Its time for the final patch of this War Effort Initiative cycle! This patch contains a host of balance changes and fixes as well as language localization for Simplified Chinese! We're going to be winding down the Initiative for the time being as we move onto other lines of development!

Furthermore, stay tuned for another message from us later, pertaining to some feature content that we are working on.

Now, onto the patch notes!


-Added Simplified Chinese language support.

-Lord Halifax now has two leader traits and reduces the requirements with the British Raj when forming the Imperial Federation/Commonwealth of Nations.
-If Lord Halifax is used to annex the British Raj as part of the Imperial Federation, India will suffer increased resistance.
-Fixed non-MTG ships having incorrect base speeds.
-Increased biggest speed and agility factor diff by 1.0, increasing the maximum effect of these stats on air combat.


-Available medals are now present on army screens for Divisional Commanders.
-Added a new Hearts of Iron IV YouTube channel link to menus.

-Added effect remove_civil_war_target.

-Fixed an issue in the Pressure Government event chain for Italy and the Soviets in which the feedback event communicating the target's choice was sent to the target instead of the sender.
-Playing as a released country is now persistent over saves in ironman.
-Observers now retain the observed country on hotjoin and resynch.
-Fixed License Production Access not being restored when reloading a save file.
-Democratic Italy can now send volunteers to Spain after completing the Aid for Spanish Republic focus.
-Fix for Belgium Congo sometimes flipping to Germany after Belgium capitulates.

Introducing the latest edition of the War Effort Map, where a thrilling challenge awaits! Take a look and observe: only one stop remains. Are you up for the task of unraveling its mystery? Keep in mind, appearances can be deceiving.


That's it from us today, as always we appreciate all your feedback! If you encounter any bugs, make sure to create a bug report over on the Forum, and don't forget to join our Discord!

Generals!

The Publisher's Weekend sale is now here, bringing deals across the board for the content you're missing, but also introducing an even better deal with the Players' Choice Barbarossa Bundle, as voted by you all :)

This bundle adds an extra 10 percent off on top of the other savings!

• Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back Additional 10% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack Additional 10% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor Pack Additional 10% off

• Hearts of Iron IV: Cadet Edition 70% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition 70% off

• Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Together For Victory 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off

• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Music Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Speeches Music Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Radio Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. 2 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Armor Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor Pack 50% off

Hello there, generals! May has arrived, and with it comes a new open beta, this time for Operation Alpha!

This patch, as usual, contains balance changes, bug fixes, and something for you awesome modders out there. However, something we have also been working on for a while is language support for Simplified Chinese. This means that all our new Developer Diaries will be translated for Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. And this is just the beginning of what we have planned for our non-English speaking generals!


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

Added Simplified Chinese language support.

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

Lord Halifax now has two leader traits and reduces the requirements with the British Raj when forming the Imperial Federation/Commonwealth of Nations.
If Lord Halifax is used to annex the British Raj as part of the Imperial Federation, India will suffer increased resistance.
Fixed non-MTG ships having incorrect base speeds.
Increased biggest speed and agility factor diff by 1.0, increasing the maximum effect of these stats on air combat.

######
######
Available medals are now present on army screens for Divisional Commanders.
Added a new Hearts of Iron IV YouTube channel link to menus.

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

Added effect remove_civil_war_target.

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

Fixed an issue in the Pressure Government event chain for Italy and the Soviets in which the feedback event communicating the target's choice was sent to the target instead of the sender.
Playing as a released country is now persistent over saves in ironman.
Observers now retain the observed country on hotjoin and resynch.
Fixed License Production Access not being restored when reloading a save file.
Democratic Italy can now send volunteers to Spain after completing the Aid for Spanish Republic focus.
Fix for Belgium Congo sometimes flipping to Germany after Belgium capitulates.


And yes, there is no War Effort map update because that will come with the release of this patch! Now, have a lovely weekend, everyone, and we will see you again next week with something even more fun to talk about!

