HOI4 Dev Diary - New Zealand & Combat Log

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podcat

Game Director <unannounced>
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Jul 23, 2007
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Hi everyone! With the team now back from a few days on Malta (where we learned, among other things, that limestone walls trumps radar for warning about incoming italian bombers), we are back at full steam and have another dev diary for you talking about stuff coming in Together for Victory and the free 1.3 patch. First up is the new focus tree for New Zealand:

New Zealand

In 1936, the First Labor Government had just taken power in New Zealand, the smallest of the commonwealth dominions. This new government introduced a number of social reforms and created what would become the world's first modern welfare state. In practical terms, this gives you a much needed boost to your available manpower and provides more workforce for your factories, represented by a reduction in consumer goods required.

nzl.jpg


With a very small industry, you'll have to work hard to expand your production capabilities. Fortunately, unique resources in the form of natural gas, oil and iron rich sands are available for you to exploit. Several industrial initiatives are also available to you and lucrative technology sharing focuses will give you a valuable advantage if you remain loyal to the commonwealth.

If you choose to abandon Great Britain to it's fate however, there are three options for you. You could side with the Japanese as they are your biggest threat, or you could embrace the global revolution and form closer ties with the Soviet Union. The last option available is to establish a true independent New Zealand and take your own path. Perhaps by taking Australia on the way.

nzl_portraits.jpg

Some of the new leaders & portraits for new zealand

When working on the New Zealand tree, we wanted to include some important historical developments. The formation of the Royal New Zealand Navy and Air Force were important for the country's ability to defend itself. To aid you, two light cruisers and a number of aircraft will be transferred to the newly formed services.

The Charlton Automatic Rifle, although historically never deployed, was a modification of the Lee Enfield rifles for automatic fire. This was just one of many efforts to make do with what limited resources they had at hand.

Another such effort, perhaps not quite as successful, was the development of the Bob Semple "tank". This indigenous armored fighting vehicle was constructed from a tractor chassis, armed with no less than six Bren machine guns and was armored with corrugated metal plating. It was believed to be bulletproof.
nzl_tanks.jpg


Combat Log
You might have spotted changes to the theater interface in earlier screenshots, and now is the time to explain whats up!
nzl_log3.jpg

First of all there are two new indicators on the right. These show you how many active defensive and offensive combats are going, and if any of them are having problems. Its a good way of noticing if there are changes to the status of a front at a glance. Next to them is a button that opens up a brand new interface: The combat log.

nzl_log1.jpg


This new feature gives you access to history over combats for the selected command groups in the theater. Summarizing losses to combat damage, attrition, any combat modifiers that were present and breakdown on losses to air. The idea is for you to be able to analyze the situation after the combat is over. This part will be available for everyone as part of the free 1.3 "Torch" Patch. For people who get Together For Victory there are also two more tabs available letting you dig into lists of equipment losses for you and enemies and check out performance of division templates involved in the fighting.

nzl_log2.jpg


Thats it for today, next week I'll be inviting @Jazzhole and @Metal King over to talk about awesome new music and sound.
Also don't forget to tune in for today’s World War Wednesday Livestream and find out if who of the Allies and Axis will be able to tip the balance in the war in Europe! Watch it live @16:00CET over at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive!
 
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@podcat Is it possible to add "Manpower lost" in the left DLC-Screen for the enemy? Like a rough estimate? And does this count different enemy nations as one? E.g. if I fight the allies and there are Canadian, British and Indian troops, I can see their combined lost equipment?

you can toggle a detailed or not list. if its not detailed its all summarized into one type and you wont see country specifics. As for manpower, maybe.. I'll check.

@podcat, is there any chance to have a dev dairy on the new art and 3d models added in TFV? There looks to be a lot of it, and I love that kind of stuff!

yes :)

Will the combat log history take into account encircled troops that your army overrun ? So that you know how many enemy divisions you captured ? And since now casualties are loggued, could we hope some day, inflicted casualties could be taken into account for peace conference ? In Hearts of Iron 3 it was one of the things I hated, me, the player, I was doing all the hard work, but the AI was taking territories, thanks to my success and kept these after the war. Would be nice to see that thing change.

