We can agree that the rocket program wasn't cost efficient. But do note that Big H didn't listen to his generals in how to better use them. It does however have great potential.
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Hearts of Iron IV - 44th Development Diary - 12th of February 2016
- Thread starter podcat
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The rockets were used exactly as they were intended to be used.
The whole program got kick started by the army that wanted bombers and long range artillery that Germany could not have because of the Versailles Treaty. During the war that is exactly how they were used - long range bombing. As a strategic weapon they were not effective as warhead was small, rocket was expensive to field in large enough numbers. Compared to ordinary bomber aircraft that could carry more bombs, over greater distance and was cheaper - the rockets role as strategic bomber was not so great.
As a tactical bomber they were abysmal. Completely useless, as preparation for firing took too long for it to be usable in a tactical situation. On top of that, it didn't have nearly enough accuracy to be used effectively. Maybe if you draw the enemy to a pre designated firing coordinates and make rockets rain... then yes. But again, bomber has the upper hand here. When rockets were used to blow up a bridge in Netherlands, they could not hit it.
The only superiority they have is speed. But when that is the only thing that gives you the upper edge... not good.
One can argue that they had some limited use as medium range strategic bombers when used in high enough numbers but that is all.
They did lay ground works for post war rockets, true. But during the WWII V2 was used in the only way possible and it failed. It was still an infant in the rocket world.
But never mind - in the game you have a building, a tech tree, a focus tree for them, but you simulate partisan warfare with a modifier. That is wrong on so many levels. Let it be that V2 was important to what ever extent - partisan warfare had bigger impact in the war, that's a fact. I do not see how can a province modifier do it justice.
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As you may have noted, the wiki article for the Czech resistance doesn't actually detail military resistance-type actions beyond the Prague uprising and Operation Anthropoid in the Czech lands. This doesn't mean there weren't any, just that a link to a wiki article does nothing to tell us anything about them.
The Austrian resistance article doesn't detail any actual military actions. One might as well talk of a "British resistance" based solely on the various attempts at spying, collusion by the Germans with the IRA and other nationalists, and the existence of the British Fascist movement.
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No Chicago, ILL USA.
Riots in the US have involved hundred to actually over 20,000 people with many armed. A riot no matter how large or small is fundamentally different from an actual military battle. Most of what the partisans did in WW2 were more military based battles. There were a few but the vast majority of actions are small scale recon or sabotage. There were also some that fall under the "peasant uprising" classification.
But it's a useless discussion anyway because Podcat said the game is in beta so the way he described it is the way it's going to be. And since I hated whack-a-mole I think it's a great change.
Finally, there was submarine CV and other very limited things in WW2. From what I read in the DD's most of these "special cases" won't be in the game so it fits perfectly with the theme they have for HOI4.
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The welcome the Nazis got in those areas that suffered under Stalin is well known and hardly limited only to "Western Ukraine" (in reality, a part of the world that had until very recently been part of Poland), but extended throughout the Baltics. Nazi recruiting also stretched to all lands that came under their occupation, including Russian, Serbian, Belarusian, and even amongst POWs from areas they did not occupy like Georgia and Azerbaijan.
The French resistance, the impact of which was very exaggerated in the immediate post-war period, and then the subject of revisionist history that minimised its impact, should not be under-estimated. France was not ablaze with rebellion during the entire occupation, but during the Allied invasion the resistance certainly had an impact, and the uprisings in Paris and on the Vecors plateau were significant struggles.
There is an unfortunate strain of thought in modern central and eastern Europe that sees western Europe as somehow effete, decadent, and weak, and picks up on spurious historical 'facts' to justify this viewpoint. Yes, the Dutch army surrendered after 7 days. By contrast, the Soviet army in the Baltic states (an area roughly three times larger) was crushed within 17 days. Yes, Denmark was occupied with barely a shot fired. By contrast, the Czech lands were occupied in 1939 without even a token resistance. Yes, there were collaborationists in Western Europe, ever heard of Vlassov?
The biggest difference was that (in game-terms to avoid talking about banned subjects) the peoples of eastern Europe were, for ideological reasons, subject to harsh occupation policies that turned them against the Nazis and their allies.
My point is that it was not something either considered so important or so easy that they had to/wer able to do it in the initial release. I expect partisan warfare to be improved in following DLC, but I don't want to see the same system used in HOI3 used here as it was a whack-a-mole chore.
Yes, if you carpeted the map with MP units etc. you could avoid rebellions. This hardly reduced the micro-management though, which is the real problem with whack-a-mole.
