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Developer Corner | Aerohydrodynamics

Hello everyone!

It has been a while since the last dev corner, as many of us (including myself) went on vacations - but now I have returned, even if it has been quite hard to readjust my brain back to the work frequencies. As usual, keep in mind that everything discussed here is in a relatively early stage, and as such is subject to change, especially all the numbers and values. There is also quite a number of placeholder art.
Today we will talk a bit more about Islands, Carriers (and changes to them) and also about a new branch of Special Forces, so buckle up!

Strategic Locations

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Truk is what we call a ‘strategic location’, a place that can have increased building capacity or potential. In this case, currently it is a ‘placeholder’ name of Natural Harbor increasing the level cap of Naval Base Truk in Caroline Islands from 6 to 8. (note, that doesn't mean all the Caroline Islands have that increased level cap). This increased level cap of 8 can be quite important as it will allow…

As I mentioned in the Hydrodynamics Dev Corner, not all islands will be equal under the new system. We have created a concept called ‘Strategic Locations’ - that due to specific circumstances, historical importance, geographical location etc. deserves to be a bit more unique, while also having increased gameplay importance. Those locations will have increased limits for certain buildings, depending on the type of the strategic location. Some of the ‘Islands’ like Truk or Guam, may have increased Naval Base caps, others could have increased Airfield or Fort Caps. Or have a mix of them.

Defending Against Naval Strikes

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In this screenshot, you can see that planes from the British Carriers shot down some of the incoming German Naval Bombers performing Naval Strike.

One of the things that didn’t sit quite right with me for a long time, was the fact that whenever Naval Strike was performed on the Taskforce that included Carriers, Carrier Planes would sit idle and twiddle their thumbs. Now, carrier planes will participate in defense of the taskforce against Naval Strikes - with numbers depending on a few factors.

Carrier Missions

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In these screenshots you can see that while the task force is executing the mission (in this case it was naval exercises), planes on that carrier can also perform the air missions at the same time. In the second screenshot I’ve selected all planes to do exercises, while in the last screenshot I’ve opted for fighters to provide air cover and superiority, while I ordered my taskforce to operate in the North Pacific Sea Zone.

Another update when it comes to the Carriers that we will be doing, is the ability to set and execute air missions for the Carrier Air Groups, while the taskforce that contains Carriers are performing the missions. Planes will be executing the missions selected in the same region that the taskforce is currently operating in.

Carrier Hangar Detection Changes

And another change for Carriers, is the introduction of ‘Carrier Sub/Surface Detection’ values on the Hangar modules. Essentially what it does - it provides increased Sub / Surface detection to the ship scaled by the % of the planes it currently has.

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Deck Space / Hangar for the ‘regular’ carriers provide +2 Carrier Sub Detection and +5 Carrier Surface Detection. For example, a carrier with 3 hangars, will have a Deck Size of 60, and +6 Carrier Sub Detection, +15 Carrier Surface Detection. If it would have a full compartment of 60 planes, then it would get +15 Surface and +6 Sub Detection, while if it would have only 30 planes, it would only provide +3 Sub Detection and +7.5 Surface Detection. As usual, keep in mind those values may be adjusted down the line.


New Special Forces

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Who will guess which one is the new branch of Special Forces?

To fight in all the jungles and on the islands, we are introducing a new branch of Special Forces - which we internally called for quite some time ‘Jungle Specialists’. This temporary name was great as long as they remained on the design board, but for the actual implementation finding the right name for them proved to be quite challenging to me. They went under a few ‘name iterations’ (amongst them some like: Jaegers or Chindits), but finally decided to name them Rangers. But hold up, aren’t there Rangers in-game already as a Support Company unlocked by the Mountaineers Special Doctrine, you will ask? Yes, and they will be renamed to Recon Rangers. Recon Rangers will be now unlocked by either picking Mountaineers Special Doctrine OR Rangers Special Doctrine. Rangers specialty will be fighting in the Woods and Jungles, and of course they can be further customized and boosted by the Rangers Special Forces Doctrine branch.

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And this is the new special forces doctrine branch in all its FINAL_BACKUP_DRAFT_FINAL_V5 glory and form.

And that’s pretty much it for this dev corner from my side. In time we will return with more dev corners, including me talking more about things that are opposite to dry amongst others. I am really curious to see and read all your feedback and opinions on what I mentioned today.

Thanks for reading and until next time, farewell!

/Zwirbaum

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I am going to leave you with another teaser for one of the new ‘toys’ we will talk about in the future. This shouldn’t be a hard guess, I think?
 
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Reserved for Developer replies~

Zwirbaum replies

Not a good way to implement anti-submarine carriers.

