Oct 2, 2023

Hearts of Iron IV - PDXKatten

Hello there it's me C0RAX. It's time for another feature dev diary and this week we are going to look at the International market.

So previously we showed this feature off in the international market dev corner and some things since then have changed. We’ve on top of this loaded the feature with brand new functionality to improve the flow and usability as well as refine the information we provide you throughout the feature. So remind ourselves let's go over what intents and goals we started with in that original dev corner.

Feature Intent & goals

Introducing a place for nations to buy and sell equipment benefiting both nations with a reward. Creating a new way for countries to contribute specialist equipment to other nations
Be able to source equipment from other nations as needed
For majors to set the global standard for common place equipment leveraging their superior economic might.

The international market acts as a one stop shop for all your equipment needs from other countries. It's an international store front, with multiple sellers being able to sell the same thing from the same store front. This means that provided you have the appropriate market access, you can go into the international market and buy tanks from the USA and planes from germany in one interface (but not 1 purchase).

The feature

So first of all, how do we get to the international market? Well, it's pretty easy. We have replaced the diplomacy button with the international market. This will take you to the home screen of the international market

You Can still access the diplomacy menu from this button at the bottom of the international market.

Now let's go buy something. The first thing we need to do is to get market access to another country. This will allow us to see what they are selling on the market. By default we have access to all of our subjects and they have access to our market.

The market access is by default automatically sent and accepted so any AI that will accept will be added to your market and you will get access to them as well meaning that you don't need to worry about missing out of a market you could have access too. You can also toggle auto accept purchase requests which will always accept other countries asking to buy your equipment on the market.

To manually get market access we simply go to the diplomacy screen for a given country and use the diplomatic action “negotiate market access”.

So now we have our market access set up and it's time to buy something. First we need to go into the buying mode of the international market. We do this by clicking the buy equipment button.

Now we can see the USA is selling some trains and convoys on the market right now so let's buy some. To start a purchase draft all we have to do is click on a piece of equipment we want to buy.

Here we can set up our contract to purchase some equipment. From here you choose how many pieces of equipment you wish to buy of each type. Each equipment entry will show how much the equipment of that type will cost in economic capacity(EC) (this is the output of civilian factories). There is also a handy purchase button if that is what you wish and you can use keybinds to change the steps of the plus and minus buttons just like in other parts of the game.

At the bottom of the draft we have the draft totals, here we can see the total EC cost, total convoys needed and then finally we have our payment settings. We can choose to assign up to 15 factories to pay for the equipment. These factories will work towards paying off the total EC cost of the equipment you selected. The more you pay every 30 days, the more equipment will be delivered per delivery. So here we can see that with 5 factories paying for our equipment we will receive all of our equipment in 4 deliveries:120 days.

Now we have sent off our draft to the USA and we just have to wait for them to respond and accept.

And here we have our accepted and now ongoing contract, we can see all of the important information on our contracts from here. Active contracts are shown in the default international market screen.

We can see our factories are assigned and paying off the contract and all 4 convoys are available. If anything is causing deliveries to fall behind the expected amount be that lack of factories, convoys or even if your convoys are being intercepted and the equipment lost to the depth of the ocean, the contract efficiency will reflect this.

As your contracts progress you can see the bars fill up and the deliveries tick down.

Now let's sell something on the market.

To sell we click the “sell equipment” button right now we can see we are not selling anything so now let's add something to our market. We do this by clicking on the ‘add equipment to market’ button.

Here we will get all of the surplus equipment we have in the right hand window and everything we are adding to the market on the left. From here we have the same controls for equipment numbers as with buying. You can select all, or choose any number in-between.

Additionally from the screen we can set the price levels of equipment, this can be done for the whole set or individually for each equipment. You can set the price to be 25% higher or lower than the normal price, this is done in order to not overcomplicate the economic gameplay here. Fully Variable prices would be very complex to understand as a player and be at odds with the economic detail of the rest of the game. This inconsistency would make the pricing very troublesome to understand, keep stable and to keep free from exploits. Generally this would detract from the core gameplay of HoI in a negative way, taking time and concentration away from the warfighting for something less useful. The final total EC value is shown at the bottom of the window if you want to see the effects of your pricing choices.

Now we can see all of our equipment has been added to our market for sale.

We have now received our first purchase requests and you can see our equipment has been taken from our market listing as it is reserved while the requests are pending. Let take a look at one of these requests

Here we can see Sweden is looking to buy the 35 light tanks we put up on the market. In the request we can see all of the necessary contract details to make an informed decision. Of course if we had auto accepted purchase requests this would have already been automatically accepted and the contract would be ongoing already.

And now we can see our purchase of american equipment and our sales of equipment to portugal and sweden all in one menu allowing you to easily keep contract of you ongoing contracts and if there are any issues with deliveries. We can also filter this list to just buying or selling if you have lots of contracts all at the same time, and we cancel contracts from here if you need to do so.

Going back to the buy menu lets take a look at some of the sorting and filtering options that help in the later game when there is significantly more equipment on the market. First lets look at the sorting options.

First we can sort by the amount on the market.

And we can sort by the EC cost

Now onto filters; we can sort by country and by equipment type

Finally we get to subsidies. Subsidies are a way of getting a better deal with purchasing contracts, you can get them from national focus and decisions or any other bit of content. An example of this can be found in the danish focus tree where you can get subsidies for buying aircraft if you choose to seek external sources. As mentioned subsidies target specific equipment types such as fighters and can be limited to contracts with specific countries as well. They work by having an EC value and when applied to a contract they will match the EC generated by your factories until the EC value of the subsidy is drained. So if 1 civ produces 5 EC/day then the subsidy will also provide 5 EC per day for each civ allocated to the contract.

With the general flow we will look at the detailed mechanics of how payment works. We are paid for contracts in EC generated by factories assigned by the buyer. Instead of receiving those factories directly to use, you are given the EC output of those factories to boost your own civilian factories. We opted for this solution in order to improve the granularity of bilateral trade, as well as to give the seller a new kind of incentive to take part in trade.

Here we can see our EC income from all of our current contracts, any collected EC is stored in our EC surplus here in the market window.

Here we can see the EC surplus being applied to your construction queue to boost it above the normal maximum rate. The amount you can boost a construction is based on your trade law. Here we are on export focus which gives us a 10% boost on top of the base 25%. This can also be affected by other construction boosts. The important thing to understand is you do not receive temporary foreign factories, you receive their EC output which boosts your own civilian constructions.

