HOI4 Dev Diary - Acclimatization and Special Forces

[Idle America]

why would you call things that hold cartridges, cartridges?

Because at the time, I called cartridges "bullets." I also thought the Marines and the Navy were the same thing, and that "Topside" was the name of the admiral or other commander. So every time the game told me to "Get Topside," I looked for the guy giving orders.

 

[Idle America]

I'm sorry but I don't understand this comment. Temperature and weather have been in the game since day 1. Current regions are already flagged as hot, very hot (or same for cold). The new DD is only about a new way of adapting to the current system.

Previously the choice was (a) brute force through the issue or (b) spend time and effort fitting everybody out with maintenance & logistic companies.

Now we have option (c) be selective with what units to send and how they are trained. When I play as Britain do I train my tank forces in London or do I ship them to Egypt and train them there with the knowledge that the extra attrition will limit me to only 5 divisions not 6. I'm going to guess that pretty much every Russian General will have the "Winter Expert" ability giving every Russian unit the equivalent of an extra maintenance company FOR FREE. All of a sudden the Red Army will have a lot more spare equipment available.

It's the same with the limits on Special Forces. At the moment the choice is "Can you afford the extra Equipment YES/NO". With the change suddenly it will be worth paying special attention to specific units and how they are used (just make sure not to send them from Africa straight to Siberia or else they wont adapt that well)


For the future both of these changes hold great promise. Suddenly the attrition of extreme cold & a blizzard can be increased since there are more options for the player to deal with it & special forces can get more & more useful bonuses since they only improve the select few rather than the standard default.

Maybe you are such a veteran player you have long since surpassed any such concerns but speaking as somebody as merely hundreds of hours I think both changes are great and serve nicely as the cream on top of an already great Cornflakes dish. (I love how hundreds of hours is still a rookie in Paradox games!)

I think at least half of my hours came from me leaving the game running whenever I stopped to nap.

 

[Kadanz]

I don't get the outrage over the cap. It's such an easy thing to mod in the defines lua file. Just look up the respective minimum cap and set it to 999, and now you can produce unlimited special forces divisions like you could before. Make a personal mod out of it which you can turn on or off at will so you don't have to touch your vanilla files.

 

[Angelis]

Because at the time, I called cartridges "bullets." I also thought the Marines and the Navy were the same thing, and that "Topside" was the name of the admiral or other commander. So every time the game told me to "Get Topside," I looked for the guy giving orders.

LOL

You made my day, dude. Thx a lot!
*have to remove the coffe from my screen now*

 

[Gort11]

@podcat First, Thanks for the great work from you and your team. The new counting system (brigade counting instead of divisions) is amazing! Could you plz add it to the mrp (German-Sovjet truce) mechanics? At the moment the mrp system is not working out, because the current system(mrp) is counting division numbers at the border (GER-SOV) instead of brigade numbers. We had a few times problems with people who exploid this mechanics with building division with 1 brigade in a multiplayer. Maybe now that you have already a system for brigade counting you could invent this for mrp too?

Sounds like they could use it for the volunteer system as well.

I don't get the outrage over the cap. It's such an easy thing to mod in the defines lua file. Just look up the respective minimum cap and set it to 999, and now you can produce unlimited special forces divisions like you could before. Make a personal mod out of it which you can turn on or off at will so you don't have to touch your vanilla files.

I guess you'd have no problem with tanks being given 1,000,000 soft attack next patch because you can just mod it out

 

[seattle]

Haven't read all 20 pages, so I don't know if this had been answered yet:
Will there be a visual indicator on counters regarding acclimatization? Sprites change their uniform, what do counters do?

 

[bERt0r]

I guess you'd have no problem with tanks being given 1,000,000 soft attack next patch because you can just mod it out

This is probably what is going to happen to special forces. Real life special forces are brigade size and usually don't do regular hold the line battles and storm the front battles. In hoi you use them in division formations. If you restrict them that much, you have to buff them enough for them to have a reason to exist. I think we'll see special forces divisions having the stats comparable to tank divisions when fighting in their terrain.