Suggestion:

Create a new hangar module for carriers instead. Much lower cost and takes one air group instead of two. That way you build dedicated ASW carriers. Give them the higher detection but worse sorties to make them less competitive against ships.
But are you aware that the carrier hangar I was showing was the standard one, and not the one could say a bit more specialized? ;)
Also a question about the maximum value of ports on islands. Previously I thought that this value would depend only on the size of the island (geographical factor), now you say that there is also a factor of historical importance, so the question is whether there could be a situation where I have two identical small islands with a maximum port level of 3, but one of them, due to the so-called historical importance, has level 6. This would be strange, because if I could build a port of level 6 on one small island, why can't I do it on the other. I hope there won't be such magical situations.

As I said in the Hydrodynamics Developer Corner: "Right now those caps are based on the Island state categories (Tiny Island, Small Island, Large Island), and upon one concept we will talk about in the future."

By historical importance in that case I mean that some of the islands were chosen and used as Resupplying/Advance Base/Refueling Stations etc. - because of their geographical factor, as well as other factors. This is a nod towards that historical element, and respecting the fact that each island is not equal to another in the chain.

State limitations work for entire state, while one specific island in that chain can provide that extra capacity. Alternative solution would be to splitting those specific islands in their own states, but that brings another problem - of having extra airbases, setting the limitations, potentially having to devise new state categories and so on.
Are you guys planing on adding even more Special Units? Currently I'm missing something like the Long range desert group (Uk).
Not right now. In the future, who knows?

hey could I get a response to my previous question I think you went past it
I'm not always responding in the order of when the posts are posted. Sometimes I go back to make sure I didn't miss something, sometimes I need to think a bit about answer, but in the meantime can do reply somewhere else etc. Also I will not be able to answer all the questions.

However in this case about Naval Raids / Japan - it is outside of the todays topic, so I will have to skip that part and say, sorry can't answer that now. :(

On the remaining part, about production costs, rebalancing etc. - as someone linked my answer from previous dev corners, it is somewhat high on my to-do lists. :)

In case enemy fighters operate air superiority in region carrier operates, will carrier fighters fight them?
Will land based fighters escort naval numbers attacking ships when sent on air superiority?
Will land based fighters intercept bombers/navs from carriers and fight escorting carrier fighters?

1) If you set your planes to do Air Superiority mission on Carrier then yes, they will fight and try to contest the Superiority.
2) Land based fighters as it is right now, do not join the Naval Strike itself, but they should definitely help against disruptions/superiority/interceptions caused by Carrier-based Planes doing Superiority/Interception mission.
3) Similarly, depending on what carrier planes are doing as their mission, but I think that should be the case.



Very nice! Three questions remain, though:
  1. I assume the new Rangers/Jaegers will unlock via army xp, which is already the slowest to get. Will the army xp gain rate be adjusted, to account for the additional branch?
  2. Talking about special forces branches, any adjustments to the current limit of 2 coming?
  3. Will the long-standing problem of hybrid fighter-bombers for carriers be resolved? For those who don't know, CV planes can only perform a single role right now, which makes hybrid designs unviable.
Would really love to get three 'yes' here! Great work, looking forward to more.
1. Yes, they are unlocked via Army XP. Army XP (or rather what it is spent on) will see some changes, but I guess that is a topic for the future discussion.
2. Nothing we have planned or discussed for now, so likely will remain at 2.
3. Yesn't. There is no big sweeping change to the multi-role planes, even though I would want to see their usability increased. However big systemic change to them would be outside of the scope, and would require to take a longer look at the air stuff more thoroughly.

Now saying that, I am right now considering that 'Multi-Role' Carrier CAS/NAVs could also potentially participate in the defense of the Carrier Taskforce, thus making designs like 1 x Torpedo 2 x HMG a bit more useful in the big picture.

It is not 3 times YES, but hopefully you will not be disappointed with this answer. :)

Another dev corner that stirs my appetite, I've always felt that woodsmen have been under represented in media as a whole. Though the carrier hangar modules and talks of specialized modules make me wonder about a particular question.
I had wanted to ask if the catapult/seaplane module will get a second look bringing in the possibility of offensive seaplane carriers for less industrious nations.
No offensive seaplane carriers are planned - sorry to tenderly crush your hopes in that case. :(
Sorry if I missed this but are Strategic Locations per state or per tile?

Absolutely chuffed that we're getting caps on harbours, air fields and forts. Keen to learn more

They are assigned to specific provinces, so per tile, not per state.