The people have spoken and the results are IN!

Your votes have been cast and counted, and the top picks of the community are;

• No Step Back
  
• Axis Armor Pack
  
• Sabaton Soundtrack

These three will now be put together into what will be called the Player's Choice Barbarossa Bundle!

Thanks so much for all your votes once again :)



This choose-your-own bundle is the first of its kind for HOI, but we plan to do more in the future. So if your favourites weren’t chosen don’t worry - there’s still a chance to get them bundled next time!

Keep your eyes peeled for when this one goes live, it'll be coming soon™

Greetings all!

Today marks the first occasion since the release of By Blood Alone where we take a deeper look into what is coming next. As you may recall from the BBA development cycle, we had an early set of 'Development Corner' diaries, which serve as an opportunity for us to reveal a narrow look at a specific mechanic or design without revealing too much about the wider context of future releases. Today's offering, as well as the next couple of diaries, will be in much the same spirit - you'll just have to wait a little bit longer to get the full picture. Scandalous and polarising, I know.

/Arheo

Hello there, it's me, C0rax. Now you can get all excited because it's time for some Dev Corners in which we will show you some WIP looks into the new features we have been working on. So without further ado this week we will be looking at…


This is all very much WIP, you are going to see WIP mock ups, and some details are still being finalised!

Feature Intent & goals

• Create a sense of a living organisation the player can interact with rather than a static bonus as with current design companies.

Why is this important you ask? Well previously we had to provide static modifiers and sometimes change them via scripted decisions or focus rewards. By creating a more organic system to upgrade your design companies you the player can now decide what these upgrades are and tailor them to fit your playstyle. Additionally we can now reward the player for using a design company as opposed to simply having you save up a resource and click a button, rewarding you for putting effort into them.

• Allow the player to define their designer direction.
  
• Integrate design companies into production
  
• Provide a framework for national specialisms that can be used on the world stage

So first here is a rough structure of an MIO;

• Name
  Icon
  Size (Level)
  funds (XP)
  Task Capacity
  Departments

• 0-1 Design team
  
• 3 departments
  
• Max 13 traits each

• 0-1 Industrial manufacturer
  
• 3 departments
  
• Max 13 traits each

• Name
  
• Category’s
  
• Trait tree
  
• Trait icons

• Size determines how many tasks a MIO can handle
  -Researching
  -Producing
  -Designing

• 2 task Capacity
  
• + scripted increases
  
• + trait increases

This structure allows us to represent MIO’s in a way that expresses the specialisms of the various organisations that designed and produced war materials during the period. You can now represent a company like Bofors AB who designed and produced anti tank, anti air and naval guns seamlessly and expand each of those specialisms as you see fit. Investing in the right MIO is critical to upgrading those specialist departments in order to gain the bonuses you need for specific stats.

An MIO of course can’t work on a number of infinite simultaneous projects. For this we have task capacity that limits how many things your MIO’s can work on balancing. This is an important thing to balance, since producing too much equipment with an MIO will lock you out from using it for research or designing equipment. For ship production this is actually important for producing ships in parallel so you might want to invest in the manufacturing department for task capacity so you can really ramp up your naval production.



Research cost and Production cost is used to calculate MIO funds that it gains when it is used.
An amount of MIO Funds is required to increase your size and pick a new trait.

• split roughly along the same lines as current design companies.
  
• possibility for country unique trees
  
• possibility for content prerequisites (national focus or decision locking etc…)

• Industrial manufacturers (IM's)
  
• Assigned to production lines (Task)

• Design teams (DT's)
  
• Applied to research (Task)
  
• Applied to equipment both via equipment designers and normal variants
  
• Skill trees provide Stat bonuses
  
• Can be applied retroactively to equipment at cost
  
• A move away from pay mana get reward

So that's a lot of high-level structural talk so you understand the core concepts of the MIO Feature and so I'll now show some of the WIP flows of actually using these structures and systems.









