Hearts of Iron IV - Developer Diary 8 - Experience and Variants

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Hi! This week is going to be a pretty short diary because we are all super busy preparing for Gamescom and Paradox Fan Gathering in Cologne, but because we are physically addicted to stress hormones at this point we love our fans we decided to squeeze one in anyway.

A big problem when doing historical games is player hindsight. They will know what works and what doesn't and tech rush to those points. For Hearts of Iron IV we want players to have to play through the war to gain the experiences that historically may have been required to make the technological choices. To accomplish this we have split up the tech system in a theoretical part which is just your plain old research, which will unlock new equipment, like for example a P-51 Mustang that can then be produced etc. The other part relies on actual field experience in war and lets you tweak and modify any of your models to create new models (which you may name as well).

Let's talk about Ship Variants for a moment. Much like with the Division Designer, the key resource here is XP, although in this case we use Naval XP. Using your NXP you can make changes to any model of ship you can currently produce. Each ship can be upgraded in four areas, although this is not the same four areas for each ship type.

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In the example here we can see a Carrier, and that it's four possible upgrades are:
Armor - Increases protection, primarily from air attacks, but reduces Speed and Deckspace.
Deckspace - Increases number of Aircraft carried.
Engine - Increases speed.
Reliability - This stat is a little more complicated than the others. The other 3 upgrades all reduce Reliability a little while this upgrade counters the effect. Could also be thought of as "systematology" or "ship-shapedness", it's basically how well put together the ship is. A low Reliability makes the ship more vulnerable to critical hits in combat.

You can choose to upgrade all four areas of the ship, of course, and get an all-round better ship at a high cost, or you can only upgrade a few stats and have a more specialized ship. Oh, and an interesting thing about ships is that you can change their variant during production, although this will impose increased production time depending on how far along in the build process they were when you changed them, so if you decide your battleship simply must have 18" guns or a better engine you don't need to build it from scratch - although you cannot make large refits to ships once they are built.

Most of the HOI4 team will be at the fan gathering so you can argue about panthers with Darkrenown, and say hi to me and Tomasz and Guraan. I will also be showing off HOI4 on a big screen during the fan gathering, so you'll get to be the first non-press people to see it in action.
 
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very nice. I understand the concept very well for ships. but how does this work for Tanks or planes? they use army exp? so you need army exp. to improve divisions and to create variants?
 
What about experience sharing between allies? Especially the US/UK.

If we have it it will be part of lend lease deals. there is no sharing in the game yet.

very nice. I understand the concept very well for ships. but how does this work for Tanks or planes? they use army exp? so you need army exp. to improve divisions and to create variants?

Yes
 
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"Oh, and an interesting thing about ships is that you can change their variant during production, although this will impose increased production time depending on how far along in the build process they were when you changed them, so if you decide your battleship simply must have 18" guns or a better engine you don't need to build it from scratch - although you cannot make large refits to ships once they are built. "

This is the first time an idea from AOD has been integrated into HOI4.

IC to repair provinces next, please!
 
So is the max amount of each of the 4 attributes based on tech research or is it just pure experience. Could I build a a variant destroyer using WW1 tech, but use experience to jack it up to 10 in all categories?
 

thanks! this would make the dieppe Raid actually "necessary" for England to get enough experience to get the correct variants to do D-Day. FUN! (meaning that england cant sit on its ass and build up until '43)

oh and i am really liking the mapcolors!
 
thanks! this would make the dieppe Raid actually "necessary" for England to get enough experience to get the correct variants to do D-Day. FUN! (meaning that england cant sit on its ass and build up until '43)

oh and i am really liking the mapcolors!

I don't think it'll be so specific that you need amphibious raid experience before you can build the required equipment.
 
What are the little rectangles with a number next to them all over the map?
 
So is the max amount of each of the 4 attributes based on tech research or is it just pure experience. Could I build a a variant destroyer using WW1 tech, but use experience to jack it up to 10 in all categories?

There is a max level currently which depend on the upgrade. The idea is you can probably progress past the next pure research tech level, but not much further. But we are still experimenting with this stuff.

What are the little rectangles with a number next to them all over the map?

unit counters. As you zoom out it groups many into one so its easy to read. they separate as you zoom in closer
 
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I don't think it'll be so specific that you need amphibious raid experience before you can build the required equipment.

i got that:) but i does mean that england will need to actually fight to get enough experiences to get 'good' units. I used the Dieppe Raid as an example because although the raid was a failure they learn a lot from it for D-Day. i thought it was a good metaphor for how the system works.
 
Very nice indeed.
 
i got that:) but i does mean that england will need to actually fight to get enough experiences to get 'good' units. I used the Dieppe Raid as an example because although the raid was a failure they learn a lot from it for D-Day. i thought it was a good metaphor for how the system works.

It's a good example, but England was fighting in Burma and North Africa all throughout 1942, and I think that provided far more experience than 1400 guys in Dieppe.
 
There is a max level currently which depend on the upgrade. The idea is you can probably progress past the next pure research tech level, but not much further. But we are still experimenting with this stuff.

So will XP just act like some percentage modifier like in HOI 3 was for theory and practical? Probably a better question would be, maybe the subject of the next dd, how research works in a nut shell?
 
unit counters. As you zoom out it groups many into one so its easy to read. they separate as you zoom in closer

Thanks for your prompt answer.

What's the granularity on that? Are we looking at how many units are in each strategic region? per state? per province?
 
Thanks for your prompt answer.

What's the granularity on that? Are we looking at how many units are in each strategic region? per state? per province?

it groups counters that overlap in the interface, so there is no direct tie-in with geography. If you zoom all the way out you basically get a summary of the entire army for your country in one pile. I have no idea how I played any of our strategy games without this. Its so much easier to get an overview
 
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