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HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Access

Diary time! Today, in the 7th diary, we continue showing off features in Man the Guns, but don’t worry - there are loads more coming! The topics for today both concern access.

Sea zone access
With MTG it will now be possible for players to mark sea zones as either Avoid or Banned. A zone marked as Avoid will be treated as dangerous and, well, something to avoid if possible. This goes for all ship routing. So if enemy submarines are decimating your shipping you will be able to route it elsewhere, perhaps somewhere safer and closer to an ally. Ships will still route through a zone marked as Avoid if there is no other way to get where they are going.

route.jpg


A Banned zone won't allow moving through it at all, except by manual player moves, or say if it’s an invasion order triggered by the player. It will for example even shut down trading if there are no other possible paths. Zone markings are shown in the naval mapmode and can both be toggled directly on strategic area alerts, or in the new “state view” for the sea. Here we also show a proper breakdown on the level of naval supremacy in the area much like you are used to for air zones instead of the old sparse tooltip. You’ll have to excuse my sneaky censoring as not to spoil a future topic however ;)

state.jpg


At this point I am sure some aspiring u-boat captains are wondering why the enemy can’t just shuffle their shipping routes constantly to avoid being located and interdicted. Changing your route will put its efficiency at 0, so if you continuously change settings you won’t be able to move things through the route. That said, there might be some good strategy in sometimes changing things up to make it harder for the enemy to concentrate their raiders.


Docking Rights
Asking for or receiving Docking Rights are new diplomatic actions. They function like military access “light” and allow someone access to base out of, resupply and repair in your naval bases. In fact military access by necessity automatically comes with docking rights. Docking rights can give you better reach and avoid troublesome paths. For example, German subs will be able to operate out of Spanish ports (if permission is granted) and threaten British shipping in areas where defending them is trickier and they won’t have to pass through the channel or more guarded waters.

dr.jpg


When it comes to repair and such you will be at a lower priority than the owner of the port, but you will have to wait for a future dev diary for more details on how the new repair system functions in detail. Ships in a neutral port that are there due to docking rights can not be attacked with aerial strikes on the base, so if you want to get rid of ships operating there you will need to draw the harboring nation into war also.

That’s all for this time folks. Tune in next week for a *cough* explosive update.

Rejected Titles:
  • This feature was inspired by the famous documentary Das Boot
  • A pouch of tricks
  • Tuesday Teaser Extended Cut HD
  • Nono, these U-Boats are on holiday here in Spain
  • “Should we be worried that Command is sending us, specifically this ship, into a zone marked as Avoid?”
  • Blockchain for dummies - naval edition
  • This dev diary has probably the worst Dev-Time-Needed to Feature-Dev-Diary-Length ratio
 
As someone mentioned earlier, coastal sea-zones could be a nifty idea. Just a narrow band outside each land province with a coastline. And with more or less matching air-zones, i.e. an air zone covering a country would also cover its coastline. And coastal artillery/forts could have some impact on combat in those zones, and possibly on enemy fleets operating there as well.

This way a country with a long, rugged costline, but a weak navy, like Norway, could try to run coastal convoys protected by their forts and air force.
 
My fleet should be able to push through a "blocked port" because telling me "no" isn't going to stop anything. It didn't stop the Germans from invading Poland or France. Unrealistic things like this are annoying. Most of all, the uselessness of nukes...

Lucky you, it's not ! It blocks only the convoy ships. It will be a zone to avoid by your fleet but any order to your fleet to go in this zone or to move through will move it.
Nukes are not useless and represent well enough the power of nukes at that time.
 
You need to justify war like usual or you will have a cb to these nations (or at least, a faster and cheaper justify war?)
faster justify. you now get that for a few "helping the enemy" relations.
 
Unfortunately I'm not inclined to buy the DLC Man the Guns on release. This is due to the fact, that paradox has so far not released a patch in connection with the so called carrier plane squadron bug, although the problem is existing for almost half a year now. I have come to the conclusion, that the developers will attend to this bug with the patch that is released together with Man the Guns.

