everything you don’t need. That ship is going to operate in the middle of the Atlantic, far away from enemy air, and the opponent has no carriers, so it needs little, if any, AA. The enemy surface fleet hasn’t shown itself in years, so you can skimp on the gun battery and the torpedo armament to cut down cost. You also go with the most basic set of engines to keep the ship as cheap as possible - it doesn’t have to be fast to catch a submarine. Instead, you load the ship down with depth charges and sonar modules to track down enemy submarines. The goal is to make a cheap convoy escort that can be mass-produced.

Britain destroyer Escort.jpg


However, Japan has been making aggressive noises recently and you expect to fight in the Pacific against enemy carrier battlegroups. So you start with a more more modern destroyer hull and add as much AA as it can carry to send it to help out Australia.

Britain Fleet Destroyer.jpg


Unfortunately, you miscalculated and the Japanese are running swarms of cheap, disposable destroyers with lots of torpedoes and not much else, using their carriers in a defensive role to provide air cover. So you design a light cruiser with plenty of guns to annihilate the destroyers before they can do too much damage. It won’t be cheap, but it’ll give you the edge - once it is in service. Somewhere along the line you’ll also want to build up a carrier battlegroup or two of your own, and that means you’ll have to also look at cruisers and battleships for escorts as well as the carriers themselves…thankfully you have a number of old battleships and cruisers lying around that could be given a second lease on life by refitting them (details to come in a future dev diary!)

A lot of these considerations come down to cost. We played around a bit with the idea of having ship hulls provide an amount of tonnage and modules cost some tonnage, but in the end we found that it was easier to understand if the number of variables restraining a design was fairly small. While the system will allow you to build super ships with naval attack values that dwarf the values you can reach in 1.5.4, they will not be cheap and they will have some other areas in which they are weak.

britain_hermes.jpg


The system also allows you to build a number of ship classes that have been requested a lot, without having to add new subtypes. A light carrier is just a carrier with fewer hangar modules (and thus considerably cheaper), an anti-aircraft cruiser is just a regular cruiser that mounts dual-purpose main guns (which perform somewhat poorly against surface targets compared to other armament options). A seaplane carrier is a cruiser that dedicates most of its custom slots to airplane launchers, giving it great surface detection at the cost of being bad at pretty much everything else.

Germany_panzerschiff.jpg


For some ship types we made special hull types that give special capabilities. The Panzerschiff hull is available for Germany and is essentially a cruiser that mounts a single battleship-grade heavy battery module. Sweden and other nordic countries get a special Coastal Defense Ship hull, which is slower than a regular cruiser but can also mount a battleship gun. The German pre-dreadnoughts have also been given their own hull type, but here it is more a case of missing capabilities…Most of these are set at game start, but some are available as special rewards for completing certain focuses.

germany_cruiser_submarine.jpg


As you may have guessed, modules are unlocked by researching technologies. Most of these are in the new and revised naval tech tree which isn’t ready to be shown off just yet, but some are spread around other tech trees. Radar research gives you access, unsurprisingly, to radar modules, and researching anti-air in the artillery tree unlocks better AA guns to mount on your ships. Fire control computers are a side branch of regular mechanical computing machines.

Here is brief list of modules for each ship type, note that some of this will not fully make sense until you see the details of the naval combat rework that is coming in a future dev diary (™):

Light Hulls:

- Light Battery: Provides some naval attack against other light ships, higher models also have dual-purpose capabilities to add AA

- Anti-Air: Provides some air attack

- Depth Charges: Provide sub attack

- Torpedoes: Provide some torpedo attack

- Mine Rails: Provide some mining capability

- Minesweeping Gear: Provides some capability to sweep mines

- Radar: Adds some surface detection. Later models also provide bonuses to naval and air attack

- Sonar: adds some submarine detection

- Fire Control System: adds a bonus to naval attack and anti-air

Cruisers:

  • Light Battery

  • Light Medium Battery: adds some more naval attack and armor piercing, better against light ships

  • Medium Battery: adds some naval attack and armor piercing against other heavy ships. Less effective against light ships.

  • Anti Air

  • Depth Charges

  • Torpedoes

  • Mine Rails

  • Secondary Battery: gives some attack against light ships, particularly useful for heavy cruisers and battleships. Later models have dual-purpose capability to also add AA value

  • Airplane Launcher: adds some surface and submarine detection

  • Armor: adds some armor to reduce incoming damage at the cost of speed

  • Radar

  • Sonar

  • Fire Control System

Heavy Hulls:

  • Heavy Battery: Adds a large amount of naval attack and armor piercing at the cost of speed. Basically useless against light ships.

