Hearts of Iron 3

[kris4o1993]

Development Diary #16 - 11th of February 2009

Before we launch into this, let’s recap quickly the important parts from the previous developer diaries. First off we have move remaining attack, we also have designer divisions and each division has an attack frontage. The attack frontage is determined by the composition of the division and doctrines.

So first we’ll start by talking off the effect of division design on combat. Attack frontage is determined by the number of actual combat brigades as opposed to support brigades, now I sure the more observant amongst you are thinking well why not build a one combat brigade division with a large number of support brigades? That would minimise your width while maximising your combat power. Well we’ve put a bit of thought into this problem. What we came up with is the cooperation penalty, the more divisions you have committed into the front line the harder it is for them to cooperate effectively and thus your combat effectiveness starts to drop. Although I should add that this penalty is reduced by doctrine research and having a good theatre commander. Well what happens when you go down the opposite route then, then big division with a wide combat frontage? Well obviously the combat cooperation penalty is reduced, however big divisions are more expensive to supply. This creates two additional headaches for you, firstly in low infrastructure provinces you may simply not be able to supply enough divisions to maintain an adequate force to space ratio, and secondly on the offensive these units will be able to draw even less than the required supplies and take longer to re-supply back up to full offensive ability afterwards. Next is officer requirement, the more brigades a division has the more officers it requires to be fully effective, but we’ll come back to officers a bit later. If you also factor in the longer fronts, a small number of large divisions may simply not be able to hold a long front effectively. Essentially what we have aimed to do is to is try and avoid the one obvious choice and set up a series of strategic choices where different situations require different solutions.

Next onto to officers and shattering. In the top bar there is a percentage value that is your effective officer value. Building divisions increases the amount of officers your army requires, taking casualties reduces your officer value. In each round of combat a unit has a chance to shatter. The formula is based on the effective officer percentage, the casualties a unit has taken (both org and strength), the leadership value of the commander and the experience the unit has. If a unit shatters and does not have a valid supply line then it is simply eliminated. Otherwise the unit loses a large percentage of its strength and reappears in the capital ready to be rebuilt back up to full strength. So basically a well lead, well officers, veteran division to can fight on long past the effectiveness of most normal divisions. Thus late in the war, providing the Germans have been able to maintain there officer value, the majority of their divisions should be highly resistant to shattering. We are aiming to duplicate the effect where highly motivated commanders would assemble to remnants of divisions into battle groups and continue to resist the enemy advance long after effective resistance should of ceased. Just a final note about the shatter effect, since the unit is not eliminated, it will retain some of its accumulated experience. Thus once it is rebuilt from the survivors that did manage to hold cohesion, then it will be a bit more resistant to shattering next time around.

The next thing to move onto is what happens when you retreat. Two changes, firstly comes out of the new combat system with front line and reserves. As the defenders do not leave combat as a stack but as individual units, they will retreat as individual units instead of as a stack. In addition the defenders do not retreat the whole distance out of the province, instead the distance the defender has to retreat is determined by how far the attacker has advanced. So if the attacker has moved 50% of the distance into the province, then the defender only has to retreat 50% of the distance. This logical little change should help make the retreat mechanics work more sensibly.

Another change we have made is a combat effect called push back. Whenever a defender has a unit removed from the line they suffer a pushback and installations in the province suffer damage, this includes infrastructure and fortifications. Here we were aiming for two things. As you assault a fortification line you will steadily over run each strong point in turn, eventually there you will push through the line and it will be as if there are no longer any fortifications. The infrastructure effect is much more interesting, if you quickly overrun the enemy in a province you will capture the infrastructure fairly intact, allowing you to supply your advance much more effectively than if you have fought a long drawn fight that has thoroughly devastated the province. So you’ll need to think a bit about those infrastructure strikes you will be considering using to reduce the ability for defenders to draw supply and slow down reinforcement, because if you can over run the enemy quickly your only going to hurt yourself.

I suppose we should add in a little about combat events. Yes they are in and since we have reworked combat they will have different effects. However we have added a rather important change. There are now specific combat events according to if you are the attacker or the defender. So only the attacker can gain the event breakthrough (which allows his attacking stack to move faster), while only a defender can gain the event delay (which narrows the combat width available reducing both the number of attacker and defenders that can be committed). Each of the 4 doctrine paths has a specific pair of attacking and defending events associated with it (those 2 detailed above come from the spearhead doctrine path) and researching those doctrines increases the chances that those events will happen.

