HOI4 Dev Diary - Officer Corps

[alpha_34351]

Greetings all, Arheo here!

For my first HoI dev diary, I’m here to introduce the Officer Corps: a collection of new features that will be included as part of No Step Back and the Barbarossa update.

For quite a while, we’ve wanted to allow for more direct specialization of military branches, as well as tying together various disparate systems such as the high command, generals, military-focused national spirits, and doctrines. To achieve step one of this process, we’re giving the Officer Corps and associated mechanics a unique national interface:
View attachment 732206

(WIP, as usual)

Here, the empty advisor portraits at the top of the window are where you can now find your High Command and Military Theorist, and the advisor portraits below this are related to each branch Chief - they have been moved out of the political sub-window accordingly.

As well as UI location, there are further changes coming to all military advisors. Where previously, the theorist was the only advisor type that granted daily experience gain, all high command and branch chief will now generate experience appropriate to the branch they represent.

View attachment 732207

The Advisor rank (e.g. Expert) indicates both the magnitude of their modifier bonus, and the daily experience you will receive.

We’re also experimenting with a split political/command power costs to gate the experience ramp-up somewhat, along with some other minor changes to command power.

Behind the scenes, we’ve made a host of changes to the advisor, spirits, and commander systems. Where previously, if we wanted to create a national spirit related to having a certain character in your government, it would be entirely unrelated to having an advisor with the same name, masquerading as the same person - likewise for commanders and advisors masquerading as the same person. This has changed. These are (for the most part) now controlled by ‘characters’. This has pretty sweeping connotations for our internal content designers, as well as modders, but importantly also allows us to bring the following new system to the No Step Back release:

Advisor Promotion

The introduction of a more connected Officer Corps felt like the perfect time to bring more of a connection to the Generals and Field Marshals that oversee your active forces, and the various military offices that advise your government.

In No Step Back, Generals, Admirals or Field Marshals can be assigned an advisory desk duty in addition to their status as a field commander. This will effectively add the character as a new advisor to your roster.

The type of advisor available to you is dependent on the skill level and traits of the commander you’re ‘promoting’ (not everyone likes desk duty ), as you can see in the highly WIP interface below:

View attachment 732208


Here, Herr Hell can be converted to an Entrenchment specialist as he possesses the Engineer trait, and has skill level 5. Currently, both Military High Command and branch Chief roles are available.

Experience

Experience generation in general has been weighted and balanced in order to achieve a more gradual switch from peacetime generation (a strong cadre of advisors, and unit training), through to wartime. Experience generation from combat and battles has been reduced fairly significantly to account for this, as well as capped (separately from other sources). Overall, experience generation will be consistently higher than in previous versions - this was done both to mitigate the introduction of the tank designer (and thereby increased costs), and to account for the other new ways in which you are now able to spend experience, which we shall cover below.

The eagle-eyed amongst you noticed in a previous diary that the doctrine branches had been removed from the technology window - they can now be accessed from the officer corps interface, and will function somewhat differently to before. Doctrines will be unlocked directly by spending branch experience, which can still be affected by instanced cost modifiers often found in focus trees and events.

View attachment 732211

(There have been no major structural changes to doctrine layouts)

There are, in addition to the above, several new and exciting things that branch experience will be used for in NSB, some of which are handily teased in the first screenshot of this diary. Alas, we will be covering what those are and how they might affect your gameplay in a future DD.

/Arheo

When will the new expansion come out?

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

I'm confused. Is there an Officers manpower now or not?

No, there is not.

 

[Generic_Stannerman]

Very interesting changes. I will say that in some regards this might make the allies weaker, if advisors are requiring 100 CP to hire, which is something most allied nations won't get all that easily since all of them start with lower war support, and the lifeline for the economy of some allied nations (jumping to partial as UK and USA earlier than if you don't send attachés) because of the 10% extra war support.

I also have a question about technology sharing in regards to doctrines. Let's say that I am playing Australia. I am in the commonwealth tech sharing, and Canada unlocks the next doctrine "technology" in the doctrine tree. My question is essentially if the tech sharing still applies to the doctrines, in the regard that you might be able to get a small discount (as example, maybe 10 XP per member who researches a doctrine) if members of your tech sharing group have researched a part of the doctrine you have yet to research.