Well that wraps things up for this week, I Hope you enjoyed it and as always please leave questions and comments below and I will do my best to answer them. Join me in two weeks for another dev corner showing another feature coming to you in the near future.

Thank you for all of your submissions, we will soon release what the results were!

Generals!

Following the popularity of our Homeland bundle, we're giving YOU the opportunity to pick our next DLC bundle to go on sale! You'll have the chance to rank Expansions, Music Packs and more!

In this survey all we ask is that:

1. You list what you own
2. You rank expansions
3. You rank music packs
4. You rank cosmetics packs



Expansions

By Blood Alone
No Step Back
Battle for the Bosporus
La Résistance
Man the Guns
Waking the Tiger
Death or Dishonor
Together for Victory

Music Packs

Radio Pack
Eastern Front Music Pack
Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. 2
Sabaton Soundtrack
Allied Speeches Music Pack

Cosmetics Packs

Allied Armor Pack
Axis Armor Pack
Eastern Front Planes Pack


That's it for today, happy voting!

Hello Generals, Katten here.

Operation Cockpit has arrived! With an additional change to the Anschluss focus in Germany and a message from our Game Designer C0rax explaining the intent behind recent balancing! Below that, as usual, you will find a set of patch notes that is now live. Feel free to give us feedback on these planned changes in this thread, or in our Discord!


The initial intent of hitprofile changes in the naval rebalance started with 1.12.0 was to reduce the effect of speed, this is now complete with the halving of the effect of speed on the calculation.

- decreased HIT_PROFILE_SPEED_FACTOR from 2 to 0.5 this will make ships speed affect hit profiles less

The final calculation is (visibility*100) / (speed*0.5 +20) with this final piece in place destroyers are roughly being hit at the same rate as pre 1.12.0 but the effect of slower speed ships such as capital ships is much lower resulting in greatly reduced hit rates.

1.12.12 hit profiles


1.11.X hit profiles


For a long time air accidents have been of minimal consequence thus reliability of planes was less valuable than wanted and air accident advisors were of low value. Accidents have now been doubled in occurrence and the amount of aircraft lost per incident is also doubled. This means that reliability modifiers for planes are even more useful and taking that air accident reduction spirit or advisors might be a good idea if you need to conserve your aircraft stocks. Additionally when training as before you get a 1.5x multiplier to accident occurrence when training so keep an eye when training airwings you may have to lose a few aircraft to keep those wings ready for war. Obviously losing more aircraft to accidents reduces your wings experience so we have also increased this so that you can still train your wings in good time despite the increased losses.

- Air accident base chance increased from 0.05 to 0.1, accident chance multiplier increased from 0.5 to 1, accident effect multiplier increased from 0.005 to 0.01 ace death chance increased from 0.003 to 0.005
- Air wing XP game from training per day increased from 3 to 7 since Air accidents are more common, air exercises xp adjusted to match
- increased supply per transport plane to 0.01 from 0.002



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

- Canadian Focuses 'National Steel Car' and 'Send in the Zombies' are no longer mutually exclusive. If Great Depression has already been removed, the focus on "War Fuelled Economy" and "Reactivate the Farmers Unity League" will grant a significant temporary construction speed boost.
- Canadian focuses regarding the repatriation of Newfoundland are now available to the recently added Communist path
- Divisional Commanders: XP requirements for level thresholds and for gaining an aptitude trait have been reduced across the board by 20-50%
- Divisional Commanders: XP gain from combat increased by 33%
- decreased HIT_PROFILE_SPEED_FACTOR from 2 to 0.5 this will make ships speed affect hit profiles less
- Air accident base chance increased from 0.05 to 0.1, accident chance multiplier increased from 0.5 to 1, accident effect multiplier increased from 0.005 to 0.01 ace death chance increased from 0.003 to 0.005
- Air wing XP game from training per day increased from 3 to 7 since Air accidents are more common, air exercises xp adjusted to match
- increased supply per transport plane to 0.01 from 0.002

##################################
# UI
##################################

- Now the discord and the Instagram tooltips will have correct localization.
- Added link to Instagram and Discord to the in-game menu.

