Hello there Generals!

Another update has arrived! Today we release 1.12.4. But we are working on a larger patch that will target some of your concerns about By Blood Alone, and itl have a slightly extended open beta that's opening soon-ish. So keep your eyes peeled for that!

################################################################
######## Hotfix 1.12.4 "Avalanche" #########
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##################################
# Balance
##################################
Peace conference:
- reduced lend lease warscore gains and losses from fuel to 0.01 warscore per fuel to 0.001 warscore per 100 fuel
- reduced lend lease warscore gains and losses from equipment IC from 0.1 warscore per IC to 0.001
- reduced war score per sunk convoy from 10 to 0.05
- reduced war score offset from convoy production from 5 to 0.04
- reduced war score per ship IC sunk from 0.04 to 0.002
- reduced war score per sailor lost when a ship sinks from 0.02 to 0.001
- increased IC value of sunk ships when determining warscore from 0.002 to 0.004
- increased base province value from 0.3 to 2.0
Air Warfare:
- Fixed primary role of guided missile for large airframes (now sets naval patrol bomber)
- Fixed aircraft naval strike mission module limits (light = 1 slot, medium = 2 slots, large = 3 slots)
- 1938 and later air module tech costs are higher
- Air engine 4 is now 1944 tech
- post 1936 Air weapon tech dates increased
- All aircraft electronics module unlocks are one tech later
- reduced USA combined bomber offensive range increase
- reduced strategic bombing stat for large bomb bays
- With BBA uk air focuses give less research bonuses but give doctrine discounts
- increased small/medium bomb bay weight
- reduced lmg turret weight
- Fix incorrect mutliengine thrust for level 2 engines. increased torpedo weight. added speed malus to floats/flying boats
- rebalanced lmg and hmg for planes
- Fixed primary role of guided missile for large airframes (now sets naval patrol bomber)
- Updated air supply to use a better calculation for per aircraft supply amount.
Balance of Power:
- Removing all the BoP requirements for the alt fascist branches; no other branch has such requirements, and it is very punishing if the player loses a core state to reach to necessary BoP levels to proceed down the alt fascist branch
Navy:
- Refresh airwing stats when setting a scrambling mission (this should fix the 1 damage 'carrier bug')
##################################
# AI
##################################
- Reduced the demand of AI nations to build tactical and strategic bombers
##################################
# Database
##################################
- Hooked up the already existing historical and generic plane variant names to the corresponding BBA plane types, leaving only plane types without a non-BBA equivalent without proper variant names (we'll get there soon).
##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################
- Prevent potential CTD when reading a savegame with a faulty persistent AI strategy.
- Fixed CTD when disbanding units while paradropping
##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- Don't autopause when a hidden event pops up (Aces)
- Added requirements to several focuses and fixed the completion rewards for some of them.
- Loosen the Laws on Secularism can no longer target the same state more than once.
- Romania and Hungary should no longer loose their conquered territory if puppeted after Germany completes Integrate War Economics
- Allies should be less likely to kick out Russia from the Triple entente due to generated world tension
- Chances of having a brainless Italian AI with no real plan have been reduced to 0.
- Fixed CTD when using console command "research all" and then interacting with the Kamikaze module Fixed Explosive Charge as any country other than Japan.
- Finland's leader's name will now display properly in the Estonian event '(Finland's leader) Steps Down'
- Fixed missing cost for Swiss political party concessions decisions.
- Italy is now sending the right events to the UK if the UK is hosting the Ethiopian government in exile and Italy has war with them. Also added conditions to 2 Italian focuses
- Event option to complete Italian focus Abyssinian Fiasco should no longer show up if By Blood Alone dlc is not active.
- Yugoslavia can now submit to Italy's ultimatum and become a puppet
- Improved available and bypass triggers for Italian focuses War with Greece and War With France.
- in peace conference, take navy peace action is now correctly unavailable if the victor does not own any naval base prior to the peace conference
- Italian decisions Vallo Alpino del Littorio will no longer be visible if the targeted provinces already have max fort level.
- Releasing Ostland while at war with SOV should no longer return the Baltic states to SOV
- Fixed reduced production when converting old equipment in production lines.
- When a player unlocks a mod achievement without having the cloud storage activated, catch the exception that was causing the game to shut down
- Characters with Unit Leader roles can now become President in the appropriate focuses
- Rolf Henne in Switzerland now gets the correct trait when promoted
- Fixed bug that caused an ungodly amount of divisions to escape when a country goes into exile
- Added missing Vorarlberg claim if AUS rejects the ancshluss.
- You can no longer use the exploit of leaving a minor DEI island free while you gobble up the rest of the resource giving island as Germany and expect Japan to just be fine with it
- Fixed instances where Vorarlberg is not included when granting cores.
- Franco should now get his old portrait after 1950 again
- Fixed portrait for Jonas Cenerius for Lit
- Fixed some countries (e.g. Italy) not being able to lend-lease convoys.
- Philippe Pétain has returned to lead Vichy France for Non-Lar users
- The Balance of Power will now shift towards the country leader, and away from the Grand Council, when reclaiming lost, none core territory.
- Japan will now bypass Tripartite Pact focus if Germanya dn Italy is at war with each other
- Clear active GiE division deployments for losers in a peace conference
- Fix crash when opening the Details tab of diplomacy view when DLC La Resistance is not activated
- Battleship generated by Ethiopia's 'Request Soviet Battleship Hulls' focus now has a name.
- Anarchist Spain's event to annex Portugal after their civil war will now trigger correctly.
- Young man Franco will now become old man Franco after 1950
- Fixed autonomy impact score not getting updated correctly, when closing and opening Start Lend Lease window.
- Frankfurter event no longer triggers unless GER is fascist
- Austria should no longer give up land to Switzerland if at war with Switzerland
- Fixed an instance where the Alpine protectorate would get hardlocked if you did the Alpine conferedation first
- Alpine Redoubt now correctly gives forts in Alpine states
- Don't display plane airframe names when BBA is not active.
- Avoid war score numbers to overflow and become negative when they get too big
- Fix opinion modifiers with a fixed time or with a decay. When the end date is reached they are now removed
- Airwings will now deal damage in air battles that involve very large numbers of planes.
- Variant comparison in the designer view will now take mission adjusters into account.