Can we mention how much of a psychopath (saying this with love) the guy that takes the screenshot is? HE PLAYS WITH NATO SYMBOLS. WHYYYY??????
I am that psychopath :p

For me the advantage of the NATO Symbols is that they are super clear to me and stand out almost instantly. :)
 
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I'd like to see simplification or unification of getting additional Special Forces branches. Now, for example, any country after 39 (as I remember) can open an additional branch. At the same time, the USSR has to spend a mountain of focuses on it, which otherwise it would not even take. As a result, playing for the Union you either give up everything and rash the second branch, or get it at best in the year 43-44.
 
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Also. I do wonder how this new branch will interact with the Belgian Chasseur Ardennais...
 
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can we execute navy raids yet? Using the raid features can for example Japan have a focus to unlock a naval raid on pearl harbour? Would be nice to see this mechanic added, also will there be any changes to sorties with the carriers? I think that most people will agree the current carrier penalties and sorties are a bit confusing and outdated. Lastly can we expect a rework to the ships with their production costs for higher tier ships? I think most people would agree tier 3 and 4's are basically useless and never produced and I haven't seen the AI do it to be honest, even though many were produced in real life theres no motivation to produce tier 3, 4 ships it is much easier to spam tier 2 ships such as battlecruisers with level 3 heavy guns and win navy everytime.
 
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Honestly not impressed expected something more. The island changes look interesting but everything else looks completely insignificant as if it is not even worth spending time on. Are there really no more important things in naval warfare? I hope for something more in the future.
 
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1) You should revisit the carrier limit of 4, currently defined in the define files, and make it a modifier which can be upgraded by tech / doctrines.

2) Also, you should fix how the carrier limit currently works, which can be exploited by having non-debuffed fleet carriers, and penalty affected cheep support carriers. (Also, IIRC, CV fighters arent affected by the penalty)

A way to fix it would be to make, in the game engine, a CV with 40 CV navs not a single wing of 40, but 4 wings of 10.

3) Will mountaineers have less penalty bonus in terrain which will be covered by rangers ?

4) Will ground based nav use naval detection of air and sea units to find targets ? Currently, they use air detection, meaning to increase target detection and engagements, you don't need to increase naval presence, but just the number of fighters in an airzone !

Overall, very good changes, however I'm starting to believe we won't see an end to the 1 battle death stack meta yet.
 
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Not a good way to implement anti-submarine carriers.

Suggestion:

Create a new hangar module for carriers instead. Much lower cost and takes one air group instead of two. That way you build dedicated ASW carriers. Give them the higher detection but worse sorties to make them less competitive against ships.
 
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can we execute navy raids yet? Using the raid features can for example Japan have a focus to unlock a naval raid on pearl harbour? Would be nice to see this mechanic added, also will there be any changes to sorties with the carriers? I think that most people will agree the current carrier penalties and sorties are a bit confusing and outdated. Lastly can we expect a rework to the ships with their production costs for higher tier ships? I think most people would agree tier 3 and 4's are basically useless and never produced and I haven't seen the AI do it to be honest, even though many were produced in real life theres no motivation to produce tier 3, 4 ships it is much easier to spam tier 2 ships such as battlecruisers with level 3 heavy guns and win navy everytime.
I asked something along those lines in a previous thread and got this reply, so some changes might happen:
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Not a good way to implement anti-submarine carriers.

Suggestion:

Create a new hangar module for carriers instead. Much lower cost and takes one air group instead of two. That way you build dedicated ASW carriers. Give them the higher detection but worse sorties to make them less competitive against ships.

But are you aware that the carrier hangar I was showing was the standard one, and not the one could say a bit more specialized? ;)
 
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Very nice! Three questions remain, though:
  1. I assume the new Rangers/Jaegers will unlock via army xp, which is already the slowest to get. Will the army xp gain rate be adjusted, to account for the additional branch?
  2. Talking about special forces branches, any adjustments to the current limit of 2 coming?
  3. Will the long-standing problem of hybrid fighter-bombers for carriers be resolved? For those who don't know, CV planes can only perform a single role right now, which makes hybrid designs unviable.
Would really love to get three 'yes' here! Great work, looking forward to more.
 
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But are you aware that the carrier hangar I was showing was the standard one, and not the one could say a bit more specialized? ;)
By all means create more modules and options wherever possible. Variety is always good, especially when it's historically accurate.

Still not sure if using full fleet carriers against submarines should be anything but a unnecessary risk. In fact i'd wager that Submarines sank more Fleet Carriers than vice versa. Courageous being sunk stopped the RN from using them in that role within the first few months of the war.

Besides specialized fleets are easier to organize and manage for the player than general purpose ones.
 
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