Hearts of Iron IV News

Hello there, C0RAX again.

It’s time again to reveal some more secret information that was hinted at in the last dev diary. Specifically this week will be revolving around the final part of railways and trains. So without any more need for introduction here are our stars of the show today.

The railway guns.

So to start off I'll go through how you get a railway gun on the map because it’s a little different to normal land units. First of all you are going to want to research railway guns which comes after armored trains



Then you can find it in your production tab just like building normal equipment. But unlike other equipment you build, these production lines are limited to 5 factories and the railway gun won't be added to your stockpile.



Instead, once completed, your brand new railway gun will appear in your capital, in this way they are built similar to capital ships.



Moving your railway gun is limited to provinces with railways, and so to get to the front you must have a rail connection. Taking into account the rail conversion time when capturing territory is important as you will have to wait for the big guns to be able to help you out.



You can also attach railway guns to armies just like with planes and they will attempt to place themselves relative to the frontline. If you have several, they will be distributed where possible to support your army. There is also a quick select button on the army to select all railways guns attached to an army should you need to.



Finally, the last bit of control understanding is range. Railway guns have a range in which they can support and so from any one point are limited in which provinces they can support. This range is shown by hovering over the unit icon.

On to combat now, here we can see a combat with a supporting railway gun, we have added the useful icon on the combat progress indicator that there is a supporting bombardment. This new icon will also show if there is shore bombardment happening in the combat.



The combat effects of railway gun bombardment work just like shore bombardment, causing negative combat stat modifiers to those on the receiving end of the big guns. These modifiers affect both soft and hard attack as well as defence values. Notably, these effects do not stack - it becomes more important to spread out your railway artillery than to concentrate it.



Finally we need to talk about capture and damage, railway guns can be captured via encircling them and damaged by damaging the railway they are placed upon.

Now railway guns are the biggest guns by far used on land and so it's important that we have representations of those built by the major powers. So now we look at the unique guns for the major powers.

This is the german Schwerer Gustav model you will see when playing as the germans. It's perhaps the most famous railway gun and definitely the biggest and so had to have a part in this feature.



This is the BL 9.2inch railway gun, a relic of the first world war but these big guns were kept in service until 1945.



Following that we have the french Canon de 305 another veteran of the first world war.


Next up is the USA’s 8-inch Mk. VI which remarkably first entered service as late as 1941!


Type 90 240 mm railway gun whose claim to fame is being destroyed by the retreating Japanese in the soviet invasion manchuria.

And finally the TM-3-12, three of these were made in 1938 and were used in the winter war against finland, unbelievably these where in service until 1999 (a whopping 61 years of service)

Finally here's a cool clip of the Schwerer Gustav firing in game.


[h3]Read the full Article Here [/h3]

Greetings, and welcome back for our last look at the supply system that ships with the Barbarossa update. As you all know, I’m British, and in Britain the trains never run on time - I couldn’t possibly break with this tradition, hence a completely intentional 10 minute delay on today’s diary.

There’ve been a couple of changes since we last looked at this, so you may find I’ll be reiterating a few aspects that we’ve already covered in previous diaries, albeit in some cases with a new twist.

Trains

As indicated in a previous diary, the logistics network that supplies your troops relies on the large-scale relocation of supply using trucks and trains.

Whereas trucks serve as an optional last-mile carrier for military supplies, trains make up the backbone of any logistics network that supplies an army which exceeds the local state supply available in its location.

The domestic production of trains is something that is unlocked via the technology tree. Many countries will start with the initial (civilian) train technology readily unlocked, however, there are several more options available to you as time progresses (more on this below!).

Your overall train need for the logistics network is derived from the overall supply usage of the nodes supplying your troops, and the distance factor that supply has to travel in order to reach them. In essence, the more troops you have drawing supply, the more trains you will need to keep supply running.

Needless to say, if fewer trains are provided than are required, supply output at point of demand will incur penalties proportional to the magnitude of the shortfall.

In one of our previous diaries, we alluded to a number of interactions that could be performed on supply nodes - one of these was a train priority setting. It transpired that this did not fit well with the underlying simulation, and we’ve removed this setting from nodes.

Logistics Strike

Of course, a freight-train loaded with supply makes a juicy target for the enemy. In NSB, CAS and bombers are able to perform the new logistics strike mission, which can put a severe strain on an enemy’s ability to supply their network - actively destroying trains and trucks, as well as damaging railways in the target area.

