​HOI IV – Open Beta Update 01     ​

Generals! (Following our Open Beta Announcement)We have now locked the first OB thread, so be sure to continue leaving your feedback in this thread. Bugs* go in the bug report forum. You can also start a separate thread, just make sure to reference this open beta and mention something like [open beta] in the title.I’m Zwirbaum, Game Designer for Hearts of Iron. It is Friday and it is time for the first update to the Open ‘Balance’ Beta. There have been quite a number of responses to the beta, on the forum, Reddit, Steam or Discord channel (if there have been more places, I may have missed it somewhat), which definitely felt great! Unfortunately, while I tried to answer as many questions, suggestions, and opinions (even those contesting whether I am a real person…), I could not provide a reply to all of them. Rest assured that I have read most, if not all of them. Also at some point I need to actually have the time to prepare the next set of changes, reevaluate the current ones, think on the feedback, and finally write this ‘Open Beta Update’ dev diary. To follow up on this, I am not sure if that was clear from my previous post, but I have seen that some people perceive that this Beta will be only concerning the things it already did in the first update (resource costs, range, supply etc.). This is not the plan, and hopefully over the following weeks I will be able to deliver other adjustments and changes to the Naval Gameplay, and today we will start seeing some of those changes happening as well.With the release of the Warships of the Pacific patch, there has been a change that impacted how the reveal chance for submarines was calculated, resulting in quite significant increase of submarine losses. (Revealed submarine = destroyed submarine in most cases). After looking into the problem, I adjusted the formula, which now should result in a somewhat more sensible detection rate, where submarines should no longer be able to achieve ‘virtually’ undetectable status, but also should not end up revealed all the time. Modders: after updating the Open Beta, in the respective section of 00_defines.lua you will find information about the exact formula being used, as well as the values you can tweak to achieve your headcannon detection rates you would wish to see.Moving forward I may also update for how long the submarine can be revealed (or in other words, until it becomes hidden again). If they can be detected a bit more reliably, then we can reduce the time they are revealed, so as to also reduce the time they can spend being ‘focus fired’. The new formula may see some adjustments, so I am curious to hear what are your impressions – are the submarines detected still way too often? Not enough? Or somehow I managed to nail the balance on the first try. (I very much doubt that…)Second change is that I am bringing the minimum naval hit chance to 0.5%. With Patch 1.17.4, minimum naval hit chance was increased to 2%, increasing effective