  • Secondary Battery

  • Anti-Air

  • Armor

  • Airplane Launcher

  • Radar

  • Fire Control

Carriers:

  • Deck Space: Provides more space for planes

  • Deck Armor: provides some armor and HP at the cost of speed. Competes with Deck Space for slots

  • Anti-Air

  • Secondary battery

Submarines:

  • Torpedoes

  • Mines

  • Radar

  • Schnorkel: Reduces visibility of submarine

As you can see, your light hulls will carry a lot of weight to provide defense against submarines, but can also be turned into quite potent AA units or nasty torpedo boats. Cruisers are meant to be very flexible and fulfil a variety of roles, from being essentially super-heavy destroyers with plenty of torpedoes and guns to being the poor-man’s capital ship or being large, fast minelayers. Battleships and Battlecruisers are separated by different armor schemes and not much else, but with heavy armor being both labor and resource intensive, perhaps some corners could be cut…

britain Carrier.jpg


Carriers are now more flexible in terms of size, ranging from tiny carriers for a handful of planes all the way to 100+ plane supercarriers. That should make the entry into the carrier game somewhat achievable even for smaller nations. Submarines are still largely the same, but with some upgrades they can be very hard to find indeed and special submarines can lay as many mines as a dedicated minelaying cruiser for less cost and lower risk of detection.

While the ship designer window itself is going to be part of the DLC, the old naval tree you already know will simply unlock pre-scripted ship designs, and instead of the ship designer window you get the regular variant upgrade screen you are already familiar with.

Britain super battleship.jpg


Assuming that the Ship designer works out as we hope it does, we might expand the system to cover tanks and airplanes as well. Some of the backend was made with tanks and airplanes in mind, but we are mainly concerned with overloading the player with design choices during potentially hectic situations in the war (you are trying to micro the encirclement of 6th Army but you also need to design a new tank destroyer…). Ships have a long lead time so we expect you to have to design them less often.

That is all for the week. Next week we will talk a bit about what you can do with your old ships...and why you probably won’t be able to build min-max battleships on the first day of the game.


Rejected Titles:

Playing with LEGO-Ships

Who designs the designer?

Basically made just to allow Sweden to have its historically accurate fleet

This is a Panzerschiff. It schiffs Panzers.

Aviation Battleships are bad and you should feel bad.

This radar nonsense will never work

What’s wrong with my bloody ships today?

The spirits of Emperor Wilhelm II and Sir John Fisher were consulted for this feature

We ship Iowa/Musashi

RIP the torpedo battleship meta 12/6/2018-7/11/2018

The best ship design is Friendship

Count of people who ask about doing this for tanks and airplanes without reading the dev diary so far: 1
 
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I won't make a difference between designers for planes or tanks. Both is a bit problematic.
Of course you could do it, because both weapon systems were overhauled during the World War. For example the Messerschmitt Bf 109 get different motors in its variants from Junkers and later on from Daimler Benz (DB601,603 or 605). Also the weapons changed. So calibers from 7,92mm to 30mm were used. And also you can add extra tanks for more operation distance. The problem I see with designing variants of planes like that, is the micro-hell. You just need to refit one ship in a squadron, that is maybe made of 5 to 10 ships. But if you want to micro-manage a squadron of planes - consiting of about 200 planes in 13 variants - then, good night.

There is the same thing with tanks. PzKpfw III and IV were improved with better guns, radio, armor or engines. Later tanks could be updated with nightsight or vertical stabilizers. The problem here is the same with the planes. Micro-hell. And the other problem is:
A ship is a platform, you can mostly free design or update. But a tank - for example a small one like PzKpfw II - you can't update as free as a ship. You can't really add a stronger engine or canon. There is an end of updating systems, so you need a more modern template. A PzKpfw II would never mount a 75mm KwK.
So, from the point with micro-hell, you have to also limitate the possibilities to design and update a template.

I would like it, too. (Yes. In Planes, too. Focke-Wulff 190 got two types of engines. You can see the difference between A-8 and D-9)
But I think you can't adopt the system one by one.
 
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@Archangel85

Okay, this is good, but... why can't we add guns to submarines? Several countries did this, e.g. France and Japan. How will the Surcouf be represented? Hopefully there will be a way to represent cruiser subs vs. attack subs, for example.

