Hearts of Iron IV - 26th Development Diary - 25th of September 2015

[wright1331]

yes, battleship coolness triumphs over historical accuracy imo.

Best Post I've heard in a long time, thanks Podcat.
I am very happy to see Paradox is putting gameplay above 100% historical accuracy.

Pre-determinded outcomes take away from the replayability of HOI, and most of the reason why CK and EU overtook HOI as the flagship game from Paradox.

 

[Razor]

Thanks!

 

[Mannstien]

Best Post I've heard in a long time, thanks Podcat.
I am very happy to see Paradox is putting gameplay above 100% historical accuracy.

Pre-determinded outcomes take away from the replayability of HOI, and most of the reason why CK and EU overtook HOI as the flagship game from Paradox.

Ahh, that's not from what I remember a post that either Podcat nor Johan has made in the past month I believe, HOI is still the flagship....

 

[wright1331]

Ahh, that's not from what I remember a post that either Podcat nor Johan has made in the past month I believe, HOI is still the flagship....

It might be in regaurds of what the developers feel is there favorite... but im just basing it off numbers, and looking that the numbers HOI fell behind.

(fyi, HOI is my fav even though I have almost 1500 hours in EU4 =O )

 

[Katarian]

yes, battleship coolness triumphs over historical accuracy imo.

I always switched to Carriers as the UK in HoI3 so it would be nice to use Battleships once in a while. If you go down the Fleet in Being tree at the end how much worse are your Carriers going to be then the Base Strike tree? Or rather is it pointless continuing down the Fleet in Being tree if you are going to focus on Carriers as the UK?

I thought everything got owned by high level destroyers, but I only played early on in the beta :3 should give it a spin again

If the destroyer can get torpedo hits then they own anything, but it's getting close enough to do a reliable torpedo run without getting killed. Carriers get owned by anything that is in gun range, but at any level destroyers are an extreme problem for them. Russian destroyers are getting added in next month and it looks like they will be extremely powerful.

 

[jju_57]

Best Post I've heard in a long time, thanks Podcat.
I am very happy to see Paradox is putting gameplay above 100% historical accuracy.

So for everyone that wants France to be way more powerful remember this line.

 

[wright1331]

So for everyone that wants France to be way more powerful remember this line.

If the game was 100% accurate, what would be the replayability??
I never said make the game ridiculously implausible. Just that it needs to have every unit (in game) as a viably option, and not just one way to build in order to have success.
Think Rock, Paper, Scissors... a purpose for everything, and a counter to each.

 

[FOARP]

Let's not be hasty.

From the screenshot, it looks like Fleet in Being could also be named Sea Lane Defense or Capital Ship Based Naval Force Projection.

Maybe the name needs a change?

But the Royal Navy wasn't really BB focus either, not any more so than the USN or IJN. This looks suspiciously like "Hey, those guys tried to send BBs to interdict an invasion (er . . . just like the Japanese did) without carrier support (er . . . because the carrier was re-fitting) so let's slap them with the BB focus (which they didn't have really, if anyone had it, it was the Germans)".

"Fleet-in-being" is a bit of a strange name choice for an entire tech tree choice. Probably would have been better to make it a branch under a capital ship focus tree. Not a big deal though. Just a name.

Who actually had a capital ship focus? The Germans (maybe) and the Soviets? Not the RN.

 

[misterbean]

It's what the doctrine is known as RL.

 

[FOARP]

It's what the doctrine is known as RL.

It is a real-life doctrine, but one that was only actually exercised as a major component of their strategy by the Kriegsmarine.

 

[Mannstien]

It might be in regaurds of what the developers feel is there favorite... but im just basing it off numbers, and looking that the numbers HOI fell behind.

(fyi, HOI is my fav even though I have almost 1500 hours in EU4 =O )

The series has my heart (haha) so I'm sensitive about it..

Cheers

 

[sandman2575]

Podcat mentioned that destroyers are the smallest warships represented, which is fine, but -- will HoI4 model discrete, individual destroyers, or are we still going to be using the nonsensical "destroyer divisions" (whatever that meant) from HoI3?

(...in short -- please tell me destroyers are individual ships in HoI4...)

 

[Secret Master]

But the Royal Navy wasn't really BB focus either, not any more so than the USN or IJN. This looks suspiciously like "Hey, those guys tried to send BBs to interdict an invasion (er . . . just like the Japanese did) without carrier support (er . . . because the carrier was re-fitting) so let's slap them with the BB focus (which they didn't have really, if anyone had it, it was the Germans)".

A fair point, but Darkrenown mentions that the FiB tree has most of the convoy defense techs.

Given that there is overlap between each tree, I'd be happy if they just called this tree "Sea Lane Defense." Because let's face it, regardless of the battleship issue, sea lane defense was a huge priority for the British.

And the lack of adequate sea lane defense was a big problem for Japan.

 

[Marine]

Great DD. Now i wait to see what you have done with Italy in the next one

 

[FieldMedic]

Maybe this was covered in the past but I would like to know what's involved in changing doctrine and whether you get refunded anything from the investments you made in the previous doctrine.

What are the pros and cons to changing doctrine? Is there a time frame for doctrine changes to take place or are they instant etc.

