I'm Zwirbaum, Game Designer for Hearts of Iron, and today I will be bringing up to you a new Open ‘Balance’ Beta that we will be running for the near foreseeable future. As opposed to the recent open betas, like for our War Effort patch (1.17.4), this beta will be much more focused on a specific area of gameplay, it will not contain any new focuses, paths, or anything like that. The main purpose of this beta is to present to you, our community, ahead of time, some of the balance changes we are thinking about, give the opportunity to test it in practice, see how it feels, give us feedback in return, which we can then use for further fine-tuning of the proposed changes, resulting in better gameplay experience for everyone.
Now to give some extra information about this Open ‘Balance’ Beta - if everything will go according to plan (knock on wood, as game development and life can throw a curve ball at you at unexpected times) - beta build will likely be updated every week. Those updates may be chonkier or smaller, may contain a bit more experimental, somewhat crazy changes, or be just relatively fine-tuning the values. In the meantime I will be listening, reading and interacting with the community to get feedback and what do you think about the direction of those changes. I will try to provide some of the commentary on those changes, and give some of the reasoning behind those changes.
However please do remember the following thing: I am not a telepath, so without your opinion and constructive criticism, it may be hard to guess what your opinion is on the changes.
Finally, as opposed to our usual open betas, changes we are testing MAY not end up (immediately) integrated into the main game, with the conclusion of the beta. We will see what the impact it will have on the global balance, AI performance and whether we will need to polish it a bit further.
Now saying that, the first of the changes should be relatively non-controversial (I hope,) and are mostly aimed at reducing the amount of inconsistencies, a bit ‘jumpy’ progression in certain places, and making tweaks to make certain elements of the naval gameplay a bit more friendly. There will also be some Service Manpower requirements reductions for the Navy, which should ease the ‘threshold of entry’ for the countries that are not blessed with abundance of manpower.
And that is pretty much all from me, at this time.
Thanks for reading, and until next time, farewell!
/Zwirbaum
How to join this Open Beta:
This beta client is Musketeer v1.17.5.1.e15e (4e4e)
To install Open Balance Beta client, follow these instruction:
[olist]
[*] Right-click the game in your library
[*] Select Properties from the drop-down menu
[*] Select Game Versions & Betas
[*] Select the beta branch called open_balance_beta
[/olist]
Finally, to report any issues you find in relation to this beta, please use the bug report forum and make sure to include the version you’re using. That way our Jira won’t go nuts trying to figure out what bug report belongs to what.
Open Beta Patch Notes
Balance
Supply Consumption
Carriers
1.2 → 0.8
Battleships
0.8 → 0.56
Battlecruisers
0.48 → 0.32
Heavy Cruisers
0.4 → 0.24
Early Destroyer
Naval Range
1500 km → 2000 km
Basic Destroyer
Naval Range
1800 km → 2500 km
Service Manpower
325 → 300
Improved Destroyer
Naval Range
2000 km → 3000 km
Service Manpower
400 → 350
Advanced Destroyer
Naval Range
2500 km → 3500 km
Service Manpower
500 → 400
Improved Cruiser
Naval Range
4000 km → 3500 km
Service Manpower
1200 → 1000
Advanced Cruiser
Naval Range
4500 km → 4000 km
Service Manpower
1400 → 1200
Torpedo Cruiser
Naval Range
4000 km → 3500 km
Service Manpower
960 → 900.
Panzerschiff
Service Manpower
1800 → 1200
Hull IC cost
3500 → 3000
Surface Visibility
22 → 20
Coastal Defense Ship
Naval Range
1500 km → 2000 km
Service Manpower
1800 → 1000
Hull IC cost
3500 → 1500
Surface Visibility
20 → 18
Pre-Dreadnaught Hull
Naval Range
2250 km → 2500 km
Basic Heavy Hull
Service Manpower
5200 → 4300
Improved Heavy Hull
Service Manpower
6000 → 4650
Advanced Heavy Hull
[strike]Service Manpower[/strike]
6000 → 5000
Modern Heavy Hull
Service Manpower
6000 → 5000
Hull IC cost
4000 → 3600
Cruiser Carrier Conversion
Naval Range
4000 km → 3000 km
Battleship Carrier Conversion
Naval Range
4000 km → 3000 km
Service Manpower
5000 → 3500
Basic Carrier
Naval Range
3000 km → 3500 km
Service Manpower
4500 → 4000
Improved Carrier
Naval Range
4000 km → 4250 km
Service Manpower
5000 → 4500
Advanced Carrier
Service Manpower
5500 → 5000
Modern Carrier
Service Manpower
6500 → 6000
Escort Carrier
Hull IC cost
1500 → 1250
Service Manpower
2500 → 1500.