[kris4o1993]

National unity

Exclusive update for our subscribers: Hearts of iron 3 – National unity

Those of you who have been keen followers of Hearts of Iron 3 will have heard us mention this concept of National Unity on several occasions, without going into much detail about it.
Well for the Paradox Newsletter we thought we would do an exclusive and reveal a bit more.
This began as a simple discussion on why did France surrender in 1940 and yet there was never any contemplation of defeat in 1914? Why did the United Kingdom continue to fight in June 1940, despite the odds looking very grim indeed and logically some sort of peace should have been sought?

From these questions we started to build our concept of National Unity. In 1914 a profoundly united France entered into war, there was a Union Sacrée that saw all political parties united in a determination to win, a determination to recover Alsace and Lorraine. The France that enter World War II was a far more divided country, the February 1934 crisis split the country down the middle and the French right’s rallying cry was “rather Hitler than Blum”, some would argue that France lost the war before a shot was even fired.
We see National Unity as how united the people at the top are, it partly feeds into coups were the more united a country is the more resistant to coups, but also into the conduct of the war. A highly united country is less willing to surrender in the face of defeats and will require much more core territory to be overrun before a surrender is considered.

National Unity can be raised only though events/decisions and espoinage and these can also lower national unity. National Unity can also be lowered by unconsested strategic warfare, your submarines and bombers canot force a country to surrender, but they cannot be ignored. Britain must divert surface and air assets to counter a sustained German U-baot comapign or see them steadly start to contemplate defeat, while if Germany does not withdraw fighters to counter an Allied bombing offensive their will to continue weaken. National Unity will raise the level of realism in Hearts Of Iron 3 to a new level.

[kris4o1993]

Development Diary #17 - 18th of February 2009

Air orders were one of those more interesting problems to play around with. When we started to think about them we first looked back at what we had done previously. So what did we do previously? Well in Hearts of Iron 1 we had the system of air units operating single provinces. It was great, you knew exactly where your air unit was going to be, but hell to manage. So in Hearts of Iron 2 we came up for the system of regions of operations. It was nice to manage, but wasn’t it just so annoying when your bomber would bomb the wrong unit in the region? So we came up with the idea of user defined region of operation, limited by range you define how large an area an air unit operates in. Thus you can have fighters patrolling large areas, while your close air support bombs that stack you really want then to bomb.

Now all this sounds great but how to do this in a simple manner? You start with an air unit, give it province to operate in and a mission. Then you get 4 additional choices. The first two should be fairly familiar to you. You can tell an air unit to only operate in the province you have selected, just like in Hearts of Iron 1. Or you can also tell the air unit to operate in the region you have selected, just like Hearts of Iron 2. However for Hearts of Iron 3 we have added two more options, defining a cone and a circle. In both cases you define the maximum range and then map will handily show you where they operate, from here you can shift click to add and subtract provinces as you see fit. When you define a cone you select the angle of the cone, thus you could define fighters operating the UK to operate in a semi-circle centred along the South coast. They will intercept German planes inside that semi-circle but won’t stray over into France in the pursuit of enemy planes.

Air missions themselves are fairly similar to Hearts of Iron 2 in both number and effect. However we have made two important changes to how missions work. Firstly we rewrote runway cratering so that it will also damage planes on the ground. This we feel was most definitely missing, and allows you to try and catch enemy airforces on the ground. The second is how logistical strike works. If we cast our minds back to the dev diary about logistics, supplies flow out towards units. Each province in the line of the supply holds supplies moving forward towards the frontline unit. It is now possible to target and destroy these supplies, preventing them reaching the enemy front line units.

With regards to the mechanics of the air mission system we are also implementing the same reserve system as found in naval missions. So you can have three fighter squadrons, two in combat in one in reserve. When one of the fighter squadrons gets too low in strength or org it will drop into reserve and the reserve squadron will replace it. This allows those long running air missions, like air defence of the home land, to run fairly continuously with the minimum of player intervention.

Well that’s our introduction into air units; we’ll be back for more in a future Developer Diary Instalment.

[kris4o1993]

Нови скрийншотове

[kris4o1993]

Development Diary #18 - 25th of February 2009

When thinking about naval combat we started out with the Hearts of Iron 2 system as our base. Things like range and positioning worked very well as a concept and we used this as our base, however we felt it could be improved.