As an addendum to the addition of the international market we have adjusted lend lease in order to better fit to the new world market. So let's talk about the changes there. Firstly, subjects can no longer always use lend lease and are subject to the same limits as other countries. Now subject levels have modifiers to the required world tension in order to use lend lease.

In addition to this ideology and laws impact the tension requirements for lend lease, fascists and communists will find it harder to give equipment for free to there allies compared to before as will countries who operate on tighter trade laws

Countries on closed economy and special cases such as the USA can also block access to certain markets or totally block all market access so be careful before taking foci like the neutrality act.

That's all for this week, as always please do ask if you have any questions about the feature and I’ll do my best to answer you. Next week we will be looking at the final art DD, you will get to see more 3D models, 2D art (including the new loading screen art) and the coveted achievements coming with Arms against tyranny, I hope to see you there. C0RAX Out.

Sep 27, 2023

Developer Diary | Military Industrial Organisations (MIO's)

Hearts of Iron IV - PDX Chakerathe

Hello there it's me C0RAX. It's time for another feature dev diary and this week we are going to look at military industrial organisations (MIO’s).

Now we talked about the concepts of the MIO’s in the Dev corner in may but since then we have done a lot of work taking onboard internal and community feedback and from that work we have changed lots of things. This means that some of the things we talked about previously in the dev corner won't be true anymore. That's enough prefacing so let's get into it, let's see what the finished MIO’s look like.

So to reiterate what we went over in the last dev corner here is what we identified and how we wanted to improve it. Firstly we have the current model of companies in HOI.

Currently we have to provide static modifiers and sometimes change them via scripted decisions or focus rewards, this makes them very un-interactive and mostly something you click once and then forget about, it's just another modifier on your country.

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.

From this we had an intent and goals established.

Intent

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

Goals

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 let's see what the final version of the MIO’s look like. So firstly how do you see your MIO's? This is as simple as previously you can find your MIO’s in the political menu where you would have found the buttons to unlock design companies before.

From here we can click on details and this will show the detailed page for that specific MIO, this is where you will upgrade that MIO as it grows in size.

Right so this is very different from the mock ups from the dev corner so let's go through this.

Firstly let's talk about the progression change in the middle. Previously we had 6 departments (3 design, 3 manufacture) each with their own stats and unlocks; this now has been condensed into 1 tree covering everything for the MIO. The old design was very void of narrative and feeling and often was overwhelming with choice but underwhelming in effect. By bringing everything into a tree like so with fewer actual unlocks your choices are more impactful and the compromises are clearer. The trees also allow for a narrative progression through the small advances made within companies that the bonuses provided represent.

In addition to this we have unique traits for some MIO’s that represent them having their historical unique capabilities.

Departments now represent the groupings of equipment an MIO will affect this allows you to have a quick snapshot of the bonuses an MIO can and is offering so if you see an MIO with a department for medium tanks you know to expect it to give you houses for that and once you’ve unlocked some of those traits you will see them on the department/

Now we have some entirely new things. So let's start with the initial trait. Every MIO has an initial trait this provides bonuses to that MIO always and generally designates the type of MIO so an MIO such as supermarine has the initial trait agility fighter this tells us this MIO is focused around agility for small aircraft and the initial bonuses will also be for that

Next we have policies, policies are mid upgrade bonuses. They cost political power and provide a bonus that is outside of the normal traits you would get for the MIO. These bonuses specialise you MIO in certain directions from making it grow faster or giving bonus stats or building faster. Once you select a policy you cannot change it for 180 days so you need to make sure you’re selecting the ones you need for each MIO because they are long term choices.

Now we will get onto using the MIO’s, so as detailed before in the dev corner MIO’s are applied when we research now, so when you go to research something that has an applicable MIO for it you will get the option to attack an MIO for a small PP income cost or to research without an MIO. MIO’s offer research time bonuses so attaching them makes the time faster and adds funds letting your MIO increase in size as you research.

If you didn’t attack on MIO or want to change the attacked MIO you can also do this after researching. You can go to any equipment and create a new variant and attack or change the MIO on the equipment for a small XP cost. Once an MIO is attached to equipment it will apply to any further variants you make.

However the MIO attached to equipment is a snapshot of the traits of the MIO when it was applied and must be upgraded to gain any new traits unlocked since then also for a small xp cost. This can be done via the make valiant screen or via the history tab.

The history tab in the MIO details screen shows every equipment you have with that MIO attached and any equipment currently being produced by the MIO. from here you can upgrade the MIO on the equipment up to the latest traits individually or you can upgrade all non obsolete ones with the upgrade all button. You can also upgrade all whenever you unlock a new trait via a check box.

Finally we can add mio’s in the equipment designers this works the same as with other equipment but we do when designing the equipment.

Finally we have production, any production line can have an MIO attached so long as it has the equipment designed in one of its departments, most MIO’s will have production bonuses for equipment allowing for faster or more efficient production when they are attached. On top of this you also gain funds from producing equipment so building something with you MIO’s will let them increase in size faster. This is integrated into the flow when you add a new production line and can be added later simply via the production menu

Modding

Implementation of new MIO’s are very easy, you can create a new one or “include” and extend/modify an existing one all natively in the api.

An MIO has a basic structure like this

<code>
equipment_type = { mio_cat_eq_all_light_tank mio_cat_eq_all_medium_tank }
research_categories = { mio_cat_tech_light_armor_and_modules mio_cat_tech_medium_armor_and_modules }
<code>

This acts to tell the MIO what equipment it will be affecting with traits and which tech categories it will be applicable to. Here we are using a new type of collection for MIOs equipment categories; these are script defined sets of equipment types that allow you to reference all of them with a single token instead of having to declare each one individually for every instance.

<code>
initial_trait = {
name = generic_mio_initial_trait_standardized_production

equipment_bonus = {
armor_value = -0.05
defense =-0.05
}

production_bonus = {
production_cost_factor = -0.1
}
}
<code>

Next we are defining the initial trait that is modifiers that the MIO starts with, these can affect the equipment modifiers, production modifiers or MIO modifiers like fund gain or research bonus speed.

