Greetings all!
Today we’ll be taking a dive into one of the fundamental building blocks of HOI4: division design, and some changes we’re making to it. This dev corner might be a little less grand than previous dev corners, but division design remains extremely important to the HOI experience, and is a part of the game that’s remained more or less untouched since release.
Those of you with exceedingly long memories may remember in my early roadmap for Hearts of Iron that I mentioned a desire to have doctrines better affect how the player is incentivized to design their divisions. The first step of making this possible is by adding another dimension of choice to support companies.
Support Company Changes
Here’s a look at one of Germany’s starting templates. Ordinarily, engineers would grant a bonus of 5 entrenchment at their most basic level: here, we’re getting 2 (Ed: 2.25 actually… we’ll fix that in post).
And here, in a little more detail - is the breakdown of why. Here, Engineers no longer begin by applying a flat bonus of 5 entrenchment - instead, their initial stats will grant a bonus of 0.25 entrenchment per Leg Infantry battalion in their division.
As you can see, this bonus is not applied to the cavalry battalions I have so wisely placed in my infantry division. We’ll go into the rationale behind this specific change later, but suffice it to say the following:
Support companies can now confer multiplicative or additive bonuses to line battalions of specific categories within their own division.
While it may seem like a small change, this allows us to better represent the effects of certain doctrinal advancements or technologies, and adds a completely new dimension to consider when choosing support companies.
Changes to Existing Support Companies [very subject to change]
Engineers
As you can see above, Engineers will be changing a bit. They’ll retain the flat entrenchment they gain from tech, but by moving entrenchment more towards a per-battalion balancing value, we’re able to flatten the efficacy of entrenchment and devalue it slightly for org-wall playstyles. Entrenchment itself is a multiplicative stat of course, so we take care to ensure that the upper end does not move too far ahead of what was previously achievable.
Recon
The neglected child of the support company family is finally getting some new tools. Recon has always been an underperforming support company, and these changes aim to augment the value of tactical reconnaissance on the battlefield. By default, mounted recon, motorized recon, and armored car recon companies will now confer a [10%] soft attack bonus to all battalions matching the Artillery category.
Note: we’re making the choice to stress the benefits of recon on artillery rather than general infantry here for game balance reasons.
Light Tank recon will confer a [10%] Hard Attack bonus to all Armored battalions.
Recon also gets some other new toys, some of which we’ll cover in doctrines, and others in a later diary on some New Cool Stuff (™).
Field Hospital
A slightly left-field modifier here, Field Hospitals now increase the strength (HP) of all infantry battalions within their division by [10%]. This results in proportionally less manpower (& equipment) loss per damage received.
Flame Tanks
These now increase the breakthrough of all infantry battalions by [5%].
Military Police
A support company with low usage outside of specific garrison templates, we wanted to give these slightly more utility within line divisions. These will now increase the base org recovery rate of all infantry battalions by 20%.
Doctrine Changes
We’re still working on exactly how these will look, but here’s a sample of what we have planned:
Dispersed Support: Signal companies grant 10% defense to all Artillery battalions in division
Airland Battle: Standard recon grants 10% air attack to anti-air battalions in division
Mechanized Wave: Armored Car recon grants 1 max organization to all Leg Infantry battalions in division.
Central Planning: Logistics Company adds 5% defense to all infantry battalions in division
As mentioned above we have more planned for these, but this should serve as an indicative sample of what is coming. These changes are intended to add an extra dimension to consider when building division templates, accentuating the value of interdisciplinary coordination. They also give us an opportunity to equalize the value of some underperforming support companies in a slightly more realistic way than flat stats.
Of course, the production value of your bonus-granting support companies will be weighted more favorably towards larger divisions - this is something we’re keeping an eye on, but broadly speaking we’re happy with this direction.
As well as being a significant balance change (and modding tool) these changes were necessary for a new small feature we’ll show off in a future diary. I’ll leave you guessing until then ;)
Speaking of dev diaries, we will call you to arms next week for something special… stay tuned, and save the date!
/Arheo