HOI4 - Development Diary - October 19th 2016

[Axe99]

I think it's best to steer clear away of "who contributed more to the war effort". Canada, Australia, India, China and even New Zealand and South Africa made significant contributions (although the last two were a deal smaller). It's just that this is a Commonwealth-focussed DLC, so we're seeing Commonwealth nations covered (and having a Commonwealth DLC now makes sense, as the alliance/puppet interactions it'll deal with will almost definitely add to gameplay with other nations as well. I think most of us hope China (or maybe East Asia - so Manchukou, China, Mongolia, Mengukou and, most importantly, Tannu Tuva ) will get a DLC of its own, with gameplay features that help flesh out its situation, rather than get a focus tree 'thrown in' with a patch/DLC. It's just WW2 is huuuuuge, and the dev team can't do everything at once.

 

[Zarathustra_the]

I think it's best to steer clear away of "who contributed more to the war effort". Canada, Australia, India, China and even New Zealand and South Africa made significant contributions (although the last two were a deal smaller). It's just that this is a Commonwealth-focussed DLC, so we're seeing Commonwealth nations covered (and having a Commonwealth DLC now makes sense, as the alliance/puppet interactions it'll deal with will almost definitely add to gameplay with other nations as well. I think most of us hope China (or maybe East Asia - so Manchukou, China, Mongolia, Mengukou and, most importantly, Tannu Tuva ) will get a DLC of its own, with gameplay features that help flesh out its situation, rather than get a focus tree 'thrown in' with a patch/DLC. It's just WW2 is huuuuuge, and the dev team can't do everything at once.

You need more Custer in your diet, you need to run to the sound of the guns! Not from them

 

[scroggin]

But Commonwealth nations are not puppets. India is, but Canada, South Africa, Australia etc are just independant.

We had close trade relationships. Military training tactics and technology was shared. Britain had a lot of servicemen from the commonwealth in the RAF and Royal Navy. And of course the king of England was head of state throughout the commonwealth. As a figurehead he never made government decisions but he was a unifying factor between our countries. The majority of pilots trained in Canada Australia South Africa and New Zealand actually served in the RAF

This was a far closer relationship than just an alliance of independent nations

 

[Axe99]

You need more Custer in your diet, you need to run to the sound of the guns! Not from them

Haha, don't worry, if I get my tail up I'll argue a point if I think it's worth arguing (as you well know Also, check out my contributions in the mega supply thread). I just don't think there's a huge point in arguing China > Canada > China in this thread . I could, of course, be wrong .

 

[Jorlem]

It occurred to me, wasn't it a design goal to reduce pop ups and pop-up menus like this? Why not integrate lend-lease into the logistics window instead? (And have requesting lend-lease from a nation expose your logistics window to that nation.)

 

[Oldflowersnewgraves]

As a Canadian i cant explain how excited i am for this. To play Canada as the proper industrial power that it was will be amazing. So ready to skewer the eagle!

 

[Alexander Seil]

You can look no further than Australia's contributions in the Pacific Theatre in 42-43, they more or less provided the entire land forces available outside of India. Ultimately the only thing China did was provide an uncoordinated, quagmire that ground down the Japanese at a rediculous cost. It was at no point strategic, more simply consequential of the Chinese mess.

At a ridiculous cost to the Japanese, no less. Australia's war in the Pacific consisted of operations that, in HoI4 terms, would be one-province battles involving at most a couple of divisions on each side. That's not to say that they weren't interesting or strategic, but they're not that interesting in a game of this scale, whereas Chinese ability (whether by open combat or resistance) to hold down millions of Japanese troops is something that demands proper treatment. I bet the first big expansion will be addressing that.

 

[Slowpoke]

Just a couple of points, in case anybody might be curious. The Canadian tech tree looks amazing, particularly the political choices, very realistic and generally overall a good tree, true to the development of the Canadian war effort. I am a private researcher focusing on Commonwealth arms and armament (in general, I am more focusing on ground equipment but I dabble in air power too.)

A couple of things I might want to add.

Canada's armored and vehicular focus, and production. Canada produced over 1900 Valentine tanks (sources vary slightly but most hover around 1900-1950) and, in addition, we produced huge numbers of "RAM-I and RAM-II" tanks as well as "Sexton" SPGs, comparatively for a country of our size. The lack of reference of Montreal Locomotive Works in the tank line is a little disheartening. I'd also be curious as to why the RAM-II wasn't actually added in the same way the Sentinel programme is made reference in the Aussie tree. (Both were essentially developments of the Lee chassis, more or less, the Sentinel, certainly more so). Not exactly sure how you'd work them in as a development. Much less well is known about Canada's intense foray into Armored Car development, including the very impressive 8 wheel Wolf which featured in it's initial stage, 3 engines, 8 wheel drive, a 60 inch turret ring and the turret taken wholesale from the RAM-I (production versions would feature the later RAM-II turret complete with 6 Pounder)

In addition, I would be interested to see perhaps something to do with Canada's indigenous development into SPAA, the 3.7" RAM and the Skink SPAA are both interesting options, the later was actually approved for service and production by UK but only canceled due to factors involved in the 'real' war (mostly the German airforce not existing in any capacity.).

General Andrew McNaughton was another huge source of Canadian tech development, he was the head of the National Research Counsel, and a leading expert on artillery, but due to his experience in the civilian world as an all-round engineer, also took great interest in flame warfare, tunneling and mining, mine clearance, airbursting, anti-aircraft and various other artillery techniques, all of which he had a hand in. He was involved in a number of "secret" development projects in Canada- and the long and short of it was that other than being a mediocre military leader and general he was a bit of a mad scientist and dabbled in everything from Artillery fire control and gunnery systems to hyper velocity weapons development- and it appears from my research into the UK and Canadian archives that he was really one of the big pushes into tungsten core'd projectiles, an early believer in APDS and APCR weapons and he pressed for more powerful tank guns. Much of this research was done at Valcartier, at what would eventually turn into the CARDE (Canadian Armament Research and Development Establishment) postwar. After the war, Canada's lead role in hyper velocity and APDS research would have them on the cutting edge of hypervelocity projects far into the 1960s, developing equipment for the UK and Commonwealth forces.

In Canada, we had developed a number of prototype weapons, including the "David gun" (essentially a wildcat gun, taking the 2 Pounder Projectile and the 6 Pounder casing) and the "Canuck Gun" which was, for all intents and purposes a "longer 6 Pounder" that had higher performance, neither of which reached production due to the rapid pace of the war. We were also leading developers of the "Pot-Type" sabot, which in the intern fixed a great deal of the accuracy problems of the inaccurate ww2 era Sabot ammo.

Another "missing" outlier may be Canada's tungsten production. Canada had a massive tungsten production and supplied herself and the UK with such a mass of Tungsten that reports I have compiled from mid '44 state that Canada should "cease increasing production due to a lack of processing facilities", meaning that we were producing such a mass of tungsten that ourselves and the UK could not actually turn the raw material into usable material quick enough.

I've got a lot more suggestions so I might comment again later!

 

[Chaoslord48]

So nice to see my motherland Canada get some love here, and the inclusion of the conscription debate really warms my historian heart