<code>
trait = {
token = generic_mio_trait_simplified_suspension
name = generic_mio_trait_simplified_suspension
icon = GFX_generic_mio_trait_icon_reliability

position = { x=1 y=0 }

equipment_bonus = {
reliability = 0.05
}
}

trait = {
token = generic_mio_trait_crew_ergonomics
name = generic_mio_trait_crew_ergonomics
icon = GFX_generic_mio_trait_icon_maximum_speed

position = { x=4 y=0 }
relative_position_id = generic_mio_trait_simplified_suspension

equipment_bonus = {
maximum_speed = 0.02
defense = 0.02
}
}

trait = {
token = generic_mio_trait_improved_tracks
name = generic_mio_trait_improved_tracks
icon = GFX_generic_mio_trait_icon_maximum_speed

position = { x=0 y=2 }
relative_position_id = generic_mio_trait_simplified_suspension

any_parent = { generic_mio_trait_simplified_suspension }

equipment_bonus = {
reliability = 0.05
maximum_speed = 0.05
}
}

<code>

Now we are defining the traits we can declare where they exist on the trait grid and if they have any parents that they connect to and what parents are needed for the trait to be accessible. As above we have the any_parent trigger. We can also do things like mutual exclusivity and other things expected from hoi4’s trees.

When creating traits we don't always have to affect everything, we can limit a trait to only affect specific equipment. By using the “limit_to_equipment_type” we can select an equipment type that MUST be contained in the “equipment_type” categories defined.

<code>
tree_header_text = {
text = mio_header_tank_construction
x = 3
}
<code>

Finally for normal MIO setup we have headers, these are text entries that you can position on the grid. They will always be above a trait on the same grid location and are fixpoints numbers so can go between grids.

Now that works great for a new MIO but now let's talk about taking an existing one and expanding on it to make it a bit more unique without having to duplicate this for every MIO.

<code>
include = generic_medium_tank_organization
<code>

This include line will take all the script from the defined MIO and use it for this new MIO; we can now modify this include as well. We can simply declare non trait values normally and they will override just like with parenting in other parts of hoi4’s scripting. However for traits since they are a tree they need to have some explicit commands.

<code>
add_trait = {
token = ENG_mio_trait_expanded_turret_capacity
name = ENG_mio_trait_expanded_turret_capacity
icon = GFX_generic_mio_department_icon_tank_medium_tank_engine
special_trait_background = yes

position = { x=1 y=1 }
relative_position_id = generic_mio_trait_all_round_cupola

any_parent = { generic_mio_trait_all_round_cupola }
limit_to_equipment_type = { mio_cat_eq_all_medium_tank }

equipment_bonus = {
reliability = 0.05
armor_value = 0.05
breakthrough = 0.05
}
}
<code>

Here we can see we have used the add trait line to add another tree to the tree just for this MIO, we are even able here to give it a parent by using the token for a trait declared in the included MIO. in addition to add we can also “remove_trait” and “override_trait” if we wish.

The final part I'll talk about for trees is the allowed and available blocks. Allowed & available works just like any other in the game. We can lock MIO’s for any reason. So if you want to stop a trait from being available because of a decision or national focus you can do this. And allows you to lock MIO’s to specific countries but is only run on load as with other allowed blocks.

The finally part of MIO’s is policies

<code>
mio_policy_land_cutting_corners = {
icon = GFX_mio_policy_cutting_corners
allowed = {
OR = {
has_mio_equipment_type = armor
has_mio_equipment_type = motorized
has_mio_equipment_type = mechanized
has_mio_equipment_type = anti_tank
has_mio_equipment_type = flame
has_mio_equipment_type = anti_air
has_mio_equipment_type = artillery
has_mio_equipment_type = rocket
has_mio_equipment_type = infantry
}
}
available = { has_mio_size > 5}
equipment_bonus = {
same_as_mio = {
build_cost_ic = -0.1
reliability = -0.05
soft_attack = -0.05
hard_attack = -0.05
armor_value = -0.05
}
}
}
<code>

This is a policy in script. It's very simple to implement but we have a few special things for MIO’s. Has_mio_equipment_type is the trigger used to ask if the MIO has a specific unit type defined in “equipment_type = {....“ so this is very useful for making sure policies are only allowed or available for the mio’s you want. Finally we have same_as_mio this dynamically makes the stat bonus apply to whatever equipment was defined for “equipment_type = {....“ So we don't need to worry if the armour bonus we add with a policy is targeted against the correct equipment or cover them all, so long as we are allowing them correctly we just add the modifiers under “same_as_mio”.

That's a quick round up of most of the core parts of MIO’s from a modding standpoint but feel free to ask questions if there's something still unclear.

That's everything for this week as always feel free to ask questions about this feature and I'll do my best to answer them. Later this week we will be looking at the International Market feature. I hope to see you there. C0RAX Out.

Sep 20, 2023

Developer Diary | Finland Alt History Part 2!

Hearts of Iron IV - PDX Chakerathe

And now for me. Hello everyone, it’s me Jonathan, here to write about some of the content I have helped with creating for Finland for the upcoming expansion. I have been jumping around and helping my fellow content designers wherever help has been needed for AAT, whilst working on other stuff in the background.

The White Death
During the winter war, the Finnish fought fiercely to stave off Soviet attacks, cleverly using a combination of their (as mentioned in the previous Finland Dev Diary) Motti Tactics alongside snipers, who had been trained either by the Suojeluskunta (Finnish voluntary militia Civil Guard) or as hunters or Jaegers. Among these snipers was Simo Häyhä, who thanks to Finnish propaganda later came to be known as the White Death. The White Death however, despite being said to have been attributed to Häyhä by Soviet soldiers, to them rather symbolized the severe cold in the deep forests, and the tenacity of the Finnish people in a more general sense.

The White Death news event:

In game, this is represented through a series of events for Finland and an aggressor, be it the Soviets or someone else in case of an alt-hist scenario, where Finland has the option to prop up their sniper organizations, dealing damage to enemy manpower and equipment pools through events, and where their enemy can choose between simply taking the hits, or spending equipment and command power on dealing with these snipers before they become a problem. Finland also gets the option to either do as historically and use propaganda to build up Simo Häyhä as the embodiment of the White Death, or to embrace the original meaning of the word, by making their enemies take more attrition. At the end of the event chain, Häyhä can either escape unscathed, be wounded (as historically happened), or be killed by the enemy, getting a hero's funeral.

The Continuation War

At this point, you have all heard about the Finnish Continuation War before, but one not all that known fact is, how did they manage to worm their way out of the mess they had found themselves in?

Well, there were talks held with the Allied powers around the time of the battle for Stalingrad, as Finland saw that there was great risk that things would go south real fast, regarding changing sides, and declaring war on the Germans in exchange for peace with the Soviets, but this plan never really panned out due to the Western Allies’ fear of intruding on the Soviet sphere by allowing Finland to join them. That is why though it didn’t succeed historically, it and the historical outcome both exist and can happen, as can be seen below.

Decisions to get yourself out of the Continuation War if worse comes to worst:

When not switching sides, but instead offering concessions to Moscow in exchange for peace, Finland will have to concede any of Salla, Petsamo and Karjala that Finland still owns, and they will need to transfer equipment over to them, signing the historical Moscow Armistice with the Soviets.