Pre-dreadnoughts shouldn't just have weaker hulls, but shitty engines and smaller guns as well. The old German pre-dreds would have struggled against modern heavy cruisers from other fleets, and only had 11" guns compared to the 13" on the Courbet/Bretagne and the 15" on the Revenge/Queen Elizabeth.

Also, the point of the 'pocket battleships' was not just their armament, but their huge operational range - they were used in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean, which is currently impossible. Looking at your screenshots, I'm not sure that issue has been resolved.

Nice to see the Hermes is back! Light carriers are now a thing, then. :)

Did you mean the deck gun?

I agree the assortment of sub modules seem a little poor compared to other units, but not only for absence of deck guns.
Some possible sub module for example;

1) Periscopes (as surface units use Fire Control System we assume sub use those)
2) Sonar ( adds some surface detection as radar, but not affect AntiAir )
3) AA guns ( limited AntiAir capability for subs)
4) Battery ( increase range or evasion )
5) Deck gun ( can add a bit of flavor to early models )
6) Radar ( as sonar affective also for AA )
7) Propellers ( reduce submerged visibility )
8) Torpedos ( main stat for sub attack )
9) Engine
10) Snorkel
11) Mine rail
12) Pressure hull ( increase reliability )
 
@podcat

I don't know if this has already been asked, but is there any way to tell what kind of design enemy ships got? How can we tell if ships have let's say only ASW equipment or full AA setup to react to that?

A lot of naval arms race was in regards to the direct enemy, if I am right. Maybe @Axe99 knows more about this. So in game we would need to know at least roughly what our enemies are building so that we can adjust accordingly.

Very nice work though, really looking forward to MtG!
 
Did you mean the deck gun?

I agree the assortment of sub modules seem a little poor compared to other units, but not only for absence of deck guns.
Some possible sub module for example;

1) Periscopes (as surface units use Fire Control System we assume sub use those)
2) Sonar ( adds some surface detection as radar, but not affect AntiAir )
3) AA guns ( limited AntiAir capability for subs)
4) Battery ( increase range or evasion )
5) Deck gun ( can add a bit of flavor to early models )
6) Radar ( as sonar affective also for AA )
7) Propellers ( reduce submerged visibility )
8) Torpedos ( main stat for sub attack )
9) Engine
10) Snorkel
11) Mine rail
12) Pressure hull ( increase reliability )

too many modules!

1) Sonar ( spotting )
2) Battery (evasion )
3) Radar ( spotting )
4) Torpedos ( main stat for sub attack )
5) Engine (speed fuel consuption)
6) Snorkel (less detection and evation)
7) Mine rail
8) Pressure hull ( increase reliability? more hp and more evasion )

aa guns and deck guns doesnt go right with battle model they described in com comments in dd, propeler doesnt have a deep change and histricly doesnt happens. and periscope havent so deep changes from ww1-ww2, other components have more changes: contramesures (hard to modelate, need to get less ratio of hit?)
 
A lot of naval arms race was in regards to the direct enemy, if I am right. Maybe @Axe99 knows more about this. So in game we would need to know at least roughly what our enemies are building so that we can adjust accordingly.

I'm a pretty sketchy on this (at least off the top of my head, and don't have the time right now to hit the books) so take the following with a fair quantity of salt. That said, the best response I have is that my impression is that the number and types of ships were more important than the details, to a degree, but key capabilities were also important (so, for example, the Tribal class destroyers were a response to the gun-heavy Japanese 'Special Type', similar to how the Southampton class light cruisers were a response to the Brooklyn and Mogami classes). I'd say some kind of estimate of number and type of ships would be more important (both for gameplay and flavour), but some kind of general estimate of ship design could be cool as well. It'd be very important not to make it over-complicated though - otherwise there's a risk it could be something that few people ever use, in which case effort would be better spent elsewhere.
 
A ship is a platform, you can mostly free design or update. But a tank - for example a small one like PzKpfw II - you can't update as free as a ship. You can't really add a stronger engine or canon. There is an end of updating systems, so you need a more modern template. A PzKpfw II would never mount a 75mm KwK.
Do you realize the PzKpfw II chassis was used as the base for the Marder II? It could handle that gun, it just couldn't handle the gun plus a proper armor layout at the same time. As a combat tank the most powerful gun it got was the 5 cm PaK 38 so the same offensive capability as late model PzIII. Decent versus Allied tanks within 500m but not a great sniper like the later model Pz4+. Unless of course you're using the high velocity tungsten core ammo which I believe was in very low supply throughout the war. It also had vastly improved armor over the earliest variants at this point. The engine however, was way too weak to keep up with these upgrades.