Remember that if you discover any bugs, please do report them in the bug report area on the forum.

/Katten

Greetings all,

Today we’ll be casting an analytical eye over the release of BBA, what players have been up to, and what the immediate plans are going forward.

It wouldn’t be a traditional post-release diary without looking at what the player-base at large have been getting up to since BBA was launched.



As you’d expect, Italy has been at the forefront of game sessions since BBA released. We were not expecting quite this level of interest however! 45% of 15+ hour accumulated game sessions were played on the Italian tree. By comparison, at the same period after launch, the Soviet Union accounted for 39% of similar length game sessions. Germany (purple) continues to be a popular choice.



Ethiopia has shot into the first place in terms of minor nations. As expected, Ethiopian game sessions tend to last a shorter time; a combination of losing, having reached player-set goals earlier, and a lot of restarts to maximize efficiency.

We’re seeing fewer players rolling back to previous versions in order to play TC mods than we usually expect during a post-release period.

Everyone’s favorite targets to nuke remain broadly unchanged from previous releases (major capitals). The one new target country in the list is… Mexico, for some reason. Turkey’s nuclear industry has seen an upswing, being responsible for 4% of nuclear weapons created and launched.

2% of games are using the newly released Japanese localization!

There’s been a noticeable increase in players using normal (64%) rather than easy (10%) or very easy (25% ) difficulty since BBA released. 0.74% of games are played on hard difficulty, and 1.10% on very hard. Prior to release, 28% of games used very easy, with 12% on easy.



An enormous number of fans are playing the game and we’ve hit several new records compared to NSB and previous releases. This said, BBA has been an unusual release. In comparison to the points above, we’ve also seen some dissatisfaction and confusion over certain mechanics. Combined with the excellent and consistent player numbers, this contributes to some difficulty in interpreting the situation. This said, we clearly don’t intend to handwave away feedback simply because it does not appear wholly representative.g

Thus, it can be difficult to ‘read the room’ on the key pain points that an entire community defines - what may seem obvious to one player is not always the same for others, and the vocabulary users exercise to express themselves over an issue often differs. It is also worth noting that compared to previous releases, the number of reported issues is actually lower in BBA - we’re still working on how to interpret this dissonance.

Peace conferences have by far been the most frequent talking point amongst the community. After a deep dive, it is clear that there are three main narrative detractors:

• Genuine bugs (ie: behavior we consider not to be ‘working as designed’)
  
• Confusion over the rules in the new system
  
• Disagreement with the direction of the new implementation of peace conferences

The majority of legitimate bugs we’ve identified here are to do with AI behavior. This is something we consider a known issue, and are iterating on improving this. We’ve made some fixes in the last few patches, and we have some wider-ranging changes coming soon.

In terms of confusion over the new system, this is something we have some longer-term desire to improve. A lot of changes were made to core systems in BBA, for which players had already established a sense of mastery and habit. This extends to both peace conferences and the air system. In retrospect, changing these habits could have been accompanied with clearer onboarding for the new expectations. That’s on me, and we’ll have this in mind for future developments.

One of the major misunderstandings we’re seeing in the wild is to do with ending bidding. Players who are used to the old behavior are ending their participation with bids selected, expecting to be granted the territory they’ve bidded upon. In reality, there is nothing stopping the AI or other players from contesting these bids, now without the risk of being re-contested. We’re considering mitigation for this behavior.

Disagreement with the direction of the new peace conference system is a more nuanced debate, but one which we feel is primarily influenced by the previous two points. On one hand, we have a sizable cadre of players who enjoy the more adversarial nature of the conferences, and on the other hand, there are a range of opinions on how effective this turned out to be.

There are several commonly occurring conference comments worth mentioning:

• Defeated major nations remaining ‘alive’ at the end of huge peace conferences is not intended to be a normal occurrence.
  
  
• ‘Bordergore’ from the AI is worse than intended in certain situations - primarily ahistorical PCs involving multiple different-ideology factions.
  
  
• ‘Bordergore’ created by players is a valid use of the peace conference system. While there are many legitimate concerns over how the AI is acting in some cases, we don’t consider it to be a failure of the system to allow the player to balkanize areas of the map if they so choose.
  
  
• Limited points is a solution we are confident in as a necessity to drive a more adversarial conference system. It does, however, require a strong understanding of how bid conflicts are expected to work, and we can do better at telegraphing this in a conference situation. Passing turns for infinite points will not be making a return.
  
  
• It is sometimes impossible to fully annex faraway war participants in smaller wars. This was somewhat intended, however the results of the balance around this are not something we consider satisfactory. There will be changes here.
  
  
• Subjects and minor nations causing ‘trouble’ have generated some friction. We’ve addressed this in the short term with some balance, however we may look into game rules and/or options to allow the player to customize the nature of peace conference resolutions. This is not as trivial as it might sound. While the intended narrative of conferences was always intended to be an adversarial conflict between ideological/major actors in an immediate post-war scenario, many players enjoy having more control over the endgame - as evidenced by the popularity of mods such as Player Led Peace Conferences. Supporting this behavior for mods is something we fully intend to do, and there are some steps we can take to make this easier.

On the subject of the air system and plane designer, we’ll be working on some improvements to the flavor elements that were somewhat lost during the transition to the new designer interface, as well as tackling bugs as we see them. There’s been a lot of guesswork from the community over what the ‘air combat formula’ is - much of which has resulted in erroneous conclusions. We’ll be making sure that the relevant parts of this are more clearly communicated; either in-game or through the wiki for those who want a deeper dive into the numbers.

We’ve now released two patches for BBA which address many of the most frequently occurring problems. We have more bugfix patches planned in the short term (likely next week for our next iteration), as well as a patch scheduled slightly more distantly with some more impactful changes.

In addition to the above, we will be continuing with the practice of monthly recurring patches throughout the BBA lifecycle - as indicated previously, we recognize the importance of ongoing maintenance for HoI.

