HOI4 Dev Diary - Scout Planes and breaking the Enigma - and Stream premieres today at 16:00CET!

[podcat]

Hi everyone! Today we are going to start talking about changes to Intel and present some of the tools you will have at your disposal for gaining it in La Résistance. We will also go back to the Agency and talk about code cracking.

Scout Planes
Scout planes is a great way of gaining intel on your enemies. This is a new plane type that comes in two tech levels

These new planes are not capable of fighting or giving air superiority, but they have a new mission “Air Recon” which can also be performed in peace time. This mission will give you intel on nations under its area of operation, or their navy if covering trafficked naval regions. It also does spotting of ships and divisions so its a great way to figure out what the enemy is up to.

Other planes types can not do the air recon mission, although in war time other planes will be gaining you intel as well during regular operations.


Code Cracking
One of the things in WW2 that has always fascinated me was the allied efforts to break the axis codes, particularly the work done at Bletchley Park. When reading about this work you usually are told about the tough choices that had to be made, because after the enigma codes had been cracked and german messages could be read the allies were forced to only use this knowledge in limited ways. If they had not it would have tipped off the Germans that they knew and made the whole thing moot. Basically, to save the punch for when it was most needed. This is something I wanted to make sure that we captured when we started designing the new code cracking system.

To interact with code cracking etc you need to form a new department in your Agency. Under it are upgrades both for creating and breaking enemy ciphers.

The higher your decryption power the faster you can break enemy codes and the higher your crypto strength the tougher you in turn are to break.

In the above screenshot I have cracked Germany's current cipher. If they end up upgradign to a higher level I would lose some progress and have to continue the work. The 25 shown is your total decryption power and will be shared among all active projects. Right now Denmark is the only active one so gets the full attention and fastest possible code breaking.

Having a cracked code gives you some passive bonuses that are not possible for the enemy to see and confirm, such as air interception. To take full advantage you will need to commit and fully activate. Doing that gives you 30 days of full intel on the enemy as well as an assortment of other bonuses.

A perfect time to use it when launching naval invasions or starting fighting somewhere because when activated the enemy will know and ciphers will reset within 30 days. After this time you will need to crack their code again,, which probably will have had its strength upgraded.

Outside of just having a bunch of mathematicians working day and night on breaking the enemy codes you can also help them out though clandestine operations

This diary showed you more ways of gaining intel, next week we will be getting into the details about the intel changes. See you then!

Today we start streaming La Résistance!
Tune in to twitch at 16:00CET to watch us talking about Updated Garrison and Resistance Mechanics! The stream will be available on Youtube later.

 

[podcat]

Military planes flying over other nations while at peace? That doesn't sound right.

Germany did it both to poland and ussr before attacks

 

[podcat]

Questions:

1) Will Aircraft Carriers be providing intel in their sea regions (and possibly adjacent sea regions to a smaller extent, based on where the TF actually is in the SR)? Scout aircraft were sent up ALL the time, looking for the enemy.

2) Will catapult planes on CL/CA/BC/BBs offer any intel to the SR?

3) Will "spotted ships" by scout planes cause a) Strike Force to sail immediately for that target, i.e. instant spotting? b) be engaged immediately by Patrol TFs in the SR? c) immediately/quickly be attacked by Naval Bombers set to the Region?

4) Can Scout Planes, not necessarily Naval Intel through code breaking, spot individual subs that can be quickly attacked by other forces, or is it just noted for the record that "subs have been spotted in the region", and you need/should manually ensure you have Escorts in that region (if you indeed have convoys in that region)

5) What circumstances can recon aircraft be shot down? A) air superiority aircraft B) provincial AA C) AA in divisions D) interception aircraft E) naval fighters on carrier mission F) naval ship AA....oh, and I know I'll catch hell from this... G) convoy AA. Assuming A will have the highest chance of being shot down, more likely the more airsuperiority the enemy
has than you, if 50/50 AirSupp, should be a low chance I would assume.

6) Could Strategic Bombers be given the mutual exclusive opportunity to perform scout missions? Their extensive range make them ideal, and sometimes, you just don't what to be bombing ALL the time.

7) How do you split your Decrypt power amoungst dozens of enemy countries? In a German example, I might not want to spend any Decrypt power on minor countries that I plan to quickly conquer, and just make sure to focus all of my power on SOV. Or is there a away to assign exact %s, or is it just ON/OFF and given an equal share?

8) So, a nation only uses 1 code for all armed forces? Its not per service branch? No diplomatic codes (for country info, not military). But with espionage, we have infiltrate Navy, Army, Airforce?

9) For enemy navy ship locations, I assume if you don't pull the trigger and reveal intel/decrypt, you get vague info location of the ships, but if you ATTACK those ships, is the intel revealed? Thinking of Midway - Japanese were foolish if they didn't realize 100% that after Midway, their code was cracked, and USA definitely revealed their intel by attacking them in their largest numbers, in perfect position for an ambush.

10) Going back to #9, there are not any passive intel/decrypt bonuses for fighting ships....is it again that by not revealing the intel/decrypt, you are simply expected to make appropriate changes to your raiding/escort/SF mission areas? Thinking of Enigma, this would let the UK keep their escort mission areas focus on where the U-boats are and around those regions....hehe, will the AI be able to do this? It certainly wastes lots of escorts by running missions in Indian Ocean and South Atlantic, places where enemy doesn't even have range to operate (and docking rights are known, not secret). Speaking of which, thats an AI improvement you can do today - the AI should NOT run escort/Patrol/SF missions in regions that it knows the enemy cannot reach. Navy intel can give you a breakdown on enemy ship range capability (its pretty easy compared to any other secret the ship has).

