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

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
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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.

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.

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If we send 10000 scout planes to Sweden now, how soon will we know the release date? :p
 
Lets forget for a moment that we know that in HOI a world war is going down.
But if in real life everyone took that aproach we wouldn't have had the cold war, it woudl've gone realy hot realy fast, get what i'm trying to poke at?

ps. my original reply was kind-of ment as a joke, but i feel i do have some form of a point though
I agree with your point. But there cannot be actions without consequences. We have WT and WS, due to aggressive actions of belligerent nations. Sending recon planes deep into enemy territory during peacetime is not a belligerent act? Yes, it should heat things up quickly...and hopefully a human or the AI wouldn't do it until war is pretty much imminent.

I'd just love to see the SOV start the war first, because GER has been sending scout planes into SOV territory, for 2 years straight.
 
16) How will intel be used with puppets? Are you telling me that New Zealand has to have its own ciphers which are completely independent of its mother country?? Germany has to crack UK, Canadian, New Zealand, Australian, South African, Burmese, Malayan ciphers, just to get a readout on the Commonwealth??
 
I agree with your point. But there cannot be actions without consequences. We have WT and WS, due to aggressive actions of belligerent nations. Sending recon planes deep into enemy territory during peacetime is not a belligerent act? Yes, it should heat things up quickly...and hopefully a human or the AI wouldn't do it until war is pretty much imminent.

I'd just love to see the SOV start the war first, because GER has been sending scout planes into SOV territory, for 2 years straight.

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.
 
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.
Yeah, that's what the War Support Mechanic is all about. Do it too much, and you can even be DOWed by a democratic nation. Do it too much against a Fascist country, and they might get a free annex war goal on you.
 
Germany did it both to poland and ussr before attacks
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?
 
17) Radio Intercept Group helps decryption and Goverment CIIIIIpher School only helps encryption?? How do these factor in exactly?
 
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.

Well, the Soviet Union and the USA didn't go into war during the 60s, so I guess if we are going to draw from Real Life(tm) equivalents, not all spy planes should cause a CB for the spied country on the spying one. Perhaps stuff like WT increasing or WS decreasing on the spying country or WS increasing on the spied one and that's it.
 
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?
Exactly. This is why I suggested that it should only be done while justifying (of doing a focus) as a prelude to attack.

You should not be able to do this at peace. Only "before attack."
 
Germany did it both to poland and ussr before attacks
Australian Sidney Cotton conducted spy flights (on behalf France and Britain), disguised as business trips, over Germany prior to the invasion of Poland.
 
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.