All in all, many of you are continuing to find great enjoyment in BBA, and we fully intend to keep working on the key areas that some of you feel don’t meet your standards.

Hello there Generals!

Another update has arrived! Bringing many requested balance changes as well as bug fixes! This patch will go live on steam right now! And itl go live on Microsoft Store next week, so if you update, you will experience issues with crossplay until its updated on both platforms.







- Some minor balance fixes for outdated focuses
- Minor balance of subpar focuses
- Minor balance changes. Railway focuses that only give railways should not also give another bonus as compensation
- Increased Air Wing damage bonus from speed advantage
- Decreased org loss from air borne air drops from 90% org loss to 60% org loss
- More peace conference AI improvements. Ai should now be less willing to perform different actions on the same bucket of states
- Main IC cost for planes moved from airframes to engines
- Updated hitprofile calulation to include speed base modiers
- Shortened a few Ethiopian Industrial focuses to 35 days, and changed the requirements for the Develop Shewa focus.
- Updated hitprofile calulation to include speed base modier
- Reduced cannon 2 air attack, increased weight of naval attack modules, reduced air defence stat modules
- Limited small airframes to 1 anti shipping missile
- Naval targeting from weapons is now an average stat, range from drop tanks and armour is now multiplicative
- Decreased 4x lmg module weight
- Increased the penalty limit for having the Swiss Militias Deployed
- Small adjustments to Swiss National Spirits 'Aktion Nationaler Widerstand' and 'Reduced Training Age'.
- Modified cost of retaking Vichy territory for France
- Adjusted focus unlock times for Fascist Path.





- Fixed CTD when showing resources with invalid ownership.
- Further Peace Conference AI balance changes, unaligned nations will now mostly embrace Empire, and take land for themselves. England now has a slight preference for coastal regions. AI is slightly less keen on multi-puppeting in multi-faction scenarios
- Added VRAM usage to the ingame profiler UI
- Fixed failure to create DX11 device on Windows 7 without KB 2670838. For the love of god please run windows update.
- Reduced VRAM usage by making sure the game will only load the fonts required to display the chosen game language.





- Germany no longer feels the need to ships armies to east africa in full view of ENG





- Adding on_peaceconference_started action




- Added fallback state targets for a number of Italian focuses building factories in case they are already using all building slots.
- Fixed some cases in which Italian focuses would build factories in states without checking for Italian control over them.
- Cze AI can now go alt history
- Luis Maria Martinzez is now avaiable again
- Communist USA can no longer annex the entirety of the Soviet union and be at peace by not joining the call to arms
- Moved port close to Hamburg closer to inland so that you can see which province its in
- Added images for Ethiopian medals
- Added bypasses to several German focuses if Germany is already in a faction and is not the faction leader; they shouldn't be able to invite other countries into the Faction
- Fixed issue with Italian Occupation of Ethiopia decision category preventing decisions related to electrify states from showing up if Ethiopia had capitulated before going into exile.
- Fix for Republican Spain on historic focuses post civil war has no cores
- Fix low probability CTD when a hull, chassis or airframe research completes and multiple equipment variants are auto-upgraded to it.
- Fixed bug where decision to form the Holy Roman Empire wasn't granting Ticino.
- You can now pick Unite our nations and Finno-estionian supremacy league again
- Italy can now negotiate colonial claims with Ethiopia's host nation
- Fixed bug where Vojvodina annexed Hungary
- Achievement Not Today now shows a previously invisible trigger.
- Fixed issue in You Shall Not Pass Achievement making it available regardless of Switzerland winning a defensive war or an offensive one.
- Cohesion settings should no longer cause some units to refuse to move to the frontline, however units may relocate somewhat further if they drop behind a swift advance. Incidentally fixed idle unit recognition for army group orders.
- The treaty of Brussels now has a description again
- Call of Hungary for support as Sweden is no longer listed under the "Support China" category
- Charles Lindbergh should have his portrait back
- If either France or Luxemburg doesn't exist, the corresponding event won't be sent
- Prevent CTD when spawning civil war for country with no valid home area
- Fix for Snek on a plane achivement (I am so tired of these sneks)
- Fixed missing cost for BB armour 3
- Fixed an instance where the influence future canton decision disappeared forever
- Fixed issue where Plutarco Calles would not get Country Leader role in Mexico's focus "Party of the Revolution".
- Concessions to Communists, Monarchists and Democrats now have the correct cost.
- Added extra checks for influence cantons along with remove effects
- The AI can no longer cheat and use spirit of the army/air/navy without No step back
- Resolved issue where it would appear as if the idea Swiss Neutrality was removed twice in the Swiss focuses 'Take a Stance' and 'Join France'.
- The Chu X-Po now gives reserach bonus regardless of if you have BBA or not
- Fixed Strait of Hormuz
- Some focuses are now blocked if Militias have been turned into Regular Infantry.
- If the pope - or anyone else BUT the King Vittorio III - is country leader, don't make Prince Umberto the new country leader. Also add King Vittorio back as an idea if the Balance of Power is in his favour
- Fixed CTD during air update in a region where a state lacks a controller.
- Italian Naval Cooperation Program decisions can no longer be taken more than once for the same target country.
- Clear the skies should now not give pre-bba fighters
- The Queen of battle spirit now correctly gives a 50% chance of gaining an infantry officer trait
- Fixed Human Torpedo not deducting the CP cost as promised.
- Fixed decisions to Offer Dodecanese Islands for Alliance so that they cannot be taken if Turkey or Greece are already in faction with Italy or are subjects.
- One can not suppress the mafia for free.
- Fix crash when a country hosting a government in exile loses a war and does not have access to exiled division template anymore
- Completing "Unite the Afar" focus when province is controlled by occupying force should no longer cause issues with control.
- Fixed Italian National Spirit Gruppi di Difesa della Donna being removed for no reason if the Spanish civil war was over.
- Fix for CZE not taking their fascist/communist advisors in alt history
- Italian focuses War with France and War with the UK will now properly work with latest strategic region changes.
- Prevent supply hub motorization range bonus from going negative when many countries have full motorization set on the same hub.
- Fixed Italian Communist leader taking over the country when player chose democratic option in the Italian Civil War after completing focus Defy the Duce.
- Italian king Vittorio Emanuele can no longer be crowned king of Albania if he has abdicated or if he is dead.
- Added the new Australian states back to the Oceania AI area
- Italy can send demands to several countries to demand the Dalmatian coast line
- Pacify Ethiopia mission now succeeds if Ethiopian states are controlled by Italian subjects.
- Fixed issue where all text in the description for the Swiss Mission 'Building Up Military Readiness' was yellow.
- Fixed issue in Swiss Mission 'No confederation councilor' where it wouldn't disappear after centralizing the country.
- Fixes issue where country could still threaten Switzerland even after not being a relevant country for Absolute Neutrality.
- Fix issue where air-wing equipment tags would not be written to the savegame.