The Moscow Armistice news event:

This is however not the end of the struggles for Finland or its people, as a part of the agreement signed with the Soviet Union was the expulsion of Axis troops from Finnish territory. As the Soviets press Finland to comply with the treaty, the Lapland War starts, and Finnish troops clash with Germans retreating into German-occupied Norway (or Sweden, if the game has gone slightly a-historical). The Germans will have options for how to deal with the Lapland war, allowing for slightly different bonuses and maluses when withdrawing.

The German response to the Lapland War starting:

When all this is said and done however, if this was the option of peace Finland chose, there will be no actual war between the countries, as compared to if they were to switch sides completely.

The Lapland War news event

City and State Name Changing

Now onto something a little bit different. During BBA, Italy introduced states and vps that change names depending on who controls them, such as Zara being called Zadar when not under Italian control.

This has now been updated to include certain state and vp name changes for Finland and Sweden, as seen below.

Petrozavodsk becomes Äänislinna if under either Finnish or Karelian control

Murmansk becomes Muurmanski, Kandalaksha becomes Kantalahti, and the state of Murmansk becomes Kuolan Niemimaa (Kola Peninsula) when under either Finnish or Karelian control

Many cities in Finland, due to the sometimes significant Swedish minority (or in some specific places even majority), officially use both Finnish and Swedish names to this day, such as Turku and Åbo both being frequently used for the same city, and Sweden and Finland still harboring a close bond to this day. Thus, if Sweden were to go rogue and decided to occupy Finland, it would only make sense that they would use the Swedish names for towns in the region.

Here you see the southern parts of Finland when under Swedish control, with many cities gaining their official Swedish names, such as Turku becoming Åbo, and Viipuri becoming Viborg.

And here you can see northern Finland when under Swedish control. Also take note that Inari (which can not be seen here) becomes Enare.

Releasables and Game Rules

And now we can move on to something a bit less Swedish, and also a bit less Finnish, we have two new game rules for the fragmentation of the Nordic countries!

You can choose between no fragmentation, only releasing Sápmi from the Nordic nations, or doing that alongside liberating Iceland, Karelia and Greenland from Nordic countries. If you combine any of these rules with the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, Sápmi and Karelia will gain their Soviet-held cores as well.

The new game rules

The Nordics Fragmented option has been chosen

And with our brand new releasable nation, Sápmi jumping into action, we had to do them some justice with just that extra pinch of flavor added on top. As can be seen in the image below, Sápmi will not only have unique party names and flags as do any other nation, but also unique leader and general portraits.

Sápmi with all of its cores

Sápmi has its own unique Admiral portrait

Sápmi also has its own unique General portraits

Sápmi has many new advisor portraits, some of which can be seen here

And that’s been all from me for now. I will see you all when I have more cool stuff to deliver! But now, back to Manu.

Alright, let’s take a look at the last batch of changes and content for Finland.

Some of you might have noticed a new focus in the historical branch that was not there in the last Dev Diary.
The focus “Pärmi’s Devils”, available for both historical and fascist Finland, is themed around the Finnish Separate battalion 21, a penal battalion formed mainly by political prisoners and commanded by Nikke Pärmi.

In-game, this focus will unlock a limited recruitment of Divisions formed by penal battalions, and spawn Pärmi’s very own full division, a veteran unit with a very promising officer ready for action!

A few extra Generals have been added at game start, based on some of the feedback from the last Dev Diary.
Karl Oesch is now available to Finland.

Aksel Airo is also available to Finland, although his portrait is still not in the game.

Raappana has made an appearance and is now replacing Törni as the general unlocked by the focus “Sissi”. Törni will, in turn, be unlocked via the fascist focus “Military Promotion”.

In terms of military advisors, Vilho Nenonen has joined the Military High Command roster as an Artillery Genius, while Kaarlo Somerto has been downgraded from Artillery Expert to Artillery Specialist. This way, Finland has the option to go for a cheaper and weaker artillery officer early if needed, and then move on to the Genius later on.

Akseli Anttila is now only available to Communist Finland, and Erik Heinrichs is the available military theorist for non-communist Finland

Something I wanted to implement for a while was French Renault tanks (available at game start) and the modified British Vickers tanks (available in the 1939 Bookmark or via “Foreign Armor” focus).

And before finishing, I would also like to give a big kudos to our 2D and 3D artists because they keep doing an amazing job delivering incredibly cool assets for our content! From focus icons to portraits, tech icons and 3D models, they’re great!

Throughout the diary you have seen a lot of cool 2D art but only a few 3D models, so here are some more pics of the new Finnish 3D models!

Let’s start with the new Soviet T-28 model (and icon), which is now the default model for the Interwar Medium Chassis for Soviets and for Finland.

We now have a Marine 3D model for Finland, based on the Rannikkojääkärit (or Marine Jaegers).

And we got a fourth regular infantry model, the best of them all. Behold the beauty of an infantry division walking alongside one of the coolest means of supply, the reindeer!

This new infantry model also has a winter version and a warm weather version. This is the winter one. Again, the coolest of them all in my honest opinion..

And last but not least, the hot acclimatization version of all 4 regular infantry models!

And that was all from me! I hope that you all enjoyed reading about the Finnish Alternative history content coming with the new DLC as well as the changes and additions implemented since the first Finnish diary. I wish you all a nice week and make sure to stay tuned for the next dev diary where we’ll be talking about one of the new features in Arms Against Tyranny: Military Industrial Organizations!

Nähdään pian!

Sep 20, 2023

Developer Diary | Finland Alt History Part 1!

Hearts of Iron IV - PDX Chakerathe

Moi! It is Mano de Zombi again to welcome you all to a new HOI4 Dev Diary for the upcoming DLC Arms Against Tyranny, and just a heads up this one is going to be split in two here on Steam since its a hefty one!

Today we’ll be talking about the alternative history available to Finland with the new DLC. In case you missed it, you can read more (a lot more) about the Historical content for Finland here

As per usual, keep in mind that some of the stuff you’re about to see is still work in progress, there is still some balancing to be done and some art in the workings. Last but not least, some of the content might vary if certain previous DLCs are not active.

And without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Finland’s Alternative History content, starting with a screenshot of the full Finnish Focus Tree!

Let’s begin with the Fascist Branch, to the right of the Historical focuses. First a short-ish piece of context!

In the 1920s and 1930s, Europe saw the rise of far-right and authoritarian movements in response to economic difficulties, social unrest, and the aftermath of World War I, and Finland was not immune to these trends, with various far-right and nationalist movements emerging.