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

- Fixed the Portuguese Great War tank not appearing in the tech tree without NSB.
- Re-introduced many tank icons for most countries that were screwed by No Step Back. Tank icons in the non-NSB generic tree will now appear in the Tank Designer with NSB.
- Improved the way country-specific tank icons appear in the tank designer, based on tech.
- Turkey will no longer be able to ask again for investment to a country until the country has accepted the portfolio and finishes the decision to invest in Turkey.
- Fixed issues with equipment bonuses to Carriers provided by Italian focus Refit Civilian Ships.
- Fixed issue with Italian focuses Standardization and Specialization so that they provide bonuses to aircraft as promised.
- Fixed issue in which Australian designer Cockatoo Docks and Engineer was not providing any real bonuses to Heavy Cruisers.
- Super Heavy Battleship armour now reduces Torpedo critical chance instead of increasing it
- Fix for Flying Tigers without BBA
- Remove duplicated delimiter in focus-tree tooltips
- Fixed wrong positioning of British focus "Embargo The Soviet Union" when hiding obsolete branches and Global Defense focus has been taken.
- Fixed disappearing icons in the division designer when NATO symbols are used
- Names in trade views are now updated when the country changes ideology
- Soviet Marti Class cruiser will now have the minelayer role.
- The Linguist trait should now work
- Fixed wrong naming of peace conference after load game during the peace conference.
- Fixed issues with misplaced focus branches in UK and USA focus trees when the Hide Obsolete Branches custom rule was set as "Show".
- Fixed a few Czech Designers having their icons broken when Death or Dishonor DLC was not active.
- Fixed a Dutch Designer having its icon broken when Man the Guns DLC was not active.
- removed erroneous leader trait XP stats from the engineering school's army spirit. It now grants a global initiative factor
- Fixed issues with dynamic textures on DX11 with older drivers / Windows releases
- Fixed handling of X1R5G5B5 and A1R5G5B5 textures on DX11 when not supported by graphics drivers or older Windows versions
- Added Black Sea cores missing from the Polish Fascist branch after selecting the national focus "Decide Post-War Borders".
- Added checks to Hungarian focus "Renew the Rome Protocols" to make sure Austria and Italy exist and are independent.
- Made it harder to do the Anschluss swap exploit.
- Anschluss fix v2. You now need >40k inf eq in the standing army to do it
- Fixed localization for poland.26 event.
- Series of bug fixes focused on Interface and Localization.


Thank you all for assisting us with your bug reports during this Open beta! And here is the updated map of the War Effort!


/Katten

Hello there Generals!

We have begun the final preparations for Operation Cockpit! Below you will find a set of patch notes that are now live on an open beta branch. Feel free to give us feedback on these planned changes in this thread, or in our Discord!


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

- Canadian Focuses 'National Steel Car' and 'Send in the Zombies' are no longer mutually exclusive. If Great Depression has already been removed, the focus on "War Fuelled Economy" and "Reactivate the Farmers Unity League" will grant a significant temporary construction speed boost.
- Canadian focuses regarding the repatriation of Newfoundland are now available to the recently added Communist path
- Divisional Commanders: XP requirements for level thresholds and for gaining an aptitude trait have been reduced across the board by 20-50%
- Divisional Commanders: XP gain from combat increased by 33%
- decreased HIT_PROFILE_SPEED_FACTOR from 2 to 0.5 this will make ships speed affect hit profiles less
- Air accident base chance increased from 0.05 to 0.1, accident chance multiplier increased from 0.5 to 1, accident effect multiplier increased from 0.005 to 0.01 ace death chance increased from 0.003 to 0.005
- Air wing XP game from training per day increased from 3 to 7 since Air accidents are more common, air exercises XP adjusted to match
- increased supply per transport plane to 0.01 from 0.002

##################################
# UI
##################################

- Now the discord and the Instagram tooltips will have correct localization.
- Added link to Instagram and Discord to the in-game menu.