Remember that if you discover any bugs, please do report them in the bug report area on the forum.

/Katten

Hello there Generals!

We are excited to be able to share with you the patch notes for today's patch!
This patch was planned for day 7, but we were able to get it to you on steam a bit early, and just in time for the weekend. For those of you who are on the Microsoft Store, the update will be coming out next week!


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# Patch Notes
##############


##################################
# Balance
##################################

- increased thrust of late game engines, balance multiengine thrust, Improved SE.100 template engine
- Increased Transport plane IC cost 4>20
- Minors and Puppets will now go back to trying to support their faction members with warscore, rather than striking out on their own. Silesia and Kashubia are now considered unlikely tags to be released.
- Reduced speed gain from excess thrust
- guided anti ship missile module is now unlocked by advanced rocket tech
- balance pass on thrust and ic cost for engines
- Increased base point calculation for winners in peace conference by 10% of base. This should result in fewer instances where original countries are left around. Several cost modifiers have been altered which should also result in it being slightly less expensive to make full demands in ordinary circumstances.

##################################
# AI
##################################

- Soviet Union prioritizes upgrading manpower over blowing up railways now

##################################
# Modding
##################################

- Civil war can get complicated regarding characters. Add keep_all_characters parameter to start_civil_war effect. Target country will keep all characters, none will be transfered to revolter. It's then up to script to do the full dispatch of the characters.

