Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Hearts of Iron IV. Today we’ll delve into how you can help other nations without necessarily being involved in the war yourself.First of all, we have the lend-lease, which for most ideologies is limited by the amount of World Tension in the world. What is beneficial with lend-lease is not just strengthening friends, you also gain XP from when your equipment is used.This is very good to help allies, or future allies, if you have the industrial power. This can be done even before them being able to join your faction or you joining their wars. The most famous was the lend-lease that the USA did to Britain and Soviet Union both before and during the time they entered the war.You can provide convoys for the target, so that the small nation you help out will not be forced to build convoys for a few years beforehand. Of course, those convoys can be sunk and the material lost. For more on this, we’ll talk in a future diary about sub-warfare.You can lend-lease anything from airplanes to tanks, trucks, artillery and rifles. And you can decide if you want to send fixed amounts, or a percentage of your production each month.This is a way to help minors to get access to materials they may not be able to build themselves.This is one of the most fun features in the game, especially in the first few years, before the major wars break out. This a great way to get experience in those years.Sending volunteers is a way that countries can get involved in wars without REALLY getting involved, a bit like proxy wars. You can only send volunteers if you aren’t at war yourself, andAs you are very likely to see the Spanish Civil War break out, this is a way for you to influence who will win the war. The amount of volunteers you can send depends on the size of the recieiving country, and some nations may be able to send larger forces.It takes 2 weeks for a volunteer force to be transferred back or forth, and they are automatically sent home if you end up in a war yourself.The ability to send volunteers is limited by ideology and world tension, where fascists can do it whenever they like, while democracies are fairly limited. France has an ability to do it earlier.So what makes volunteers fun? You get to control your volunteer forces yourself!This is used for handing over your troops to allies in war. Useful if you don’t want to control them, or if AI wants to fight in your theater and thinks you’ll do a better job than it. Can be handed over at any time, but AI will usually ship them to you as well.Stay tuned, next week we're back again!