 

[myzael]

Haven't read all 20 pages, so I don't know if this had been answered yet:
Will there be a visual indicator on counters regarding acclimatization? Sprites change their uniform, what do counters do?

As soon as there will be movement indicators on counters...

 

[paranoidsteve]

what do counters do?

I find that they normally sit on top of each other, making knowledge of what is where just as hard as using the sprites

 

[imperiumiv]

PLEASE RELEASE AT LEAST 1 WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS AND MAKE IT SO MY FLEET CAN AUTOMATICALLY ALLOCATE BETWEEN NAVAL BASES FOR REPAIR.

 

[Sventex]

Nice additional features. Especially like how the future harsher weather penalties can be somewhat offset by acclimatization.



I would hope that the special forces units are given a higher starting training level than the regular units. I realize the existing mechanics don't accommodate this very well. Maybe the above "more drag and not quite as high speed" reference ties into that. But if they could start with trained (instead of green) and could be trained up to seasoned (instead of trained) it would nicely reflect their status as elite troops.

I've been learning from the Great War series that Germany created the Alpenkorps without any special training. They were suppose to learn on the job, at the front line, on the mountain.

 

[Gort11]

This is probably what is going to happen to special forces. Real life special forces are brigade size and usually don't do regular hold the line battles and storm the front battles. In hoi you use them in division formations. If you restrict them that much, you have to buff them enough for them to have a reason to exist. I think we'll see special forces divisions having the stats comparable to tank divisions when fighting in their terrain.

Nah, in WW2 they had divisions of special forces. Here's some from the UK:

Royal Marines Division

1st Airborne Division

6th Airborne Division

Even these days the US marines are a corps.

I think maybe you're using a different definition of "special forces" than this thread is. In Hearts of Iron 4, "special forces" means marines, mountaineers and paratroopers. I think the actions of your definition of "special forces" (EG: Commandoes) are better represented by events like "Colonel so-and-so wants to do a raid on an Axis airbase, do you go ahead and risk X equipment and X manpower to maybe destroy some planes, or is it not worth the risk?" with encryption, decryption, RADAR, paratrooper, mountaineer, marine and landing craft technologies affecting how well the raid turns out. Maybe military police techs for the defender too, to represent the efficiency of garrisoning forces.

 

[Meglok]

@fabius @Axe99 @billcorr @JerkyJerry

I do not dispute that from a realism standpoint tacking an arbitrary cap (and a flat 5% across the board for every nation IS arbitrary) on SF forces makes some sense.

My questions are these;

Is this realism for realism's sake? Saying it is for balance doesn't track because SP games are supposed to be about Sand Box and MP games regulate balance on their own.

If PDS wanted to tackle deployed force "realism", why not do something to reduce the historically implausible number of divisions nations, especially minor nations, can deploy. I haven't seen a huge hue and cry about there being too many Mountain troops, but I sure have seen people complaining about (insert minor country here) with 50 divisions.

Is this about game balance? Because I am not seeing complaints from SP players saying they are ruining their own games by fielding too many SF forces. And MP games regulate their own balance.

Just my own humble opinion based upon the info given, if I don't like how this finally shakes out I will mod it away.

 

[Gefallener_Held]

Again, I do not think mountaineers are special forces as I understand the term. Nor are marines for that matter. For this reason, five percent is way too low, especially for countries that consist largely of mountains and thus have naturally have more mountaineer divisions.

 

[Forster]

Again, I do not think mountaineers are special forces as I understand the term. Nor are marines for that matter. For this reason, five percent is way too low, especially for countries that consist largely of mountains and thus have naturally have more mountaineer divisions.