The most notable of these movements was the Lapua Movement, formed in 1929, and succeeded by the Patriotic People’s Movement during 1932-1944. It drew its support primarily from agrarian and nationalist groups. The movement aimed to combat what it saw as the growing influence of left-wing and communist forces in Finnish society, using tactics such as street violence and intimidation to suppress left-wing organizations and activities. They targeted labor unions, communist sympathizers, and other perceived threats to Finnish nationalism.

The actions of the Lapua Movement led to a political crisis in Finland, with the government struggling to maintain order. Eventually, President Pehr Evind Svinhufvud declared a state of emergency and took measures to disband the Lapua Movement and restore stability.

But now let’s take a look at how the branch looks in-game.

As you can see, the Fascist Branch shares some focuses with the Historical Branch, which were already covered in the Historical Dev Diary, so let’s talk about the unique stuff:
“Right-Wing Policies” is the first focus in your path towards a Fascist Finland, unlocking your Fascist Demagogue so that you can start boosting ideology in the country.
After that, you can choose to “Discredit the Democratic System” for a slower-going but peaceful change of ideology, using your advisors to boost ideology in the country until you reach the required support and stability to complete “A Fascist Regime” and have a peaceful change of government.
On the other hand, “Prepare a Military Coup” will set you up for a faster (yet more violent) change of ideology. This focus will unlock a series of decisions granting some advantages for the Civil War that will, in turn, be triggered by the Focus “A Fascist Regime” after choosing the military coup focus.

And simple as that, you are now a fascist. But what does the future hold for you? Well, first of all let’s take a look at your new leader, Vilho Annala:

SOME CONTEXT
Vilho Annala was a Finnish economist, nationalist and far-right political figure active in the 1920s and 1930s. He played a role in the early stages of the Lapua Movement, and was known for his involvement in organizing paramilitary activities and actions against left-wing groups during the turbulent political climate of the time.
He supported the replacement of capitalism and free market economy with state-led corporatism, similar to Italy.

In-game, this is represented by Annala’s trait Economic Reformer. Also, to represent the influence of other prominent individuals of the right-wing movement, Annala’s personal Agenda will make the Balance of Power (BoP) move towards high trust when Finland has a considerable army and is not losing a war, whereas having too much Democratic or Communist support will make the public trust decay over time.

In the focus tree, the rightmost sub-branch is themed around internal affairs and utilizing and empowering multiple right-wing organizations.

Here you will unlock advisors, get bonuses for the army and industry, some Balance of Power, etc. But there are a few focuses that stand out a bit more:

“Mustapaidat” was a youth organization of the Patriotic People's Movement (Blackshirts), the successor of the previous Sinimustat (Blue and Black, hence the color of the focuses in-game). The focus will unlock militia units and spawn some in the capital state.

“Take Over the Suojeluskunta” represents the fascists taking absolute control over the Voluntary National Guard and will grant a new division template and spawn some of these units, which can be useful as garrison against sneaky naval invasions.

As for the final focuses, “Intellectual Elite” grants the fifth research slot, while National Fanaticism will, among other things, boost the army’s manpower and performance when on core territory, increase the Militia cap and improve their stats, and finally improve Vilho Annala’s trait as country leader, to represent is success as the leader of the country and the turn towards national corporatism in Finland.

Finland will potentially have to deal with a winter war regardless of Finland’s ideology, and in this regard the fascists have the historical option “A Cry for Help”, or they can “Seek German Protection”, trying to secure a Non-Aggression Pact with Germany and a German Guarantee, in exchange for military access and some resource rights.

In terms of Alliances, Fascist Finland can either “Join the Axis” or work to achieve “Finnish Supremacy in the North” and form a Finnish-led faction focused on the Nordic and Baltic states.

The focuses under “Join the Axis” are more focused towards getting German (or other major fascist countries) aid to boost Finnish industry and army getting, among other things, some research and doctrine bonuses, military factories and some old foreign tanks, whereas the mutually exclusive focuses spin around Finland’s own way of developing the armed forces, boosting Finnish generals and divisions.

“Finnish Irredentism” has multiple effects, the most relevant ones being claims in Kola and East Karelia, significantly reducing the cost for taking cores and claims during peace conferences, and unlocking a new set of decisions: The Last Kinship War.

The Heimosodat, also known as the Kinship Wars or Kindred Nations' Wars, were a series of conflicts in the early 1920s involving Finland and other Finno-Ugric ethnic groups in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution. These wars were characterized by the desire of various ethnic groups to assert their independence and self-determination.

Finland's involvement in the Heimosodat was primarily aimed at supporting the aspirations of fellow Finno-Ugric peoples, such as the Estonians, Karelians, and Ingrians, who sought to break free from Bolshevik or Soviet control and establish their own nations. Finnish volunteers and military aid were provided to these groups during their struggles.

In HOI, Finland has now the option to ignite one last Kinship War in Karelia.
These decisions are available both to Fascist Finland (via the focus “Finnish Irredentism”) and to Non-Aligned Finland (via the focus “Finnish March of Conquest”).
You will start by creating Anti-Soviet sentiment in Karelian states controlled by the Soviet Union.

Once you have stirred the Anti-Soviet sentiment in the region, you have one year to arm the Karelian independentists and ignite the uprising, before the instability and agitation fades away. During this time, the Soviets will also have a decision to crack down on Karelian rebels, crashing down the uprising before it had the chance to happen.

Once the Uprising happens, Finland can choose to openly side with Karelia, fighting alongside the Karelian independentists against the Soviets and puppeting their government, or just provide support to Karelia without officially joining the conflict.

Here you can see a Karelia, supported (and puppeted) by Fascist Finland.

Karelia will also spawn with a general who will also be the leader of Non-Aligned Karelia if it is Non-Aligned Finland causing the uprising.
His portrait is still not implemented in-game (it is almost finalized now), so I took the liberty of making a quick sketch for you so that you all can get an idea of what he looks like in-game.
You are welcome.

And this is how his portrait is coming along. I know what you’re thinking, you can barely tell the difference between the in-game portrait and this one, just a couple of shadows here and there…

Just a final note about the Kinship War content, you can also support your Karelian friends during the second Russian civil war.

Finally, “Keepers of the North” will demand Nordic states from allies and claim states controlled by neutral or enemy countries.

And just like with Non-Aligned Finland, this branch culminates with “Greater Finland”, granting the final cores and claims that Finland needs to further its expansion in Scandinavia, Baltic and Russia.

