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HOI4 Dev Diary - Officer Corps

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:
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(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.

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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:

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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.

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(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
 
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remember that there is generally more XP now and more ways to set up to get more
Uh, he meant by Command Power.

Yeah, i like the new system already but it would be taxing to get the advisors since Germany and almost all of minor nations IIRC didn't have bonus amount of CP like Netherlands, USA, UK, Nationalist China, and a few more nations did.
 
Looks like some really good features coming Arheo, great diary! These will add a great deal of depth.

Have you guys considered adding HQ units from previous iterations of HOI? It's a small thing, I know, but it would be another addition of flavor and depth to have a physical on-map headquarters. Goes hand in hand with the additions already showed in this diary and others, imo.

Certainly doesn't have to be as complicated as the HOI3 OOB lol. Maybe something akin to HOI2 DH

Anyway, thanks for the update! Excited for this patch.
 
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Do you mean there are more ways to gain command power? Because that is what's shown in the screen as a cost for advisors. Most countries have a max of 100cp and an advisor costs all of that. You will also be unable to get advisors while having an active attaché, which is most of the time. Either in Spain or China or one of my allies during the great war.

Uh, he meant by Command Power.

Yeah, i like the new system already but it would be taxing to get the advisors since Germany and almost all of minor nations IIRC didn't have bonus amount of CP like Netherlands, USA, UK, Nationalist China, and a few more nations did.
Yeah sorry cant brain today ;D

numbers are always subject to change. Often when we show stuff like this its just random stuff pulled from thin air altho these have had some testing
 
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Will there be changes to doctrine balance at all? Will any of the individual doctrine choinces get number tweaks or changes?

We may be looking into some general balance tweaks.

Do you mean there are more ways to gain command power? Because that is what's shown in the screen as a cost for advisors. Most countries have a max of 100cp and an advisor costs all of that. You will also be unable to get advisors while having an active attaché, which is most of the time. Either in Spain or China or one of my allies during the great war.

There are indeed. The CP cap is now also increased to 200 by default, and the gain is now flat, rather than related to the current maximum.
 
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Will Field Commanders being assigned to desk duty have a harder time doing both jobs? Or will it still be abstracted that they can do both at the same time?
 
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Will Field Commanders being assigned to desk duty have a harder time doing both jobs? Or will it still be abstracted that they can do both at the same time?
Currently the latter. This is subject to change.
 
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Are there any changes to how front lines work in general upcoming?

At the moment lets say you have a grouping of Infantry, Tanks and Mountain troops assigned to a single front line and the front line covers an area that has Mountain / Plains / Forest. There should be a way to force your mountain troops to the Mountain provinces, Tanks to Plains and Inf to the forest Etc.

I like the idea of the front line but the way its deployed in game I do not like. I micro 100% of my units in combat but this is a huge issue of mine.
 
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This very screenshot shows something remarkably unrealistic with doctrines:

Superior Firepower doctrine level 1
Name: Superior Firepower
Symbol: An artillery cannon, suggesting it buffs artillery
Effect: Buffs everything *except* artillery

Or more generally here is a letter sent by Abram, a soviet officer, on December 43:

"Early that morning, when it was still dark, our artillery opened fire so fierce that it became light as day. Behind us was a solid wall of artillery fire. Overhead, an ocean of fire raged. This lasted a whole hour. Shells burst without let-up on the German side, nothing living remained there. Then we attacked. By evening we were already very far ahead."

So summing up, it would be good if artillery was as useful in the game, as it was in reality. I'd make Line Art have zero width (as you can read above it fires overhead your own troops, and no it is not only 12 guns per division that fired overhead), but allow only placing 1 art battalion for every regiment with at least 3 frontline battalions.
I believe that all battalions that are in the main body of the division template are "frontline". So yes it should buff artillery.
 
Cool I guess...
 
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Okay I am about to go a bitter "modderschizo" but please allow hidden idea slots. what i mean is how you have the "Idea slots" where if you add one idea, it replaces the former idea. Now, there are also hidden ideas so imagine if you could have a hidden idea slot where you add and it auto replace the old one. For my modrades, it could allow us to make more dynamic things where we want to have things that could be slots but we dont want the players to see. Pls pdx
 
This dev cycle just DOES NOT STOP

So many amazing things - this is incredible. Any of this, trains & supply or combat would have be excited alone - we get *all three*
 
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I love this so much, but I want to ask if level 5 for just a specialist isn’t too low? Shouldnt he be an expert on level 5? Just my opinion and I understand that the numbers are WIP.
 
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