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HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Terrain

Today we are going to talk about Naval Terrain and start talking about some of the core changes to the naval game.

We felt that we wanted to make where you fight more important, and where possible give advantages to people fighting in home waters. The sea in HOI4 has previously generally been either “ocean” or “ocean in range of enemy land based aircraft”, and otherwise mattered little. That’s about to change!

To do this we are introducing several terrain types for seas. These impact what ships work best there, how mines function as well as some other stuff. In total seas are divided into 4 types:
ocean.jpg

Regular Ocean has no special effects, so its similar to plains on land.

Screenshot_4.jpg

Fjords & Archipelagos come with some hefty penalties to big ships, but make it easier to hide (all numbers still quite work in progress btw!)

Screenshot_3.jpg

Deep Oceans on the other hand are not good for light ships. They are also not good place to mine due to their depth and vastness. Subs like this area (mid atlantic gap = bae) because it is also easier to hide here.

Screenshot_5.jpg

Shallow seas are a bit harder to maneuver well in, and not a great place for submarines.

There is also some possible modifiers on them:

Screenshot_6.jpg

Arctic Water is a general bad area to operate in, wearing your ships down and causing potential accidents. It also increases casualties if ships sink for any reason. This modifier works much like Extreme Cold on land so it depends on the time of year and temperature.

Screenshot_7.jpg

Some places in the world have quite a lot of sharks and there are a lot of stories of heavy casualties after the sinking of ships due to sharks. The USS Indianapolis is a famous example where due to several reasons, sharks among those, something like 75% of the crew were lost. It is honestly mostly a cool flavor thing though we wanted to have in ;)

Your performance in these are also affected by Admiral Traits. As we have shown a bit before your Admirals can now gain traits for different terrain types.

Screenshot_2.jpg

  • Cold Water Expert reduces the impact of arctic waters
  • Inshore Fighter gives combat bonuses and speed when operating in Fjords and Archipelagos
  • Blue Water Expert gives combat bonuses and speed when operating in deep oceans
  • Green Water Expert gives combat bonuses and speed when operating in shallow seas
You might have noticed some strange colors in the screenshots above. We are adding some more mapmodes, but it’s mostly all pink and full of coder art at the moment, so you are going to have to wait a bit more to see all those. I am pointing it out because I need to show the terrain mapmode a bit to more easily show off the naval terrain across the world
Screenshot_8.jpg


Around the Dutch East Indies several of the terrain types are visible (the colors on land in this mapmode are still in need of some tweaking btw). The brightest there is archipelagos with the other shades of blue being shallow seas and regular ocean and the darker areas is deep oceans.

This is what the Atlantic and Europe looks like:
Screenshot_9.jpg


Notice the deep ocean in the Atlantic and the fjords around scandinavia.


That’s it for this today, next week we are going to start going over some of the more core naval changes. Seeya then!

Rejected Titles:
  • Naval “terrain” is an oxymoron, like “Military Intelligence”
  • SHARKS
  • Fjords, or how to make Scandinavia relevant this DLC
  • Not from the creators of Sharknado, comes SharkBlizzard
  • Podcat read a book about how horrible it was being on a destroyer in the arctic
 
Nice! Can't wait to actually focus on naval warfare next patch as Britain, looks to be more strategic now, like the war on land. :)
 
Will there be little 3D animated sharks on the map swimming about snapping at unwary passers-by?
 
Deep Ocean looks brutal to destroyers, but I thought they were supposed to escort convoys there? Is destroyer vs subs so one-sided that even -lots% is still enough? Or is it simply WIP?
 
Cool but want more info curse you slow passage of time!

Now the important question, if an admiral with the inshore fighter trait dies will it make a monty python reference?
 
I really liked how this will influence fleet composition from country to country and what your main objective will be. Question: is there any difference between naval terrain where i highlighted or the light blue in the coast is because of fog of war? (US coast)
WQELxVK.jpg
 
I don't see the logic behind light ships being bad in deep oceans. I would say that simply heavy ships don't have a penalty there, and heavy ships are inherently superior to light ships.
 