And to wrap up the Fascist content, let’s take a quick look at the fascist advisors and generals unlockable throughout the branch:

And now let’s jump into the Socialist branches:

Finnish Socialism in the 1930s and early 1940s was marked by political tensions and the growing influence during the 1940s of the Finnish Communist Party (SKP). The Great Depression had led to economic hardship, fostering support for socialist ideas among the working class. However, as Finland geared up for the Winter War (1939-1940) and the Continuation War (1941-1944) against the Soviet Union, political focus shifted towards national unity, temporarily reducing internal political conflicts. Socialist parties, particularly the Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP), still advocated for workers' rights and social welfare policies during this period, but the geopolitical challenges of the wars played a dominant role in Finnish politics.

The conservative political parties in Finland are represented as NonAligned, so it kinda made sense to have the democratic ideology representing the more progressist social-democrats, and having the Communist and Democratic branches sharing part of the focuses.

Since the two branches are a bit intertwined, let’s start by looking into the way of changing government and the unique focuses in each branch.

“Suomalainen Sosialismi” unlocks the Communist Revolutionary and Democratic Reformer political advisors. These advisors will in turn unlock decisions to help Finland switch ideology when they are hired.

The focuses below (“Towards a Red Government” and “Social-Democracy”) will unlock two more ideology-related advisors each. And these advisors will also unlock, when hired, more decisions to help change the government.

“Pragmatic Socialism” will peacefully swap the government to Democratic. It requires fairly high Democratic support (60%) to be available, but with the help of your advisors and their decisions, you should be able to get there without much problem.
The rest of this democratic internal affairs sub-branch is initially focused on BoP, PP, boosting ideology and unlocking advisors shared with the Historical branch (“Align the Agrarian League” and “The Finnish Swedish Party”), shared with the communist branch (“Sosialistinen Eduskuntaryhmä”) and unique to the social-democrats (“Social Democratic Women’s Union”).
The last focuses, “Mineral Wealth” and “Funds From Kalevala Koru Oy” grant some factories, resources and consumer goods.

And now you are democratic, what does it imply? Well, first of all you get Väinö Tanner.

Tanner played a crucial role during the Finnish Civil War as a leader of the Red Guards, the socialist faction, which ultimately lost to the White Guards. After the war, he faced imprisonment and later political rehabilitation.

During the turbulent years leading up to World War II, Tanner adopted a pragmatic approach. He supported President Risto Ryti's government during the Winter War (1939-1940) and the Continuation War (1941-1944) against the Soviet Union, prioritizing national unity over internal political divisions.

In-game, Väinö Tanner is the Democratic country leader, a Pragmatic Socialist. His BoP Agenda includes having very high democratic support while controlling all owned states (including Karjala even if ceded to the Soviets) in order to get trust, and watching out for Fascist or Communist rise in the country so as to not have Public Trust decreasing.

We’ll talk more about the late-game focuses available for Democratic Finland later, but for now let’s just move to the leftmost part of the tree and see how the communists can rise to power in Finland.

Flipping to Communism in Finland can be a bit faster than flipping to Democratic, but it’s definitely going to be harder, since you will have to undergo a civil war in order to achieve it.

All the decisions unlocked by the Communist advisors will help you getting the upper hand when the civil war starts: granting extra states and percentage of the armed forces, sabotaging some of the enemy’s factories and supply lines, imprisoning far-right politicians and officers to weaken the fascist side, and getting aid from the Soviet Union.

Once you are done with your preparations and complete the focus “The Second Finnish Civil War”, it is time to purge fascism from Finland once and for all!

Militia divisions will be spawned for both sides in this civil war (some pre-civil war decisions will grant the communist side more militias and some will grant the fascist side less militias).

Once you have dealt with the tiny issue of fascists rampaging around the country, you can start working on the internal affairs branch.

Here you will get access to extra advisors (some of them shared with the social-democrats) and get some industrial and intelligence bonuses, and a couple of custom operatives.

As for country leader, Communist Finland there are a various options:

The initial Communist leader is Aimo Aaltonen.

Aaltonen studied in the Soviet Union for several years during the 1930s, where he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He returned to Finland on two occasions to organize the military branch of the Finnish Communist Party, but got arrested in 1935. He remained in prison until his release after the Continuation War, and was elected chairman of the now-legalized Finnish Communist Party.

In-game, Aaltonen’s BoP Agenda will be focused on fighting (and be winning) wars against fascist countries in order to increase Public Trust, and keeping a united proletariat with a very high Communist support in order to not lose Public Trust over time.

The focus “The Red Watch” unlocks a decision to appoint Yrjö Leino as leader of the Communist Party.

Yrjö Leino was sentenced to three and a half years’ imprisonment in 1935, for high treason.
Allegedly, he became a communist during this period and, when he was released in 1938, he participated in underground activities of the prohibited Communist Party of Finland.
During the Winter War Leino stayed underground, hiding in communist safe-houses across the Finnish countryside.
In 1940, Leino was detained in a secure facility, until 1941 when he escaped from a prison train in Riihimäki, which was taking prisoners to fight in a penal battalion. Leino participated in underground Communist Party activities until the 1944 armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union and the legalization of the Communist Party.

Leino’s BoP Agenda will make Public Trust grow by wiping out fascism from Finland’s society and from European Governments. Just like Aaltonen, he needs high Communist support to prevent Public Trust from going down over time.

Last but not least, Otto Wille Kuusinen will automatically become the country leader the moment Communist Finland joins a faction led by Stalin’s Soviet Union (including if Soviet Union puppets Finland after a war), and the Finnish Democratic Republic will be formed.

Kuusinen had fled to Soviet Russia after the defeat in the civil war, and there he forged his political career. He played a key role in the founding of the Communist International and managed to survive the Great Purge. During the Winter War Kuusinen was appointed as leader of the Finnish Democratic Republic, also known as the Terijoki’s Government, a short-lived puppet state of the Soviet Union in occupied Finnish territory during the war.

In-game, when the Finnish Democratic Republic is formed, Kuusinen will grant the Soviet Union a small but convenient Consumer Goods and Supply Efficiency boost for a couple of years, in exchange for some construction speed bonus for Finland.

In terms of his BoP Agenda,
“A Solar system of organizations" is a reference to Kuusinen’s proposal for a network of various political and mass organizations that are either sympathetic to or directly affiliated with the Communist Party. These organizations would work in conjunction with the Party and serve as a means to influence and mobilize the masses for political purposes aiming to create a system of interconnected entities that can effectively advance the party's objectives and prevent the loss of political influence among the masses.

