Hearts of Iron IV - 22nd Development Diary - 28th of August 2015

[Gamer_1745]

@gregor_mendel

Just be happy for what we get today! We can talk about the other things we want later!

I am sure that we can mod the number & type of support equipment. I am very happy to see the type they are adding at the start.

 

[gregor_mendel]

@gregor_mendel

Just be happy for what we get today! We can talk about the other things we want later!

I am sure that we can mod the number & type of support equipment. I am very happy to see the type they are adding at the start.

+1 I agree. I'm just worried about the lack of an OOB. I loved Darkest Hour EXCEPT for the fact it had no OOB. I want to see Corps and Army Groups and Theaters! And I would love it even more if supply flowed through the OOB to the divisions.

 

[alkomon]

Thank you Pdx and God, we have counters!!!
(I told you Johan "We will never have counters", never say never!)

EDIT: Can we now hide those 10 km tall soldiers from the map?

EDIT2: What does the PLUS sign on the Anti-Air and Arty Counter mean?

 

[Capt. Tane]

This is great
Btw, Can these supporting battalions be assigned to the 5 brigades? The slots for the supporting units are not enough as you mentioned but IMO the slots for the infantry and armored battalions are too many.

I agree with franc001sher, too many combat battalion slots and not enough support battalion slots. Maybe you could make a Column for Artillery only so we can choose how many Artillery battalions a division has and what their type is: light, heavy, ...
For example:
a french (type A) Infantry Division: 3 light artillery battalions and 2 heavy artillery battalions
an Italian Infantry Division : 2 light artillery battalions and 1 heavy artillery battalion
an US Infantry Division: 3 light artillery battalions and 1 heavy artillery battalion
a Soviet Infantry Division: 2 light artillery battalions and 3 heavy artillery battalions
(source)

Yes, the differences are small. But there is still more variation than for the number of Infantry battalions.
This would increase the customization choices for the Player, because Artillery was the main "damage dealer" on the battlefield (AFAIK).
And it would also allow to better adapt the number of guns in a division to the industrial capacity of a country and to the focus of its leader, quality or quantity (of divisions).

 

[Veer]

+1 I agree. I'm just worried about the lack of an OOB. I loved Darkest Hour EXCEPT for the fact it had no OOB. I want to see Corps and Army Groups and Theaters! And I would love it even more if supply flowed through the OOB to the divisions.

I'm fine with there being no OOB. Do they add anything to the game other than flavor? After all the command organization is not implementated - you the player get to play as division commander, crops commander, army commander, supreme commander all rolled into one. As such the HOI4 system of ad hoc groups makes more sense to me.

 

[VampiRos]

I appreciate it. Nice DD.

The Templates, are they historical acurate? (as much as it can be?)

 

[rjohansen]

A. BRILLIANT with Nato counters, looks WAY WAY better than the other symbols we have seen!

B. Agree with someone, would work great as a Corps/Army attachement. Please add Corps/Armies/Army Groups/Theatres again - you can make it not mandatory for those (can't understand who) that didn't like it though.

Question: Has there been any DD about the divisional designer that? Especially about the naming convention of the unit?

1. What numbering you can use?
2. What happens if you change the template (from normal infantry to either motorized, mechanized or other) - what happens to the name of the unit?
3. What happens if you edit the name of an already built unit to give it a nickname: "Big Red" or similar?
4. Will you be able to see the name of the individual battalions/companies and such? I really don't care (well actually I'd love to though) if I can attach and detach them and switch them between divisons - but I'd like to somehow see their names? And not "1st INF" and such as in HOI3, but something that has a meaningful name. Only for immersion purposes ofcourse, but that matters in my opinion. Sometimes I spend hours in HOI3 and rename every single brigade. Give them different name according to if the unit is in a MNT or a INF unit etc.

 

[Veer]

Cool DD!

Can we get a listing of what combat battalions we can add to a division? I know of the basics - Inf, tank, etc, and some if the preview videos showed Artillery, but what about rocket-artillery, anti-tank, AA, etc? Are those limited to support or can they be added as regular battalions too?

