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Hi everyone and welcome back to regular weekly dev diaries (if you don't count the april fools one last week). I know you are all super excited to hear what we have been up to since Battle for the Bosporus. The answers to that are going to take a few dev diaries to cover, so I figured I would start with a timeline for you:
  • We recently released 1.10.4 to fix various multiplayer exploits going on, but seems an important case was not detected at the time so we are working on a 1.10.5 to address that soon.
  • Pdxcon is coming up in May so expect to hear some more details there.
  • The yearly anniversary is coming in June so expect some cool stuff and a patch.
  • We are however spending most of our time on the 1.11 Barbarossa update as well as the unannounced expansion that will be released together with it. That's what we will spend most of our diaries on, as well as today!

‘Barbarossa’ and the unannounced DLC will focus on the Eastern Front and the core of Hearts of Iron, which is warfare - particularly land warfare. Historically the Eastern Front was without doubt the most important front for World War II. It was the largest confrontation in history and
is where Hitler’s expansion was first stopped and pushed back signaling the eventual doom of the axis powers. There are several areas we want to improve here. Weather does not feel impactful enough, while historically it had a massive impact. Logistics currently doesn’t have much player interaction and is mostly something you have to deal with only when problems appear, and finally the combat and division meta has been stable (with an emphasis on large divisions) for a long time - something we hope we can shake up. As you can imagine, these are all things that affect the game on a deeper level and take a lot of work to get right.

Today, I’ll give you guys a bit of an overview on the supply aspect, but fair warning: it’s early days and stuff may still change here before we’re done. I’ll probably spend 3+ diaries on supply over the course of the development to cover everything, but I figured it would be nice to hear about the overarching ideas.

The old system worked by having discrete supply areas pathing back to the players capital and keeping track of the bottlenecks. To simplify a bit ;) - those bottlenecks then decided how many units could fit into areas near the front without penalties. The areas themselves were unintuitive to players and required you to check multiple mapmodes to see if you stepped over an edge etc. I do like bottleneck systems though, because feedback is usually immediate, but it suffered from not having much scaling cost as distances increased, so it was hard to use it to limit snowballing. As I mentioned it was also a system you didn't care too much about until you had problems, while historically, logistics was a vital part of planning a campaign. This led to combining the issue with another gripe of ours - that the way fronts moved in WW2 often followed important railroads, but don't really in HOI4. We came to the conclusion that we should try and make a system focused on railways and with a truck based component as a way to get more out of it when away from the rails.

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In our new system, supply flows from the capital (the total amount available depends on your total industrial base) through railways, where the level of the railway acts as a bottleneck. To transport more, you need a higher level railway (or a bigger port if it goes over water) so the railways are the current bottlenecks in a way. Depending on how much supply is transported you need a certain amount of trains for the rails to perform. Trains are a new equipment type that we will dig into in a future diary (well actually, several types ;P)

An important part of railways is that they are capturable, so as you push into enemy territory you will want to make sure to hold vital railways and capture railway hubs to supply your troops. There is a conversion time here to model the fact that there was usually some repair or re-gauging that needed to happen for attackers.

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Mapmodes are still quite WIP ;)

Rivers also had a huge importance on the eastern front for transport and supply so they will work essentially like basic railroads now, where you need to control both sides of their banks to use them to ship supplies around.

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Supply is drawn from what we call Supply Hubs now, which are either cities, naval bases, or manually constructed stations along the rails, which have to be linked into the network. Air supply works a bit differently but we will talk about this in the future along with some other supply additions...

The flow of supply from a Hub to a division depends on the terrain/weather etc, and ideally you want to have available trucks here (which is to say, motorized equipment) to increase the amount of supply you get as well as range. Cost of trucks and trains and losses to attrition and bad weather will be a limiting factor on your logistics.

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Overall, this creates a system where it's strategically sound to fight over railways, prepare for large offensives, to try and bleed each other's logistics capability and to force care when advancing in bad terrain and weather. The result is a much more fun, historical and immersive Eastern Front as well as adding a new layer of invasion planning in the rest of the world.

See you all next week for the next diary!
 
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respectfully, i disagree. it is annoying AF and not fun to have to ramp up civ factories to have the pleasure of 15 of them focusing on single constructions... My recommendation is that the pool of construction material be in the background as a ratio of supply levels, excess natural resources and ideally a generic construction equipment that can be built up and stockpiled as an opportunity cost against raw materials towards building the standard equipment.