This is in my opinion far too late, scince the aforementioned bug is of a very substantial matter and therefore leaves us players in a very ackward situation until the problem is finally fixed. This goes especially with those of us, who favor to play maritime nations like the Japanese Empire, the Netherlands, the United States and last but not least Great Britain. Just look into this thread, which contains loads of information about that whole affair:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/carrier-plane-squadrons-wiped-out.1090883/
 
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Will any minor nations get focus trees in man the guns? I was hoping for Spain if possible

They have pretty much said it won't be Spain. Too much work on diplomacy and such, and this DLC is about mostly naval stuff.
 
As someone mentioned earlier, coastal sea-zones could be a nifty idea. Just a narrow band outside each land province with a coastline. And with more or less matching air-zones, i.e. an air zone covering a country would also cover its coastline. And coastal artillery/forts could have some impact on combat in those zones, and possibly on enemy fleets operating there as well.

This way a country with a long, rugged costline, but a weak navy, like Norway, could try to run coastal convoys protected by their forts and air force.

That would be fun, right now when I want to manage the naval part of the game I realise every time that ah, there is nothing to do, it’s either you control the seas or everything you own is sunken. Or its gonna be.
Specially as smaller nations. Sure I have no hopes of contesting the UK over the canal as Finland, but sure would be fun to find some middle ground to make naval really fun.
Hope that MtG will do just that!
 
Unfortunately I'm not inclined to buy the DLC Man the Guns on release. This is due to the fact, that paradox has so far not released a patch in connection with the so called carrier plane squadron bug, although the problem is existing for almost half a year now. I have come to the conclusion, that the developers will attend to this bug with the patch that is released together with Man the Guns.

This is in my opinion far too late, scince the aforementioned bug is of a very substantial matter and therefore leaves us players in a very ackward situation until the problem is finally fixed. This goes especially with those of us, who favor to play maritime nations like the Japanese Empire, the Netherlands, the United States and last but not least Great Britain. Just look into this thread, wich contains loads of information about that whole affair:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/carrier-plane-squadrons-wiped-out.1090883/

You do realize this was probably something that would have required a serious revision in the way naval and naval combat works to fix. Just "hot fix it" when everything about naval combat is changing would be redundant and take away from working on the DLC and patch.

Yeah, it sucks this bug slipped thru testing. It annoys me because I like to play naval nations, but stuff happens and you move on. Continuing to hate on them when they have said fixing this is a top priority in the MtG patch seems counter-productive at this point. Your soap box and your money though.
 
Finally, no more convoy suicides!
 
You do realize this was probably something that would have required a serious revision in the way naval and naval combat works to fix. Just "hot fix it" when everything about naval combat is changing would be redundant and take away from working on the DLC and patch.

Yeah, it sucks this bug slipped thru testing. It annoys me because I like to play naval nations, but stuff happens and you move on. Continuing to hate on them when they have said fixing this is a top priority in the MtG patch seems counter-productive at this point. Your soap box and your money though.

Thanks for your polite comment on my post. I honestly do not really know, whether the bug is of an nature that needs this much time to be addressed to in an conclusive modus operandi, scince I'm not a game developer or software programmer. One thing however is quite clear. Naval air combat was at least in comparison to its present state, in ship shape bristol fashion eight months ago. It seems therefore a little strange to me, that the elimination of this bug needs so much time. And furthermore you can take my word for it, that my criticism in regard to this problem is in no way lead by any kind of hatred towards the developers of paradox. Hence I hold the position that my comments on the bug are warranted.
 
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Excellent diary!!

Docking Rights
Asking for or receiving Docking Rights are new diplomatic actions. They function like military access “light” and allow someone access to base out of, resupply and repair in your naval bases. In fact military access by necessity automatically comes with docking rights. Docking rights can give you better reach and avoid troublesome paths. For example, German subs will be able to operate out of Spanish ports (if permission is granted) and threaten British shipping in areas where defending them is trickier and they won’t have to pass through the channel or more guarded waters.

