Avalanche 1.12.5 OPEN BETA - By Blood Alone - Checksum 18aa - UPDATED

[pdstanbridge]

Do they pick Civil Oversight even for their African holdings? That would we especionally questionable, as they get a nice special option called "Colonial Police". I would assume that it is intended that they use it in a historic playthrough, so if they should not use it, it is either the problem that they are directly making a subotimal choice - or they aren't pursuing the needed focii (which would not feel right for me in a historic playthrough either)

I think Colonial Police is only enabled via focus? Certainly is for the player.

 

[Herennius]

I think Colonial Police is only enabled via focus? Certainly is for the player.

Yes, but shouldn't Italy take that focus?

 

[Razgriz13]

A bit of a feedback about the new update:
BBs and BCs having the same surface visibility affects target choice, isn't it? Shouldn't be better having BBs with a little bit higher Surface Visibility so they can fulfill their roles as "tanks"?
Also, on the same vein, CAs with 2 guns are more visible than BBs, and 2 guns (what it's pretty common on all base CAs) it surpass easily any other ship. That means not only they will be horrible to use as patrols, but also they will be the first ones to be targeted. Wouldn't a "one time only" increase in visibility better than visibility by module?

 

[Alexander 'The Grape']

A bit of a feedback about the new update:
BBs and BCs having the same surface visibility affects target choice, isn't it? Shouldn't be better having BBs with a little bit higher Surface Visibility so they can fulfill their roles as "tanks"?
Also, on the same vein, CAs with 2 guns are more visible than BBs, and 2 guns (what it's pretty common on all base CAs) it surpass easily any other ship. That means not only they will be horrible to use as patrols, but also they will be the first ones to be targeted. Wouldn't a "one time only" increase in visibility better than visibility by module?

I believe target weighting is based on HP and role primarily

 

[Razgriz13]

I believe target weighting is based on HP and role primarily

In fact looks like that's true. My life is a lie!
Jokes aside, ty for the answer

 

[Alexander 'The Grape']

Had a quick chance to look over the changes in beta 2, seem pretty positive so far.

BB/BC changes seem to be pretty great. They now hold their own against CAs effectively, and the changes to visibility rewards investing in engine tech. In order to beat CLs they need to heavily invest in secondary batteries, which makes them a lot more vulnerable to air, which seems fair.

AA changes seem good also. Being able to have a decent AA score without having to stack masses of it, and the reduced cost, definitely helps AA on ships that weren't just bristling AA bricks - especially carriers.

The Naval Strike changes are massive. From testing, it now takes around 4000 Naval Bombers to kill the UK's fleet that's been fully refit with AA, up from the ~2000 it took previously. I quite like these, as it means that Naval Bombers are no longer quite as good at wiping out fleets just by themselves. They still seem powerful in a supporting role though, particularly at dealing org damage. And if you throw enough Navs at any fleet, it will still eventually die. At worst, you get a 2:1 IC trade from throwing Navs at floating blocks of AA. Researching Anti-Ship Missiles swiftly returns things back in the favour of planes.

In terms of carriers, they now seem to be able to throw out more sorties under red air before being deorged, meaning they can still have a decent impact under red air. However, the naval strike reductions mean they deal less overall damage. I kinda liked the incredibly OP carriers, but maybe they were a bit much...

Carrier fighters still seem to be unable to properly interdict land based or carrier based bombers. I'm not sure if there's a way to fix this without going back to the bad old days of all carriers being nullified by even slightly unfavourable air, meaning you either a) had red air and useless carriers or b) had green air, meaning there was no point having carriers because you could just use airfields.

 

[nymet260]

Carrier fighters still seem to be unable to properly interdict land based or carrier based bombers. I'm not sure if there's a way to fix this without going back to the bad old days of all carriers being nullified by even slightly unfavourable air, meaning you either a) had red air and useless carriers or b) had green air, meaning there was no point having carriers because you could just use airfields.

Ok so I wasnt crazy when I was testing. I vaguely remember being able to interdict enemy carrier planes with my own carrier fighters last Xpack. When I was testing I too noticed It was not interdicting enemy naval bombers. I mean CV fighters do hit somewhat hard vs CV bombers but without interdiction your CV's just get Deorged then killed which is.... awkward? I mean considering I have 200 fighters trying to disrupt and down 200 CV Bombers

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

SHBB visibility is outrageuously high compared to BB/BC now. But that's not the end of the story. With same shared engines and yet higher penalties for armor and guns, the hit profile difference is sky-high.