I.e. lets say you are a lower tech/industrial minor power like china or brazil, maybe you don't have access to all the steel and concrete to do large land forts and lots of infrastructure to pipeline your constructions, but you could use your manpower to create large engineer corps to do a lot more lower-intensity (level) forts representing simple earth works, trenches and log/sandbag defenses etc.

The basic Ai could run in the background if you don't want to manage it and basically have it automatically work AS-IS, or you could take the reigns and really finesse your constructions/defenses and bases to squeeze the most out of asymetric strategic situations.

IRL, Japan had a CRAZY amount of land forts and layers of defenses which in combination with terrain and weather would have made a land invasion by the Allies extremely costly.

ENG battalion options could really make for some interesting, varied and FUN gameplay with this new supply system IMHO.
History proves you different:

Germany:
Westwall - constructed by Organisation Todt (not Engineers)
U-Boot pens in France - Organisation Todt

France:
Maginot Line - state-owned construction firms

Britain:
Chain home stations - commercial equipment, supported by the BBC, government contractors
Bletchley Park - significantly run by civilians, using private property

Other countries do not have something comparable as the US Corps of Engineers (if that is what you are thinking) - it would simply break their manpower that could be used for other goverment projects in a similar manner.

On the other hand, the role of military engineers is to increase mobility of other forces (improvised bridge building, mine clearing), disrupt enemy movement (mine laying), protect own forces (field fortifications, that are build in mere hours - not days - as the tactical situation requires) and disable enemy strong-points as needed.

I am not opposed to revamp the division designer - in fact that is a GREAT idea. However, HOI 4 is still a historical game in some respect and should represent forces in that context.
 
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Well it's good to know that finally something is happening with the supply and more attention is brought to the Eastern front. I have a suggestion. How about working a bit on the Baltics too? They were an important part during eastern front even when dead. Focus trees might be a bit too much to ask, but how about fixing the borders and adding a couple of cities and counties to make It better. Also events should take place. Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were all forest brothers fighting against the Russians, events should come where the Russians get more than usual resistance in the areas. When Germans take the area, there can be an event where many forest brothers join the Germans to fight against Russians (Like historically) and also the fact that 50,000 Estonians volunteered up to join the Germans against the Russians.
 
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Britain:
Chain home stations - commercial equipment, supported by the BBC, government contractors
Bletchley Park - significantly run by civilians, using private property

Other countries do not have something comparable as the US Corps of Engineers (if that is what you are thinking) - it would simply break their manpower that could be used for other goverment projects in a similar manner.
This is not a fully representative view of the situation. Very significant numbers of men were recruited - particularly from British 'colonial' areas - into labour or 'pioneer' batallions. These were widely used for road and rail improvements, airfield construction and similar tasks; vital, but underappreciated in the history books. In the 'end of empire' period and the subsequent purging of empire from British history (apart from a few 'glorious' bits) the role of these units was largely forgotten, but a few sources are starting to dig it out (pun intended...)
 
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1) you can capture them, but its mostly to spread you access. which is like the core gameplay here - capture routes into the enemy land. We dont have any plans right now for say captured supply
2) there is no "supply goods" thats tockpiled its abstracted and produced by your collective industry
3) A good question, its more complex but the old one was also quite costly so we will have to see once its done


Infra drops down to max 5 levels and some stuff comes from rails instead. they do a bit different things now. More details in future. it doesnt use the building slots so there is no competition


mostly but with artistic freedom, it also need to look good and make sense for gameplay
Late for the party but that's a good dev, thank you podcat.
Does the 'collective industry produce supplies' idea similar to the HOI2 or HOI3, where a single value IC will decide both industrial capacity and supply capacity?
If so, I would propose a suggestion that, do not directly use the total number of factories to calculate that supply capacity but use consumer goods factory instead.
 