Our current system that's abstracted as the AT, SPG, AA variants you can convert into. With a modular tank designer I'm not sure the variants would need to be a separate hull type as far as the raw data is concerned. The variants would be templates you could get as part of research or national focus but the tank designer would allow you to design it ahead of time (for a price) if you had all the required modules researched. Swapping out the turret on a PzIV for example creates either a Möbelwagen, Wirbelwind, Ostwind, or Kugelblitz. So instead of having to invest in advanced medium tanks for better SPAA you could refit the hulls with better armaments, rangefinding, armor, engines/transmission, and radio as the war progresses. It may never be as good as a fully kitted out advanced medium tank hull in the same role, but it would be cheaper to upgrade the old units than build entirely new hulls and then sending your old tanks to minors. Or if YOU are the minor you definitely want to refit old tanks versus building new ones. A medium sized nation may try to find a balance where they upgrade some tanks, build some new tanks, and donate some spares to their alliance.
 
too many modules!


aa guns and deck guns doesnt go right with battle model they described in com comments in dd, propeler doesnt have a deep change and histricly doesnt happens. and periscope havent so deep changes from ww1-ww2, other components have more changes: contramesures (hard to modelate, need to get less ratio of hit?)

I do not know if subs have too many modules but light cruisers certainly have much more by the list described.
I was not thinking about what module had a real evolution and what not, i was referring to the possible combinations of the modular system.

In the system described above, light cruisers and destroyers will have many different combinations while subs will have substantially similar characteristics for everyone.
Prescinding from what devices has evolved between the two great wars (periscopes), the game currently can be extended up to the 60s or more and propeller had change the design.

I have'nt listed other fantasy modules like hull size for a possible differentiation between coastal submarines and oceanic submarines (it could interact with the range or naval terrain).
 
Increasing deck size should have some drawbacks too or its a nobrainer.
Reduced speed or something.

Reduced reliability would be the proper drawback. Having a bunch of airplanes, bombs, torpedoes, and fuel lying on and under a wooden flight deck proved to make carriers very vulnerable to damage that cruisers of a similar size could have shrugged off.
 
too many modules!

1) Sonar ( spotting )
2) Battery (evasion )
3) Radar ( spotting )
4) Torpedos ( main stat for sub attack )
5) Engine (speed fuel consuption)
6) Snorkel (less detection and evation)
7) Mine rail
8) Pressure hull ( increase reliability? more hp and more evasion )

aa guns and deck guns doesnt go right with battle model they described in com comments in dd, propeler doesnt have a deep change and histricly doesnt happens. and periscope havent so deep changes from ww1-ww2, other components have more changes: contramesures (hard to modelate, need to get less ratio of hit?)

Sonar and Radar seem have the same stat, nobody will accept cost increase if it has no benefits and a diversification in the spotting of naval and air units. Perhaps the periscopes did not have a great evolution over time but the launch computers certainly did.

I do not understand why surface units can have a fire control system as Admiralty Fire Control Table (A.F.C.T.) and subs cant have a Torpedo Data Computer (T.D.C.).

Another solution for the diversification of the main armament system could be the one with separate modules, torpedo launch tubes and torpedoes. Without allowing the possibility to unrealistic models with many torpedo modules, great naval attack and nothing else, only 2 tube modules (bow and stern) and 2 torpedo modules (bow and stern).

Submarine Design.jpg
 
Bumping this one, partly because it is a good diary explaining much of the ship design, but also since I still have some concerns regarding the difference between light and heavy cruisers. In-game a heavy cruiser is just a cruiser hull with lots of modules thrown into it, whereas a light presumably only has a few. In real life light and heavy cruisers had quite different roles, and could vary greatly in size. Can the game system simulate this?
 
Bumping this one, partly because it is a good diary explaining much of the ship design, but also since I still have some concerns regarding the difference between light and heavy cruisers. In-game a heavy cruiser is just a cruiser hull with lots of modules thrown into it, whereas a light presumably only has a few. In real life light and heavy cruisers had quite different roles, and could vary greatly in size. Can the game system simulate this?
No a heavy cruiser (CA) is designed to engage warships, hence the name heavy not applicable for Anti-air, or antisubmarine, or minewarfare as many topics are being described by this check carefully the dev diaries they explain what is what.

