HOI4 - Development Diary - September 23rd 2016

[podcat]

I have to say I was a bit skeptical with the game as so many Problems were reported in the beginning so I was waiting for sale and started my first game after the 1.2 patch and.... wow this game really was an amazing experience. I love what you did there how the game feels and Looks. I didn't recognize any bigger AI failure or anything. Can't say that the game was easy (I was France and got crushed by Germany and Italy) as many People say here on the Forum. But I mean These People are probably pretty good Players and I am not (not yet).

I am looking forward spending more time with the game and seeing more dlc and stuff.

Good Work, Respect!

Thanks I quoted your post to the team as well. Its really nice to hear positive things because as devs most of our contact will be bug reports or people with problems, so hearing from the guys without problems and just having a good time adds some much needed balance

 

[nuarbnellaffej]

the core theme will be around allied cooperation and the commonwealth (but not limited to this).

This is fantastic news! Bad cooperation between allies, and especially commonwealth allies is a huge frustration for me atm.

 

[grandad1982]

Looking forward to the future.

I hope the cooperation with allies involves telling them to bog off from your section of front or asking them to help with specific unit types on a plan.

For me the airwar is the a bit of a let down and there are many aspects of it I think sound change but it's rather wait till you know what you want to do and can do it well.

My overall main hope for on going improvements is with the UI and information feedback to the player.

Good luck!

 

[Darkath]

season pass people will get it free yes


A few of those for sure. but I consider forts messing up SP balance too.



There was a lot of requests for it the Air management is one of those big things that didnt turn out as great as we imagined so you can be pretty sure its going to improve in the future. I dont think we will have time for any major changes to that in 1.3 though. Its more likely for expansion after that perhaps.

It's sad that Land and Naval come before Air in your grand plan, because while land and naval need some love, i think they are pretty fun aspect on their own now (except naval invasion with battleplans which are a drag) they mostly need proper balancing and good AI. On other hand, Air is not fun as it stands, mostly because there is no feed back for the player, there is no "air battles" and overall the impact of having a good airforce and air superiority is too low

 

[Axe99]

there is a very good reason for that actually in the Grand Plan. Stuff that needs to be in to make future improvements possible. You'll understand when we show it next year for next expansion.

Sorry - that wasn't meant as a criticism, more just a joke . That said, I like the sound of this grand plan you're working on (final stage being Errordawg taking over the world as our lord and master?), and I'm looking forward to next year (but still very much enjoying HoI4 now - I kind feel bad having not gotten around to playing Reaper's Due or EU4 1.17 or Stellaris 1.2 (all of which I'm keen to play) and it's, by and large, because I haven't quite been ready to put HoI4 down for a few weeks yet ).

improving UI and information to players is high prio and each major patch/expansion will improve that.

Cheers for the response and great to hear . I promise not to mention it every DD, just didn't want you to think that it wasn't a thing anymore.

Also, I didn't mention in my original post, but an expansion based around allied cooperation sounds really good . Could well be a good way to tweak the way expeditionary forces work as well, and possibly help flesh out Axis cooperation as well.

 

[mursolini]

The solution for the clunky air system would be very simple: Scratch air bases and only assign a desired target number of planes per type to a region. The a.i. assistant could handle the rest. Why would the player care which air base a plane is based on? The player builds airport capacity per region and the rest is abstracted. No need for actual bases on the map and micro-ing wings and base-attachment.

Redo air mechanics so that wings over 100 planes are not penalized(having to micro thousands of planes in wings of 50-100 is only slightly decreased by absence of air bases), get rid of teleporting to far away air region, because you can`t set up your wings to intecept over Channel&Nederlands even with great radar, if Brits want to bomb Berlin, that is where you need to put your planes in, and once AI changes air region, you too, have to. Change air mechanics so short ranged planes are not automatically penalized in large air regions, ex, ex. Plenty of stuff to work on, hardly very simple.

 

[podcat]

Redo air mechanics so that wings over 100 planes are not penalized(having to micro thousands of planes in wings of 50-100 is only slightly decreased by absence of air bases), get rid of teleporting to far away air region, because you can`t set up your wings to intecept over Channel&Nederlands even with great radar, if Brits want to bomb Berlin, that is where you need to put your planes in, and once AI changes air region, you too, have to. Change air mechanics so short ranged planes are not automatically penalized in large air regions, ex, ex. Plenty of stuff to work on, hardly very simple.

yeah its a big one

 

[Darkath]

Can we have Errordogs as a Species in stellaris if we own HOI4 ? pleaaaase

 

[mursolini]

@podcat Since the patch is about allied cooperation, any chance trade laws will be reviewed? The case where your ally AI closes economy and decimates your production, despite not needing all of it`s resources domestically is a huge pain! Allies should always have a chance to buy your surplus of resources, regardless of economy law. Cases like Romania closing it`s economy and cutting Germany of oil supplies is ridiculous, and make player prefer to conquer minor nations instead of having allies, just so player isn`t screwed.

 

[Adrized]

I'll take the chance sínce devs are reading this thread: Could you please add a way to see if a server is hotjoin or starting? It's so annoying to click through all the "all welcome" servers to find out that they've already started and are just hotjoin.