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

- Fixed the Portuguese Great War tank not appearing in the tech tree without NSB.
- Re-introduced many tank icons for most countries that were screwed by No Step Back. Tank icons in the non-NSB generic tree will now appear in the Tank Designer with NSB.
- Improved the way country-specific tank icons appear in the tank designer, based on tech.
- Turkey will no longer be able to ask again for investment to a country until the country has accepted the portfolio and finishes the decision to invest in Turkey.
- Fixed issues with equipment bonuses to Carriers provided by Italian focus Refit Civilian Ships.
- Fixed issue with Italian focuses Standardization and Specialization so that they provide bonuses to aircraft as promised.
- Fixed issue in which Australian designer Cockatoo Docks and Engineer was not providing any real bonuses to Heavy Cruisers.
- Super Heavy Battleship armour now reduces Torpedo critical chance instead of increasing it
- Fix for Flying Tigers without BBA
- Remove duplicated delimiter in focus-tree tooltips
- Fixed wrong positioning of British focus "Embargo The Soviet Union" when hiding obsolete branches and Global Defense focus has been taken.
- Fixed disappearing icons in the division designer when NATO symbols are used
- Names in trade views are now updated when the country changes ideology
- Soviet Marti Class cruiser will now have the minelayer role.
- The Linguist trait should now work
- Fixed wrong naming of peace conference after load game during the peace conference.
- Fixed issues with misplaced focus branches in UK and USA focus trees when the Hide Obsolete Branches custom rule was set as "Show".
- Fixed a few Czech Designers having their icons broken when Death or Dishonor DLC was not active.
- Fixed a Dutch Designer having its icon broken when Man the Guns DLC was not active.
- removed erroneous leader trait XP stats from the engineering school's army spirit. It now grants a global initiative factor
- Fixed issues with dynamic textures on DX11 with older drivers / Windows releases
- Fixed handling of X1R5G5B5 and A1R5G5B5 textures on DX11 when not supported by graphics drivers or older Windows versions
- Added Black Sea cores missing from the Polish Fascist branch after selecting the national focus "Decide Post-War Borders".
- Added checks to Hungarian focus "Renew the Rome Protocols" to make sure Austria and Italy exist and are independent.
- Made it harder to do the Anschluss swap exploit.
​- Fixed localization for poland.26 event.
​- Series of bug fixes focused on Interface and Localization.

Thank you all for sending in bug reports & suggestions, there is more of this on the horizon, now have an amazing easter!

/Katten

Hello there everyone, I’m sure you can guess who it is, it's me, C0RAX.

So let me clue you in, I know it's been a while since our last update but this one will be worth it, I promise!! We have been working tirelessly to bring you the greatest leap in the history of the hearts of iron franchise(Bit of trivia,it’s over a decade old). We’ve wanted to go above and beyond what the fans expected for a long time so we have a long running project we've kept very close to our chest, the one we’re here to announce.

Ok, without further ado and before you can make all the blocks fall into place on your own, here it is, the future of the franchise:

Generals!

Info from the front lines shows that the Steam Spring Sale is operating massive discounts up to 75% on everything Hearts of Iron!

Discounts on top of discounts for you to get the DLCs you want, from the 16th - 23rd! Like the new Homeland Bundle that brings the frontlines to your doorsteps with Battle for the Bosporus and La Résistance at an even larger discount!

• Hearts of Iron IV: Homeland Bundle Additional 20% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Ultimate Bundle Additional 10% off

• Hearts of Iron IV: Cadet Edition 75% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition 75% off

• Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back 20% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Together For Victory 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off

• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Music Pack 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes Pack 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Speeches Music Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Radio Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. 2 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Armor Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor Pack 50% off