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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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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.
 
Dan1109 said:
Yeah, that is an excellent point. I mean how much R&D does it take to take your current aircraft of high speed, and REMOVE its weapons, and just carry more fuel and some cameras?? I'm actually not liking this, having specialized plane types....I really think you should be able to scout with ANY plane, but that missions is mutually exclusive with any other air mission. And if you choose it on a tac or strat bomber, you get a % range buff because you are carrying no ordinance.

I MEAN SERIOUSLY, THAT IS WHAT WAS DONE IRL!
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I'm pretty sure what is represented in game (based on the models being used) are not Observation Planes (which were pretty advanced already, but not suitable for intel gathering), but Photo Reconnaissance, which while it was done during WWI and the Interim peace, wasn't very advanced. Improvements in Stabilization (twin-engine aircraft were much more effective than single engine aircraft) and Heating (fogged lenses were a big problem) were the biggest advancements. For example, most experts consider the French Aerial Recon assets at the start of the war to be non-factors because they were still operating on the WWI 'observation' model (like the open cockpit Mureaux 115/117 and Potez 630) instead of a Recon model (the Bloch 174 were pretty good but scarce).
 
Louella said:
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.
Click to expand...
https://books.google.se/books?id=Ho...oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=the Rowehl Group&f=false here is some info on Rowehls early work
 
podcat said:
Q:Can you proactively change your own codes?
A:No, it would be too exploitable and no sane nation would do that.
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18) Are you alerted by ANY means that someone has used Active Decrypt Intel on you and broken you code? And by the way, why would changing your own code be insane? The Japanese did that right before Midway, so the USA was in the dark with their exact position, they just knew they would be in the area. Or....is changing your code, basically the same thing as upgrading to the next level of encryption? If so, that makes sense. And therefore I don't understand why upgrading your encrypt would be exploitable. Or are you talking about a situation where you change to a completely NEW system, so new and different, that it causes your enemy trying to decrypt to start over from scratch? If that's the case, yeah, I think that fair - I don't think anyone 'went back to the drawing board' on their ciphers.
 
xtfoster said:
I'm pretty sure what is represented in game (based on the models being used) are not Observation Planes (which were pretty advanced already, but not suitable for intel gathering), but Photo Reconnaissance, which while it was done during WWI and the Interim peace, wasn't very advanced. Improvements in Stabilization (twin-engine aircraft were much more effective than single engine aircraft) and Heating (fogged lenses were a big problem) were the biggest advancements. For example, most experts consider the French Aerial Recon assets at the start of the war to be non-factors because they were still operating on the WWI 'observation' model (like the open cockpit Mureaux 115/117 and Potez 630) instead of a Recon model (the Bloch 174 were pretty good but scarce).
Click to expand...
Agreed that twin engine aircraft are more suited for the job, although plenty of fighters did recon missions. Hell, spitfires photographed the Bismark during its run out of Norway. I just want a mission for Nav Bombers sitting on strike missions, doing NOTHING while waiting for the enemy to be spotted. I say, go fly up there and them the targets yourselves! And Strat Bombers should have the ultimate range when on recon missions, and were used ALL the time for naval recon in the Pacific. No an ideal use for them, but if you have nothing to bomb, go find something yourself.
 
podcat said:
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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@podcat I presume there will also be a carrier-based recon plane or are all recon planes land-based?

Ursul said:
I hope this can turn into a diplomatic incident of some sort, a military plane spotted flying above another's country instalations should create tensions. Even more if said plane is downed by anti air-defense or figther planes.
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I second this idea. There were cases of German recon planes shot down in preparation for Barbarossa, for example. Also, maybe we should have an option to launch a rescue operation for these downed pilots.
 
Dan1109 said:
Agreed that twin engine aircraft are more suited for the job, although plenty of fighters did recon missions. Hell, spitfires photographed the Bismark during its run out of Norway. I just want a mission for Nav Bombers sitting on strike missions, doing NOTHING while waiting for the enemy to be spotted. I say, go fly up there and them the targets yourselves! And Strat Bombers should have the ultimate range when on recon missions, and were used ALL the time for naval recon in the Pacific. No an ideal use for them, but if you have nothing to bomb, go find something yourself.
Click to expand...
Well, he already said that planes on other missions would provide Intel, just that only 'Scout' Planes could do the Recon Mission, and the Recon Mission provided the most Intel.
 
Ⰽⰻⱃⰻⰾⰾ said:
Can recon planes be shot in peacetime? Powers' U2 intensifies
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Agreed. I think there should be an event chain where a recon plane goes down in a neutral country, and the two parties involved have to decide how to handle it. In extreme cases, it could lead to the victim getting a CB against the perpetrator, but this should be rare.
 
Any chance we will see stuff like the french fleet and more french troops joining the UK if you help the french (and delay the germans) more than historically was done (including RAF help)? Not talking only about 1940 but also North Africa defecting in masse after the desert campaign push the Axis back a lot.

Good DD, BTW.
 
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