Hearts of Iron IV - Developer Diary 8 - Experience and Variants

[misterbean]

You know what I love and hate about DDs?

You learn more about the game every time, and you realise that you approve of most of it.

Then you realise you have to wait for at least 2 weeks until you can learn more.

And the game itself? That's still an entire pregnancy away.
But I think we will have a beautiful, vibrant baby after those 9 months or so.

 

[seattle]

Perfect. I want this in Vicky 3

Perfect. I want Vicky 3!

@Podcat/Darkrenown
Any chance you could reveal the upgrades for the other ship types as well?
3 out of 4 should be clear: engine, hull and reliability. I guess the 4th one will be type-specific. Like AA for cruisers and guns for BBs. Which raises the question: If there is indeed just 1 parameter left, how much customization is there actually going to be in the game?

 

[Fryslan0109]

So naval experience is gathered by those specific ship models or by your navy as a whole? If the latter, then it starts sounding like another mana point system...

 

[civlibprof]

I was wondering if one way to gain experience would be through espionage. What I was thinking is that one of the missions could be military observation? I don't think you would get a lot of experience but it would be another way to make espionage important in the pre-war period, it could even be related to relationship with the country if your friendly you gain more experience like the US did during the Battle of Britain. If the country that your observers are in is at war you gain more if it is at peace you gain very little. Sorry if this was mentioned before I skimmed through the 13 pages and didn't see anything like this.

 

[RisingSun]

I am not sure if this game HoI IV is going to work out well, there so many flawed and wont be like historical setups on units, etcs. All i can say it will be a simply strategy wargame. So dont get your hopes up on this one. If you are tight on budget and not sure if this game is for you, wait til there a demo or wait six to twelve months and see how fans say about it.

 

[Lazy_Boy]

That screenshot is very worrying... looks like 10 steps back from HOI3 to a much more simplistic board game style.

 

[PlacidDragon]

So naval experience is gathered by those specific ship models or by your navy as a whole? If the latter, then it starts sounding like another mana point system...

My understanding of both land XP and naval XP (and presumably air XP which im sure is around the corner...lol), is that the XP is an accumulation of all your fights (call it battle experience if you will), in that particular medium (land, air, sea).

So yes, it is a point system, designed to do a number of things (and to force you to make the hard choices between them, which is another layer of strategy).

As far as i understand it at least

 

[PlacidDragon]

That screenshot is very worrying... looks like 10 steps back from HOI3 to a much more simplistic board game style.

Its (at or near) maximum zoomed out, so you cant really see any detail of anything. Any production facilities were likely just put in place for the purpose of the example (the game is in alpha)...

 

[1alexey]

So naval experience is gathered by those specific ship models or by your navy as a whole? If the latter, then it starts sounding like another mana point system...

If it is the former, what are you suposed to do with it?
You build a series of capital ships, usually around 3-4. The war starts a few years later. By that time, your engineers would develop much biger and better capital ships. So what are you suposed to do with expirience on the old ships? You can`t upgrade them, they are already built. You won`t build old ships, they are obsolete.

If you can use that exp to upgrade your new ships, the system makes sence. If you can`t, it is useless.

 

[Big Nev]

The way I see it...

Your individual ships gain experience and improve their own competence which will affect their combat abilities.

at the same time... your country (call it your engineers if you like) gain experience points that you can spend on upgrades & other stuff.

Now there's tech' research too. This allows you to develop ships with bigger guns, heavier armour etc. etc. but spending your country's gained experience allows you to jump ahead (a little or a lot is yet to be seen) of your currently researched tech' year.

So, for example, you may be able to research a 1944 tech' by 1942 but with experience you've spent it may be possible to effectively be a year or two ahead.

 

[plasticpanzers]

experience ships gain is often diluted by the increase of ships and the movement of recruits onto ships and
dispersing veterans among others. This often happens in ground units and was common, at least in US divisions,
thru WW2 as divisions were stripped of personel to rebuild other units and air units were raised with minimal
vets and a lot of recruits. Also was the reason for the drastic loss of Japanese quality of aircraft crews after 1942.

Overall experience is gained by knowledge gathered by upper echelon and passed around and by the vets that
survive the longest passing it on to newbies in their units and ships. There is no real 'morale' of ships ingame
that can represent 'elite' crews or poor use of ships such as Italy's really light use of their fleet.

 

[Cardus]

Not to nitpick here, but shouldn't the Italians be making Oriani class destroyers by this time? The 3 Mariabellos were all built in WW1. I suppose you haven't yet assigned tech levels, so that would be the lvl 0 destroyer class for Italy.

Just to avoid a possible mistake i.e, a misspelling in game: the class was Mirabello not Mariabellos (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabello-class_destroyer)

 

[Jazumir]

The way I see it...

Your individual ships gain experience and improve their own competence which will affect their combat abilities.

at the same time... your country (call it your engineers if you like) gain experience points that you can spend on upgrades & other stuff.