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I think we're basically in agreement that the continual uprisings you had to deal with in HOI3 were basically a chore and the game is better without them. I'd like to have a uprising mechanism that allows historical-ish uprisings to occur, not ones that would be a chore, but ones that might occur only once during the game for each country occupied and only then where a GiE has put significant effort into preparing it.
No Chicago, ILL USA.
Remind me to wear a flak-jacket next time I fly through O'Hare!
However, I think we can all see the qualitative difference between uprisings such as those that occurred in Paris and Prague (thousands of casualties), and the DNC riots or even the West Side riots (~11 killed tops).
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+1 I really think something like that would be the sweet spot. Make the uprisings rare, but significant- like when they get to a critical point.
Also maybe give the not yet in game units buff bonuses for close terrain; urban, mountain, jungle, forest, marsh.
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edited- we could debate the finer points of realism; but uprisings that tied down divisions did happen. And while we don't want whack a mole, the occasional Unit uprising would be more fun.
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And before Polish, the territory was part of Austria-Hungary. As for the Baltic region - as I said, nationalist welcomed them, majority of the population did not. You have nationalist in every country int he world, usually between 5-10% of the population. Those welcomed Germans in the East and West just the same. THe difference being, the rest 90-95% in the West did not organize resistance until the very end while in the East they did. Why, later in the post. But that is a common myth in western history - just like all the others concerning WWII in the East. Soviet Union mobilized more than 34 million troops during the war yet a majority of time is spent talking about a few thousand collaborators and deserters. From history books, to films, all the way down to video games. It takes a special kind of person to do that. So now we have generation who think that Soviet soldiers were sent without the rifles into battle (Enemy at the gates, Company of Heroes 2), were executed by machine guns if they retreated and many other idiotic things. Btw, Germany didn't recruit a single person in Serbia during the occupation. Only ethnic Germans, Volksdeutsche population. Collaboration forces numbered 10-20.000 and were out of German OOB. They were used only for local peacekeeping against the communist resistance (while they helped the royalist one, and the same thing was before the war, Germans did not change that. Communist were regarded as terrorists from 1921 onward so those troops would be used against them even if the Germans did not come) because of the harshest reprisals for any region during the entire war (banned subject so I will not go in detail, but reprisals had the highest rate of any other occupied region during the entire war). Not a single soldier was used in war on the German side. The collaboration government was against it and threatened to resign if any soldier is sent into battle. Germany did not want to deal with the chaos that would become of that so no soldiers were recruited from the start to the end of the war.
And yet you defend the province modifier system that does it no justice in any way. I also said that they only had an impact when the actual liberation started. Before that - nothing. And with the current system you cannot represent neither of those phases of resistance. You cannot have your Paris, Warsaw, Prague or any other uprising. No, you will have a modifier.
I do not know where you get your info from and at this point I am afraid to ask.
Not at all. Regardless of occupation policy, in both Soviet Union and Yugoslavia partisan warfare was not relying on oppressed people but was the official military doctrine. In Soviet Union, before the war, special units were formed to lead a guerrilla warfare behind the enemy lines. The best cadre was chosen for OMSBON and they would be the nucleus of partisan and sabotage groups. They were trained and during the war equipped by the government. It was a whole system. In Yugoslavia as well. The original plan was to construct supply cashes throughout the country and special officer corps to be trained in the use of guerrilla tactics to be used behind the enemy lines. The plan was canned (unfortunately) and static defense was chosen, but right before the war in 1940 (when it became far to clear that static lines do not work) 5 battalions of specially trained and equipped troops were enlisted in the army and they would, like in Soviet Union, form a nucleus of war time resistance. So not just some people fleeing from the occupation policy but highly trained officers.
In game terms, all you needed to do is erase those black partisans. Then, you have the same effect from revolt risk (that lowers your resource and IC intake and increases supply cost - the thing you would get from individual sabotages of railways and factories) while regaining the option to fight an active war behind the lines using underground cells. But instead of fixing what was wrong with the previous system they canned it altogether and instituted almost the same as it was in original HoI3, just without uncontrollable partisans popping out. Takes away from the gameplay and makes a conquered nation pointless to play.
Usually most of you defend PDX when it destroys history for the sake of gameplay - yet here where gameplay has only to gain you defend the system by quoting inactive western form of resistance. And as mention, when it grew from an inactive one to an active one by the time of liberation (I never questioned refuted that, facts are facts - just use them for all sides please), you still won't have it as an option. It will remain a province modifier.