When it comes to repair and such you will be at a lower priority than the owner of the port, but you will have to wait for a future dev diary for more details on how the new repair system functions in detail. Ships in a neutral port that are there due to docking rights can not be attacked with aerial strikes on the base, so if you want to get rid of ships operating there you will need to draw the harboring nation into war also.

One question on docking rights - if a neutral country is resupplying another nations' ships, are there diplomatic repercussions? If Portugal is selling torpedoes to the Germans, surely they risk being pulled into the conflict somehow?
 
Finally, no more convoy suicides!
There are 3 possible sea zones Allied shipment can traverse to Britain. If German U-Boats cover all 3, then the convoys must cross them.
It just won't be possible for Germany to create the Bay of Biscay killzone with air coverage.
Now it's off to the Azores!
 
Somewhat OT and I apologize for that but this is a great opportunity to break a lance for the devs.
I honestly do not really know, whether the bug is of an nature that needs this much time to be addressed to in an conclusive modus operandi, scince I'm not a game developer or software programmer. One thing however is quite clear. Naval air combat was at least in comparison to its present state, in ship shape bristol fashion eight months ago. It seems therefore a little strange to me, that the elimination of this bug needs so much time.

Software development is oftentimes not as straight forward as one might think. Especially in complex software systems - of which a game like HoI surely is one.
When you fix a bug - or change some line of code in general - there might be side effects in other subsystems (apparently) totaly unrelated to the part of code you just changed. Hunting down and fixing these side effects can be a very time consuming and thus expensive task.
The current XKCD is somewhat related (although it's actually more about hardware):
upload_2018-8-16_12-16-50.png


So in this case Paradox has decided to throw the naval system away and get a new one instead of fixing it.
 
This is awesome! I hope we can lease/lend ships like the Germans did to the Spanish during their Civil War as well. Also, I hope there is a visual way added to see known convoy routes, suspected convoy routes, and when/where you have sunk them.
 
Thanks for your polite comment on my post. I honestly do not really know, whether the bug is of an nature that needs this much time to be addressed to in an conclusive modus operandi, scince I'm not a game developer or software programmer. One thing however is quite clear. Naval air combat was at least in comparison to its present state, in ship shape bristol fashion eight months ago. It seems therefore a little strange to me, that the elimination of this bug needs so much time. And furthermore you can take my word for it, that my criticism in regard to this problem is in no way lead by any kind of hatred towards the developers of paradox. Hence I hold the position that my comments on the bug are warranted.

So I took a look at that issue for 1.5.4. It was not a planned patch, but something we needed to do to fulfill new data privacy laws to add GDPR, so getting fixes into it was difficult and were done in our spare time because we didnt want to leave people with the china problem. The naval air issue is a big problem which essentially boils down to "rewrite all the air->naval code from scratch". So for our limited patch time it would have been extremely high risk of introducing something worse and dragging out the process (the realities of software development is that if we were to do another patch in between it would mean roughly pushing DLC/big-patch release a month forward which nobody wants. Nothing is free and happens in a vacuum). On top of that since we need to change a lot of other stuff in the naval combat system for MTG we would end up doing the job, then potentially throwing it all out and doing it new again, a huge waste of time. There is also the fact that this doesnt affect that many players (its mainly MP crowd and very naval focused players... who are probably more interested in getting MTG faster), but of course that is no excuse and doesnt make things better for you personally. Its one of those tough choices we deal with all the time. Rest assured we'll solve it for MTG though.
 
yea basically. no fighting in neutral harbor. you can pretend the sailors meet up in the local bar and there is a really uncomfortable vibe though. possibly fistfights.

Well, that one calls for a "diplomatic incident" pop-up random decision with some chance firing:

Riots broke out yesterday evening in a pub in 'insert random spanish port where German and British anchored'.
With some options how you want to treat the problem:
case 1: stay neutral, calm the situation, gain negative diplo from both - there might be an additional event later
case 2: withdraw docking rights for both nations, a) gaining negative diplo from both, but stay out of trouble b)occupy the ships from both nations
case 3: stop avoiding taking sides and occupy the ships from a)one nation or b) both nations or simply join the battle on one side.
case 4: British seals sneak on German ships, stealing or blowing up what they can get a hold on.
(I think the Vichy-Fleet event for Germany might work as a blueprint?)

