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HOI4 Dev Diary - Officer Corps #2

Hello there C0RAX, here!

For my first HoI dev diary, I’m here to show you the second part of the Officer Corps, a new way of personalising your military that will be included as part of No Step Back and the Barbarossa update.

In the last dev diary we explained how we want to allow you to specialise your military branches with the leadership and advisors. Today we bring to you some new features that allow you to customise how your military operates, and act as a further use for the new sources of branch experience that were hinted at last week.

You may have been wondering what all those shiny boxes with emblems were for. I'm here to tell you they are the new Officer Corps Spirits.

Spirits are a new way to specialise your military, generals and even help your division designs. Each branch has multiple categories for its spirits that affect different aspects of the way they operate. Here I have shown you the spirits of the army which provide bonuses to designing divisions or operating armies. Of course this category has analogs for both the air and navy branches.

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Now we have the more direct combat effect level spirits that let you improve specific parts of your units to best match your strategy. These also let you conduct some historical moves that previously were quite hard such as using your capital ships as surface raiders without screens. And for those keen eyed readers, yes the division spirits provide tactics weight increases if you also have them selected as your preferred tactic which we will get to shortly.

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Finally we have the final category for the army and navy branches, the academy spirits. Previously generating commanders was a purely random chance. Now with the academy spirits you can tailor this toward specific personality traits along with helping you generals progress in a particular direction. For the above image you can also see the new engineer officer personality trait that provides bonuses to xp generation for the engineer trait. This works in tandem with the advisor promotion mentioned last week, and adds another dimension towards tailoring your officer corps from the very beginning.

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With the new spirits some are limited by either your political ideology or doctrines and so you will have to take this into account when deciding the strategy of your officers corps.

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The final part of this week's dev diary brings us to preferred tactics. This new feature provides you with a tool to influence the likelihood of a specific tactic being used in combat allowing you to increase the chance of getting that favorable matchup in battle or possibly the perfect counter.

This simulates a doctrinal emphasis on doing battle in a specific way; but can also provide a tool that can be used to counter a strongly themed force.

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The new window will help show you all the tactics you have unlocked from doctrines and see what effect they have on the battle. If you combine this preferred tactic with your division spirit bonus you will double the effectiveness of the tactic preference so unifying your strategic direction will help you get the most out of the officer corps.

Well that's all for this week comrades, see you at the front. C0RAX
 
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I absolutely love this! I'm so excited to finally specialize my army.

Just one query: will you ever change the chances of the 'Subjugate the Warlords' focus for china? With the new importance of army xp, it seems unfair that china has to rely on luck to grind the warlords.
 
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I hope the military spirits aren’t locked behind dlc so mods can play with it. Right now it looks like just another way to do national spirits so it’d be nice if it’s a base game thing
 
Sourlol said:
Probably because by default it is -50% or something. The way paradox displays modifiers can be confusing at times, consumer goods modifiers or the construction speed modifiers.
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That's another issue. There needs to be a online guide or a manual in-game about what modifiers do and how they are shown. From Paradox devs, not from the community.
 
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I must add to my previous suggestion of having 1 prefered defensive and offensive tactic. To prevent tactic whack a mole maybe lock in a selection for a certain amount of time or have some sort of debuff if your changing too often. Thoughts on this to prevent whack a mole or any other suggestions with everyone trying to counter the counter to the counter to the counter every day?
 
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Alpha2518 said:
I must add to my previous suggestion of having 1 prefered defensive and offensive tactic. To prevent tactic whack a mole maybe lock in a selection for a certain amount of time or have some sort of debuff if your changing too often. Thoughts on this to prevent whack a mole or any other suggestions with everyone trying to counter the counter to the counter to the counter every day?
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Absolutely have a time lock-in period. Also have a mana cost so you don't switch at the end of every time period just for the heck of it. The values can change for balance.
 
Being able to prefer a specific tactic and customization of your military is something I've been waiting for. This already seems like a bigger overhaul than man the guns.
 
