HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Updates

[Holy.Death]

Does hitting convoys has any effect on Stability? Or will the material loss casued by convoy raiding sufficient enough to justify an early investment and further development of submarines?

 

[LastPlayer]

 

[Pyro157]

Generally people tend to believe that the things they want are easy.

And then when you ask them to do it themselves, they chicken out.

 

[BlueAndGrey]

Looking forward to the nation forming part of next weeks diary

 

[Cpack]

Hey @podcat ,

is it also planned in your rework to get some summary about the naval and convoy battle screen/ summary somehow like shown in the screen??

I totally lost the overview over all the things going on. Every couple of days I get 50-60 messages in this stage of the war...

 

[indignanthedgehog]

In which historical battle did the loss of 2 cruisers and 2 carriers represent 1-2 divisions worth of manpower?

In the Battle of Midway for example Japan lost 4 Carriers + 1 Cruiser and lost 3057 men, which is not even close to the manpower in a division, and not even register in Japans millions of men available manpower ( despite it being the single most devastating loss of combat capability their Navy suffered in the entire war ).

As much as I would like Naval (and air) manpower losses modeled, this is largely correct. Only really Guadacanal did you see a massive manpower loss compared to ground forces, but that was a shitshow for both sides. Over the *entire* war the USN saw manpower loses at 62,614 killed and 37,778 wounded (acoriding to a quick google), so it will add up over a while, but when you are dealing with casualties in the millions, 60k isn't that big a deal.


Nevertheless, I'd still like to see Naval and Air manpower losses modeled eventually as well as naval and air manpower training.

 

[Gort11]

If we're talking about manpower, I'd like to see the following modelled before air and naval manpower losses:

• General pilot skill level. We've got aces, which is something, but I'd also like to see a pilot skill level meter. It would go up when your planes succeed in missions (successful bombings, shooting down enemy planes, so on) but go down when your planes are shot down. Being shot down over enemy territory would be worst, followed by being shot down over water, followed by being shot down over friendly territory.

• Training of soldiers who are not in divisions. Currently any soldiers who reinforce a division are of the "green" training level. It would be good to be able to use surplus equipment to train a pool of soldiers to the "trained" or "regular" training levels, so they don't drag down the level of your existing divisions when they reinforce. You could use an interface similar to the lend-lease mechanic to make it easy to use only old equipment for training.

Air and naval manpower losses might be much easier to do, though.

 

[DomMartin]

So, is that going to finally make me bother about naval warfare? Probably not tbh

But is that a good change? Yes, yes it is.

Also the rejected titles,lol.

 

[indignanthedgehog]

Training of soldiers who are not in divisions. Currently any soldiers who reinforce a division are of the "green" training level. It would be good to be able to use surplus equipment to train a pool of soldiers to the "trained" or "regular" training levels, so they don't drag down the level of your existing divisions when they reinforce. You could use an interface similar to the lend-lease mechanic to make it easy to use only old equipment for training.

I really want this. Basically a secondary pool that's X% of your total used manpower and would slowly train up at the same rate that the division deployed does. and when you take losses, you are reinforced from that pool instead, stopping the massive falloff in training you get when taking even minor losses, and allowing for divisions to actually gain xp at a decent rate (as the xp gained wouldn't all be used to offset the loss of trained troops

• General pilot skill level. We've got aces, which is something, but I'd also like to see a pilot skill level meter. It would go up when your planes succeed in missions (successful bombings, shooting down enemy planes, so on) but go down when your planes are shot down. Being shot down over enemy territory would be worst, followed by being shot down over water, followed by being shot down over friendly territory

• Also god yes, and the ability to do air exercises that increase air xp and train up your pilots in the same way that ground training works now. I'd also really like to see this in naval ships. You could even have the training focus on different tactics, allowing for things like Japan's heavy focus on night battle in the training of it's lighter surface force, which gave them a heavy advantage until the USN devised night battle tactics of their own.

Manpower losses would also be repetitively easy to do. 1 per fighter/CAS, 2 per fighter/NAV, 4 or so for TAC, and something like 6 for strategic bombers. Wouldn't have an excessively large effect in the grand scheme of things, but combined with an experience system would just make the game that much better

 

[vengen]

the ability to do air exercises that increase air xp and train up your pilots

I've often thought that all those obsolete aircraft sitting around would be perfect for forming training wings to train pilots.

 

[Cpack]

I've often thought that all those obsolete aircraft sitting around would be perfect for forming training wings to train pilots.

Therefor you need the often requested "do not upgrade" button *hint hint*

 

[Ozdemiroglu]

Nice job

 

[Axe99]

Manpower losses would also be repetitively easy to do. 1 per fighter/CAS, 2 per fighter/NAV, 4 or so for TAC, and something like 6 for strategic bombers.

Don't forget the differing rates of loss depending on whether the combat was over friendly or neutral territory (or, if over the sea, in areas covered by an air/sea rescue service)

 

[Gort11]

How would you do naval exercises in a game where ship repairs are free? Percentage chance for ships to just sink at random during exercises?

 

[Dracolithfiend]

How would you do naval exercises in a game where ship repairs are free? Percentage chance for ships to just sink at random during exercises?

Have it tie down/require oil resources.

 

[Dracolithfiend]

Or simply have shakedown cruises that take X amount of time during which the ship is weak in combat. Something you can only do in war if you outrange the enemy navy.

 

[Gort11]

Come to think of it, what does experience on a ship even do?

 

[Walderschmidt]

Manpower losses would also be repetitively easy to do. 1 per fighter/CAS, 2 per fighter/NAV, 4 or so for TAC, and something like 6 for strategic bombers. Wouldn't have an excessively large effect in the grand scheme of things, but combined with an experience system would just make the game that much better

Such losses would be otherwise trivial in manpower unless they came out of your "[trained] pilot" manpower.

This game begs for a trained pilot pool of manpower, trained landforce pools, and trained naval force pools, in addition to the normal manpower pool.

It begs!

Wald

 

[Idle America]

Woot! Not much makes me smile like a naval-related DD, cheers for the update Podcat, and the team for all the work . In the context of things to make the current system work better, this DD is all win . Thanks for the wake-up call @Meglok .

In honour of an update with some sub-loving, here's a pic of an Italian fleet review in 1938, that involved eighty submarines surfacing simultaneously

View attachment 333592

I had a feeling you'd like this one.

 

[Axe99]

How would you do naval exercises in a game where ship repairs are free? Percentage chance for ships to just sink at random during exercises?

It did happen, but that would probably be a bit of a brutal gameplay mechanic

Come to think of it, what does experience on a ship even do?

The crew's level of training, familiarity with each other, the ship and fighting the ship in combat had a huge impact on ship's performance - so I'd guess this is what it's trying to proxy. If anyone was silly enough to let me design the naval game, I'd have experience for ASW, surface warfare, night warfare and anti-air split out into separate categories .

Like land training, there's value in having it possible to train up to a certain level in peacetime (crew getting used to working with each other and the ship, exercises and what-have-you) and then higher levels for actual combat experience.

I had a feeling you'd like this one.

Oh aye I reckon you might have as well .