Now there's tech' research too. This allows you to develop ships with bigger guns, heavier armour etc. etc. but spending your country's gained experience allows you to jump ahead (a little or a lot is yet to be seen) of your currently researched tech' year.

So, for example, you may be able to research a 1944 tech' by 1942 but with experience you've spent it may be possible to effectively be a year or two ahead.

Well, IIUC, it´s more like this:

You still have conventional research as we all know it from earlier titles. The items to research this way are the basic models, the different classes (not types!) of ships (i dunno - ´Lexingtion´-class carriers, ´Iowa´-class BBs? - i am not versed in ship-classes). These all come with basic stats attached to them. And those stats you can boost by creating variances of the class with naval experience, which is accumulated by all naval vessels (a big pool filled by all ships-types). So if your DDs see a lot of battle, you could use that xp to carve out another carrier variant, based off your latest carrier model. I dont think there will be ´years´ attached to any upgrades on variants - only to the basic classes.

 

[Cardus]

I don't want to resurrect a heated discussion but in my opinion money is king always http://igmmedia1.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/logo-2.jpg

For example, apart from budget constraints to fund R&D + production, even for basic activities as agriculture and mining you need money. To exploit resources you need money, the same to store those resources (assuming that you can store them otherwise they are lost and this increases even more the cost). This is the reason why if there is a lack of demand the production slows down. Anyway all countries are interested in making money so they want to exploit/produce as much as possible to sell as much as possible. For example Italy received from the USA oil plus additional supplies as tractors, trucks etc, needed for the Abyssinian war during the League of Nations embargo. In HOI money is not so preminent and trades are not very welcome. In my opinion this should be amended.

 

[Modestus]

That screenshot is very worrying... looks like 10 steps back from HOI3 to a much more simplistic board game style.

Getting worried myself that this is going to be some version of EU set in the 20th century but I cant imaginer Paradox being that stupid.

Map still looks crap.

 

[seattle]

Getting worried myself that this is going to be some version of EU set in the 20th century but I cant imaginer Paradox being that stupid.

Map still looks crap.

Do you guys remember the alpha maps of Vicky2 and HoI3????
This already looks incredibly good for PDS standards.

#simplistic board game style
The map is zoomed out so far that in HoI1, HoI2 and HoI3 you wouldn't see any units on the map at this distance.
So by your logic, HoI4 is a board game while its predecessors were facebook-games...

 

[tommylotto]

We have not seen the map zoomed in yet. We should reserve judgment.

On the accumulation of experience, podcat has commented that you get it by fighting, but you also get it more slowly even while at peace. His comment was not much more detailed than that, and it is unclear if there is anything you can do to influence how much experience you accumulate in the peacetime years. Giving Germany and Italy experience from the SCW is essential. It might also be a function of intelligence and diplomacy. Spies could detect what your enemies are up to while observers can go on campaigns with your friends. I found an odd book written by USMC Gen. Pedro del Valle about his experiences in Ethiopia. He was a US observer with the Italian campaign in Abyssinia. He had some criticisms, but overall was very impressed, particularly with the logistics of the campaign. He later went on to command the artillery on Guadalcanal and the 1st Marine Division on Okinawa. It is interesting to think that lessons learned by Graziani in Somalia might have helped the marines beat the Japanese on Guadalcanal...

 

[Alex_brunius]

I have a suggestion for a 5:th value that would be very nice to have for ship variant selection:

Endurance:

Primary to separate the ships intended to be out at sea for months if not years in the Pacific ocean or as commerce raiders from littoral European variants with much lower range and endurance. This value determines range (fuel) and how long the ship can function at sea.

In game higher endurance ships could have more range, fuel , spare parts and ammo ( depending on how much detail the game goes into some of these could result in higher max org if not specifically modeled ). For Carriers it would increase how many strikes can be carrier out before ammo runs out ( real carriers seldom had more then 2-3 reloads available ), and repair/re-org of the airgroup.


Edit:

The tricky part is that there is really two factors at play for each value here that are totally separated.

The final engine power for example is derived both by how efficient/advanced the engine is, and how big it is ( how much % of the tonnage budget that is allocated ).

It would be cool if the system somehow allowed for both, so a primitive ship with 50% engines can be just as fast as a modern ship with a much smaller % engine.

 

[Stenner]

Assets

Just a guess but it seems like there are fewer models this time, is that just me?

Do you think it would be possible to get more art assets that change the pictured model?, like adding engine points changed the cowl shape of a plane every 5 points, or different cannons actually change the tank's main gun length?

 

[Poh]

Nice DD. I like the way you have integrated the techs from HoI3 into what seems to be a design with much more flavour and overall less complicated at first glance. It seems a little weird to use "Inf" for infinite when theres a perfectly good sign for it aswell as Inf begin used as the short for of Infantry which may cause you "confusion"

From the DD im mostly concerned about how much managing it will add to be able to change ship variant during production. I hope theres a popup, buttom or similar when you create a new variant that ask "do you want to upgrade your current production line to the new variant? it will add xxdays to the completion date, which will now be xx.xx.xxxx"