Not sure what justifies such a hatred.

Oh, and Heavy Batteries IV are now just 1 point behind in attack, but coming with lesser speed penalties (1%) and less cost (150 IC). So no advantage even here.

 

[Alexander 'The Grape']

SHBB visibility is outrageuously high compared to BB/BC now. But that's not the end of the story. With same shared engines and yet higher penalties for armor and guns, the hit profile difference is sky-high.

Not sure what justifies such a hatred.

Oh, and Heavy Batteries IV are now just 1 point behind in attack, but coming with lesser speed penalties (1%) and less cost (150 IC). So no advantage even here.

Eh, from my testing SHBBs still beat equal IC BBs. 55 + 770 HP Armor is a lot, and they also have infinite piercing. Sure, they might not stack up so well to 1944 BBs, but that's 1936 tech compared to 1944

Yeah the visibility is high, but when armor can be raised to 120 with designers, advisors and admirals, those hits aren't gonna do much!

 

[DaReal-BurningDeath]

Eh, from my testing SHBBs still beat equal IC BBs. 55 + 770 HP Armor is a lot, and they also have infinite piercing. Sure, they might not stack up so well to 1944 BBs, but that's 1936 tech compared to 1944

Yeah the visibility is high, but when armor can be raised to 120 with designers, advisors and admirals, those hits aren't gonna do much!

But SHBB beating IC equal BB is actually fine considering that you get the value of the BBs ~33% earlier than with a SHBB.

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

Eh, from my testing SHBBs still beat equal IC BBs. 55 + 770 HP Armor is a lot, and they also have infinite piercing. Sure, they might not stack up so well to 1944 BBs, but that's 1936 tech compared to 1944

Yeah the visibility is high, but when armor can be raised to 120 with designers, advisors and admirals, those hits aren't gonna do much!

I wouldn't go as far as saying SHBB were so plain OP prior to beta2 patch that they now need this visibility disparity.

 

[Herennius]

Is the increased torpedo hit chance of 25% vs. SHBB compared to BB factored in the calculation?

 

[imbirxxl]

Will the patch fix incorrect rendering of flags on DirectX9? This is only on the map, and in encryption in the agency section.

 

[MERLIN CHANG]

When Model and Montgomery were marshals of the group army group, switching map mode or returning from the construction interface would make their heads disappear. This problem has not been fixed.View attachment 893249

When you click Spy Map Mode, Navy Map Mode, Air Force Map Mode successively, and then return to the group army group where Model belongs, he will disappear.

 

[Ossiv]

A bit of a feedback about the new update:
BBs and BCs having the same surface visibility affects target choice, isn't it? Shouldn't be better having BBs with a little bit higher Surface Visibility so they can fulfill their roles as "tanks"?

HMS Hood was just as visible and as good and important target as Bismarck was. Having a bit weaker armour and a bit higher speed does not make a capital ship less visible.

 

[Faction Less]

Greetings all,

Today (and hot on the heels of our latest live patch), we're releasing an early open beta for the 1.12.5 patch for By Blood Alone. This update will be slightly more wide-reaching than previous updates, and contains some more chonky changes to core player issues, including cohesion and AI peace conference behaviour.

In addition to this, the open beta period for 1.12.5 is likely to run longer than our previous open betas, and will receive some incremental updates until we're happy with the state of it - so don't expect this to go into the live branch for a little while yet. As always, your feedback is valuable to us - please use this thread oir the bug report forum to indicate any issues if you're playing on the branch, I'll try to check in regularly.

Important
As usual, with open beta branches, you may encounter some instability. There is a current known issue with hotjoin crashes in some cases, we'll resolve this in the next iterative update to the open beta.

Savegames should be fully compatible between 1.12.5 and prior sub-versions.

Update: the open beta was updated on October 28th with a few more fixes, the new checksum is 18aa. Check out the new patch notes below.