11) Is any of this information SHARED with your allies? Passive DEcrypt info? Scout Plane info? Activating the Decrypt Intel, are the bonuses shared? If the results are not shared, does the strength of your decrypt efforts affect your allies? Any collaboration in this at all??

12) Are there only 3 levels of encrypt/decrypt? What happens when you break their code and use active decrypt intel for a 3rd time? Or it doesn't work that way? Perhaps if your levels are EQUAL, then you decrypt at a base rate (maybe 365 days), but if your encrypt is level 3 (german enigma), and you stupidly don't even realize that anyone will ever try mechanical decrypt, it might take 365x10 days to decrypt if you level decrypt level 0, but only 365 days if you have level 3?

13) BTW, Decrypt is much much more costly than encrypt. do you have them reversed in CIC cost??

14) cipher has no "Y" in its spelling

1) 2) No, these are different systems although combat will. it will get clearer when we show the whole thing next week.
3) no, spotting is quite strong, but you still need more sources to get them instantly. altho all is subject to balancing still
4) its a lot more abstract than that, altho a sub force could be spotted to a high degree (but not 100% atm, see 3)
5) similar to things like strat bombers. So no divisional AA, but interception and regular aa can.
6) they already supply some intel as they are.
7) it is just on off with even split of resources
8) yeah keeping it simple. we have the per-branch stuff in the intel system and spy operations tho
9) not really decided the entire effect yet.
10) see next week for more details
11) bonuses from crypto are not shared, for intel see next week for details
12) 5 levels. when stuff is broken it resets after 30 days and needs to be broken again. but yeah after 5 levels its not possible to make the re-cracking more time intensive
13) encryption is 30% costlier for the higher levels. note that there is 2 upgrades each for them
14) been reading too much Dark Angels lore :S

Can recon planes be shot in peacetime? Powers' U2 intensifies

we are debating if static AA Should be able to do it. atm we try to balance it around accident chance

 

[podcat]

Hmm, will there be a release before Christmas...

also no. you would know the date if so

 

[podcat]

good or evil

Thats the question isnt it ;D

I would like to see a new thread in Reddit of your team talking with the community.

we'll probably do one before release. Its always fun!

they key word in your reply was "BEFORE", or put more precisly "just before". You can't accept that this is OK for months and years before war without any consequences?

I dont have my research books on it at the office. I will dig up some numbers for you. From my memory Germany did it for like a year over poland. Specially built scout planes can go at very high altitudes where you cant easily identify (especially as you'd paint them to look civilian) or intercept things and at the time period it wasnt enough of a threat to cause major diplomatic incidents.

Can you proactively change your own codes?

No, it would be too exploitable and no sane nation would do that.

 

[podcat]

The Germans did some covert photography of the UK before the war, under a few schemes, such as Theodore Rowehl flying a civilian Heinkel 111 fitted with secret cameras, under the guise of surveying potential routes for the Lufthansa airline. The Hindenburg and other zeppelins also took photographs of towns and cities from the air. (They even sold souvenir prints of the pictures taken by Hindenburg to the public to help cover the expense, the cheek!)

When war broke out, the Luftwaffe photo flights continued, using high altitude capable aircraft, that were difficult or impossible for most fighters to intercept.

Incidentally, the Luftwaffe, and not the RAF were the first to make a comprehensive aerial survey of the UK. The RAF only did so in 1947.

https://books.google.se/books?id=Ho...oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=the Rowehl Group&f=false here is some info on Rowehls early work

 

[CraniumMuppet]

If not shooting it down SOMETHING must be done. No sovereign nation would allow this. Why else would you send a spy plane? Any reasonable person would figure it out.
You would need diplomatic event popups or something that rapidly puts your country on a war stance.

Germany did extensive recon of Western USSR before Barbarossa and was largely unapposed since Stalin did not want an escalation and a war with Germany. Pre-war a lot was done as aerial mapping, although Sidney Cotton did some strategic recon just before the outbreak.

I think the thing to consider is
1. it is not always easy to determine a recon plane from another plane
2. The major powers during pre-war ww2 did really not want a ww2 after ww1, and tried to avoid escalation for a long while, so even if a plane was suspected or doing recon work, it was probably hard to gather enough evidence to accuse said power of doing recon. Even if evidence was gathered it isnt clear that the western powers were willing to stamp their foot down, even after Czechoslovakia and Poland they were still kinda hesitant to commit fully for a while (see phoney war)

 

[CraniumMuppet]

This implies that they should be single planes and not an air wing of 50 or 100 planes. So will that single plane do as much as 20, 50 or 100 recon planes in the same air zone?

I am not sure how easily 20-100 recon planes over an area the size of say, Northern France would be to spot with early ww2 tech actual. Granted recon was mostly targeted at specific locations irl, so some abstraction is required for the game.

Even then I am not sure if they would be shot down either way, as the remifications of such an attack is questionable at best. Imagine giving the Third Reich a CB against Soviet for shooting down a "civilian" plane flying over USSR territory, a nightmare for most countries at the time

Then again as Podcat said, whether it does or does not makes sense to be able to shoot down recon planes during peacetime is still being ironed out so things might change

 

[Enfield_PDX]

I was going to come in with some rebuke about how peacetime recon flights were a thing (The number of flights going over the USSR prior to Barbarossa was actually quite staggering) and how dealing with them in HOI is a difficult gameplay problem to solve but I feel like a lot of people are missing the key point of this dev diary.

Look at how damn cute the FW-189 is.