 

[FOARP]

A fair point, but Darkrenown mentions that the FiB tree has most of the convoy defense techs.

Given that there is overlap between each tree, I'd be happy if they just called this tree "Sea Lane Defense." Because let's face it, regardless of the battleship issue, sea lane defense was a huge priority for the British.

And the lack of adequate sea lane defense was a big problem for Japan.

Ah, I had missed Darkrenown's input.

Yeah, if it has all/most of the convoy defence techs in it that's fair enough for the RN. The only area the RN (with the RCN) truly excelled was anti-Submarine warfare and convoy defence, in every other area they were good but perhaps not the best. In terms of the submarine warfare the Germans probably were top with the USN following close behind (yes, the USN managed to eliminate Japanese shipping almost entirely, but there was much less of it and the Japanese were terrible at anti-Submarine warfare). In terms of surface warfare, I think you really have to give it to the Japanese, though the Germans, USN and RN are all contenders as well. The USN excelled at carrier warfare, with the Japanese and then the RN following behind.

Really, if the RN had been a BB-focused navy, you'd expect them to have done much better in surface encounters - not that they did terribly, but the German's far more modern ships seem to have often had the edge on them. The RN's tradition was (and is) control of the sealanes, convoy warfare, which led to basically attempt to be a Jack-of-all-trades navy.

 

[sandman2575]

Never has so little new information been given to so many, by so few. Here's to hoping you spend more than 10 minutes on the remaining DDs.

While this is worded a little more strongly than I would've written it, I tend to agree with the sentiment expressed. I understand these are weekly dev diaries and not meant to be exhaustively detailed (and that the energy is going into creating the game, not the info. updates -- all well and good) -- but these diaries seem a bit thin in new content. Much of this one repeats content from previous posts "As mentioned in dev diary X..." ...and the connection to the closing screen shot seems tenuous at best. It's a very nice screen shot, but what's the connection to the topic? It seems to show a fleet sortie-ing from the Balkans...and so....?

Do we know anything further about, for example, submarine warfare (which needs to be massively improved from HoI3)? Naval combat mechanics? How fleet composition affects combat? How leadership affects combat?

Seems like a missed opportunity here.

 

[v.Falkenhayn]

I thought everything got owned by high level destroyers, but I only played early on in the beta :3 should give it a spin again

Destroyers is the class of choice now. DD and CC just high explosive ammo light everything on fire...Then DD torpedoe everything.
Battle ship accuracy and secondary ranges are plain awful I don't see point playing WoW until they fix BB. :-((

 

[mursolini]

DDs got nerfed.

IMO, Cruisers are the best class

Most straight-forward. Cruisers gameplay pretty self-evident, DDs require quite a bit of thinking to get torpedoes hits, Carriers are fairly simple and depend mostly on your own skill, providing decent result and huge immediate impact. BBs are for people that are very good at aiming.

Best Post I've heard in a long time, thanks Podcat.
I am very happy to see Paradox is putting gameplay above 100% historical accuracy.

Pre-determinded outcomes take away from the replayability of HOI, and most of the reason why CK and EU overtook HOI as the flagship game from Paradox.

HOI wasn`t updated to the next version. HOI was the largerst franchise within it`s generation, to say flagship changed, we need to see how HOI4 performs.

But the Royal Navy wasn't really BB focus either, not any more so than the USN or IJN. This looks suspiciously like "Hey, those guys tried to send BBs to interdict an invasion (er . . . just like the Japanese did) without carrier support (er . . . because the carrier was re-fitting) so let's slap them with the BB focus (which they didn't have really, if anyone had it, it was the Germans)".

Carriers of royal navy were generally smaller pre-war, their planes had low priority for upgrades (Swordfish biplanes flying to hunt Bismark! in 1941!)
Royal navy carriers had low capacity compared to USN ones and IJNs. Out of 7 CVs, 3 carried only 20 aircrafts (Hermes, Argus, Eagle). 2 Courageous class carriers carried 48 aircrafts. Furious carried 36, and only Ark Royal can really be called modern CV there, with a bit of stretch. Ark Royal, Eagle and Courageous being sunk by subs before any serious fleet engagements, and HMS Glorious was one of the few carriers sunk by cruisers. Overall, RN had to rely on BBs far more than other fleets, largely because of it`s wasteful use of it`s carrier assets at the start of war.

UK carriers were at clear disadvantage if you would compare then to US carriers pre-war (Yorktown, Enterprise, Lexington, Saragota, Wasp ) each outmatched any UK carrier, which shows that UK wasn`t even closely as focused on building strong carrier fleet as US was, prefering to dump money into other things, like King George class BBs, instead of proper carriers.

Who actually had a capital ship focus? The Germans (maybe) and the Soviets? Not the RN.

Maybe, the side that had the most of BBs, and neglected building good carriers in 1920s, and then after war started send them to escort convoys against submarines, instead of forming carrier groups?
Also, the same side that neglected upgrading it`s carrier aviation for quite a while.

 

[LostinSpice]

If in range how do land based aircraft get involved in a sea battle? I get sea bombers having a pop but I assume your fighters can attack enemy carrier fighters? This would be important in the Channel or Baltic for example.