The first change we made was that each ship determines it’s own position. No longer will destroyers simply sit around doing nothing while the big ships, instead they will close in themselves. Seek to engage the enemy screens and should they be eliminated they will start engaging bigger ships. Secondly with ships positioning themselves separately naval units can be positioned into combat separately. Thus each unit will roll its search value separately and then be positioned according to how well it fails or succeeds in this. With one additional proviso Capital ships will have a smaller deviation. Although this sounds a bit weird we are working with the following logic. A naval task force will actually be in a fairly widely dispersed formation with the smaller ships screening the larger ships, meaning that you are more likely to find a light ship on the far side of the formation (and thus needing longer to close). While heavy ships like Battleships and Battlecruisers are more likely to be concentrated together in the centre of the formation (thus their smaller positioning error). The upshot of this is a fleet made up of destroyers and light cruisers meets a mixed battle fleet they are more likely to get picked off piecemeal by the concentrated fire power of the heavy surface units.

When it comes to combat itself we have reworked the interface so each individual ship’s displayed with it’s own positioning so you can see at a glance which fleet units are engaged, plus the enemy ships as well. However just because you can quickly see how your combat is doing doesn’t mean you can simply leave it. Instead once a retreat is ordered it will take time for the ships to disengage. This is influenced by weather, if it is at night and how long the combat has lasted to determine if the units can escape. In addition there is also a chance that the two fleets will simply lose contact with each other during the fight, again modified by the same factors. Thus two fleets can simply just lose each other in the confusion of combat, especially in a fight at night and in bad weather. Not in the case of breaking combat neither fleet actually retreats and will start to search for each other again. Leading to the possibility of a running combat happening at night as various ships find each other and then lose each other again in the dark. As radar increases spotting, radar-equipped ships should quickly find the enemy again.

I suppose we should end with a note about carriers. Yes carriers not longer fight in Naval combat (well ok they do just very very badly), instead the CAG is now a separate air unit that can be used as an air unit. Thus you can bomb enemy air bases and support naval landings with it. However the actual effectiveness of the CAG unit is modified by a carrier tech value called hangar. This is essentially the amount of physical space on the carrier for air units. We also have a separate tech for armour. A rather neat consequence of this is we can model the differences between the design philosophies of the British carriers as compared to the American and Japanese ones quite neatly inside the tech system.

[kris4o1993]

Development Diary #19 - 4th of March 2009

Before we start talking about this, let’s just quickly recap. Technology components are modular and can affect more than one unit type. Divisions too are modular and can be customised with different brigade types. This week we are going to talk a little about how these work and also drop a few details about how technology can be shared.

Of course we have defined model names for air and land units, as we did with ships. For air units this is the unit itself, for land unit these are the component brigades. When it comes to upgrading, the land unit brigades upgrade separately. Note the division is still the smallest tactical unit and the land unit and its brigades are indivisible, but for technology purposes the brigades are distinct. Once the right technology levels are reached the brigade (or air unit) will change model name to reflect it’s new stats. In the case of air and land units you always build at the best technology available. However with ships we have added the option to downgrade your ships for faster, cheaper building. Thus if those pesky submarines are massacring your convoys and you want to fire out some quick destroyers to help combat them, then you can. You can basically decide exactly which model to use for each technology affecting that kind of ship.

For technologies themselves we have added support for flavour names. So instead of Germany developing Infantry small Arms year 1943 we get Sturmgewehr 44. Although I doubt every tech for every country will end up being named, we will certainly be adding quite a few for the majors.

We have also added a pretty neat form of technology sharing, building units under licence. You can buy the right to build units from other countries at their technology and practical experience level but with your IC. When the unit is complete you gain that model type and name (until you upgrade it) and increases your own practical experience (which will assist your own research efforts in the future). This costs money but can be money well spent. Of course, these, as well as expeditionary forces retain the model & tech names of their origin, until upgraded.



Here is an example of how this is all scripted:

units\models\ENG.txt

battleship.3 = {
	capitalship_armament = 2
	battleship_antiaircraft = 3
	battleship_engine = 2
	battleship_armour = 2
	largewarship_radar = 0
	battlefleet_concentration_doctrine = 0 
	battleship_crew_training = 0 
}

localisation\\technology.csv

ENG_capitalship_armament_2;14'' MK VII;;;;;;;;;;;;;;x
ENG_battleship_antiaircraft_3;QF 5 1/4'' Mark I;;;;;;;;;;;;;;x 
ENG_battleship_engine_2;Admiralty 3 Drum Boiler;;;;;;;;;;;;;;x 
ENG_battleship_armour_2;14.7'' Main Belt;;;;;;;;;;;;;;x

[kris4o1993]

Ето една от песните, които ще е в играта

http://www.fz.se/filer/?id=8355

[kris4o1993]

Development Diary #20 - 11th of March 2009

Let’s start with a quick recap of information in previous developer diaries. Each country generates a value known as leadership. This via a slider system is allocated into 4 areas, one of which is espionage. When you have assigned enough leadership to espionage a spy point is generated that can then be used to spy on people.

