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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
 
Looks great. Seems like Germanys going to have to be much more careful with its subs, with the 100% visibility penalty in the English Channel and the North Sea. Also, how does the naval terrain affect naval invasions?
 
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 think that's the same colour as the North Sea, so probably shallow sea?
 
Do deep oceans get a movement penalty because they cover a wider area? If so, why not just make those provinces large?

Big waves and such are not as easy to deal with for smaller vessels as it is for capital ships. This impacts their performance and speed (and thus the whole task force composition)
 
Big waves and such are not as easy to deal with for smaller vessels as it is for capital ships. This impacts their performance and speed (and thus the whole task force composition)
Shouldn't that be linked to weather instead? There can be big waves in regular oceans, and there can be times where there are no waves at all in deep oceans.
 
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.

It means they've taken the class "How to Avoid Icebergs 101"
 
Big waves and such are not as easy to deal with for smaller vessels as it is for capital ships. This impacts their performance and speed (and thus the whole task force composition)
I know things are still being tweaked, but do you really think that 50% isn't a bit extreme? How about 25%? Or is this more of a game rule to help subs operate without being sunk too easily?
 
This should add nice nuance to the indvidual naval theatres.

Deep waters seem to incentivize the use of escort carriers over destroyers, it should give Germany a nice window to attack transatlantic convoys until the Allies can properly patrol that area.
 
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?

I would hope without techs or doctrine, Submarines clean up while killing convoys in the blue ocean.

In WW1, the british figured out convoys worked better, they also invented depth charges.

In WW2, the Brits invented HFDF which was useful against surface U boat attacks at night, the invention of RADAR helped too. The Germans cleaned Americans clocks when they entered the war and were using seemingly Pre WW1 tactics (no convoys, no coastal black outs).

Also, subs generally weren't targeting the Destroyers, they were targeting the merchant ships. They'd fire on the convoy, take out a few shipping vessels and attempt to sneak away before the escorts could organize a response.

And for that matter, itd be great if I can select my subs to only attack convoys at night.
 
Shouldn't that be linked to weather instead? There can be big waves in regular oceans, and there can be times where there are no waves at all in deep oceans.

Perhaps open ocean could have a "weather magnification factor", so that weather makes bigger waves/etc everywhere but the base effect is multiplied by the magnification factor before it's applied. Coast has a small factor, open ocean has a big factor, while more aggressive weather has a higher base effect (so a hurricane in the open ocean would probably be the most dangerous, while a lesser storm closer to shore is less so)?
 
This looks Great!

One Major thing that needs to be done is dividing up some of the sea zones. The Baltic should be 4 zones (or at least 3) & the Back Sea into 2 zones. Air zones should match to better cover some areas effectively.

Also the zone in the Pacific in the image below should be at least two zones!
Screenshot_8a.jpg
 
Do I smell a "Sharknado" Achievement here?

Also: will Cuba get a new focus tree aswell?
Since they have such a strategic position and so much chromium, I'd love to see them play a "bigger role" e.g. decide if they want to help the USA or act as a "forward base" to Communists/Fascist allies
 
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.

It's probably that though one could argue that having experience navigating colder, more ice ladden/storm prone waters should be represented in some fashion. We do have "Cold Weather Expert" for generals and they can't control the weather either, merely mitigate it's effects.
 
Naval...... Terrain

how does this dev diary and game mechanic make sense when it sounds like it shouldn't make any.
 
Can someone help me, what does it mean in real life to be a "cold water expert" for an admiral?
getting experience navigating those areas, ship procedures and experience with cold climate maintenence. there is also a big health impact which i could argue would impact an admirals ability if he isnt used to it. Mostly its for gameplay. its a nice bonus for some nations

I assume this will be fully moddable? More terrains, more modifiers, whatever we like?
i am not 100% on modifiers, can check. the rest is.

Can terrain be combined? For example, can you have a shallow water fjord, or arctic deep ocean?
you can combine modifiers and terrains but if you want shallow fjord you will need a new type (which is easy to mod in)