The strategic bombing air mission will also target rail and supply infrastructure, however the logistics strike mission is a much more effective way of neutralizing an enemy’s fighting capabilities while retaining important industrial infrastructure if you intend to occupy an area for any period of time.
Train Variants

As mentioned above, trains will be a researchable technology with several variants. Trains, unlike regular units, are not controllable - their movement and behaviour is entirely simulated based on the needs of your logistics flow. This said, there are several important statistical aspects to them.

To begin with, most of your network is likely to be populated by civilian trains. You can construct more of these by co-opting military factories. Further on in your campaign, you can unlock a variant of the civilian train with a significantly reduced construction cost.

To combat the strategic mission mentioned above, there is one (or..is it more?) further item in your toolbox for owners of the NSB expansion. Armored trains, while coming with a higher price tag, are much more resistant to destruction from air missions, and can act as an effective deterrent against logistics disruption.

Train enthusiasts (we have none of those here, right?) will note that the trains displayed above belong to the soviet union - there is indeed unique art as well as 3d models for several other major nations.
A highly camouflaged train in action. Displayed trains are based on your stockpiled train equipment. This is the german armoured locomotive!

That’s all from me for today - I’ll hand over here to @YaBoy_Bobby to go over some of the details on supply distribution at a hub level:

Hub to Province Supply Distribution

We have talked about how trains and rails feed the supply hubs, but not so much about how hubs feed divisions in the field. As hubs are fed from the capital province by a rail network, divisions are fed by hubs over land.

Every Hub has an overland range that gives it a collection of provinces that it touches. This range is constant, but the cost of moving over each province is impacted by things like weather, terrain, rivers, and infrastructure. Motorization decreases the penalty for crossing each province, thus increasing the number of provinces a hub will touch and potentially creating greater hub density and thus greater overall supply in an area.

As has been alluded to with the phrase “hub density,” a province may be touched by multiple hubs. When multiple hubs touch a province, a ratio is created to determine what percentage of the supply requested each hub is responsible for. Every hub that touches a province lessens the supply burden of other hubs also touching the province.

In the final step, Divisions draw supply from hubs, depending upon the relationship between their current province and the hubs that touch that province. When a hub does not have enough supply to meet demands, the lack of supply is distributed evenly across all divisions currently drawing from the hub.

In older DDs we talked about a penalty to the amount of supply delivered to a province based upon weather, terrain, and distance. Over the summer we decided to remove this penalty as we found it compounded in a hard to predict way that created bad supply and sometimes penalized having more hubs touching a province in a way that we did not like.

Greetings all, and welcome back for a slightly less content-focused dev diary than our latter soviet efforts. Today we’ll be covering a couple of smaller additions to be added in NSB, some of which have been hinted at before, followed by a small announcement from project management.

[h2]Weather 2.0[/h2]

One of our long-standing goals with the new supply system, was to introduce some changes to the way weather affects the gameplay experience. To give some strategic relevance to weather, we’ve slowed down the system to modulate between potential weather effects on a less frequent basis. This gives a player some time to react to potentially advantageous/disadvantageous conditions, as well as being somewhat more predictable on a larger scale.

In addition to this, we’ve taken a broad look at the combination of stat effects on ground conditions, temperatures, and weather, in order to mesh more closely with the new supply system, and to give a greater impact on campaigns - especially those conducted in adverse conditions:

• In addition to Org recovery, weather will now affect org loss from movement, and in extreme cases, supply consumption.
  
• While temperature has no new modifier effects, we’ve taken a pass on temperature data across the world, with the intention of improving accuracy.
  
• Ground conditions now also have the potential to affect org loss on moving divisions. This becomes particularly important in muddy/cold conditions such as the eastern front, where the combination of various conditional effects can severely slow an advance.
  

[h3]New Weather Effects: (WIP)​[/h3]


[h3]New Ground Conditions: (WIP)​[/h3]


Visually the weather effects have been updated to be easier to spot on the map, with updated particle effects weather will look better than ever. This also makes it clearer when a region is experiencing a weather event so you can react to it faster.

[h3]Equipment Management[/h3]

In NSB, we’re introducing the ability to manage specific equipment usage by division template. This means you can ensure that your elite breakthrough divisions have everything they need, while line divisions have equipment of a lower priority. Please bear in mind that the interface is still a work in progress!



You can access this new feature in the division designer, where you’ll have a comprehensive breakdown of all equipment types currently stockpiled.