I mean, hell this means a lot 'gramin effort for you for a 'little' gimmic, but i strongly suggest to avoid 'happily heavily drinking' and then going back to ship sinking each other again and again.... come on.


By the way, this could be a nice way to draw Spain into battle early and it is a bit risky to ask for docking rights all over the world (which is a little bit ridiculous after all).
Cheers


A, while I'm logged in, I'm calling for specific focus trees I've been waiting for since the release:

Spain
Turkey
Finland
Aethiopia
Mexico
Argentinia
(...)
Three (!) of them are involved in wars, which means that there definitely should have a focus tree, since the outcome has a major impact on the games progress (!)

And... this thing with Sweden and the Kalmar Union event doubling with Nordic Unity is a bit boring :)
 
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So I took a look at that issue for 1.5.4. It was not a planned patch, but something we needed to do to fulfill new data privacy laws to add GDPR, so getting fixes into it was difficult and were done in our spare time because we didnt want to leave people with the china problem. The naval air issue is a big problem which essentially boils down to "rewrite all the air->naval code from scratch". So for our limited patch time it would have been extremely high risk of introducing something worse and dragging out the process (the realities of software development is that if we were to do another patch in between it would mean roughly pushing DLC/big-patch release a month forward which nobody wants. Nothing is free and happens in a vacuum). On top of that since we need to change a lot of other stuff in the naval combat system for MTG we would end up doing the job, then potentially throwing it all out and doing it new again, a huge waste of time. There is also the fact that this doesnt affect that many players (its mainly MP crowd and very naval focused players... who are probably more interested in getting MTG faster), but of course that is no excuse and doesnt make things better for you personally. Its one of those tough choices we deal with all the time. Rest assured we'll solve it for MTG though.

Thank you for the detailed explanation on this subject. Better than my poor attempt and comes from a much more informed and authoritative source. One of the many reasons I respect the devs at PDS. May not always agree with them but we as customers are informed and kept abreast of what is going on. It is very appreciated. :)
 
So I took a look at that issue for 1.5.4. It was not a planned patch, but something we needed to do to fulfill new data privacy laws to add GDPR, so getting fixes into it was difficult and were done in our spare time because we didnt want to leave people with the china problem. The naval air issue is a big problem which essentially boils down to "rewrite all the air->naval code from scratch". So for our limited patch time it would have been extremely high risk of introducing something worse and dragging out the process (the realities of software development is that if we were to do another patch in between it would mean roughly pushing DLC/big-patch release a month forward which nobody wants. Nothing is free and happens in a vacuum). On top of that since we need to change a lot of other stuff in the naval combat system for MTG we would end up doing the job, then potentially throwing it all out and doing it new again, a huge waste of time. There is also the fact that this doesnt affect that many players (its mainly MP crowd and very naval focused players... who are probably more interested in getting MTG faster), but of course that is no excuse and doesnt make things better for you personally. Its one of those tough choices we deal with all the time. Rest assured we'll solve it for MTG though.

Thanks very much for your answer podcat, that is very kind of you indeed. Well, I'm glad to say that your reply has cleared my view on the problem of the carrier wing bug to a certain degree, and I see now that your company really needs some time to solve the issue in a proper way. Many thanks also to Meglok and elektrizikekswerk for their friendly
as well as insightful comments in regard to this matter.
 
Thank you for the detailed explanation on this subject. Better than my poor attempt and comes from a much more informed and authoritative source. One of the many reasons I respect the devs at PDS. May not always agree with them but we as customers are informed and kept abreast of what is going on. It is very appreciated. :)

I can see now that your explanation was right on the spot. Allow me therefore to compliment you for that, and also your gentleman like understatement in that regard.