Even though this concept has nothing to do with actual invasion of any nations, in order to spice-up Kuusinen’s gameplay and make it a bit more rewarding to expand with him in charge, controlling all Scandinavian and Baltic countries or having them as puppets will make Public Trust increase, while not having control over all three Karelian states will make Public Trust slowly decrease.

Regardless of its ideology, Finland will most likely have to deal with the Soviets kindly asking for Karjala state in order to secure Leningrad from potential threats coming from Finland.
In this regard, both Communist and Democratic Finland have two options: “Approaching the Soviets” or “Antagonize the Soviets”.

“Approach the Soviets” is your way to show the Soviet Union that Finland poses no threat to their country, trying to cooperate with them and leading to establishing a “Finno-Soviet Pact”, getting a Guarantee from the Soviets as well as other diplomatic deals.
This option will also unlock Finnish generals exiled in the Soviet Union, available for the Civil War, and a decision to request the extradition of Kullervo Manner, who was imprisoned in 1935 in the Soviet Union and died of tuberculosis in 1939, so you better hurry to get him out of that prison camp before it is too late!

On the other side… Does Finland really need the trust of the Soviets? “Antagonize the Soviets” will make Finland reach out to major communist or democratic European countries (Soviets don’t count, obviously) to get a guarantee from them. Further down the branch, you have focuses themed around the fortification of the country and getting trade Agreements with friendly nations.

In between those two options, there are shared focuses granting the fifth research slot, boosting industry, and seeking a union between Finland and Estonia.

When it comes to factions, as you have probably noticed already, there are three options:

To the left, assuming Communist Finland did “Approach the Soviets” and a “Finno-Soviet Pact” was signed, you can choose to “Join the Comintern”.
But remember: if you do so with Stalin at the helm of the Soviet Union, Kuusinen will inevitably pop-up, pushing aside your former leader!
Well, Stalin might initially not be in the mood to trust just any Finnish leader, so he will only accept Kuusinen, but over time, he will get confident in the Finnish leadership and you will be able to complete the focus “Finnish Autonomy”, once the industrial bonus to the Soviet Union, provided by Kuusinen, has expired. This will bring back your former communist leader, country name and white color on the map!

Apart from territorial and war-related focuses, the branch culminates with “Red Finland”, which, similar to Greater Finland, will not only grant some cores and Resistance bonuses, but it will also increase the Militias cap and improve the country leader trait (whoever is in charge).

To the right, Democratic Finland can “Approach Major Democracies”, assuming you decided to “Antagonize the Soviets” previously.
This branch will get some industrial and naval bonuses, some territorial demands and it has two culminating focuses:
“Proclaim the Grand Finnish Federation” will grant cores and big Compliance bonuses in certain neighboring states, and “Socialist Welfare” will grant pretty good bonuses to industry and research, but it will also improve your current leader trait

But Finland can always (regardless of your ideology and how you dealt with Soviets) opt for forming their own faction, the Northern Defense Front.
This branch will (unsurprisingly) focus on the Nordic and Baltic countries, and as you can see shares many focuses with the other two options.
However, there is one unique focus, “Confederated Finno-Russian Republics”, with which Finland will work towards the integration of several semi-autonomous republics within the nation, appealing to the Finnic peoples living in these regions to spread a sentiment of trust towards the Finns among the local population.

In terms of advisors, these are all the ones you can unlock in the Socialist branches.

These are the generals that Communist Finland will unlock. As you can see, a couple of portraits are not finalized so they have not been implemented yet

Here is the (WIP) portrait of one of the missing guys, Antikainen.

And, even though this is pretty much the alternative history for Finland, we are not done with all the new content for Finland just yet, since there have been some changes and many new things implemented for historical Finland (or just Finland in general).
And for these various flavorful details and content I have had the luck to count with some extra help, so allow me to hand you over to Jonathan!

Click this for second part of today's Dev Diary!

Sep 13, 2023

Developer Diary | Modding!

Hearts of Iron IV - PDX Chakerathe

Hey there, everyone, Carlo here. As Content Designers, and developers, we not only make content, but we’re always trying to find new tools to do our job better and faster. And since HoI4 is crazy moddable, these tools are available to modders too, these are some of the new things you’ll be able to do when making mods, starting with Joint Focus Trees.

How do you make a Joint Focus Tree?

Well, at its core, a JFT is a Shared Focus Branch, one where depending on conditions, has a set of member countries, and the completion of the focuses is shared between them, and different effects apply either to the country completing them, to the rest of the countries or to all of them equally.

After that it’s all Joint Focuses, and they’re different in a few ways. First thing you’ll notice is the text_icon parameter, we’ll talk about later, but the SECOND thing you’ll notice is the joint_trigger section. It’s a trigger that determines which countries will be considered part of the JFT and get their corresponding effects. In this case it’s checking if you have the alliance leader flag or you are in a faction with this country.

The other thing that’s different from normal focus trees is there’s 3 (THREE) different sections for Completion Rewards.

First one, regular old completion_reward does its effect in every valid country in the Joint Alliance, the same for everyone.

Then there’s completion_reward_joint_originator, that only applies the effect in the country that completed the focus.

And finally the completion_reward_joint_member, which applies the effect on every valid member of the alliance that is not the country that completed the focus.

That’s basically it. It’s a simple system, but we hope it’ll be flexible enough to have a bunch of use cases and variations, specially since it doesn’t need to be a faction! We used a faction as the most obvious use for it but you can make any amount of related or unrelated countries share the tree. Every country in a continent? Sure. Every communist country? Go ahead. Countries on both sides of a war? Can’t stop you!

I can’t wait to see what you do with it.

Focus Title Background

In the previous point I mentioned a text_icon parameter, that’s the way we are giving you the ability to change the background for the Focus titles. It’s one of the features that were added to enhance the Joint Focus Tree, but can be useful for any kind of focus tree content..

It came about because we wanted a way to quickly differentiate normal focuses from joint focuses. At first we thought about just making them have the same framing on the focus icons but that proved… Not ideal.

The biggest problem is that it immediately made every focus icon be too busy and hard to read.

Plus, when the whole tree was pentagons everywhere, it looked way too repetitive.

Eventually, we accepted that we couldn’t solve this problem with art or design, and we were gonna have to resort to an extreme measure… Talking to a programmer D=

We barely survived, but after an arduous process we agreed to make a system to change the title background changeable. It was the best option; relatively simple to implement, noticeable, and we didn’t need to make every icon from scratch. Of course there was still a bit of trial and error to get the look right.

Setting them up is relatively easy. First, you will have to set up the 4 GFX entries you set up in the nationalfocusview.gfx, in our case, most of the animations and masks work just fine so it was mostly copy-pasting.

