Developer Corner | Support Companies

Today we’ll be taking a dive into one of the fundamental building blocks of HOI4: division design, and some changes we’re making to it. This dev corner might be a little less grand than previous dev corners, but division design remains extremely important to the HOI experience, and is a part of the game that’s remained more or less untouched since release.

Those of you with exceedingly long memories may remember in my early roadmap for Hearts of Iron that I mentioned a desire to have doctrines better affect how the player is incentivized to design their divisions. The first step of making this possible is by adding another dimension of choice to support companies.

Support Company Changes

Here’s a look at one of Germany’s starting templates. Ordinarily, engineers would grant a bonus of 5 entrenchment at their most basic level: here, we’re getting 2 (Ed: 2.25 actually… we’ll fix that in post).

And here, in a little more detail - is the breakdown of why. Here, Engineers no longer begin by applying a flat bonus of 5 entrenchment - instead, their initial stats will grant a bonus of 0.25 entrenchment per Leg Infantry battalion in their division.

As you can see, this bonus is not applied to the cavalry battalions I have so wisely placed in my infantry division. We’ll go into the rationale behind this specific change later, but suffice it to say the following:

Support companies can now confer multiplicative or additive bonuses to line battalions of specific categories within their own division.

While it may seem like a small change, this allows us to better represent the effects of certain doctrinal advancements or technologies, and adds a completely new dimension to consider when choosing support companies.

Changes to Existing Support Companies [very subject to change]

Engineers

As you can see above, Engineers will be changing a bit. They’ll retain the flat entrenchment they gain from tech, but by moving entrenchment more towards a per-battalion balancing value, we’re able to flatten the efficacy of entrenchment and devalue it slightly for org-wall playstyles. Entrenchment itself is a multiplicative stat of course, so we take care to ensure that the upper end does not move too far ahead of what was previously achievable.

Recon

The neglected child of the support company family is finally getting some new tools. Recon has always been an underperforming support company, and these changes aim to augment the value of tactical reconnaissance on the battlefield. By default, mounted recon, motorized recon, and armored car recon companies will now confer a [10%] soft attack bonus to all battalions matching the Artillery category.

Note: we’re making the choice to stress the benefits of recon on artillery rather than general infantry here for game balance reasons.

Light Tank recon will confer a [10%] Hard Attack bonus to all Armored battalions.

Recon also gets some other new toys, some of which we’ll cover in doctrines, and others in a later diary on some New Cool Stuff (™).

Field Hospital

A slightly left-field modifier here, Field Hospitals now increase the strength (HP) of all infantry battalions within their division by [10%]. This results in proportionally less manpower (& equipment) loss per damage received.

Flame Tanks

These now increase the breakthrough of all infantry battalions by [5%].

Military Police

A support company with low usage outside of specific garrison templates, we wanted to give these slightly more utility within line divisions. These will now increase the base org recovery