 

[blahmaster6k]

Great dev diary! I really like the idea of being able to promote officers to advisory roles. I can already think of ways to exploit the system to get three armor experts, this is going to be pretty fun to optimize both in single player and multiplayer. I particularly like the implied de-cluttering of the political interface, the new UI looks great!

Another positive change - with all the new technologies added to the game over time, particularly with Man the Guns, moving doctrines away from research will allow many more opportunities to keep up in tech. This is especially beneficial for minors that previously had to devote one of their two slots to land doctrine for the entire early game, but also for majors where it potentially frees up three research slots that were permanently on doctrine research from the early game until their completion.

I have a lot of thoughts on the issue of updating land doctrines. This patch is the perfect opportunity to fix many of the problems with the different land doctrines, so I hope the devs will take that opportunity and read my thoughts as well as those of other players who add criticism or input. I doubt many people will see this as it 10 pages deep in the thread, but I hope some people can gain inspiration from reading it. I may post it in its own thread later if it seems like there is interest.

I'll start with the near-universally agreed weakest doctrine, Mass Assault.

I feel like the Mass Mobilization branch of Mass Assault needs to be extended to the same length of the other doctrines. In an ideal world where every doctrine fits its niche perfectly, it would be picked by manpower and industry poor countries. But at least in single player, the player almost always doesn't stay in that low manpower, low industry state forever. And if a player starts mass mobilization because it's the logical choice for the time, he will end up punished in the late game because he chose a dead-end doctrine that does nothing for a minor once it has expanded into major status.

As it is now though, Mass Assault is not the best doctrine for any situation. Barring a very industry rich nation that can afford to just throw more of everything on the front line than all its enemies and really wants the supply reduction, Mass Assault is just underwhelming. Org walling with Mass Mobilization is a valid tactic until you realize that it won't be able to stall infinitely, takes massive casualties requiring mass production of guns to supply reinforcements, reduces all your divisions to green, and grinds your enemies' division exp, general traits, and skills for free until their divisions can just overpower your own with stacking multiplicative modifiers.

The other three doctrines are theoretically best at something, but they are not.

Superior firepower is better in nearly every scenario, both for industry rich and poor nations as well as manpower rich and poor nations. It's intended niche as far as I know is inflicting more casualties and taking fewer, making it great for industry rich, manpower poor nations. But in practice the stats that it gives are the most universally important stats, and the other doctrines give none of those important stats, leading to it being the default choice all the time.

Mobile Warfare can have better tank divisions than any other doctrine but is heavily contested by Superior Firepower's Airland Battle at that. Grand Battleplan is great for nations that only build coastal garrisons in multiplayer (and expeditionary force exploits), but not a whole lot else aside from being decent for new players who use the battle planner for everything.


Personally, what I would do:
Make the Volkssturm branch give bonuses to infantry defense, attack and defense on core territory, and anti-air attack. This makes it a defensive switch from Modern Blitzkrieg instead of being a mostly useless branch. I would remove the manpower bonuses from doctrine entirely if it were up to me, because being able to recruit more men has nothing to do with war doctrine, it's more of a recruitment policy than anything related to how troops fight.

I would add some soft and hard attack bonuses to tanks on the two right branches of Mobile Warfare. This would keep MW as the go-to doctrine tree for nations who want to focus on tanks, and make it the obvious choice over airland battle. Each doctrine should be the best at something, and right now it's debatable that MW is not the best doctrine for tanks when it should be.

Grand battleplan requires only a few changse. Remove the manual order planning bonus decay, It hurts GBP comparatively more than the other doctrines. I would also buff both branches of GBP by adding some soft and hard attack bonuses to it, just less than Superior Firepower. Max planning bonus from doctrines in GBP should also be increased back to pre-1.5 values, as it took a pretty big hit. I assume it was to compensate for the adding of the planning skill level to generals with Waking the Tiger, but since all four doctrines can make use of generals equally it was still a very big nerf to a doctrine that was already not as competitive.