Super Heavy Hull
Service Manpower
9000 → 7000
Naval XP gain for the following mission types
(This value is expressed as a ratio compared to Naval Training XP Gain Rates, which is currently set at '1'.)
Patrol, Convoy Raiding, Convoy Escort, Mines Planting, Mines Sweeping
Increased to 0.2
Strike Force
Increased to 0.05
Developer Commentary: The purpose of this change is to make a more unified approach to the resource costs across the naval production. Under the previous set of the resource costs per some modules, you could end up with battleships barely costing any resources, and destroyers using 50-60 Steel per ‘full production’ line. They were also not used uniformly across the ship modules, where for example Ship Secondaries would be ‘free of charge’, while Dual-Purpose Light Gun Mounts would cost steel even on the tiniest of the ships. Under the new system, the costs are mostly associated with the hulls, with a very rare exception of Anechoic Tiles (they introduce new resource cost, which is usually not used in naval production) and Armor Schemes. The rationalization behind not increasing the resource cost with modules is that they already increase the IC cost of the ship, which in turns means finishing the production of said ship will overall ‘consume’ more Resources. This one will likely be one of the more ‘controversial changes’ of this beta batch, so I am more than keen to hear what you think about moving to this system, from the previous one. The IC cost of the modules, if the current set of changes when it comes to resource costs will be taken positively, will be likely tackled in the follow-up updates to the beta.
Also, at first glance the resource costs may look like they increased mostly across the ships, (especially on Heavy Ships), due to the removal of the resource costs from modules, overall they should cost around the same if not lower amount of resources, barring some kind of stranger constructions and designs.
Balance (Continued)
- Removed Resource Cost from most of the naval modules (guns, deck armor, hangar decks) (Armor Schemes as well as Anechoic Tiles will still have resource costs associated with them)
Resource Cost Changes
Cruiser Armor Scheme
Steel: 0/1/1/2 → 0/0/1/1
Chromium: 0/0/1/1 → 0/0/0/1
Battleship Armor Scheme
Steel: 1/1/2 → 1/1/1
Chromium: unchanged
Submarine Carrier Hull
3 Steel → 4 Steel
Advanced Destroyer Hull
4 Steel → 3 Steel
Early Cruiser Hull
1 Steel → 2 Steel
Basic Cruiser Hull
2 Steel → 3 Steel
Improved Cruiser Hull
2 Steel → 3 Steel + 1 Chromium
Advanced Cruiser Hull
3 Steel → 4 Steel + 1 Chromium
Torpedo Cruiser Hull
2 Steel → 3 Steel
Panzerschiff Hull
2 Steel → 3 Steel + 1 Chromium
Coastal Defense Ship Hull
3 Steel → 2 Steel
Pre-Drednought Ship Hull
1 Steel + 1 Chromium → 2 Steel
Early Heavy Ship Hull
1 Steel + 1 Chromium → 3 Steel + 1 Chromium
Basic Heavy Ship Hull
1 Steel + 1 Chromium → 4 Steel + 1 Chromium
Improved Heavy Ship Hull
1 Steel + 1 Chromium → 4 Steel + 1 Chromium
Advanced Heavy Ship Hull
1 Steel + 1 Chromium → 5 Steel + 1 Chromium
Modern Heavy Ship Hull
6 Steel + 3 Chromium + 2 Tungsten → 6 Steel + 4 Chromium + 2 Tungsten
Super Heavy Ship Hull
1 Steel + 1 Chromium → 5 Steel + 3 Chromium
Basic Carrier Ship Hull
3 Steel + 1 Chromium → 5 Steel + 1 Chromium
Improved Carrier Ship Hull
4 Steel + 1 Chromium → 6 Steel + 2 Chromium
Advanced Carrier Ship Hull
4 Steel + 2 Chromium → 7 Steel + 2 Chromium
Modern Carrier Ship Hull
5 Steel + 3 Chromium → 8 Steel + 3 Chromium
Ice Carrier Ship Hull
5 Steel + 2 Chromium → 10 Steel + 2 Chromium
Escort Carrier Ship Hull
2 Steel + 1 Chromium → 3 Steel
UI
- Tooltip updated to indicate that the control ratio required for having dominance in a sea zone is 60% (was 66%)