##################################
# Bugfix
##################################

- Fixed wrong speed modifier calculation in special cases for armies.
- GiE templates no longer transferred to new country when releasing or through peace conferences
- Changed a leader trait depending if LaR is installed or not
- Fixed wrong description for SwapIdeas Effect, when same category of bonuses are defined both in the idea and the idea's trait.
- Added a loc string to every language file
- Changed Italy's ai strategy, so they shouldn't lose to Yugoslavia. Also rearranged the strategy plan for Balbo slightly
- Italy has an ai atrategy that will be able to withstand the Yugoslavian onslaught and push them back and even conquer them
- Fix freedom level calculations when creating a new puppet with an autonomous state allowing no other autonomous states than itself
- Independence focuses in the Italian Civil War branches now requires Italy to not be at war at all.
- Fix the supply consumption stat in the plane designer. It now displays the value for a full air-wing.
- Fixed scope issues in remove triggers for several state modifiers.
- Fixed issue in which Italian marine 3D models did not have an MG weapon with the latest infantry equipment tech researched.
- Fixing missing description for Focus 'Total Defense' in Switzerland.
- Fixing initial positioning of Switzerland's Focus Tree
- No plane templates without BBA dlc
- Added missing Remove Times in Absolute Neutrality Decisions in Switzerland
- Removing Political Power Cost from Back channel Negotiations in Switzerland
- Changed 'Reclaiming Ethiopia' focus condition so that Ethiopa (or an ally) only needs to control any Ethiopian state to allow the focus
- Decision Show of Defensive Force in Switzerland now gives the correct modifier.
- Corporatist trait now reduces Democracy instead of increasing Fascism.
- Changed Rally Workers Decision so it doesn't increase Communism.
- Danzig for guarantees now correctly gives cores on Gdynia again
- Fixed icon for Eidgenoissiche F+W in the air designer
- Removed a DLC lock requiring NSB for a decision category so that Poland actually gets a reward for completing 2 separate focuses
- Fixed an instance where Expand military staff did not show up
- List of names for generating Swiss characters expanded.
- the Spanish Civil war now ends even if for some reason more than one Spain survives and are at peace with each other
- Dismiss council tooltip should now target the incoming president and not the current one
- Preventing overflow in war score when lendleasing too much fuel
- DFC console command no longer causes countries to capitulate forever, every day that they are alive
- Polish general Wincenty Kowalski now uses his new portrait from No Step Back.
- LoN non interference correctly removed when Ethiopia get peace
- Certain political branches in the Italian Focus Tree will now hide if they are no longer relevant when custom game rule "Show obsolete branches in Focus Tree" is set to "Hide".
- Italian Monarchist and Christian Democrat AIs will now be more inclined to ban fascism
- Ethiopian states will go to the fascist side of the Italian civil war if Italy is still fighting a war in Ethiopia when the focus Defy the Duce is completed and the civil war starts.
- Germany can now invite Poland into its faction after successfully trading Danzig for Slovakia
- Added a missing state to Bulgaria's "Dominance of the Black Sea"
- Added a national focus to Soviet's historical ai strategy so that it can approach Germany and complete its strategy
- Fixed some 3D planes not showing up in-game.
- Fixed state of Afar not being included in the arrangement when Italy withdraws from Ethiopia.
- Fixed issue where Equipment and Experience would be lost when turning Swiss Citizen Militias into Regular Infantry.
- Fix create_operative_leader effect so that triggers with character scope using the resulting operative leaders work properly (ex: can_gain_xp in traits for operatives)
- Fixed Balance of Power requirements in Historical Focuses.
- Fixed issues with character split in Italian civil wars.
- Fixed typo in Swiss Infantry Divisions.
- The Italian AI should not push as hard when wanting to discredit Mussolini
- Fix crash at the end of peace conference when player is in observer mode
- Fixed minor typos in two Italian focuses and in Vittorio Emanuele's National Spirit description.
- Italian focus The New Emperor of Ethiopia now grants some ideology support for Non-Aligned.
- Iberian countries should no longer be rude and leave the Italian faction after deciding to join it via the Italian focus Iberian Protection.
- Italian civil war cosmetic tags Republica Sociale Italiana and Regno del Sud now use the appropriate flags.
- Ethiopia can no longer use Arms Purchases decisions when the LoN has become inactive
- Adjusted the likelihood for the AI to accept giving territory to Switzerland across all branches.
- Adjusted the time it takes for the incompetent Councilor to be assigned, made it so it wouldn't trigger once Switzerland is centralized.
- Reduced the Political Power penalty for the incompetent Councilor in Switzerland.
- The Balance of Power is now removed once Rudolf Henne takes power in Switzerland.
- Removed conditions related to Balance of Power towards the end of the Fascist Branch of the Swiss Focus Tree.
- Changed the Spirit of Helvetia Entrenchment Modifier to Entrenchment Factor in Switzerland.
- Councilors in Switzerland do not change the Balance of Power when hired after the Balance of Power is no longer relevant.
- Fixed bug where Political Advisors couldn't be removed after centralizing Switzerland.
- don't send countries into exile in a country that is not major
- New Zealand now gets their tac bombers from the NZPAF if they have BBA enabled
- Hungary will bypass 'Join the Comintern' focus if they're already in a faction with Soviet
- Changed the condition that Yugoslavia only needs to own a state to that they need to control the state to add improvements there
- Fixed AI weights for occupation laws. They will now follow resistance levels more appropriately
- Italy starts now with a production line for Ca.111 so that the initial wing at half-strength gets eventually fully reinforced
- Fixed the event sent to France when Germany integrates Alsace-Lorraine to be sent to the Franco-British Union instead if that exists
- correctly end paradrop mission after units are delivered
- Flags for democratic Italian Empire updated with correct images
- Losers in peace conference reset GiE status and rechecks major status
- Gdynia now becomes a German core if ceeded by Poland in Danzig For Slovakia
- The capitulation of Germany will now make Republica Sociale Italiana to become free and take over the Axis if they were a German puppet.
- The Netherlands now bypasses either "Protect against Britain" or "Germany is the Greater Threat" if its in a faction with the country in question.
- Fixed issue where AI Switzerland would not train any Militias.
- Fixed issue where AI Switzerland would build a Silo that it doesn't need right away.
- Adjusted some AI weights in Switzerland.
- Compliance discount for peace actions now applies to all types of peace actions and not just Take States
- Fixed issue where Swiss Focus would not show effects after completion.
- Foreign countries can now properly get rid of the mafia state modifier in their controlled states.
- Fixed Suez canal being locked for antifascist Italy if Fascist Italy was sanctioned by the League of Nations
- Officine Mechanice will no longer be visible if BBA dlc is not active.
- Fixed minor typo in Italian Tankettes focus
- Fixed issue preventing the Italian Blackshirts branch (Security Militias) from being available if BBA was not enabled.
- His Holiness will no longer demand Palestine to himself.
- Fixed typo in War Escalation tooltip.
- Sylvia Pankhurst should now have a portrait without MtG DLC if you are playing as Ethiopia
- Added war escalation variable to Ethiopia when BBA is not enabled. Allows war escalation to continue functioning as expected for Italy.
- Fixed a few Italian Generals getting generic advisor portraits when promoted.
- Fixed broken advisor portrait when promoting Ethiopian General Nasibu Zeamanuel
- Added a requirement for capital to be a core state when inviting members to the Organization of African Unity. This prevents countries like Belgium being eligible when they capitulate and move their capital to Africa.
- Fixed issue where Germany would not get opinion modifier from Switzerland in Frankfurter case
- Italian missions Conquer Northern Ethiopia and Conquer Southern Ethiopia should no longer fail if Ethiopia is defeated and puppeted while active.
- Fixed issue in Italian mission Pacify Ethiopia checking for 70% Compliance in Ethiopia instead of the promised 60%
- Fixed issue where Show Defensive Force decision in Switzerland deducts its cost at the end and not the beginning.
- heavy mg air tech is now correctly located in the tch tree
- Fixed issue where Citizen Militia Dynamic Modifiers were not properly removed from Switzerland when Militias are turned into regulars.
- Fixed stacking of enemy air superiority modifiers in land combat when multiple countries are at war with the country.
- Fixed fullscreen setting triggering weird monitor resolution changes and weird UI selection on DX11
- Fixed issue where player couldn't trigger the emergency president event through decisions.
- DX11 should now handle failure to create textures more gracefully. You should still probably update your drivers...
- Switzerland: Added a few compliance bonuses in alt ideology branches to compensate for the big loss of compliance every time ideology is changed.
- Removed DLC locked sounds for Planes in BBA. Replaced using Base Game sounds. This should fix a common error log in live build
- Capitulating England (or other majors) will no longer cause them to go into exile in Canada. They would rather die.


Hope you all have a fun time playing the game during the weekend!

/Katten

Hello there generals!

You might have already seen two forum posts made by our Game Director and Tech Lead, about how to assist you with common issues. I have made this post to cover all of that in one single place, and to also invite you all to our open beta!


Open Beta

For the open beta, all you have to do is to select the correct branch. You do this by right clicking the game in your library, going into properties, then beta versions and selecting open_beta as the beta branch that you would like to participate in. Then the game will simply update, and then you just launch the game like normal, and poof you are playing in the open beta!

Do remember that all encountered bugs and issues should be reported through the same bug reporting forum as always.

Why aren’t these fixes on the live version?

We’re still undergoing comprehensive testing on everything in here, and for stability’s sake we want to finish that process before going live. We are confident in the majority of the fixes included in this open beta branch, but there is always the possibility of encountering unexpected behaviour - this is worth being aware of before opting in.

You are welcome to reply to this thread with issues that pertain explicitly to the fixes mentioned in the open beta patch notes, but for items not mentioned, please use the normal reporting process.