Or are you saving that for another DD

 

[Capt. Tane]

I'm fine with there being no OOB. Do they add anything to the game other than flavor? After all the command organization is not implementated - you the player get to play as division commander, crops commander, army commander, supreme commander all rolled into one. As such the HOI4 system of ad hoc groups makes more sense to me.

He meant that he wanted Corps support units like heavy artillery, engineers, and so on. Most Armies had a lot of such units at Corps and Army levels so they could shuffle them around and support the divisions that needed extra firepower and stuff. This was also way cheaper then giving a lot of these support units to every division.

 

[Gamer_1745]

@Capt. Tane
Artillery can be both in the support &/or line battalion.

 

[Nelfe]

NATO counter finallyyyyyyyyyy !

(ah, and cool DD ! I like especially fielded hospital, maintenance company, MP... Now we can specialize our division as we want !)

 

[mdw1985]

Thank you Pdx and God, we have counters!!!
(I told you Johan "We will never have counters", never say never!)

EDIT: Can we now hide those 10 km tall soldiers from the map?

EDIT2: What does the PLUS sign on the Anti-Air and Arty Counter mean?

I guess the plus marks the unit as a support unit...

 

[Mevsrei]

This is great

wow i can't believe i actually guessed 9 out of 11 support batallions. Only ones I didnt get were maintenance and military police.

should a field hospital be included in most divisions so as to save MP?


omfg i cant wait, pds just take my cash!

Allready did that back in may: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/speculation-support-brigades.854167/

I even explained why there must be more than 5 choices for 5 slots.

But people told me how stupid it would be to have something like medical support, because every division has medical units by default...

And now I'm just: LOL

 

[Riekopo]

I get the feeling that people are going to end up using the same 5 support companies most of the time. I don't know if limiting it to 5 is a good idea.

 

[mdw1985]

Btw the new world tension icon looks reall really cool!!!

 

[podcat]

So does that count for say brigade AT or ART? "IE replace one of the inf units with AT"

In general battalion types like artillery have lower organisation yes so using them rather than infantry will lower it.

Johan posting dd 7.07 in the morning. Swedes...

It made him so tired he's taken the rest of the day off to the beach so I wouldnt feel bad for him ;D

Thank you Pdx and God, we have counters!!!
(I told you Johan "We will never have counters", never say never!)

EDIT: Can we now hide those 10 km tall soldiers from the map?

EDIT2: What does the PLUS sign on the Anti-Air and Arty Counter mean?

- Zoom out or mod the game
- Plus sign indicates support (since some stuff exist both in main line and in support and has different stats)

I appreciate it. Nice DD.

The Templates, are they historical acurate? (as much as it can be?)

They are historically accurate up to a point. We dont model tiny differences between templates because its no fun to have to manage 4 different configurations of colonial troops etc

I get the feeling that people are going to end up using the same 5 support companies most of the time. I don't know if limiting it to 5 is a good idea.

that would be a balance issue then if the rest arent worth picking. My guess is you'll pick certain configurations for certain types of templates (for expensive armored templates you'll want maintenance companies etc and for veterans and elites a hospital to conserve experience loss), my gut feeling is that 5 support on your main infantry will be much too expensive as well if you need many divisions.

Btw the new world tension icona looks reall really cool!!!

yessss! we felt it needed to be more prominent since its so important

 

[keynes2.0]

The experience icon on the SS division makes me think it will be possible to upgrade your elites Soviet guards style.

Also, could one have a division with very few combat units but logistics support to create something very lean for far flung colonial deployments? Or does the logistics support just knock off a percentage?

 

[podcat]

The experience icon on the SS division makes me think it will be possible to upgrade your elites Soviet guards style.

Also, could one have a division with very few combat units but logistics support to create something very lean for far flung colonial deployments? Or does the logistics support just knock off a percentage?

its a percentage so that they are useful for big divisions too

 

[keynes2.0]

Darn, there goes by my plan for 1 inf, 1 logistics divisions.

 

[Nelfe]

Is it possible to add more than one of the same support company in one template ?

For example, I want to create a MP specialized infantry template, can I set 5 times the MP support or not ?