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

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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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The thing of note here is that Britain has the Fascist flag from Victoria 2 - Nation name changes, and flag changes confirmed - Especially as it is called 'British Empire'.


My guess from this is the 'Bad Guy' can be anybody. In this play through the British are taking the place of the Third Reich.


Also while we are here, can you show us a screenshot of the Specialists research track?
 
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USA, England and Italy must be on pretty good terms ( maybe all fascist :p ), can see they use the exact same mechanized vehicles/equipments ;) Just give a call if you guys need some help :rolleyes:
 
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Like a kid's "spot the difference" game?

The map modes buttons have moved from top left to bottom left.

There were two circular buttons next to them, which have now become three and remained top left. And are different.

Three new tick boxes with the map modes in the bottom left. And if I'm not mistaken one of them is to disable the night/day cycle.
 
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Enjoy your summer - here in the antipodes we are freezing our buts off.
 
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Like a kid's "spot the difference" game?

The map modes buttons have moved from top left to bottom left.

There were two circular buttons next to them, which have now become three and remained top left. And are different.

Three new tick boxes with the map modes in the bottom left. And if I'm not mistaken one of them is to disable the night/day cycle.


The three ones in the top right are I believe to change which regions are on show, either Air Regions, Naval Regions (and presumably transporting planning) and then Land Regions/provinces.

The tick boxes in the bottom right are from left to right, most likely - Day night on off, Political map shading on off, Movement arrows/planning arrows on off.
 
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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"?
 
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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.
 
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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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Someone put me in stasis until a week before this game comes out please. Facist Britain seems like a nice scenario ;)

I like the way tech advances. Main tech => small advances => new tech. Much better than lvl up each year. Good job guys! Keep it up.