We’ve provided several broad methods of manipulating equipment usage, in the form of a togglable setting on whether this division template should automatically have newly researched equipment enabled, and a quick method of toggling the usage of foreign equipment.

Beyond that, you’ll be able to toggle categories (such as Infantry Equipment II), all the way down to individual variants.



Changing these settings will not incur any explicit cost, though you’ll need to maintain awareness of your production lines when using these settings prodigiously. The update division tooltip, as before, will give you a summary of the scope of your changes, as well as how many divisions are likely to be impacted by this change. Lastly, it is important to note that these settings will affect reinforcement and training only - your existing divisions will not have their weapons immediately confiscated.

[h2]Allied Construction
[/h2]
Indeed, as hinted at yesterday, we’re introducing allied construction to the game. This oft-requested feature will allow you to build certain buildings in the territory of members of your faction.


Unlike subject construction, this will utilize only your own factories, leaving your favored ally to continue with their own constructions as before. We have limited the building types permitted for allied construction to Infrastructure, Railways, Airbases, and Radar, however this setting is easily moddable for those interested in expanding their options. We initially allowed the allied construction of forts, but, well, the office MP proved why that was a terrible idea.

For balance reasons, constructions with levels dependent on technology (ie Radar) will be limited by the tech of the recipient country, not the builder.

[h2]
Graphical Encircled Unit Icons[/h2]

We've taken the opportunity with NSB to add some feedback to one of the more serious situations an army can find itself in - encirclement. Whenever an encircled division is destroyed, a short animation will be played to draw some attention towards it. Of course, this animation also plays if you are the one doing the destroying.


[h2]
Changing of the Guard
[/h2]
Here, I’ll hand over to @podcat to cover an upcoming change in the HoI development team.

Hi everyone Dan here, I want to let you know that you’ll be seeing Peter more and more as he is now taking over as game director on Hearts of Iron IV.

Looking back I have been working on HOI4 for about 7 years now and before this I worked a few years on HOI3. So it's fair to say that Hearts of Iron will always be close to my heart, but I also feel like it's time for something new to sink my teeth into.

I’m going to be working with a Secret Project which I can't tell you very much about - except that I am super pumped about it, and that it isn't HOI5. While I’m sure the time will come for that, right now we feel that HOI4 still has room to be developed with content and cool stuff.

Timing wise it fits well for me. No Step Back was the last expansion step I had penned down back when the original game released in 2016 so it's time for another 5 year plan (heh). It takes the game full circle as with NSB we will have touched on all the major systems in free updates and expansions at least once. It's also a perfect time to get more fresh perspectives to help evolve the game when most of my original ideas and plans have now been done.

Of course you will still see me around and I expect I’ll be poking around here and there in HOI (one does not simply let go of their baby so easily!), but I am confident in Peter and the team to take the helm and keep steering the ship now, and I am sure No Step Back will be awesome and that you will all love it.



Et tu, Peter?! Game development is serious business!

Peter here - I’m honored to have been asked to take the reigns on HoI. I’ve been working closely with Dan and the team over the last months, and feel confident that we can keep on building HoI in the right direction.

As some of you will be aware, I’ve come to HoI by way of Imperator, having previously worked on several PDS projects as a content designer. Prior to that, I had a long and entirely unrelated career in classical music. Historical PDS titles are something I’ve been an avid fan of from long before I worked here, and I’m super excited to take my experiences forward from Macedonian nation-building to the 20th century.

We have many plans for the future of HoI so after NSB is safely out of the door, you’ll get a chance to see my take on the future of the game. This said, I’ll point out that Dan and I are very much aligned on the creative direction of HoI 4, so to pre-empt some questions, a switch in game director does not mean lootboxes, mana, or any radical shift in core design philosophy.

What does it mean? Well, it’ll take time to see that properly. We’ve made no secret of the intentions around future dlcs and content (see last PDXcon for more details!), so the best answer I can give you there is that we’ll be doing our utmost to meet this potential roadmap while I begin to put my personal spin on the game. I’m more than happy to try and answer broad questions about my thoughts on the future of this excellent game, my industry experiences thus far, or myriad other topics, but please be aware that (beyond what I’ve already implied) we will not, as usual, be able to answer qualitative questions on future releases.

In general, you’ll find me present and willing to engage in polite discussion on the forums and other media inasmuch as my time allows, so I expect to begin interacting more with this passionate community in the near future!

/Arheo

[h3]For the full Article: Read it here[/h3]