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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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kimidf said:
The Germans will have new staff commanders like Von Blommerg, Halder or Zeitler even Hitler should be considered as such through event or decision
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I just imagine him having massive debuffs, due to his lack of experience or competence as a military commander.
 
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Yeah, I like that new Features too, which get in for the full Refit.

Hoi IV is a cool Game and the first Playable one, which you don´t need to be an Expert / Veteran.

If all that Features, which get in now (playable Navy, Airforce, Army, Economy, Buildup, usefull Officer Corps and all the other cool playable Stuff) get in with that easy to handle Form in Hoi 5, then it will be very cool incl. a full timeline from Pre-WW1 to the End of Cold-War.
 
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I still believe the naval command system should be revised to a system similar to the land field marshals and generals, that is, the Grand Admiral will command the task force in general, but each squadron of this task force had its own commander or vice admiral as it really happened.
 
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kimidf said:
I still believe the naval command system should be revised to a system similar to the land field marshals and generals, that is, the Grand Admiral will command the task force in general, but each squadron of this task force had its own commander or vice admiral as it really happened.
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HoI4 went with well made but hard to make portraits. I doubt they'll ever make hundreds of admiral portraits.

Hopefully HoI5 goes 3D Models so they can pump out military leaders left and right (though i still would like to see 2D art in some form)
 
Hippob4 said:
HoI4 went with well made but hard to make portraits. I doubt they'll ever make hundreds of admiral portraits.

Hopefully HoI5 goes 3D Models so they can pump out military leaders left and right (though i still would like to see 2D art in some form)
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I think it has nothing to do with my proposal, since they can perfectly use the generic models that already exist as it already happens in the terrestrial case


On the question that you propose to me, I think there are solutions to increase the name of portraits, it is that asking permission to take material from this or have collaborations with mooders or people from the community to do so that they would be happy to collaborate in exchange for a small gratification

Another also feasible solution is that they could return to having black and white photographs as the previous games would not be as a lesser evil in some commanders but rather want to make a specific portrait because it would be more expensive and I think people would accept and they would already have a good base of the previous ones games. like this doing mod darkest hour that uses the photo system again in vers to the portraits system
 
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kimidf said:
I still believe the naval command system should be revised to a system similar to the land field marshals and generals, that is, the Grand Admiral will command the task force in general, but each squadron of this task force had its own commander or vice admiral as it really happened.
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Totally agreed. The naval command system is too simplistic and the air command system is completely non-existent.
 
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kimidf said:
I think it has nothing to do with my proposal, since they can perfectly use the generic models that already exist as it already happens in the terrestrial case


On the question that you propose to me, I think there are solutions to increase the name of portraits, it is that asking permission to take material from this or have collaborations with mooders or people from the community to do so that they would be happy to collaborate in exchange for a small gratification

Another also feasible solution is that they could return to having black and white photographs as the previous games would not be as a lesser evil in some commanders but rather want to make a specific portrait because it would be more expensive and I think people would accept and they would already have a good base of the previous ones games. like this doing mod darkest hour that uses the photo system again in vers to the portraits system
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Eh, I really dislike the repeating portraits. There's like 3-4 generic portraits per country/culture. Maybe it's not immersion breaking for others. It is for me :p

I think black and white photos would be nice. But it'd clash with the aesthetic choice Paradox went with. At this point im just hoping HoI5 uses the 3D model generator. I think HoI4 has an identity problem (not sure what it wants to be and maybe too much of a sandbox game). Hopefully HoI5 has a stronger clear vision and foundation.

I think Podcat said they realized mid-development to take a more alt history, sandbox route instead of a historical-focused route.

The upsides though i will say that HoI4 is the most moddable Paradox game out there. But i think it can be far better vanilla and mod experience if they embraced the alt history sandbox from the start.
 
Hippob4 said:
Eh, I really dislike the repeating portraits. There's like 3-4 generic portraits per country/culture. Maybe it's not immersion breaking for others. It is for me :p

I think black and white photos would be nice. But it'd clash with the aesthetic choice Paradox went with. At this point im just hoping HoI5 uses the 3D model generator. I think HoI4 has an identity problem (not sure what it wants to be and maybe too much of a sandbox game). Hopefully HoI5 has a stronger clear vision and foundation.

I think Podcat said they realized mid-development to take a more alt history, sandbox route instead of a historical-focused route.

The upsides though i will say that HoI4 is the most moddable Paradox game out there. But i think it can be far better vanilla and mod experience if they embraced the alt history sandbox from the start.
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I don't really like the idea of generic clone commander portraits either and I prefer some kind of black and white photography of real historical commanders before any generic portrait
 
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kimidf said:
I don't really like the idea of generic clone commander portraits either and I prefer some kind of black and white photography of real historical commanders before any generic portrait
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I'd put in a +1 for historical personalities being in commander positions. While there's room for different people from that period to be in different positions, the vast, vast majority of potential candidates for military officers were either already in the military in 1936, or served during WW2 - so replacing them with random people would be a big step away from historical plausibility/immersion. Random portraits wouldn't be alt-history, it would be alt-planet. Would be great for an alt-planet type mod though :) Of course, there's nothing wrong with wanting random portraits, I'm just personally in favour of actual people being used - there are more then enough known people to cover a range of plausible alt-histories for the majors at least (although photos of all of them are a bit harder to come by).
 
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