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This is big. Combined with the changes revealed last week, our officer corps and general staff actually become living, breathing things that impact how our troops fight, rather than just a portrait photo and a combat modifier. I've seen some people in other places complain that combat is becoming too much about combat modifiers, but I think that's a bit unfair, since the changes are realistic and complement existing systems.
 
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I don't like how they keep calling it Officer Corps when there's actually no Officers manpower mechanic.

The Japanese Navy specifically trained for and focused on night fighting and were good at it. At least until Radar was widely adopted on ships and the enemy could see them coming.

The Japanese army also attacked at night often. However the Division night fighting bonus is at the very bottom of the Doctrine tree which makes it impossible for Japan to get that bonus until the end of the game.

What other "historical moves" are they talking about? Please elaborate.

It is good that they are allowing you to actually control (or have some degree of control) of what happens in a battle. That is something they have never done before to my knowledge. But making Paradox battles less automated and more interactive is a good idea in my opinion.
 
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Arheo said:
There are a lot to cover, so we might show some off in future. For today, you can see the glorious USA unique spirit:

View attachment 734035
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Really happy this is being put into the game. Posted a lot about it. However, the American torpedo failure rate was more like 50% I believe and it took like 2 years for them to fix it. It greatly affected the early part of the Pacific War. So -10% and 75 points is not enough imo.
 
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goodcigar said:
I don't like how they keep calling it Officer Corps when there's actually no Officers manpower mechanic.

The Japanese Navy specifically trained for and focused on night fighting and were good at it. At least until Radar was widely adopted on ships and the enemy could see them coming.

The Japanese army also attacked at night often. However the Division night fighting bonus is at the very bottom of the Doctrine tree which makes it impossible for Japan to get that bonus until the end of the game.

What other "historical moves" are they talking about? Please elaborate.

It is good that they are allowing you to actually control (or have some degree of control) of what happens in a battle. That is something they have never done before to my knowledge. But making Paradox battles less automated and more interactive is a good idea in my opinion.
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until the end of the game?
yeaaah, i think you don t know the meta thaaaat well
 
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Wonder if the Rats of Tobruk will get changed into one of these buffs for Australia. 70 days on a focus just for a single elite unit is pretty useless it would be nice if it now gives one of these based on what the 9th Division did in the North Africa Campaign (Tobruk & El Alamein).

Infantry Attack and Defence would probably be most appropriate.
 
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general_nabo said:
There will be air generals? I hope it.
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Where did this come from? I see nothing about air generals on pictures.
On airforce part only difference there are 2 (instead of 3) spirits.
 
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Cheers for the DD C0RAX, a great DD debut, and thanks to Arheo and Podcat for some info as well :cool: These elements all look very cool in terms of helping customise ones' playstyle, and will add a lot more high-level strategy to things.

C0RAX said:
These also let you conduct some historical moves that previously were quite hard such as using your capital ships as surface raiders without screens.
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Of this I am a huge fan :) Random and possibly terrible thought, but if it was possible to perhaps reduce the hit chance from torpedoes on capital ships, and increase retreat speed (and possibly retreat chance) in this spirit it might also help (to represent surface ships not closing the enemy, and being more willing to break off actions where they're outgunned).

C0RAX said:
yes the division spirits provide tactics weight increases if you also have them selected as your preferred tactic which we will get to shortly.
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I imagine it'd be way too late for the current DLC/patch cycle (unless you'd already done it - fingers crossed :) ), but if we could ever have sea and air tactics as well, that could be a nice touch.

Arheo said:
For today, you can see the glorious USA unique spirit:
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You're being very generous to BuOrd there (also, if you're handing out torpedo debuffs, don't forget Germany - not as bad as BuOrd, but they had some serious issues). From the book Torpedo (which is great book on said weapon, although it somewhat bafflingly leaves out any discussion of the Mk 24, despite mentioning a section about it in the text):

"It was estimated that of all US torpedoes fired up to the summer of 1943, 70 per cent were duds"

After the last few DDs, this is a much easier one for naval pics - here's Admiral Scheer, meeting a supply ship in the North Atlantic, presumably during her very successful raiding cruise.

Scheer meets supply ship small.jpg
 
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