Next let’s move onto what we were thinking when we started to design this system. Espionage was first added in Hearts of Iron 2 Doomsday, and it was a rather nice addition to the game. However it didn’t mean we felt we couldn’t improve on it. We aimed to improve in three ways. These are interaction, interface, and consistency.

We have worked hard to make the espionage system simple to use. Instead of manually clicking every time you wish to send a spy you simply set priorities and spies are sent our if available. You can then tweak these as required; the system is very similar to the autosending of merchants in Napoleon’s Ambition (if you are familiar with that game). We also feel that this system is more realistic, leaders of countries didn’t manually manage their intelligence agencies, instead they would be given broad direction on where to focus their efforts and given resources to carry it out (in our case it is setting of a leadership value in the slider) and then they would do the best they could within the scope of the orders given. We have taken a similar approach to the actual using of spies, again for the same reasons of simplicity and reality. Instead of giving individual orders as in Doomsday you give your intelligence services a focus and they will continue to execute this mission until told otherwise. We’ll talk a little bit more about missions later on.

Then we have the interface, essentially the whole interface was built from scratch. Our goal to make intelligence information clear, leaving you more time to decide what to do with this information. We have also added more information in the intelligence screen, especially in the economic and political sides. With this is mind we have also cooked up a handy little solution that allows the intelligence screen to be saved, so it will update only monthly, or when the amount of spies you have placed in that country changes. This should make using the intelligence screen easier, if you just want to double check something it will still be the same and also avoid you trying to jump backwards and forwards into the intel system to watch out for enemies.

For intelligence missions we have added a number of options, in your own country you can search for enemy spies, support your ruling party or lower your neutrality value. These are pretty self-explanatory. The first two options are also available for other countries as well, so you do not have to just use espionage to subvert your enemies you can also use it to prop up your allies. For those of you who prefer to use espionage to only gather information we have three options, military, tech and political that boosts the accuracy and quantity of information you will receive in these areas.

[kris4o1993]

Development Diary #21 - 18th of March 2009

The convoy war during World War II was, in the west, one of the most important engagements of the war. The Russians may be tempted to disagree here, but certainly it gave Churchill sleepless nights. So we saw our task here of how we could raise the importance of the convoy war with out turning it into micro management hell.

At its core the Convoy system remains unchanged, convoy ships goods to and from places automatically. They run by themselves and you don’t get much control over them. This is basically the Hearts of Iron 2 system dropped into Hearts of Iron 3. So I suppose you are wondering where are the changes?

First big change is that there is now only one resource stockpile. If you have goods abroad and you do not succeed in moving it to your home country then they are lost. What this means in practice is if you sink the goods, you will destroy the resources. If you cripple a country like Britain’s merchant marine you will cripple its economy. We’ve also done the same thing with trade. When you buy goods from a country that is on a different continent you need to ship the goods to your country via convoys, which are open to attack. Note that if you are landlocked you cannot do this. Looking at it this way, if the US starts to supply Britain with resources to continue the fight (say on credit) then these will be able to be attacked by the Germans the U-Boat war in the North Atlantic could become very very important.

We have mentioned previously strategic warfare can be used to force countries to surrender. We will talk about this in more detail in a future developer diary, but it is important to know that allowing the enemy a free reign on your convoys will steadily undermine your will to fight so have to defend them. So falling back on the tactic of a mass build of convoys and then ignoring your sea-lanes will lose you the war. If the enemy makes attempts against your convoys with submarines, surface raiders or aircraft you can’t ignore them. What this means for the war is if say the Germans park the Tirpitz in fjord in Norway threatening to sortie it out against British convoys, the British really want to keep a reasonable sized battleship force on standby to counter this until they can find a way to sink the ship. Our whole convoy system was aimed to try and create the correct historical effect.

So how do you defend and attack convoys? We’ll we’ve already shown several screenshots of the convoy screen where you can see your convoys on the map, so you know exactly where to defend. Intelligence will allow you to identify sea zones that enemy convoys operate in, so you can also deduce exactly where to attack. In addition you will be able to detect enemy submarines via your listening stations. Our aim is to make the convoy war as much an intelligence war as actual fighting.

Another aspect that impact convoys is that the amount of supplies and fuel that can be shipped into a naval base depends on the size of that naval base. And yes, only naval-bases can be the origin or destination of a convoy.

[kris4o1993]

New Screenshot

[kris4o1993]

New screenshot

[владетелят на шумер]

Знае ли се дадата на излизане?

[kris4o1993]

Знае ли се дадата на излизане?

някъде около юли-август 2009.

[kris4o1993]

5 new screenshots

[kris4o1993]

New screenshots