Mass Assault should just double down on its strong points. I would add soft attack bonuses for infantry to the Mass Mobilization branch as well as increasing the supply usage reduction even more for Deep Battle. I would add an infantry division speed modifier as well. This would allow for infantry to retreat more quickly to re-entrench when they are pushed back to allow for more defense-in-depth, as well as allowing infantry divisions to better exploit breakthroughs in line with the deep battle philosophy.

Superior Firepower can stay as-is, I mostly want the other doctrines to be buffed into viability and brought in line with SF rather than nerfing the doctrine that is currently the best. However, it probably needs something to tone it down a little bit without taking away its main strengths even more. One change that would make sense is to increase the supply usage of SF divisions, as they theoretically fire more ammo at the enemy than other doctrines.

If anyone notices a trend in my personal opinions for doctrine changes, you'll notice that each doctrine has some form of percentage increase to soft/hard attack or defense added somewhere. This is because those stats are the most important stats for any division to have, and will always be useful the higher they are. Every other stat is either less important, or will not always be necessary to increase. What use is supply reduction if you don't fill the base supply usage? What use is 2500 breakthrough when the enemy only has 1000 defense? What use is extra organization for tanks if your units are so armored with such high hardness that they take next to no org damage from the divisions they fight?

Every doctrine should give some amount of core stats that are always useful for a particular strategy, and should be the best at something. When one doctrine is the best in all situations, it's not necessarily because that doctrine is overpowered but because all the others don't offer anything useful. Superior firepower was nerfed, but most players still pick it every game - why? It's because none of the other doctrines offer useful stats or bonuses for most situations. Make the other doctrines better by giving them useful bonuses, and this won't be a problem anymore.

 

[Jamor]

You forgot to mention it is also the most casualty producing weapon system when compared to say small arms, tanks, or any other weapon system.

That is surely true, and I mention it all the time in connection with all warfare since the 19th century. There are other doctrines further down the tree that simulate this reality as well. I was referring to the notion that casualties alone do not generally force an enemy to cede ground nor produce victory. America learned this in Vietnam, among other places. Fire combined with shock, and offensive maneuver putting you astride the enemy's lines of communication, though...

 

[Idle America]

what a great development. I loved it!
and the soviets focus tree? i really want to see.

I'm guessing they'll tease at least part of the USSR rework next week, because it will be right after the anniversary of Operation Barbarossa.

 

[Idle America]

Does this mean our General Staff can finally rise above being "Specialists"?

 

[Lord_Boreas]

How come air has 2 slots instead of 3?

Air doesn't have special forces

My guess is those two extra slots that the others have go for those, buffs or something.

The stars are to do with the changes with supply or something along those lines and maybe the last one is a buff you can switch around for xp. That is my best guess I'm going with.


Edit: After reading the DD again the stars could be for some sort of military based national spirits or something like that.

 

[Alpha2518]

That is surely true, and I mention it all the time in connection with all warfare since the 19th century. There are other doctrines further down the tree that simulate this reality as well. I was referring to the notion that casualties alone do not generally force an enemy to cede ground nor produce victory. America learned this in Vietnam, among other places. Fire combined with shock, and offensive maneuver putting you astride the enemy's lines of communication, though...

General Patton would beg to differ. While he said the Garand as the greatest weapon of WW2, he also said that Artillery already won the battle by the time the maneuver forces got to where they needed to be because of the effects of artillery fire. And that right there is the reason artillery is called The King of Battle.

 

[Alpha2518]

I have to expand on my earlier post to address the gentlemen who disagreed with me. The following is a quote from MG R.O Barton, commanding general of 4th ID of WW2

"The artillery was my strongest tool. Often it was my only reserve …. I repeatedly said it was more a matter of the infantry supporting the artillery than the artillery supporting the infantry…. I wish I knew the countless times that positions were taken or held due solely to TOT’s "

It is quite clear from this quote that Artillery is winning the battle, especially with the wonderful tool of TOTs. For those that are not artillery, let me explain to you what this means to people like me, an artilleryman. TOTs are Time on Targets. There is a countdown and at the specific moment of the countdown all the guns fire at the same time. It could be an interdiction mission as in the Forward observes see an enemy convoy and here comes the steel to lay destruction. It could even be important suppressive fire the infantry, whatever it may be there are many uses for TOTs. And because of these the battle was on.