##############
##############


New DirectX11 Renderer
(and how to revert to DX9 if you have issues)

As mentioned in the previous dev diary, with the Avalanche update the default renderer is now DirectX11.
If you were using DirectX9 previously, the launcher will perform a one-time upgrade to DirectX11 the first time you open it.

While we are fairly confident our DX11 renderer works fine (we have been using it internally for a year now), some issues might arise on specific hardware or configurations.
If that is your case, please first make a bug report so that we can address those issues!

Here's what you can do to try and solve the issue:

• First, make sure your video drivers are up-to-date. Some GPUs are known to have issues on older drivers with DX11 that might not show on DX9.
  
• Second, if you are playing in fullscreen, toggle it to borderless fullscreen.
  
  • This is known to fix the issue where using DX11 makes the UI click "away" from where your mouse pointer is

Finally you can try reverting back to the older DX9 renderer by changing the settings in the Paradox Launcher:

Remember: the upgrade to DX11 was one-time so if you set it back to DX9, it will remain that way until you change it again.

Finally, keep an eye on this forum for new patches announcements and the known issues list.


Experiencing Issues launching BBA? Please run through this checklist first!

Some users are reporting being unable to launch the game, not seeing content in the game at launch, or graphical oddities.

Before filing a report, please take the time to confirm that you've run through these steps. It may seem tedious, but the vast majority of reports are fixed by one of these solutions.

• Confirm that you are not opted in to any rollback branches in Steam or other platforms
  
• 
  
• Change your renderer from DirectX 11 to DirectX 9 or OpenGL. Some hardware can experience issues running DX11, we have more information here. Some users have also reported that using fullscreen windowed mode solved the issue for them.
  
• 
  
• Ensure that you have no mods that do not directly support this game version loaded. This solution accounts for the vast majority of bug reports we receive: outdated, enabled mods can occasionally carry over to new versions without the user being aware.
  
• 
  
• If the above steps do not yield success, you can try clearing your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Hearts of Iron IV/ folder. This will delete save-games and reset user-settings, so take a backup of anything you consider valuable.

I hope this post has been able to assist you! Hope you all are having a fun time playing By Blood Alone.

/Katten

Now Live!
Patch Notes Here!

The future of war hangs in the balance. Take to the skies and pen the annals of history in the latest expansion for Hearts of Iron IV - By Blood Alone

Buy it here!

If you missed any of our Developer Diaries or By Blood Alone Tutorials, then check this list down below!

Developer Diaries​
16 - Art & Achievements
15 - Tech
14 - Modding
13 - Quality of Life
12 - Peace Conference Roundup
11 - Division Commanders & Unit Medals
10 - Plane Designer
9 - Ethiopia #2
8 - Switzerland #2
7 - Italy #2
6 - Ethiopia #1
5 - Switzerland #1
4 - Italy #1
3 - Designer Corner: Naval Rebalance
2 - Designer Corner: Air Changes
1 - Designer Corner: Peace Conference


By Blood Alone Tutorials​
4 - Naval Changes & Balance of Power
3 - Divisional Command
2 - Air Changes
1 - Peace Conferences

Greetings all,

As is tradition, we’re releasing the upcoming patch notes for the Avalanche update along with By Blood Alone ahead of the time with release later today.

Undoubtedly there may be some missing items here, and we’ll keep a log of anything we missed in an edited spoiler below the main one.



EDIT

Hotfix

Checksum: 45c2
In-game version: Avalanche v1.12.1.a74e

Hello, and welcome to this week's Dev Diary!
I am HOI’s 2D artist and am the one who makes the little buttons, icons, and whatever gets thrown in my way for you to look at and push on, and today I have gotten the opportunity to talk about my work!
So let’s start at the beginning, how does a project start, and how and when do artists get involved?

Being an artist on a project such as Hearts of Iron is not an easy piece of work. You need to be on your toes and ready to adapt to whatever task your colleagues want help to solve. It usually involves a bit of text and a ton of reference material. And to gather all of these things we use a tool called Miro.


It’s essentially an online whiteboard that can be used however fits you and your team best. On our Miro, we separate the features into columns that give you a quick overview of what we need to complete for the upcoming update.
The columns are usually divided into Focus trees and Features that are expected to get art during the project.
As the project starts it’s not uncommon for the Miro to be a bit empty. A lot of the research for what can be used, artwise, is a pretty heavy task to bite into with all copyrighted photos out there. Our amazing content designers spend quite a lot of time on valuable research, sorting out what is necessary for the game to make sense as well as adding flavour to your gameplay. And yes, this takes a fair amount of development time to gather all this valuable information as well as imagery that will communicate the right thing for you when you play HOI.

As time goes on, more art tasks will fill up the Miro board. So, for an artist at the beginning of a project, it can range from doing some cleanup work on older icons or portraits, starting to work on loading screens, continuing setting up the Miro board for the DLC to their taste or helping with another project that needs some extra art-hands.

But back to BBA and our work there!
We already know what kind of art we want to have for each focus tree, it's more the quantity that is a fluctuating number at this point and it's still uncertain how much we can make in-house. I always try to convince my CDs to ask for art to their heart's content because we always prioritise what needs to be done so the things that matter the most get the art it deserves first.
When all High Prio art is done, if time allows we continue with Medium and last of course the Low. We also have, for whenever we manage to wrap up art in a timely manner, a special section that is called a “wish-list” or Corner of Shame. It's essentially Low Prio art but stuff that maybe was more of an afterthought or just forgotten for a Feature or a Tree that would be extra sweet if it got some new shiny textures.

Without giving too much away, here's a heavily zoomed-out version of how a Miro board can look like that I as an artist work with. And yes, I was in charge of all the Focus trees and the Plane Designer for this DLC (granted I did not make all the art, we also outsource).


We use a colour code to communicate what's going on on the board! All of them also have a little stamp on them to mark what Prio it has as well as a text section where CDs write what they want to communicate with the icon they request. As you probably can see, there's quite a lot of information that needs to be shared between the departments before art can be worked on.
It’s our transparent way to communicate with each other, CD’s can see how much I have done and how much I have left. They can also see my schedule on what I’ll be working with each day. This means that CDs can also ask to get prioritisation over each other if their Focus tree or Feature requires art sooner rather than later and this is constantly brought up and talked about on our syncs together.
Communication 👏 is 👏 key!