In the US, the special forces are the seals, rangers, special forces (green berets), paratroops, and marine force recon. The air force has a small specialized unit that supports the others.
Mountain divs are trained in mountain warfare and marines are trained in amphibious operations, but they are not considered special forces, as such. Both, of course, are trained in regular infantry type operations. Some battalions of the regular inf divs are trained in amphibious operations. Actual special forces are small in number in comparison to the regular ground forces, and in HOI IV, too small to model in the game. If mountain and marines are considered special forces, then 5% really is too small for the major nations.

 

[Had a dad]

Again, I do not think mountaineers are special forces as I understand the term. Nor are marines for that matter. For this reason, five percent is way too low, especially for countries that consist largely of mountains and thus have naturally have more mountaineer divisions.

I'm trying to remember any unit at the divisional level that was true "special forces". The term that probably should have been used in the DD is "Specialized Units" Which para, marines and mountain would def fall under.

That said, my guess the 5% is to accommodate not allowing SP to cheese units against the AI. Those that wanna go the route can easily make the define change to allow it, and it won't effect anything other than achievement hunting.

TFH intraduced "Special forces" to hoi3, so it would be my assumption they will eventually find their way to hoi4

 

[Gefallener_Held]

I'm trying to remember any unit at the divisional level that was true "special forces". The term that probably should have been used in the DD is "Specialized Units" Which para, marines and mountain would def fall under.

That said, my guess the 5% is to accommodate not allowing SP to cheese units against the AI. Those that wanna go the route can easily make the define change to allow it, and it won't effect anything other than achievement hunting.

TFH intraduced "Special forces" to hoi3, so it would be my assumption they will eventually find their way to hoi4

I do not disagree there should be a cap, I suppose. I just feel 5 percent is too low. There are other ways to stop cheese, eg making 20 width maximum, capping number of artillery, at as line units.

 

[Had a dad]

I do not disagree there should be a cap, I suppose. I just feel 5 percent is too low. There are other ways to stop cheese, eg making 20 width maximum, capping number of artillery, at as line units.

and that falls under realistic division composition that I so desperately want included one day

 

[Secret Master]

Since you like quotas so much, how a bout a cap for tank divisions or airplanes.

I would love a pilot training mechanic that limited airplanes to something other than "how many planes can my factories produce?"

You want to talk about planes? Let's talk about the number of planes Germany and Japan had in 1944 and 1945 versus the number they could actually fly on missions versus the quality of pilots they had. Sure, Japan could kamikaze planes into the US ships in 1944 and 1945, but that doesn't require the fuel, training, and quality of instructors that a real air force needs.

The cap on MTN, MAR, and PARA is arbitrary only in the sense that it's meant as an abstraction of a bunch of other factors that cover why every division in the war didn't have MAR, MTN, and PARA in them.

I haven't seen a huge hue and cry about there being too many Mountain troops,

Probably because most players don't know how you can abuse ministers to make them far more powerful than they should be. And probably because it's easier to see Romania put 100 divisions in the field and complain than it is to point out the weird parts of the mechanics that make special forces far more powerful than they should be.

It's one of those things that isn't really a big deal until someone takes the entire army and then makes it special forces after stacking ministers and other bonuses.

 

[Meglok]

I would love a pilot training mechanic that limited airplanes to something other than "how many planes can my factories produce?"

Amen. Pilots and pilot training is sorely missed.

Probably because most players don't know how you can abuse ministers to make them far more powerful than they should be. And probably because it's easier to see Romania put 100 divisions in the field and complain than it is to point out the weird parts of the mechanics that make special forces far more powerful than they should be.

It's one of those things that isn't really a big deal until someone takes the entire army and then makes it special forces after stacking ministers and other bonuses.

Definitely would raise an eyebrow in MP play (romanian marines anyone?) which is why there are house rules in almost any MP game. If there is a way to abuse a rule MP gamers will find it. But PDS has been trumpeting HOI4 as a WW2 sand box up until now. Seems like they just poured Quikrete in a corner of the vanilla sand box.