I'd like to count casualties and warscore better in the future yeah. Just looking at terrtiorial conquest doesnt tell the whole story. overruns should count as (very) one sided combats
 
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Well at least with Italy wasn't there at least, nominally speaking, some talk about it and maybe a couple rough sketches here and there? I just don't see us having even of that for the Big Bob.
the italian super heavy is actually from a joke thread here on the forum ;) Big Bob is just a crazy thing and I suspect if NZL had made a super heavy it would have been crazy like that.
 
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Not sure if I understand the purpose of the first screen in the combat log, however the equipment log is very nice. Was well needed!

it gives you summaries of losses from combats that have happened. It lets you see for example how much losses you actually take from attrition, air and enemy fire. hard to get by just observing combats (and doing it on all is hard if you dont pause all the time)
 
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Though the NZ focus is a bit small, I love this dev diary! Honestly I kind of wish the log would be completely DLC- everyone is complaining because suddenly they don't understand your awesome DLC policy, however it's happened so much and the people doing it have been so ignorant(a lot- I'm not calling anyone specifically ignorant) that iv grown tired of it and have stopped taking them seriously.

The reason to make the base window free is twofold:
- Having a simple log of combats instead of popups was something I had planned for release but had to cut due to lack of time
- if I put the whole window in the DLC it means I cant add more tabs and other statistics in the future to it, something I would like to do
The same argument goes for the configurable garrison order. its a big improvement now, but we have future plans that might end up changing it drastically. We dont just give away stuff for free that make perfect sense to put paid in DLC, there is almost always a practical reason for it ending up the way it does. I recommend not overthinking things and embrace that people who dont pay for the DLC still end up with a lot of cool stuff for free

So why are limestone walls better than radar as an early warning system?

Quicker basically. if you use radar it wont warn you until the planes are in the air, while the wall lets you hear their engines rev up. info here: http://www.everythingiselectric.com/malta/il-widna-maghtab.html I found it very interesting.

Am I imagining it, or are you implementing the "Clearer Unit Selection Mod"? Awesome is so!

Not sure how close we got, but I sent @Sideburnout a link to the mod and said "this is great, make something like it" :)
 
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Can we get a way to see how many total soldiers we have in a selected army?
you mean in manpower? I have that in a future todo list. probably wont get in for 1.3 tho.

Cheers for the DD Podcat :D. New Zealand focus tree looks mint (although I'm not totally convinced that NZ need a Big Bob national focus, but I appreciate that their small size means some creativity is required :)) and that Combat Log looks the bomb - very useful. A few questions if easy/appropriate (but ignore if not):

1) The slider at the top looks like it maxes out at 12 months - any chance this is (or could be in the future) moddable? While many theatres didn't last much longer than this, something like the Japanese front in China, Eastern Front for Germany/USSR or the front in North Africa lasted longer, and it'd be nice (ie, this isn't critical, but it'd be nice if it's an easy thing to do) to be able to extend it to the whole history if possible.

2) What does "armoured" and "other" mean in the combat log? I'm guessing that manpower is total manpower lost, armoured is manpower lost to armour, air is manpower lost to air and other is manpower lost to anything that's not armour, air or infantry, but it's either potentially confusing or I'm just thick. If latter, laugh and roll on :).

3) Are the categories in 2 moddable in terms of how many are displayed? For us detail nuts, would be cool if we could tinker with the interface and add motorised and infantry (and perhaps mechanised, or whatever feels appropriate for particular mods). This is just a "it'd be cool if it was possible" (and, as a land thing, something I personally would be unlikely to get to until 2017).

1) Its a question of savegame space and memory, but yes its moddable
2) those are actually listing equipment losses by category, so lost armored vehicles, regular equipment, or aircraft
3) I am not completely sure on this one without spending a lot of time digging into code, but the categories I think are moddable, but right now UI only handles those particualr ones. we can probably expand it in the future.
 
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Agreed. The mock-up below seems ideal to me.

1zvq23a.jpg


Also, and this is just nitpicking, but the "Won Combats" column might be better after the "Fought In" column. That's strictly my opinion though and doesn't really matter too much.

Edit: One last thing. Some good columns for the Div.Templates section might be "Defeats" and maybe next to the numbers in the "Won Combats" column and suggested "Defeats" column it could show the percentage out of the totals battles they fought in. For example, in the image above for the "Indian Divisions" under "Won Combats", it could say "21 (80.76%)". Or a "Win Factor" column for the divisions like the combat log already has for overall battles. Just 'something' so the player could calculate a template's worth at a glace.

thanks for this feedback btw. we are doing some tweaks & improvements
 
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