The current system only covers passive resistance in the western countries prior to the liberation campaign. Active resistance in the west and the whole resistance doctrine and system in the east is out the window. So it does not do justice for any side. But you can defend it all you want.
And once again, conformism and justification of lazy work comes into spotlight. Partisan warfare is not considered important for initial release... yet wonder weapons are? The whole system of building, research and national focus for them - because they were obviously more important for initial release than hundreds of thousands of partisans. And we can talk about DLC policy but what is the point. Now days it is normal for an integral part of the game to be sold as a DLC. Even day one DLC. And people who defend the companies that do that just encourage them to do it over and over again. How about getting a complete game for once? Nope, if you want partisans, wait a few years and give us some more money for the thing that should, by all standards, be in the initial release of the game. If not for anything else, because there are far less important things already in the game that have low gameplay value and almost no historical impact on the war. Who knows, by the time HoI5 hits the market it might be a practice to get only infantry in the initial release and get the rest of the units by DLC. And for secret techs, only if you pre-order with the special DLC.
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Why do you care about graphics? Game still has partisan warfare, now you just don't need to click with your mouse constantly.
Apart from uprisings like Warsaw, partisans are in the game like they were in HOI3. Only graphics have changed and partisans have been hidden under.
What is the point of representing 8 man partisan sguads as invidual units in game where base unit is division with 15 000 men? This system is better, becouse you can't just kill partisans by sending unit into same province, instead you must garrison the province and let your men hunt them down.
This system is just more convienent, and in a way it is graphical difference. You don't need shadows either, but your infantry still defends better in forests.
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Please read my posts again.
Partisan warfare has two phases.
One is passive - the one you describe. Every HoI game had it. It is local revolt risk that gives you penalties and you need to garrison troops to reduce it. Those are your 8 man squads doing sabotages and gathering intel.
One is active - where large formations rise up to fight. Like in Soviet Union. Like in Yugoslavia. Like in Warsaw, Prague and Paris. That one is removed from the game altogether.
And yes, you kill active partisan resistance by sending troops in. Operations like Fall Weiss, Fall Schwarz, Rosselsprung and Operation Mihailovic in Yugoslavia were exactly that. Where tens of thousands of troops had to be sent to destroy the partisan movements that created their own free territories. In Soviet Union there were so many I do not dare to name them.
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That can just be handled by larger revolt risk. That then forces player to send division, ten thousand men, to deal with it or it will spread to other provinces.
Then again, if nuclear weapon would never have worked, people would remember it as crazy waste of resources.
You just don't know what effect new tech can have. Hence you experiment.
While I agree it'll be great to have partisan warfare that includes some actual uprisings in the game, and even better if it was there at launch, it's important to be realistic with what PDS can achieve at launch. They've hardly been 'slacking off' on HoI - they've had a dedicated team working on it for years, and already had two pre-Christmas crunches, and more than a few at other times of the year. They've added a stack of new features, and while the partisan system as it stands doesn't allow for open uprisings, it's been designed in such a way that developing it further along those lines should be straightforward (I'd expect in it's current state, there's a decent chance it'd be pretty easy to mod in a set of events allowing for a percentage chance of outright uprisings when there was 100% (or some other level) of resistance, for example).
There are a range of other things not in the game that were important during the war that we'll have to wait and see whether they'll make the cut via DLC, or have to mod them in ourselves (for example, HoI4 will contain, as discrete units, less than half the total tonnage of fighting ships built during the period). We've all got our particular interests we'd like represented in-game, but them not being there doesn't mean PDS is trying to rip us off, or going cheap. They've got a huge, very complex game, with a bunch of new and rather complex systems, that they have to balance with:
- Complexity for players - too much, and it'll turn people away, which they clearly don't want.
- Budget for development - everything takes time, and they can't afford an infinite development cycle.
Say you were a bajillionairre, and could give PDS a few million to keep HoI4 in the oven another year - would it be better this way? I'd prefer to get it as it is now (it still looks great now), and have the DLC later. From our perspective, would we prefer HoI4 as it as for $40, with a $20 DLC later that added stuff in, or would we prefer if they waited, and gave us HoI4 with more detail for $60 next year? At the end of the day, they have to recover the cost of development one way or another - it's all accounting.
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What about the huge V2 factory made as a launching platform in France? Officers wanted to transport the rockets by trucks instead.