 

[mrelarquero]

I knew this would happen and I was really worried.
This game lacks content everywhere. People still played thanks to the amazing community around PDX games which improve the games for you.
I knew after fixing a little bit the game after several months, the next DD would bring up the sneak peak of a new DLC...

 

[tom_jones]

There was a lot of requests for it the Air management is one of those big things that didnt turn out as great as we imagined so you can be pretty sure its going to improve in the future. I dont think we will have time for any major changes to that in 1.3 though. Its more likely for expansion after that perhaps.

Long term, I think the air mechanics could really use a 'paradigm shift' to where an air wing is handled like the ground force division -- that is, you use the "division planner" to put squadrons (battalions) in groups (columns), use the existing unit training interface to crank them out, and then such units are attached to the current battle plans just like the ground force divisions, and handle support/bombing/interception in the marked/assigned area/province(s) accordingly.

So kind of similar to HOI3, but instead of having to make separate plan strikes for all your air units etc you just draw the fronts and their advances the regular HOI4 way, and assigned planes automatically get involved in fights along these fronts.

 

[podcat]

Long term, I think the air mechanics could really use a 'paradigm shift' to where an air wing is handled like the ground force division -- that is, you use the "division planner" to put squadrons (battalions) in groups (columns), use the existing unit training interface to crank them out, and then such units are attached to the current battle plans just like the ground force divisions, and handle support/bombing/interception in the marked/assigned area/province(s) accordingly.

I dont necessarily disagree with that

 

[Centuria]

Hey, since the focus of the Torch expansion/DLC will be the Commonwealth, will the diplomatic status of Oman, Yemen, Nepal and Bhutan be changed? I mean, at the very least they should be guaranteed by Britain, but hopefully be puppets, given how they were protectorates. It's wierd that as, say, Saudi Arabia or Iraq, i can conquer British protectorates and still be trading with them.

Of couse, Nepal having better relations with GB would also mean some Gurkhas will actually take part in the war at some point, and ATM these four Protectorates always end the game neutral.

 

[DominusNovus]

I would just like to lobby for improvements to The Pacific in general (happy to see it get some memtion) and China in particular.

In my opinion, China is a great country to play as and very useful for learning how to handle a large land war. You get to deal with building up your country from almost scratch and deal with your internal challenges, and you are almost naturally guided to focus first on land (to survive), then air (to secure the mainland), and then naval (to push back your attackers), each at a gradual pace, so long as you can survive the initial invasion.

It also has the appeal of being a country that, while on the winning side, didn't exactly win so much as survive, and even that didn't go as hoped. There's so much room for detail in there, its almost too perfect (and, imo, a far better candidate for said detail than Poland).

 

[Drasp]

the percentage is for daily unique players playing MP. It moves around a bit as its daily, but sits roughly there

The question here is more hoe the balance is changing between sp and mp, as i have a
feeling that more and more People start playing mp games.

 

[ASPGolan]

I hope the allied focus will also give some useful tools to the single player people to negotiate with the AI in charge of a faction (at least details regarding fronts in the player focus). For example, if I play as France and have joined the Allies, would like to be able to tell Britain to provide troops for specific fronts or not to provide any troops because I have things under control (and allow them to focus on other important objectives). It would be awesome if we could influence the chance of other operations organised by the alliance. There should be ways to negotiate this, a faction with greater contribution to the war effort should be more persuasive than others and willingness to commit divisions, sea/air support should provide negotiation power in the details of the missions (location, start date, total number of divisions assigned, objectives, total number of reserves, etc, etc).

I can see why such an area might be number 1 at this point, but have mixed feelings about it as there are other areas of the game in need of some tough love.

 

[fabius]

This is fantastic news! Bad cooperation between allies, and especially commonwealth allies is a huge frustration for me atm.

Agreed. And am wholeheartedly enthusiastic and pleased with the DD !

1. Better cooperation between allies, especially if I can limit their access to areas/regions at my fronts, and give or suggest plans would make the game exponentially more enjoyable for me. It would open so many more play style options and decisions as at the moment, as a Major I refuse most allies to keep them out of my supply space.

2. Focus on core Land War. Wow, yes, Yes, YES !! There's much that could be improved, tweaked, and added to improve the battle mechanics. Could we get some sort of ammunition supply with this...

3. Looking forward to the Pacific War making into the game

4. And later Air War.

Yes, all in all, it sounds like a very good round map

 

[Grallak]

I just like to point out that there are still two Iwane Matsui in the game. I know it's confusing to tell whether he was a field marshal or a general since he changed roles during the war but please delete one of them. I would have posted it in the bug report forum, but unfortunately, someone decided to deny that ability for people on probation. He has been there since Vanilla, please show some respect. I already brought this up with PDX but it still hasn't been dealt with. Thanks.

On the topic of DLCs, make sure they are focused on things with a lot of substance. I have no problem with paying for DLCs, but I would rather that the developers focus on fixing the core game rather rushing to make new content that will have to be fixed aswell. If you do make DLCs, I would suggest making new features like some good people mentioned earlier, such as espionage, expanded diplomacy and ledgers etc.

 

[hellfire15]

Honestly, hearing that a big focus will be the island hopping makes me hopeful to ever see an AI invade Japan <3