Spoiler: Patch notes - Part 1

##################################
# Balance
##################################

- Minor tweaks made to further railway/infrastructure focuses that were a bit weak, or were unchanged in the last iteration
- Changed certain Italian Balance of Power Decisions from being available only one time to once a year. This should give players more leeway with the whole balancing act
- Songgotu Zhanshan is now an economist for MAN to avoid a double Captain of Industry for MAN
- Stopped medium and heavy flame tanks from being paradroppable
- Reduced values for some modifiers in Swiss National Spirits, including Spirit of Saint Bernard.
- Reduced values for the modifiers in swiss Weapons Designer and Popular Dictator traits.
- Made it less likely for countries to accept Swiss demands for territories.
- Influencing Cantons decision in Switzerland is now slightly more expensive and less likely to succeed.
- Cohesion settings should no longer result in unit clumping for the AI, and provide a much more stable frontline situation for all orders with less relocation, but may have slightly more overall movement than before. [GD note: from a design perspective, cohesion now works significantly better than previously; feedback particularly appreciated here]
- Changed the Yalta conference to make it better interact with the new Peace Conference Format.
- AI peace conference beahviour changed significantly when taking land for themselves. This is now much mroe distance based, and should result in more cohesive borders. [Iterative change #1]
- Peace Conference AI is now slightly more self-aware about contested bids. They will early-out of contests in some cases as an effort to reduce point wastage and to create more cohesive borders. Several defines added to control this behaviour. [Iterative change #2]

##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################

- Fixed a crash during hotjoining on Mac.
- Reduced the size of the flags texture so the game works on GPUs with 8k texture limit

##################################
# UI
##################################

- Airbase tooltip will now aggregate airwings of the same type, country and mission to make it more readable
- Glow effect is now shown when you can afford a BoP decision
- The game will now prevent incompatible saves from loading when continuing from the Launcher

##################################
# Modding
##################################

- Added has_completed_custom_achievement trigger and debug_custom_achievements console command
- More configurable AI behavior in peace conferences (through defines)