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Late for the party but that's a good dev, thank you podcat.
Does the 'collective industry produce supplies' idea similar to the HOI2 or HOI3, where a single value IC will decide both industrial capacity and supply capacity?
If so, I would propose a suggestion that, do not directly use the total number of factories to calculate that supply capacity but use consumer goods factory instead.
Even better IMO would be a combination of 1 MIC plus one CIC produces supplies :)
 
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Hey guys,

first of all, I love HOI4 and I'm a huge fan and very happy to see that logistics finally get more attention... but I'm also a little concerned. The reason for this is the following: Lots of the talks in this forum are dealing with historical authenticity. So, as it happens, I'm German and I'm a historian who did a lot of research on the Holocaust and German society and it feels not right to just ignore this huge crime against humanity in HOI4 completely. Don't get me wrong, of course there is no way to include it in any way IN the game itself (that'd be even more wrong), but I'd really appreciate some kind of "Please note" at the beginning, some kind of clarification that Paradox is aware of the holocaust and the predicament it poses to play (or develop) a WWII video game without mentioning this crime. Even more, if Paradox is now going to implement trains. Trains, in which back then millions of jews and other "unwertes Leben" were brought to places of extinction - especially on the Eastern Front.

I know, there is no real solution to this. But to include a short note or explanation at the beginning of the game would be worth a lot, in my opinion.
 
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Hey guys,

first of all, I love HOI4 and I'm a huge fan and very happy to see that logistics finally get more attention... but I'm also a little concerned. The reason for this is the following: Lots of the talks in this forum are dealing with historical authenticity. So, as it happens, I'm German and I'm a historian who did a lot of research on the Holocaust and German society and it feels not right to just ignore this huge crime against humanity in HOI4 completely. Don't get me wrong, of course there is no way to include it in any way IN the game itself (that'd be even more wrong), but I'd really appreciate some kind of "Please note" at the beginning, some kind of clarification that Paradox is aware of the holocaust and the predicament it poses to play (or develop) a WWII video game without mentioning this crime. Even more, if Paradox is now going to implement trains. Trains, in which back then millions of jews and other "unwertes Leben" were brought to places of extinction - especially on the Eastern Front.

I know, there is no real solution to this. But to include a short note or explanation at the beginning of the game would be worth a lot, in my opinion.
I am Pole, I am historian too. I fully agree and support your opinion. It is with concern that I observe the process of the HOI4's increasing deviation from the historical context.
Instead, there are absurd ideas, such as reactivating the Roman Empire and the like.

I like playing as Japan. There was an event like this: the Nanjing Massacre. Suddenly it was gone.

Political correctness is a disease of our time. It leads to the falsification of history. As a result, the lack of knowledge of history - as can already be seen today - results in a return to popularity of totalitarianism and populism.
 
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Hi everyone and welcome back to regular weekly dev diaries (if you don't count the april fools one last week). I know you are all super excited to hear what we have been up to since Battle for the Bosporus. The answers to that are going to take a few dev diaries to cover, so I figured I would start with a timeline for you:
  • We recently released 1.10.4 to fix various multiplayer exploits going on, but seems an important case was not detected at the time so we are working on a 1.10.5 to address that soon.
  • Pdxcon is coming up in May so expect to hear some more details there.
  • The yearly anniversary is coming in June so expect some cool stuff and a patch.
  • We are however spending most of our time on the 1.11 Barbarossa update as well as the unannounced expansion that will be released together with it. That's what we will spend most of our diaries on, as well as today!

[...]

See you all next week for the next diary!
Thanks for your great dev diaries again. This looks great and I am super exited for those new supply mechanics.
 
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Are railways tied to infrastructure ?
Infrastructure is now roads and highways, which presumably are in every province, and capped at level 5. Rails come in addition to those.
 
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Uh...everyone except Americans and British to a lesser degree would use horses....(plus, the horse can be eaten when encircled)
 
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Uh...everyone except Americans and British to a lesser degree would use horses....(plus, the horse can be eaten when encircled)
Well, I think just about every combatant nation used trucks to some degree, but I take your point as "generally that degree should be <100%", and I think that is an entirely valid position.
 
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Will it be possible to use HORSES in place of TRUCKS for supply at a penalty to supply efficiency? It would model the oil crisis of WW2 perfectly!

The devs have already said horses are the default for all countries - trucks just boost throughput.

So even if you have no trucks at all some supplies will get through (due to horses).
 
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I hope the supply rework will solve also the issue of reinforcement being too abstracted and prone to be abused. I mean i hope it won't be possible anymore to land with a 2w infantry and then magically turn it into a 40w armour division overnight :)
 
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