Here is an example of how a request turns into an icon (that you may or may not already have seen):
This is a typical request.
It has an in-game name displayed, reference images provided as well as a description of what my CD wants out of the icon. It is also prioritised!


And this is how it ends up looking!
Since we have quite the large art-library by now I can quickly iterate on what type of background works the best as well as reuse different layer styles to make the icon feel cohesive and on-style with the rest.
I also made sure to hit all the marks from the requests such as;

• At least one donkey
  
• The donkey should carry (at least) a supply
  
• Add wheat bundles without overcrowding the icon.

When the icon is in either a conceptual phase (putting the requested items together without rendering it further) or simply put together from our art library, I of course share the progress with the CDs so they can have to say their yay or nay. If I hit or missed the mark with the request if we need to re-think the icon in itself or just a 10/10 beautiful icon, ship it! 🚢
Also, one thing to keep in mind when doing these types of icons is remembering their size. All the things that a CD may want in an icon may not fit in the end or make it more or less unreadable because all the things together will just create noise.
That's when we artists step in and “take over” so to say with simplifying without losing the information that the icon should communicate.

This is also a typical request when a CD isn’t 100% sure on what would or could look the best and leaves that up for me to figure out:

Icons are requested the same throughout the art process, so name, description, and prio are all there.
It's just that this time I didn’t get any reference material and that's perfectly normal!

And this is the result!

• I have the silhouette of Africa
  
• Railroad
  
• And industry
  
• And of course, a background to frame it all on

Had I added coins to show off investment I would have crowded the icon. We usually have a rule of max three things in one icon to communicate what's necessary. After three it can start to become muddy.
Example of adding coins to this icon to communicate investment:

• Immediately crowded
  
• Silhouette of Africa is no longer a focus and is hidden
  
• The coins stealing the show

Use good Tools for communication, whatever that may be for you and your team.
Be honest and transparent with what's going on, what you need to do your part, and when you need it to estimate the time left on the project.
CDs do research, CDs request art, Artist look at the requests/ask questions, Artist make art, Artist share art with CDs and so the circle is complete.

Now when you kind of know how artists, or at least I, do work with content and for the project I would also like to share how the loading screen got worked on for BBA!

Ahh shit, here we go again.
Yes, I was thinking that we could get a little re-cap on how it is to not just make icons and portraits, but also be flexible and knowledgeable enough to pull off a loading screen. We artists are a jack of many trades so to speak and we do need to be able to adapt to a lot of different types of art tasks that need to be done for a project.

So, how is a loading screen created? It usually always starts with a prompt or a vision from one of either designers or content designers that are heavily involved in the upcoming DLC.
Essentially we want the loading screen/splash screen to communicate something in relation to the DLC, this time we want to focus on Italy and planes. Mostly because Italy has been heavily requested and we want to shine a spotlight on the country as well as showcase the plane designer!

The prompt is “Italian and American fighters incoming in a dogfight over Italian landscape”

Cool. Let's go ahead and make some thumbnails then!


Once again several thumbnails are presented for the others to choose from. Typical hierarchy methods are used here, black = most visually interesting, grey = further away and white/light grey = low focus.

The last one, A3+5 was chosen and started to get some more details in a simple greyscale set-up. This time I quickly wanted to take it into colour and started to experiment with what kind of setting looked best.


After going with a more sunset/evening vibe, because it looks more epic, I started to experiment with the range of those colour schemes as well as trying out some different styles.

Here you also can see that I had no idea I was painting the wrong plane but that doesn't matter because we are still very early in the process and just trying to find a good mood.

I also noticed that the balancing of the image was off since we need to take into consideration the different kinds of resolutions it's gonna sit on. So to solve this I pushed the whole image down and (thankfully) it was just drawing more sky this time!

(still, the wrong plane, don't worry about it)

The render phase is coming up and I’m not gonna lie, I’m not too excited to draw hard surfaces.
But luckily we have a fantastic 3D artist on the team that needs to model some planes for the DLC anyway! He was generous enough to pose the plane for me on top of my background and now it's just painting over them a bit to make them blend into the image and look cohesive.

(3D render of the planes)


(3D render on top of WIP background)

What's needed now for the next step is to make the planes work together with the background as well as paint more details in the clouds.
I also need to add details such as motion blur to make the planes go woosh, which is a dilemma. How much do you paint before the details you put in get lost from said motion blur? Let's find out… the hard way 😌


Along the way, I also realised… what if we tilt the plane some more to have the wing cut through the cloud better.
Needless to say, I asked our 3D artist to tilt his model and render a new one which he so kindly did.

Looks nice 👌

But back to figure out the BG again.
After some back and forth with rendering in and out clouds as well as doing some touchup to the landscape I think I finally landed on something that I was happy with.

Adding motion blur, air trails, and a propeller as well as bounce-light and painting in the sky in the plane's window I think I made it work nicely together.
And the loading screen is done ✨


And now for something completely different! I was thinking that you guys might be tired of reading about the art process now so I’m just gonna drop a bunch of art stuff for you at this point.
Please, enjoy the small selection of what's to come for BBA!

Cute misc icons:


Focus icons:


Portraits:
Italy:













Switzerland:







Ethiopia:








Why yes, we can’t forget about the achievements for BBA now can we?
We always think about what type of achievement can be done for each DLC. This time around I hope you guys will have a few laughs and also maybe think “well that's easy” or “oh no… how?”

…and you get a canton, everybody gets a canton!
As Switzerland, have 24 states.


I’m not locked in here with you…
As Switzerland, declare war on Germany and win.


Swiss Cheese
As Switzerland annex 5 states that are not contiguous with each other or Switzerland.


You Shall Not Pass
As Switzerland, win a defensive war without ever losing Western Swiss Alps, Eastern Swiss Alps or Ticino.


The Lion that Roared
As Ethiopia, without being in a faction, force the Italians to make peace. Again.