There is a phrase used in my Battery as we have the biggest guns. It is "Shape the Deep Fight." Now what does this mean? Well as Artillery and the biggest guns we have the ability to reach furthest into the rear areas of the enemy. These rear areas are the "Deep Fight." The larger tactical picture. It could be destroying enemy artillery, armor, laying a minefield, logistics. I cannot tell you how many times through exercises were we've been told that the work we've done has allowed us to win over and over and over.

Now this is with all the modern tools we have at our disposal and we are being credited with already winning the battle with the rest just being cleaning up. Now lets go back to the quote. The General is saying that despite not having all the wonderful modern technology and tools that we get to use, the artillery had still already won the battle and with the rest being simply a matter of finishing up.

You are now doubly wrong from a historical military professional, a current one. This isn't counting all the "referees" for the training exercises that also gave this same sort of credit.

 

[Yes I play hoi4]

WHERE IS SYRIA FOCUS SYRIA SYRIA SYRIA SYRIA SYRIA SYRIA

 

[Yes I play hoi4]

so when is the rough time frame this will relese at this summer? fall?

 

[Otti87]

(There have been no major structural changes to doctrine layouts)

Damn, I was really hoping they would be. If a country doesn't have tanks or other such equipment they shouldn't need to research those doctrine just to unlock the next one.

 

[Feather Prince]

That's hot.

 

[styroler]

There are a lot of issues im seeing with how this will effect balance in multiplayer. One of the most glaring issues I feel will be the effect of doctrine cost on the Pacific. The US has the luxury to train its fleet from day one while Japan starts with basically no oil production, so US will be miles ahead in naval doctrine every game. When in reality Japan had the arguably the strongest naval doctrine at the start of the war that was adopted by the allies in response to their dominance over the Pacific.

They have already said that xp is getting a full rebalance in the dev diary. There will no longer be xp farming from naval exercises and overall xp will be far easier to come by yet more gradually gained because it is used in so many more systems then when the game first came out. They already fixed this exact problem with army experience a few years ago for the same exact reason btw.

 

[withche.07]

Is asking for unlockable 2nd and 3rd theorist slots would be too much? Considering how game evolves we should be flexible to add more theorists, at least 2nd. Currently everyone drafts regular military theorists as land warfare is the most important one. It makes other theorists obsolete.

 

[Skraoo]

Interesting, its gonna take a bit for me to fully understand the new combat systems.

 

[Tomray94]

So, if military advisors have been moved out of the political interface, does that suggest there might be improvements there?

I second this question. Are we getting a cabinet of ministers like in HOI3?

 

[snegovick]

At first I thought they're gonna implement new resource, "officers", like in HoI3 and got excited...

 

[KingStevenofEarth]

While I like the way the officer corps and advisors will be updated, I was personally rather hoping for a more HOI3 style update. I loved the immersion I got from being able to assign officers from the theatre level all the way down to the divisional level, and promote them accordingly between one and 4 stars. Still everything about the upcoming update and DLC seems like it'll be a lot of fun.

On another note though, is there any planned update to the fuel system? While I like the mechanic, and it currently feels very underrated. In fact when playing as almost any major country, you can nearly entire ignore your fuel usage and production levels by maxing out your storage and synthetic refineries. In all my playthroughs, I've only once started to seriously risk running low on fuel and that was when I was providing the allies with 99% of my fuel production. Even then, I fought the entire war keeping 1% of my fuel produced and didn't run out. Granted by the time Germany, Italy and Japan had surrendered I was at less than 3 days worth of fuel, but I could have easily just stopped my fuel lend-lease to the allies and not had any problems. As it is even with 6 groups of 5 armies of 40width divisions+ special forces + garrison armies I can safely ignore my fuel usage so long as I have some production being kept in country.