Development Diary #10 - 17th of December 2008

[chridder]

Are the old mission "Support invasion", etc. are still in?

[bbasgen]

Nicely done. Great news about detection and obsolete ships. The detection should, in particular, help the Pacific War considerably. It sounds like naval engagement could be massively improved as well.

I have three questions:

1. Are you considering a frontage system for navies, to prevent the DD-zerg exploit?
2. How will you balance a CTF with SAG? In HOI2, the CVL was used to give the SAG a fighting chance, but the ability of the CVL to instantly transport within range essentially mothballs the CTF
3. Will the new naval order system include intelligence like auto retreat and return to port when a patrol group is attacked? This would make it possible to have patrol fleets that aren't clobbered the moment an enemy fleet approaches.

[Kouak]

Aircrafts will be able to do "patrol mission" as small ships ?

[Gigalocus]

The Hood was a post Jutland ship ...

Excellant! This is also I've been wanting to hear about in HOI3 since the begining.

[Tskb18]

Enjoy the holidays! (And thanks for the update.)

Now for tiny quibbling... is Zerstörer-flottille possible as an alternative to Zerstörergeschwader in terms of naming?

http://axishistory.com/index.php?id=4573

And being no expert on naval stuff, i take recourse to Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hood

Laid down: 1 September 1916
Launched: 22 August 1918
Commissioned: 15 May 1920

Although the design was drastically revised after the Battle of Jutland, it was realised that there were serious limitations even to the revised design; for this reason, and because of evidence that the German battlecruisers that they were designed to counter were unlikely to be completed, work on her sister ships was suspended in 1917.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland

Date 31 May 1916 – 1 June 1916

[King]

The Hood was a post Jutland ship ...

You didn't read, it was a pre-Jutland design Battlecruiser.

[Will Lucky]

I like the shiny model ships.

[Wobbler]

Has something been done to limit the time a ship can stay at sea or do away with the problems caused by the maximum range?

[WarDog]

This sounds great!

This upgrade system is a bit like bringing back the best part of HOI.

One question: When you have research a new tech that can also improve existing ships, do you need to select the ship to have it upgraded? And will it be taken of the board for the upgrade time?

I'm thinking about how in HOI you sent them to the build queue for a time. If you upgraded several things it took a bit longer time and cost a bit more. I think that made it a bit more realistic.

[Gravenn]

Yeah - thats an important q - and what about unlimited range for port change and for AI???

[Gigalocus]

You didn't read, it was a pre-Jutland design Battlecruiser.

Its design was changed drastically after Jutland though ... But never mind, Paradox is always right

Looking fab

[TheLand]

Is there still generic "sea attack", "air attack" and "sub attack" with "sea defense", "air defense" and "sub defense" - or are you moving more towards gun attack, bomb attack, and torpedo attack?

Obviously it's good that parts can be researched independently and combined as we wish - are there any more details on how the ship construction system works?

Also, what's happening to the naval combat engine - are we still working on engagement distance and postitioning, or has that been amended as well?

[kstanb]

Firstly we have added the infinite order, for something like convoy escorts, you send you fleet out and the order will run indefinitely.

Look like convoy battles won't be abstracted which is great news

[Tyson_48]

It was already said, that the ai won't cheat on normal difficulty...

[Froptus]

Those screenshots are fantastic. In HOI 3 I'm really looking forward to the increased flexibility and range of the zoom and the higher resolution settings. The listing of ships in the first screenshot looks very nice too; more polished than HOI 2. Oh and the quality of the gameplay sounds better and better with each diary. Can't wait.

Merry Christmas everyone.

[Bullfrog]

"If you build a ship its main gun armament is fixed for all time..."

Is this moddable?

That is what he said.

BTW it looks like German industry is having a rough time deciding what to build.

[King]

Its design was changed drastically after Jutland though ... But never mind, Paradox is always right

Looking fab

No actually it was slightly up armoured, but the basic design flaws remained. That's why she blew up so easily.

[MercZ]

Ah yes, those mountains are looking nice.

[Johan Jung]

Both carrier groups would (should?) probably detect each other at approx the same time (depending on recce effort and Carrier Doctrine?) and thus be able to launch a strike/counterstrike. At Midway 1942 the japanese carriers were for example detected early by US land-based aircraft and not the US carrier aircraft.

A question though: what about carrier warfare? It's perfectly reasonable for, say, US carriers to find and attack Japanese carriers without the latter knowing where the US carriers are. Basically, what I'm asking is whether or not both fleets have to detect each other for an effective battle (as opposed to a one-sided turkey-shoot)? If Carrier Fleet A sees Carrier Fleet B and engages, does that mean that CFB automatically sees and engages CFA or will it have to find CFA first?

[Kouak]

Next to Naval orders. We’ve made a couple of changes to naval orders. Firstly we have added the infinite order, for something like convoy escorts, you send you fleet out and the order will run indefinitely.

It means that convoys will be visible on the main map ?