The Lion King
As Haile Selassie, declare yourself “King of Kings” and control Kenya and Tanzania.


This time for Africa
As Ethiopia, found the African Union and have it encompass at least 13 different countries with capitals in Africa.


Crusader Kings IV
Take Jerusalem as Ethiopia and move the capital there.


The Red Sea
As Ethiopia, go communist and take all the states that border the Red Sea.


Holy, Roman, and an Empire
As the Pope, restore Rome.


Pizza Time!
As Italy, occupy New York, Chicago and Hawaii.


Collect all the Romes
As Italy, continue holding onto the First Rome, and gain the second and third Rome.


Nothing personal, Adolf
As Italy, take Austria before the Anschluss and never enter a faction with a fascist Germany (before 1945).


Not today
As communist Italy, save Gramsci from the brink of death, make him the leader of Italy and form the Italian National Union.


This time it will stick
As any Allied Nation (in faction with a democratic Britain), enforce a peace deal on Germany that disarms the Rhineland and makes it a demilitarized zone.


By Beer Alone
As Germany, control Budweis, Tsingtao, and Guinness directly or through a faction member.


By merit alone
Promote a Unit Commander to a general, and reach max level.


Snakes on a plane
As Brazil, capture Rome with paratroopers.



Of course, we need to show, last but definitely not least, the 3D art that was made for BBA \o/
(some are still WIP 🤫)


T-posing soldiers o7


Cute tanks ❤️



Adorable planes 🛩️




And with that, I’ll wrap up this week's, and last DD for By Blood Alone!
Thank you for hanging around for this long, I truly hope you enjoyed getting a peek behind the curtain of a HOI4 production!

/CreamGene

Bonjour friends, it’s your favourite Tech Lead again!
Last year already I wrote to you in the final weeks leading to the release of the Barbarossa patch, and we draw close to the go-live of the Avalanche patch, here I appear again.

Like the future, technology is always in motion. As new platforms arise, olders need to be taken behind the barn and put down.

Don’t worry, we’re not talking about Windows 7 (yet 😉). Despite the release of Windows 11, we have not elected to make a push to Windows 10 since Microsoft’s support for new tech on older releases is still fairly good.

The same cannot be said for Mac and Linux, sadly. And so, starting the new 1.12.0 release, the minimum OS versions will be macOS 10.14 (Mojave) and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa). You will still be able to play older HoI versions on older operating systems by rolling back to previous branches, but Avalanche will refuse to start.

Those updates are done in order to introduce new tech to our games (not just HoI) and ensure that all can be built on the same infrastructure within the studio.

Last year we introduced the option to run the game with DirectX11 rather than the venerable DirectX9. After a long period of observation and very few issues observed, we have decided to make it the default.

The first time you start the Paradox Launcher on Avalanche, the game will perform a one-time upgrade of your settings from DirectX9 to DirectX11. New installations will also default to DirectX11.

If you notice any issue due to this change, first, please make a bug report, and then simply go to the settings page and set the renderer back to DirectX9.


Visually the game should look absolutely the same, but internally the tools that come with DirectX11 have helped us find a few sneaky graphical bugs that will be fixed in Avalanche, such as weird white squares appearing on the side of some tank models.

This is I bet the bit most of you were waiting for, the usual question of “will the new patch make the game run faster than previous versions?”. And I’m happy to say the answer is yes.

The biggest improvement has been made to the map icons rendering (unit counters, factories, supply hubs, you name it). The number of icons potentially displayed on the map had grown a lot since HoI’s release 6 years ago and the historical algorithm wasn’t cutting it anymore.

For example, here are what the FPS and frame time look like on Avalanche on my work desktop (i7700, NVIDIA GTX 1060, vsync off and 150 fps cap):

Avalanche default zoom

And fully zoomed out:

Avalanche zoomed out

Finally zoomed back in, but with Speed 5:

Avalanche at speed 5

(If you forgot last year’s dev diary, you can pop up the ingame profiler by typing imgui show profiler in the debug console).

Contrast those numbers with the ones from the current live build (Barbarossa 1.11.13):

Barbarossa default zoom

Note that Barbarossa denotes rendering performance in “render time” rather than “frame time”, which is only the GPU part, while Avalanche counts both CPU and GPU rendering time, so the numbers look different.

Barbarossa zoomed out


Barbarossa at Speed 5

Since PDS games from HoI’s generation tie up rendering and game simulation, this will translate in faster tick speed (on top of a few smaller performance optimizations we added to the simulation itself). Although, to be clear, faster rendering does not translate perfectly in faster game speed. It mostly means a more fluid experience when playing (especially unpaused in Speed 4-5), and then some improvement to the speed of the game simulation.

Speaking of which, I have read and seen a bunch of “guides” to HoI performance over the past months sharing tips & tricks on how to improve the game speed, so let me give you mine: consider disabling VSync in your graphics settings, unless you have a high refresh rate monitor.
The way the game simulation waits for rendering to be done to continue, with a slow refresh rate your CPU might end up spending precious time waiting on your monitor VSync which is not ideal. This root of the issue is difficult to address on HoI4 especially with DirectX9, but with DirectX11 becoming the default we will see if there is a way we can address this in the future. No promises though.

Last year I had some extra French content to show, but I’m afraid this patch I was a bit short on time to bring you more. Although if you like Tech and History, I recently wrote a technical presentation on how to crack Enigma on a modern computer, with a focus on bringing the works of Marian Rejewski to light (as he and the Polish Cipher Bureau tend to be left aside in favour of Alan Turing and Bletchley Park in many stories). There’s no recording available yet, but I’m scheduled to deliver twice more this year at tech conferences so they’ll be on Youtube eventually.

Speaking of Poland, have you all found my secret event in Barbarossa yet? 😉


That’ll be all for today, but I’ll be happy to answer your questions, tech or otherwise!

Today we go to the drawing board and the planning table as we take a look at the
Divisional Command changes as well as the Plane designer with Peter Nicholson and
Gabriel Blum.

Click Here to watch the Features Highlights #3

Pre-Order By Blood Alone today: https://pdxint.at/ByBloodAloneSteam

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