A light cruiser is designed to carry a wide range of weapons even dual purpose so a light cruiser will help you with mine warfare, antiair, and kind thats it but given the nature of hoi 4 is yet to arrive the naval airpower in reality light cruiser had many roles even shore bombardment along side heavy cruisers, s

so both classes are distinguishable and important in game fingers crossed they will keep update the naval system in future patches/dlc add minor updates and tweakes :)

Destroyers are the ones that hunt subs! so dont try on light cruiser which lacks speed to catch a u-boat (again this is hardly for hoi 4 or any hearts of iron games yet) we wait to see what the new dlc brings to us :D
 
Bumping this one, partly because it is a good diary explaining much of the ship design, but also since I still have some concerns regarding the difference between light and heavy cruisers. In-game a heavy cruiser is just a cruiser hull with lots of modules thrown into it, whereas a light presumably only has a few. In real life light and heavy cruisers had quite different roles, and could vary greatly in size. Can the game system simulate this?
Also to add the hulls are different heavy and light the heavy cruisers ones carry biggers guns than lights cruisers, so you cant put heavier guns on a light cruiser you need a heavy cruiser hull for this same goes with battle cruiser, battllehips, carriers subs and so on

I will wait for the dlc/patch to arrive before anything i can ask since the dlc/patch changes quite a lot in the game now

Also along side the hulls you need to consider fuel consumption (will you go for big guns which are always thirsty or make a bigger fleet of smaller faster heavy cruiser which consume less fuel :) )
 
Also to add the hulls are different heavy and light the heavy cruisers ones carry biggers guns than lights cruisers, so you cant put heavier guns on a light cruiser you need a heavy cruiser hull.
I have to point out the Japanese Mogami class, which was constructed as a light cruiser to comply with the treaty restrictions, but was later rearmed with heavy guns and reclassified as heavy cruisers.

London naval treaty defined cruisers:

Light cruisers were defined as cruisers having guns of 6.1-inch (155 mm) or smaller, with heavy cruisers defined as cruisers having guns of up to 8-inch (203 mm). In BOTH cases, the ships could not be greater than 10,000 tons. Size of the hull shouldn't matter. Its the weapons that define a cruiser as heavy or light.
 
Bumping this one, partly because it is a good diary explaining much of the ship design, but also since I still have some concerns regarding the difference between light and heavy cruisers. In-game a heavy cruiser is just a cruiser hull with lots of modules thrown into it, whereas a light presumably only has a few. In real life light and heavy cruisers had quite different roles, and could vary greatly in size. Can the game system simulate this?

The system can simulate any differences, the point is the classification between heavy and light cruiser you do.
This classification has been defined (and imposed) historically, by naval treaties.

KaiserWilhelml correctly cited this classification but it was already defined before London's, by Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.

Warship could have more 10.000 tons, but every warship over that limit or with armament of a caliber grater than 8 Inches, was counted as a capital ship.

Warship with armaments of a caliber over 6.1 (and not more of 8 inches) was defined as heavy cruiser, and with armaments not over 6.1Inches light cruiser.

Essentially the naval treaties did not distinguish about total weight of the warship under 10,000 tons, except for their main armament.

However, even today it is politically played on the classification of the war ship, assigning it a class that does not always reflect their actual capabilities.
An ancient saying, "made the rule, found the deception".
 
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Will something similar be happening with Tanks, Airplanes and Guns? Also Focus trees for SEA

from the dev diary


Assuming that the Ship designer works out as we hope it does, we might expand the system to cover tanks and airplanes as well. Some of the backend was made with tanks and airplanes in mind, but we are mainly concerned with overloading the player with design choices during potentially hectic situations in the war (you are trying to micro the encirclement of 6th Army but you also need to design a new tank destroyer…). Ships have a long lead time so we expect you to have to design them less often.

Also what would SEA even be aside from Siam and some puppets (which wouldn't make sense without their overlords getting more attention). I don't expect this region to be reworked for a long time due to this.
 
This is all well and good... BUT WHEN COMES THE DAY WHEN WE CAN LEND LEASE WARSHIPS TO OTHER NATIONS!!!. Wouldn't it be great to help out your ally who's struggling naval(ie) and needs some help but you don't to get your men involved... SEND THEM SOME BOATS.

LOOK AT ALL THESE BOATS: (ShipType, #sent, ClassType, TimePeriod, SentTo)

 
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