Cold Water Expert reduces the impact of arctic waters

Can someone help me, what does it mean in real life to be a "cold water expert" for an admiral? How could an admiral mitigate the effects of the weather without just...leaving it? Maybe Paradox just wants a modifier for each thing, but I don't know of any way that an admiral, by using their own skill, could affect that. Seems odd to me, I would say just drop that modifier and cold weather is just something you have to deal with. Is there warm weather as well, or I take it this does this not matter as much? I know the cold had a big effect on the steel originally used by the USA (it dropped below the point where it became very brittle) and the warm does not do that, but I don't have all the facts in front of me - there could be more disease or something after all.

I assume this will be fully moddable? More terrains, more modifiers, whatever we like?

Can terrain be combined? For example, can you have a shallow water fjord, or arctic deep ocean?
 
Today we are going to talk about Naval Terrain and start talking about some of the core changes to the naval game.

We felt that we wanted to make where you fight more important, and where possible give advantages to people fighting in home waters. The sea in HOI4 has previously generally been either “ocean” or “ocean in range of enemy land based aircraft”, and otherwise mattered little. That’s about to change!

To do this we are introducing several terrain types for seas. These impact what ships work best there, how mines function as well as some other stuff. In total seas are divided into 4 types:
View attachment 410010
Regular Ocean has no special effects, so its similar to plains on land.

View attachment 410005
Fjords & Archipelagos come with some hefty penalties to big ships, but make it easier to hide (all numbers still quite work in progress btw!)

View attachment 410007
Deep Oceans on the other hand are not good for light ships. They are also not good place to mine due to their depth and vastness. Subs like this area (mid atlantic gap = bae) because it is also easier to hide here.

View attachment 410008
Shallow seas are a bit harder to maneuver well in, and not a great place for submarines.

There is also some possible modifiers on them:

View attachment 410004
Arctic Water is a general bad area to operate in, wearing your ships down and causing potential accidents. It also increases casualties if ships sink for any reason. This modifier works much like Extreme Cold on land so it depends on the time of year and temperature.

View attachment 410006
Some places in the world have quite a lot of sharks and there are a lot of stories of heavy casualties after the sinking of ships due to sharks. The USS Indianapolis is a famous example where due to several reasons, sharks among those, something like 75% of the crew were lost. It is honestly mostly a cool flavor thing though we wanted to have in ;)

Your performance in these are also affected by Admiral Traits. As we have shown a bit before your Admirals can now gain traits for different terrain types.

View attachment 410003
  • Cold Water Expert reduces the impact of arctic waters
  • Inshore Fighter gives combat bonuses and speed when operating in Fjords and Archipelagos
  • Blue Water Expert gives combat bonuses and speed when operating in deep oceans
  • Green Water Expert gives combat bonuses and speed when operating in shallow seas
You might have noticed some strange colors in the screenshots above. We are adding some more mapmodes, but it’s mostly all pink and full of coder art at the moment, so you are going to have to wait a bit more to see all those. I am pointing it out because I need to show the terrain mapmode a bit to more easily show off the naval terrain across the world
View attachment 410009

Around the Dutch East Indies several of the terrain types are visible (the colors on land in this mapmode are still in need of some tweaking btw). The brightest there is archipelagos with the other shades of blue being shallow seas and regular ocean and the darker areas is deep oceans.

This is what the Atlantic and Europe looks like:
View attachment 410013

Notice the deep ocean in the Atlantic and the fjords around scandinavia.


That’s it for this today, next week we are going to start going over some of the more core naval changes. Seeya then!

Rejected Titles:
  • Naval “terrain” is an oxymoron, like “Military Intelligence”
  • SHARKS
  • Fjords, or how to make Scandinavia relevant this DLC
  • Not from the creators of Sharknado, comes SharkBlizzard
  • Podcat read a book about how horrible it was being on a destroyer in the arctic
Nice changes so far, though I would tone down the green water areas as they are quite jarringly bright - maybe about 20% darker. I see you guys took my advice on the brownwater! Though I got a lot of flak for it, I think greenwater, especially as an admiral trait is much better.
 
I don't see the logic behind light ships being bad in deep oceans. I would say that simply heavy ships don't have a penalty there, and heavy ships are inherently superior to light ships.
The deep water mine penalty seems a bit light as well. I mean surely you can't chain a minefield in place on the bottom of the ocean without having to carry dozens of kilometres of chains with you.