"Nationalist" here would include who? In the Baltics, it would include anyone who supported the continued existence of the countries that Stalin had snuffed out of existence scarcely 12 months before Barbarossa. In the Ukraine, it would include the people that Stalin had mistreated.
As Antony Beevor described in his book Stalingrad, the HiWis numbered close to 1 million. This was information that came from the Soviet archives - what, you think he made it up?
Or maybe one who just doesn't decide how they think history should have been, and then denies everything that doesn't fit in with that interpretation?
They were.
They were.
They had a Serbian puppet government with an entire army of its own.
So they did recruit people, you've just decided they didn't count.
So now we've gone from "not a single person" to "10-20,000". But apparently they didn't count because, even though in reality (just like other puppet armies) they were basically under German control they weren't official part of the German army.
Or, they were employed in Yugoslavia which was where the Germans needed them anyway. Given that the men of the Nedic regime ended up fleeing to (and fighting in) Bosnia, Austria, Italy and so-forth, we can judge how seriously we should take this insistence about not fighting outside Serbia (or Yugoslavia).
A history book and an atlas, two things I think you would definitely profit from owning. The invasion of the Netherlands began on the 10th of May, 1940 and ended seven days later. The invasion of the Baltics began on the 22nd of June, 1941 and the sweep northwards was completed by the 9th of July - 17 days later. The area of the Netherlands is 41,543 km2 whilst the Baltic states have an area of 175,015 km2.
I'm not doing either of these things. I've said (repeatedly) that I think the removal of whack-a-mole from the game is positive but large-scale uprisings would still be nice to have so long as they are decently implemented.
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As always, depends on who you ask. Soviet Regime did not mistreat according to someone's nationality. For instance, in the case of Ukraine, many people suffered. Mostly ethnic Russians in the central and eastern parts that were more agricultural. Yet they were not the ones to turn the back on the government but the radical nationalist groups in the western part. Same goes for Baltic. Rightist elements helped Germans everywhere. It had nothing to do with nationality or mistreatment but ideology.
Yes, and Solzhenitsyn spoke of 100 million oppressed in Gulags, in a country with 180 million people. I guess he did not make it up either.
And funny how you still cling to a long ago debunked myth of soldiers without rifles and machine gun executions. If you do not know how penal battalions and blocking detachments were used, I suggest you investigate a bit.
Even wiki page states your machine gun executions as "fiction": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_troops
There were 1000 soldiers per entire army who were well behind the front lines and were used to arrest deserters. Less than 2% of the arrested were shot, only after court marshal. And there sure as hell were no machine gun execution of soldiers in the front line in the nick of battle. That just shows ho serious historian you really are.
Yeah, I tend not to count recruited German population. Do you know what Volksdeutsche means? If we count them then we can say that Germany recruited people from the USA as well, because ethnic Germans came when Germany called.
Except they were not. Head of government, general Nedic, threatened to resign his post and disband the government if that be the case. So Germany did not recruit anyone from the local population (except Germans) nor had control over them. German High Command actually ordered those troops to go east in 1942, the same time as several divisions from Croatia. Croatian ones did go, not a single soldier from Serbia went. Why? Germany had no command over them, even if the government was puppet.
They were employed in the same place they were employed before the war, in the same position they were before the war. Arrival of Germans did not change anything - they just allowed the things to go as they were before the war when it comes to those troops. Those were the same people that long before the war used to fight communist and ustashe fighters during uprisings. That is the same thing they did during the war, regardless of German commands. They even fought off "friendly" Croatian soldiers of another puppet government several times on the border.
When Soviet army closed in on the border, Royalist forces asked for a deal - to unite all forces in the exchange for freedom. That way Germans could retreat and Serbia/Yugoslavia would gain independence and crush the communist uprising within its borders. On the Hitler's direct command, it did not happen and Nedic, with his government was evacuated from Belgrade to Budapest, Vienna and in the end Kitzbuhel. Never been to Bosnia though. His forces never fought on the German side and they surrendered to Allies.
And this is another of your manipulations of facts. What you talk about is occupation of Latvia, not the whole Baltic states. And army was not crushed - most of it retreated. Baltic states fell only on August 28th, 3 months into the invasion. Not 17 days.
But I am losing my time here arguing with a person who still believes in machine gun executions and Enemy at the Gates as a historical movie. A classic western approach to history of countries and nations you know nothing about.
As Bad Comedian once said: "Well, I guess Soviets wanted to lose so badly that they deliberately did what western movies and books say they did." Well, I guess that is where western myths about the war get to live, books, movies, video games.