##################################
# Bugfix
##################################

- Minor loc fix for concessions to monarchies for Switzerland. Used to say "Concessions to Swiss Monarchies", now "Concessions to X country (German)" Monarchies
- Added a variable to whichever nation that cedes Bessarabia to Soviet so it shows up correctly in news events
- Fixed typos in Guarantee events for Switzerland.
- Fixed minor comment in Guarantees event for Switzerland.
- Adjusted "Side Active" condition for Balance of Power so it's more accurate.
- Added tooltip for Political Advisor Adolf Furrer so it's clear he can unlock an extra Research Slot
- Fixed typo in one of the Italo-Ethiopian war events
- Improved tooltip in Italian focus All Roads Lead to Rome so that the way wargoal targets are picked is more intuitive.
- General Cedillo is now agian a leader of the Mexican revolt
- Grand Council of Fascism will now actually oust Kings or Christian Democrats in the form of the National Military Junta, if Balance of Power is low enough.
- Fixed old newsevent not having a dynamic loc for the USSrs name
- Slight loc fix changing 'Embargos' to 'Embargo' in the League of Nations embargo event.
- Added conditions for entering peace talks between Italy and Ethiopia, as well as events, and loc, and other things concerning the peaxe conference.
- Fixing missing Modify Government alert for a political advisor can be assigned.
- Salvador Abascal now has a portrait if you have MtG enabled
- Puyi now gets nationalist symbol correctly
- UK shouldn't be able to give Turkey Levant states that they no longer own.
- Germany no longer ignores Switzerland after they've stopped being neutral.
- Fixed trigger not showing appropriate requirements in Human Torpedo decision.
- Suppress the Mafia decision will no longer show infantry equipment requirement twice.
- Italy's Focus 'Negotiate Claims' will be bypassed if certain criteria is met. Certain events will also be skipped, if the criteria isn't met.
- Fixed Germany granting territories to Switzerland in Fascist Path
- Added extra tooltips for expansion focuses in Switzerland
- If France is faction leader, all its allies will join them in the Stresa Front with Italy
- If Italy declines Germany's offer to assassinate Mussolini, Germany won't be able to ignore that rejection and go ahead with the assassination anyways. Also, if the Balance of Power is active for Italy, Mussolini's side will be switched out to the King's.
- Typo fix for BBA_ethiopia_anti_colonialism_events.4
- Fixed bad texture conversion on DX11 when using R8G8B8_UNORM, R8G8B8_UNORM_sRGB and X1R5G5B5 formats
- Ivan Smirnov, Ivar Smilga and Aleksander Shlyapnikov now gets released out of prison if they are still alive and hasn't been released yet when completing Return Democracy to the party
- You can no longer use the "No Garrison -> Kurdish uprising -> Annex" exploit to fast remove Kurdish separatism faster than normal
- Turkish puppets can no longer pick the "invite to alliance" focuses and break free from their overlord that way
- Remade some checks that only checked for "puppet" subject type to include all subjects for Turkey
- Italy can no longer claim the throne of Montenegro if the controller of said state is at war with Italy.
- AI should now respect the equipment_production_min_factories AI strategy even when there is no need for the equipment type
- It's no longer possible to see certain Balance of Power Decisions before finishing the required National Focus for Italy
- Paradrop orders without enough assigned transport wings now display how many wings are missing on the order instance (map arrow) tooltip.
- Scrambled carrier airwings that can perform naval strike or kamikaze mission will prioritize them over air superiority and interception unless they are fighter or interceptor airwings.
- Fixed missing localization of equipment categories fighter and CAS, displayed in a naval combat tooltip and probably in a few other places too.
- Fixed issue where Vorarlberg wouldn't be a core of the Holy Roman Empire when formed by Germany.
- Fixed an instance where the Italian AI would always decline Ethiopian territorial expansions if Ethiopia went up to a satellite via the focus tree
- At the end of peace conference, for new puppets, calculate the right type of puppet
- Songgotu Zhanshan and Megata Toshiro are once again Manchurian advisors
- Tooltips in Northern and Southern Italian designers now specify the need to complete the focus New Industrialization Program to improve them.
- Fixed issue with Italy completing two mutually exclusive focuses when failing on mussolini's missions to conquer North/South Ethiopia and withdrawing from Ethiopia at the same time.
- Turkeys join alliances focuses now bypasses if in faction
- Fixed missing core in the Siberian union that created a weird gap
- Losing non-cores as Italy will now only reduce BoP if the value is below 30% towards the Grand Council. Losing a core will now reduce 15% BoP instead of 20%.
- King Vittorio Emanuele III will no longer get the crown of Albania if he abdicated or died.
- Pressure government decisions will no longer show up if the target country already has the same ideology and is in faction with the sender.
- Focus Topple Amhara Rulers will no longer be available if ideology is not Fascist or Non-Aligned. The Ethiopian characters that become the country leaders of their respective puppet countries will become the leaders of both Fascist and Non-Aligned ideologies.
- Added tooltips in Swiss Focus Tree to notify when the Absolute Neutrality and Swiss Citizen Militia Decision Categories are disabled.
- If a subject of Yugoslavia controls Dalmatia and Italy demands those states, Yugoslavia will get to decide the fate of those states - not the subject nation.
- You can no longer hire several advisors of the same type
- Fix potential OOS on hot-joining caused by data on executing air missions never being written to the savegame.
- Fix CTD when leaving a game where an air group for whatever reason contains a faulty airwing reference.
- Fix potential OOS on hot-joining a second time without restarting the game, caused by erroneous reading of daily port strike limits from the savegame.
- Fix OOS involving interception missions targeting an enemy airwing that's passing through a region, where both the enemy's mission region and the interception region updates on the same hourly tick.
- Ceding Bessarabia is now properly showing the former owners name in an upcoming news event

Spoiler: Patch notes - Part 2

##################################
# Balance
##################################

- Adjusted base org values for ship types
- Reduced org bonuses for some ship classes in doctrines
- Medium and heavy batterys attack and peicing adjusted, bb and bc armour no longer increases visibility and have higher armour values
- Increased xp spend cut off for legacy land equipment upgrade
- COMBAT_DAMAGE_SCALE_CARRIER returned to 5 was 1, NAVAL_STRIKE_DAMAGE_TO_STR decreased to 1 from 2, NAVAL_STRIKE_DAMAGE_TO_ORG decreased to 1.5 from 2
- Air combat COMBAT_DAMAGE_SCALE increase from 0.25 to 1
- SHIP_TO_FLEET_ANTI_AIR_RATIO increased from 0.2 to 0.25, ANTI_AIR_POW_ON_INCOMING_AIR_DAMAGE increased from 0.2 to 0.25, ANTI_AIR_MULT_ON_INCOMING_AIR_DAMAGE increased from 0.15 to 0.2
- Removed multiply stats ic cost and AA from Ship AA modules, increased base AA attack to replace them
- Reduced base Heavy hull costs slightly,all treaty battleships should now fit within treaty limits
- ENG now starts with 36 BB hull researched, nelson class now obsolete at 36 start
- Slightly improved Fascist/Neutral approach to beating overseas countries

