E3 2012: New Expansion for Hearts of Iron III Announced!

[Magyar1988]

when can we expect the first development diary?
I love reading them!!!

[Broe]

Could be great if the planes ability at night were serverly hampered. specially over open waters.
even some str. loss from landing in the dark on carriers maybe even airfields.

would make handeling aircraft carrier a little mre difficult but could add option for no night flight? maybe?

would do wonders for navel battles I think.

[cindel5]

Looking very good its on my to get list

[kaspar42]

in terms of supply a provience can only "belong" to one nation at a time, changing that requires a rubuild of the entire system (pretty much a new game)

I am sure that there are ways to do it. Like creating a supply source where the allied supply route enters the transit territory, and a supply demand in the province(s) where it it exits. That way the supply movement would integrate into province owners supply network.
As I said, I realize this is tricky, but this is a paid expansion and I am sure the brilliant people at Paradox can find a way to do this, if they can afford the development time.

[juv95hrn]

Note that I am not saying the demoting should be forbidden because it is totally unrealistic. I am just saying that promoting
and demoting should come with a small penalty so that the player feels he is taking a real decision.
Totally scrambling your generals repeatedly multiple times a month is surely something even a dictator could not afford.

I have to agree with this since I don't like decisions with no consequences at all. I didn't fancy the way it worked in HOI2 that much because it meant extra micromanagement to watch your leaders and only promote them right after a new level of experience was reached. A system where you got some temporary negative side effect (like operating at -2 skill level for 6 months at their new rank fx?) would be good though. You don't have to micromanage too much and you don't want to reshuffle leaders too much because you pay a temporary price.

[Jazumir]

How about some cost in officers for demoting/promoting? Some slight number. Just to make it cost something.

[Cybvep]

like operating at -2 skill level for 6 months at their new rank fx?

I like it, although this number should definitely be moddable. Temporary penalties would be good in this case, because they don't affect your OOB-building during peacetime, but a change of commander becomes a strategic choice during wartime.

[albso437]

Could be great if the planes ability at night were serverly hampered. specially over open waters.
even some str. loss from landing in the dark on carriers maybe even airfields.

So the player should have to micro manage every single air unit to make sure they don't land at night???
The idea is not bad per se, but it doesn't really fit the scale of the game, does it?

[plasticpanzers]

aircraft to operate well at night should have to research the advanced tech on air radar.
This tech should be fleshed out a bit more and split up into a couple techs inc night fighters
and night bombing

[Secret Master]

aircraft to operate well at night should have to research the advanced tech on air radar.
This tech should be fleshed out a bit more and split up into a couple techs inc night fighters
and night bombing

It already does. Each level of aircraft search RADAR adds +10% to aircraft fighting efficiency at night. This stacks with RADAR combat impact from ground based RADAR stations, so if your planes are running night missions inside their own RADAR coverage, you can substantially mitigate the night penalty (which is -50% right off the bat).

Hypothetically, you could reduce that night penalty to nothing if you could afford to research enough air search RADAR enough ahead of time (level 5 would be at 1946 techs I think). That's pretty damn good for WWII techs.

Even better, navigation RADAR gives all aircraft that research it better detection against all surface targets. CAGs and NAVs with navigation RADAR are really good at finding enemy ships. You aren't hiding your ships from CAGs or NAVs with RADAR, and night time ain't going to save you, either.

How much more impact should RADAR techs have on night fighting?

[amalric de g.]

They should fix the airbattles (stacking etc.). Please make the fleets mergeable.

[comsubpac]

They should fix the airbattles (stacking etc.). Please make the fleets mergeable.

what exactly needs to be "fixed"? i am sure the devs are interested in actual useful informations.
what fleets? as far as i know fleets are mergeable...

[Cybvep]

They should fix the airbattles (stacking etc.). Please make the fleets mergeable.

There is a good thread about air combat here. I think that suggestions should be posted there.

You can merge as many fleets as you want, unless you meant "air fleets"?

[plasticpanzers]

Night bombing should be a doctrine that the AI would follow in certain circumstances (the
UK and Germany in WW2 pounding each other comes to mind). Right now the Ai will use
day/night it doesn't matter to attack. My point being that if the AI cannot provide fighter
escort to pound at daytime it would switch to night due to losses (which did occur and why
night bombing was used). its not a techish issue more than how the game handles it. right
now if you want to conduct or have your allies conduct night strategic bombing you cannot
unless you manually assign your own and you cannot 'encourage' you allies to stop daylight
raids when their bombers should be getting slaughtered. Also a subtype of aircraft would be
nightfighters. A nice immersion thing as generally you would not be able to simply assign 10
airgroups randomly to night missions in real life (folks bump into each other in the dark). I am
just suggesting that a way be found to adapt this into the game where the Ai will follow it as
a national doctrine and not hogepodge it as it does now.

[mkupac]

How about some delay for leaders taking place, as in AOD? Makes much more sense, and as is now, you could go for micro-management hell to put your best leaders in almost every single offensive around the globe. This would also mean that promoting/demoting occurs less often, as it would make the leaders useless for some time. The amount of time required would be really important, and as such should be moddable.

[TrueCoppa]

Will it be possible to preorder it on gamersgate?

[andrewcdann]

Looking forward to the release, well done Paradox

[Owsik]

the new combat tactics system for battles.

what it is exactly?

[Chromos]

what it is exactly?

Hi Owsik.
Podcat wrote that they will reveal that in an later Dev-Diary.

Cheers,
Chromos

[JASGripen]

I have to agree with this since I don't like decisions with no consequences at all. I didn't fancy the way it worked in HOI2 that much because it meant extra micromanagement to watch your leaders and only promote them right after a new level of experience was reached. A system where you got some temporary negative side effect (like operating at -2 skill level for 6 months at their new rank fx?) would be good though. You don't have to micromanage too much and you don't want to reshuffle leaders too much because you pay a temporary price.

I agree that the "no consequence" state of affairs could be improved. In HoI2 the AI cheated with promotion/demotion (in a way as we all humans and AI do now). I am not against that the AI continue as it is now, but humans could get a penalty. Demotions should be costly for players, in order to discourage them as they happened seldom and one can also believe that many of those demoted officers didn't get a performance boost by the demotion. I would say that demotions cost 1 skill level permanent and promotion cost as suggested above -2 in skill level but for perhaps only 1 month (6 months is along time in WWII).

I could also see a pop-up each time a new skill level is reached for a general. As with all pop-ups it can be turned off for those who do not care. For my own part I care a lot about this and pet the generals more than needed from a pure efficiency standpoint.