Hearts of Iron IV - 19th Development Diary - 3rd of July 2015

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Johan

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Welcome back to another development diary for Hearts of Iron IV.

We have talked a lot about equipment in various development diaries. Most of you know that you build individual tanks, guns & trucks for your armies. Of course, we don’t track each individual gun, but instead a set of infantry equipment, where a standard battalion has about 120 infantry equipment required. Currently, a battalion of light armor wants 60 tanks, while a standard support artillery uses 8 artillery pieces. Support artillery is different from regular artillery, which is a bit bigger, and is towed by the rest of the combat battalions and will thus match their speed. To focus on support vs regular artillery is a choice up to the player with support more suited to smaller divisions and certain doctrines.
The equipment you have in your divisions is the one that affects things like what your technical capabilities are, like the base for soft attack and hard attack, but the type of battalion determines your capabilities for recon, terrain penalties, organisation etc.

If you lack enough equipment, your units will fight with far less efficiency,

The cool thing with equipment, as we have shown you before, is that battalions will pick up the best gear they can take from your produced stockpiles, and will attempt to replace old gear if there is a surplus if their upgrade is prioritised enough. This means that you may end up with a division with whatever amount of tanks you can get delivered at the end of a war.
While talking about Equipment, I think its time to discuss one, so lets take a deep look at the Infantry Technology Tree.

IgYaje4.png


Technologies with big boxes enable new equipment that can be produced, while the small boxes give improvements.

In the first line we first get what we call Support Weapons, which provides increases to breakthrough and defence for leg units. After that we have some late-game technology that mitigates nighttime penalties.

The next line is the Infantry Equipment research itself. There are 3 separate types of infantry equipment that can be manufactured, each better than the last. There is also a branch later in that line that gives improvements to the AT capabilities of Infantry.

Then we have a block of 3 lines related to more motorized units. The first is for the recon support battalion, enabling it and then improving its reconnaissance capabilities. We’ll talk more about that when we discuss combat tactics. Secondly there is the engineer battalions, and how to improve their capabilities for offence and defence. Finally there is the line that allows construction of military trucks and mechanized units.

The last block is the Specialist track, where you research Marines, Mountaineers and Paratroopers and how to improve them.

Thanks all, and we’ll be back in 6 weeks time, when we are back from Summer Holidays, and lets see how much new stuff you can figure out from screenshot #2.

Ns9jaS7.jpg
 
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To show the flag change is a nice move!

A like to add that it was also said recently, that when you design a Division you can decide for its "status" (regular/elite) wich will also determine if it will get priorized new equipment etc.
Can we overrule that later like we could before with the HQ's in HoI3?
So we could later say, "Well ,Our units in Pacific don't need that much of new equipment, they could use up the older tanks in that theatre"?

We havent talked reinforcement and supplies yet, but it goes like this:
Priority for supply is first looking at theater priorities, and after that individual division priorities. So if you have elites in africa and put africa on low priority they will get stuff after regulars at home etc if that has higher priority.

So the UK starts with no troops outside of the 'homeland' now, none in other theatres?

I think Johan fired some event to get the flag in '36 and I think the colonies, canada, australia etc tell you to f**ck off if you go fascist in that event ;) (or its just because he tagged between nations and that resets the list of theaters right now)
 
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I'm unsure whether someone has mentioned it before but the buttons seem very German. Will this change in the official release? Would be nice to see the different weapons of the different countries. And for the minors some standard/whichever ones they are aligned to more.
we only have infantry weapon pics for germany and USA right now. the rest will follow
 
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Does this mean the BUF flag and tag change here are tied to an event specifically for Britain and not possible with the regular political/influence system?

no its generic but some have special events and stuff

wait a second, is it just me or can you convert the first truck into an AT-Truck?
It unlocks motorized rocket artillery ("katyushas") but its got the AT icon atm isntead of rockets
 
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any chance we might see at-trucks and maybe aa-trucks aswell?

support battalions are assumed to be truck towed if attached to motorized. for main combat battalions of those types they are either slow, or self propelled on top of armored hulls (think Wespe etc). I think thats enough detail, but I'm sure someone will mod in more at some point ;)
 
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I have a question about equipment production:
What impact will lack of some resource have on production? Since rubber was produced in only a few locations and AFAIK, game doesnt have synthetic rubber plants, many countries wont have access to rubber.

you can produce synthetic rubber, but otherwise as Vidkjaer said
 
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I remember last year you guys were against flag changes. What happened? Or is that going to be a future DD?

To have a good and flexible civil war mechanic, we needed the V2-flag/name system for nations.
 
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It seems that there are more factories on the map, are factories now at the province level and not at the state level?

No, the way they are visualized is that more and more small factories start appearing spread over the state the higher your level is on the state.

And so begins 6 weeks of hell... :-(

Dury

I'll be playing during vacation so there is a little chance for some bonus AAR perhaps :)

#1 How does equipment take damage in combat? (Is it just manpower that takes damage and if manpower falls below a percentage the equipment is lost?)
#2 Presumably a battalion with 50% equipment only gets 50% of it's combat stats. (Or is it non-linear?) What about a Division though? If a mixed intantry / tank Division has Infantry Battalions with 100% equipment and Tanks at 0% equipment would they get no stats benefit from the tank Battalion?
#3 Can you capture enemy equipment? Would be nice to see Germans using captured French tanks for example.
#1 wait for combat diary
#2 its linear, and on division levl its as you say. no tanks, no benefit
#3 not right now, but may happen in the future at some point
 
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