##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################

- Fixed rare CTD during GUI initialization in DX11
- Fix CTD caused by incorrect parsing of persistent AI strategy

##################################
# AI
##################################

- Improved ENG BB ai templates
- AI no longer treats obsolete equipment as best available equipment
- AI ENG will now try to build at least some KGV class BB's on time
- AI ENG now wants to build slightly higher ratio of BB's

##################################
# Modding
##################################

- Reworked how ai_strategy unit_ratio is used to calculate and set build_airplane values. See common/ai_strategy/documentation.info for details.
- Added a list of all active ai_strategy entries to the imgui view ai_strategy.
- When retrieving a list of equipment icons or 3D models from the equipment graphic_db to display in the tank or plane designer any duplicate entries will now be removed.

##################################
# Bugfix
##################################

- Switzerland will now seize the gold reserves of countries it enters war against.
- Added bypass for Swiss Focus 'Trade Agreement with Germany' for when Germany is not fascist, and it will not be completed if Switzerland is at war with Germany
- Added bypas to the Swiss focus 'Withdraw from the League of Nations' for when the League of Nation has already been disbanded.
- Fixed issue where Switzerland would not have a Viable European Fascist to complete Fascist Path.
- Set the correct population in the Swiss Plateau state in Switzerland, and adjusted the population in other states.
- Fixed first loading screen background flipping immediately as GUI is being loaded
- Increased AI weight for Japan to abandon the naval treaty in early 1937.
- Fix crash on Leader details screen, officer corps tab, when the player clicks on an advisor role to give to a unit leader
- Switzerland no longer gets "Breach of Neutrality" event when the Absolute Neutrality category is not present or when the hostile country is in a faction while not being the faction leader.
- Switzerland will not be able to offer trading gold with countries they're at war with.

Please, please, I beg you game director. Please make the standardized air wings as a selectable option in the settings for both the player and the AI. As for MP, make it an option for the host. It would mean the best of both worlds since players are able to choose 100-size airwings or the pre-1.12 airwings. Putting this in 1.12.6 would be a godsend to thousands of HOI4 players.

 

[C0RAX]

Please, please, I beg you game director. Please make the standardized air wings as a selectable option in the settings for both the player and the AI. As for MP, make it an option for the host. It would mean the best of both worlds since players are able to choose 100-size airwings or the pre-1.12 airwings. Putting this in 1.12.6 would be a godsend to thousands of HOI4 players.

This is not to say this is something we will do, or plan to do, but the change from variable to fixed wing sizes involved a significant amount of code and script changes. It is not something that can be simply or quickly changed to be variable by changing a couple values or lines of code.

 

[pdstanbridge]

Loving the new upgrades, and the support from the devs. A quick question regards both the Air / Armour designers - would it be at all possible to enable a kind of list with the aircraft/armour ready to build? I don't mind dabbling, but there is a lot of micro involved when it comes to trying to build an accurate as possible model.

 

[Faction Less]

This is not to say this is something we will do, or plan to do, but the change from variable to fixed wing sizes involved a significant amount of code and script changes. It is not something that can be simply or quickly changed to be variable by changing a couple values or lines

Maybe I was overexaggerating a little bit but I really hope the great devs of Hoi4 might consider this option. However long it takes, I will be grateful for the feature of optional standardised/variable air wings.

 

[Gort11]

Another weird bug - playing the USSR, I've sent 6 mountaineer divisions and 200 planes to Republican Spain as volunteers. For some reason the mountaineers cannot get new equipment as reinforcements. No matter where I put them in Republican Spain (they're currently in Madrid), they can't reinforce - mousing over them just says, "Reinforcement blocked, no supply from capital".

You can also see a much more minor bug in the screenshot where the Field Marshal for the volunteers (Yegorov) has no portrait in this view.