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"The main goal of modeling local resistance in HOI4 is to remove whack-a-mole of rebels running around and to model the strategic problems with occupying large chunks of enemy territory."
The improvement in the game system described in this sentence will make the end of the long wait for HoI4 so much better. I'm very happy to hear about the end of whack-a-mole. Does resistance level change as the political situation does, so that if the USA entered the war would French resistance rise, or if Britain were conquered would French resistance fall?
The improvement in the game system described in this sentence will make the end of the long wait for HoI4 so much better. I'm very happy to hear about the end of whack-a-mole. Does resistance level change as the political situation does, so that if the USA entered the war would French resistance rise, or if Britain were conquered would French resistance fall?
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If you include the V1 as a rocket though it was pretty effective actually. It could do things no bomber could do, like attack despite enemy air superiority or heavy AA. It didn't need a single pilot or aircrew trained, and it was alot more damaging to morale since there wasn't really an effective way to stop them, and great efforts had to be spent on figuring out a way to stop them and trying to disable the launch sites.
Here is an assesment written by the allies comparing the Luftwaffe 1940 bombing of London using traditional bombers with the 1944 V1-blitz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb#Assessment
The cost of all V1s used was around 41 million RM and the cost of the airplanes lost when bombing London in 1940 was 370 million RM ( or 9 times greater ), and both destroyed roughly the same amount of buildings, the V1s certainly look effective to me. The Blitz did inflict more airplane losses to the allies, but if you take that into account the cost of the German planes not lost also should be added, it pretty much evens it out.
Even if you count all V1s produced by Germany during the entire war (30 thousand) their cost is still less then half of the cost of the Bombers lost in 1940 trying to attack London during the Battle of Britain.
If you want to compare actual costs a top class Strategic bomber in 1944 (B-29) Cost 639,188$ = around 1.6 million RM = 314 V1 rockets carrying a total of 267 tons of explosives. The B-29 need to fly ( and survive ) 30 sorties to deliver the same amount. Using an average 95% survival rate per sortie for allied planes bombing Germany this means a typical strategic bomber had on average 21% chance to actually survive 30 sorties.
Had the Germans had a superior intelligence service and known in beforehand about the millions of men and huge amounts of war material being built up near ports in southern England at the time + been able to put the V1 into service just 1 or 2 months earlier and targeted these assembly areas instead the result could have been catastrophic for the allies, and meant postponed or even cancelled D-Day in 1944.
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I do not count is as a rocket. It was a jet powered bomb, or a cruise missile as they are called today. Rocket is a different thing, and I was talking about V2.
And about V1, the loss rate was 80% in 1944 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb#Operation_and_effectiveness
That is not what I call an effective weapon. For instance, the loss of 20-30% was unacceptable for other weapons. Today it is a standard for NATO not to engage the enemy with airforce if projected losses go over 5%. And Germans knew that enemy was preparing an invasion in the south of England, they just did not know where and when are they gonna land. But with the loss of 80% it was useless to try and shoot at the invasion force. As a matter of fact, V1 could only be used effectively if you HAVE air superiority because it was very vulnerable to air attacks. But if you have air superiority to use V1 effectively, then you could just as well use conventional bombers and deliver a bigger punch (and more precise one too) with a reusable weapon that was more versatile - a bomber.
And if compared to a bomber (just the Blitz), the bombers inflicted up to 180.000 casualties, while V1 bombing did around 24.000 casualties. Yes, 9 times cheaper - yet 9 times less effective, not reusable, with 80% fail rate.
V2 did not require air superiority and there indeed was no defense against it. But it was not cost effective (too small punch) and could not be used as a tactical weapon effectively. When they were used as a tactical weapons, they could hit just under a kilometer to their target (700m) at the closest and 40km(!) at furthest - simply put, it was not precise enough for tactical use and was too weak for strategic use.
But all that is normal - both V1 and V2 were first of their kind and were not very useful. As a proof of concept, yes, and as a stepping stone to bigger things. But as weapons themselves, no.
Do not get me wrong, I like using them and investing in the game. And I think that as a concept they were great things, especially when you add mobile launchers. But that is not the point. We were talking about the effectiveness of those weapons that are in the game and have almost a system of their own, while partisans that were more important to the conduct of war are not in the game. They are - but like a modifier for a province. That is OK for passive resistance, but for the type of partisan warfare used on the other half of the front - no.
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