There’s a new file called 00_titlebar_styles where you can add style entries and specify the GFXs for each state, and set one as default so you don’t need to specify the style for every single focus..

And now you just use your new style with the focuses you want in the text_icon parameter. They’re set on a focus by focus basis so you can go wild and do dumb stuff with any kind of focus!

Dynamic Focus Icons

Another feature that we added thanks to the Joint Focus Tree. You now can have the focus icons change depending on conditions. This is something I’ve wanted for a long time but never found a big enough excuse to do it… Until now.

The reason we finally added it for the JFT is that we want to have the option of playing it as more than one ideology, while still giving you some thematic distinction. After all, a democratic alliance should have a very different look from one formed by monarchies and dictatorships.

How they’re set up is very simple. Instead of specifying a GFX, you can open brackets and enter a trigger and a value. First one to be true becomes the icon for that focus! Just remember to add the “dynamic = yes” parameter so it’s updated more easily.

Showing Event Option Tooltips

One of the things I hate the most when doing events is showing the effects of both sides of the events in tooltips. Usually, when we have an event option that sends another event to another country, we have to show you what will happen in your country, and in the other country, so you can better judge what’s the right choice. This has always meant adding effect_tooltips and duplicating the other side’s effects inside it, which is time consuming and annoying to maintain and keep track of.

Well not anymore! (Kind of). We’ve added an effect called event_option_tooltip, that allows you to show the tooltip that option will display.

This is also very useful for those effects that go after the “If They Accept” tooltip.

It does have some limitations, like ignoring anything inside a FROM so you don’t accidentally crash the game with an infinite loop if you have a show_event_tooltip on both sides, but it’s already been a time saver and we hope to improve on it in the future. .

Modifying the Effectiveness of Forts

You know, not every fort is built the same, but until now they were in HoI. To make it easier to represent just how bad and outdated fortifications were in Norway and Denmark we needed something extra, so we added a couple of percentual modifiers that change the attack penalty inflicted on the attacking enemy by forts: land_bunker_effectiveness_factor and coastal_bunker_effectiveness_factor.

Before, if we wanted to represent having bad forts, our only option was reducing their production speed, which numerically could make some sense but feels a bit off thematically. You can be very fast in making really bad forts and vice versa.

For example, if a fort normally inflicts a 15% penalty and you have a -50% value in land_bunker_effectiveness_factor, that penalty will be reduced to 7.5%. Forts are already plenty effective so we’re mainly using this to make them worse, but of course, there are exceptions here and there.

And that’s it for me, but Mano de Zombi has a bunch of other stuff to show you!

Mano de Zombi here!
After returning from a sunny vacation to this Swedish deluge I really needed to go through some of the code support we've been getting lately in order to give meaning to my life and remind me of the things that I enjoy and that not even this weather can ruin for me.
So here you have a selection of functionality, tools and improvements that have been added during the past months by our amazing coders:

Scripted Loc can now be used in Dynamic Modifiers
Your dynamic modifiers can now dynamically change name (previously we needed to create duplicates and swap the modifiers and it was really painful and ugly T_T)

New Generator Parameters for create_wargoal effect
We can now use an array as the generator in the effect create_wargoal, allowing us to set the generator states based on the world conditions by the time the effect is executed:

You can use an already set array if you so desire:
Or you can create your own array and add states based on whatever requirements you'd like:

New Functionality for CTRL + ALT + Click

We’ve added more functionality for the (debug-only) hotkey CTRL+ALT+Click on certain UI elements.
For those of you who might not know about this hotkey, this is an extremely useful tool for scripting and debugging: when used on a certain object in the UI, it will automatically open the file and lead to the line in which said object is defined, so you can immediately see the script behind it, and do whatever you need to do with it.
Quick example: (with debug mode on) you can CTRL+ALT+Click on a focus and it will open the appropriate focus file and lead you to the line in which it is defined:

As a reminder, this could already be used in focus, events (clicking on any of the event options), decisions, ideas (National Spirits, Designers, Laws, Officer Corps Spirits), characters (advisors, country leaders, unit leaders), technologies and doctrines.
Please forgive me if I forgot something, I can barely hear my thoughts on this rain…

Now, our amazing coders have fixed an issue with unavailable advisors not working with this (now they do!), and new functionality has been added so that we can now CTRL+ALT+Click on:

Designer Modules in the Ship/ Tank/ Plane Designers
Battalions in the Division Designer
Production Lines and Equipment in the Production Tab
Intel Agency Upgrades
Operations and Phases
MIOS and Traits

Improvements for Division Commanders.

We have improved a bit the way of scripting Division Commanders (Field Officers). Now you can define them with a localized name and with portraits, both in OOB files and inside the create_unit effect:

Parameter random_select_amount

This useful new parameter can be added to all the every_[scope] effects (every_character, every_state, every_other_country, etc.). The parameter takes an integer as value, and this value is the number of times the effect will run before breaking the “for” loop running behind the scenes.

Previously, we had a few different ways of applying effects to, let’s say, 3 random states, but all of them required an unreasonable amount of script and custom tooltips in order to make sure that the effects could not be applied to the same state twice, and they all generated very shitty tooltips.

Now, the use of random_select_amount allows us to apply effects to a number of random scopes (states, characters, countries…) in a very simple way with no possibility of choosing the same scope twice and generating a standard tooltip that indicates the actual states targeted by the effect:

Filter for including invisible unit leaders in effects & triggers

If you ever had the need to apply effects to all your land and navy officers, regardless of them being visible to the country or not (due to, for example, the country not having completed a focus yet), you will find the new parameter include_invisible pretty useful.

This parameter is now available as an optional parameter in the full set of scoped triggers and effects related to unit leaders (every/random/all/any_unit/navy/army_leader). By default is set to false, so you only need to use it if you want to scope to all the unit leaders belonging to a TAG, regardless of them being visible (unlocked) to the country or not.

This is the full list of effects and triggers that benefit from this parameter:
every_unit_leader
random_unit_leader
every_army_leader
random_army_leader
every_navy_leader
random_navy_leader
all_unit_leader
all_army_leader
all_navy_leader
any_unit_leader
any_army_leader
any_navy_leader

Use of Variables as tag in targeted modifiers

Now it is possible to input a variable as the tag parameter inside the targeted_modifier block, allowing us to store the appropriate country inside a variable and then apply the National Spirit targeting the appropriate country very easily!

And this is all for me, I’ll see you soon in a future Developer Diary but in the meanwhile I wish you all a great summer!