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Dev Corner | Thermodynamics

If you missed the previous Dev Corner, check it out here!


Briefing: Thermodynamics
Author: @Zwirbaum

Hello everyone!

It has been eight days since the last dev corner, which means it is time for another one. Last time, I was talking about some of the new naval concepts and changes coming to the Hearts of Iron IV. Today I will be talking about the introduction of Coal and Energy into the game. As a casual reminder keep in mind that everything discussed here is in a relatively early stage, and as such is subject to change.I also want to add that not every dev corner will be a long one, and some may end up on a rather short side. But without further ado, let’s keep this lump of coal rolling.

For the first time since the launch of the game we will be adding a new resource to the game, as every other resource, Steel, Rubber, Tungsten, Chromium, Aluminium and Oil were since day 1 in-game (with Oil getting Facelift in Man the Guns to be used for Fuel production instead of equipment production). This resource is Coal - to put it very briefly it will be serving as a ‘fuel’ in the form of Energy for your industry to keep it running efficiently.

Core Concept​
What are some of the goals when it comes to adding Coal & Energy, and what do we want to achieve with it?
  • We want to introduce a potential soft-limit on the current almost limitless industrial expansion.
  • Increase importance on expanding and securing a resource base for your needs.
  • Provide a bit more interesting choices when it comes to economic laws, give some incentive for a player to consider ‘demobilize’ at some point during the gameplay, and that War Economy / Total Mobilization is not always the one and the only one right choice.
  • We are not aiming at creating a super complicated or overly complex system for energy/economy model

What is all the fuse about?

dc_thermodynamics_001.png

Sardinia starts with 2 units of Coal at the beginning of the game. As usual, numbers are subject to change, so please do not despair yet.

Base Concept​
So the system works like this: Coal is excavated just like every other resource in-game. Each unit of Coal that you have for your own use (so not traded away) will produce a set amount of Energy, which then in turn is used to power up your industry - your civilian, military factories and naval dockyards, which for the ease I’ll be later calling them in this dev corner as ‘factory’. Each Factory, regardless of the type, has the same base Energy demand, so what you are seeing in the top bar as your industry size should also give you a very rough estimate of the demand.


dc_thermodynamics_002.png

This totally mysterious country, that is totally unrelated to Sardinia from the previous screenshot starts with 56 factories, and now has a mysterious bar under the factory count.

Economy of the Scale​
However the base Energy demand is not everything, as each Factory you own will also introduce a little extra scaling cost to the demand per factory, so a small, undeveloped minor country will be able to sustain their few factories with a rather small amount of coal, while historically accurate Luxembourg spanning across Eurasia will require much more energy in order to effectively satisfy the ever hungry maw of their Industry.

Lower Mobilization Law is your friend?​
Most, if not all, economic laws will also have factory energy consumption modifiers, which will essentially either increase or decrease how much each factory (including the ‘scaled’ portion from ‘size’ of the industry) will demand energy. Higher mobilization laws will have higher energy demand, to represent longer working hours, more shifts etc.

dc_thermodynamics_003.png

Economy Law picker will also now proudly display the energy consumption modifier at the first glance, so that you do not need to scour through the tooltip to find the modifier. Before you start going crazy with guessing what is the second number, it is just the expected amount of consumer goods - the icon is currently placeholderish, as we haven’t adjusted the previous icon yet.

How does it work though?​
I will start with a quick reminder how the Civilian, Naval and Military Industry operate in-game currently. Essentially each of the ‘factories’ have a specific base amount of output valued in points that they contribute daily to. (5, 2.5 and 4.5 respectively). And that was further modified by all the technologies, laws, ideas, ministers, national spirits with various ‘Construction Speed’ or ‘Dockyard/Factory outputs’ modifiers. I am not mentioning Production Efficiency, as that was unique to the Military Factories.

So how will that operate in the brave new world? We will now have a base output for each of the industry types - which means that regardless of the energy, you will always have at least this much output from your factories. And there will be ‘fully powered’ output values for the industry. Depending on the energy ratio you are providing, you will end up somewhere on that scale, e.g. If you have 50% energy - you will be getting output that is ‘50%’ way from the base output to the fully powered up. All the previously mentioned Construction Speed, Dockyard/Factory Output modifiers will also be scaled accordingly to the % of the energy you have.

dc_thermodynamics_004.png

This is the current debug display that allows us to see energy demand & consumption, and how much it impacts the industry. In this case we have 26.7% energy needs satisfied, and it means that each of our CICs provide 4.2 IC daily, MIC provides 3.7 IC daily and NIC provides 2.1 IC daily. Of course as usual, reminder that all values are subject to change.

Wrapping Up​
And that is all from this dev corner. While this post is one the shorter side, impact from adding this ‘system’ could of course be quite big - however thanks to covering only this one matter, feedback, opinions, suggestions from you dear readers, should be laser-focused and allow us to get a much clearer picture of what you are thinking. Anyways, that is all from me for this week, and next week Thomas will be back with more things to say about the Factions.

Thanks for reading, and until next time, farewell!

/Zwirbaum
 
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It's not bad, but it feels like another missed opportunity (after Götterdämmerung) to add Uranium to the game and make Nuclear capability more realistic.
 
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I would like to ask whether it would be possible to treat oil as a raw material to be refined in order to obtain diesel fuel, which will then power ships, trucks, tanks and so on. By building refineries, you process oil using electricity and get a certain amount of diesel that you can either store or sell on the arms market added by "Arms Against Tyranny." In addition, it would be good if, when designing a ship or train, one could choose whether to power it on coal or diesel according to one's energy availability.
One last thing I would like to ask (not related to the dev diary) is to increase the amount of war material that the IA puts on sale; it often happens that there are 50 artillery pieces on the market, put a minimum of 500 pieces that the IA can sell
 
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twillie96 said:
With the addition of coal to the game, could we also get an option to run our navy on that instead of oil? Probably best to represent this through new engine modules. Ie, if the ship has a coal boiler, it runs on coal, and with the traditional engine it will run on fuel.

We will probably need stockpiling mechanics for coal as well then, but I think that should be both doable and necessary. That way you also have some flexibility with regards to keeping your industry running when a few convoys get sunk.
Click to expand...

No plans for it at the moment.
 
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Wrongwraith said:
Currently we are letting Industry in states with Dams or Reactors require less coal.
Click to expand...
Is it theoretically plausible to completely transition off of coal if you had enough reactors or something. Kinda interested to see if you could be a completely environmentally sustainable economy in preparing for the war.
 
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stingray20 said:
As a player since 2016 the game is starting to feel bloated and overwhelming and I do not think it will be as enjoyable to try to manage all of the new resources. Will there be an updated tutorial or something to help out new players or someone like me who is getting turned off by the additional things to manage?
Click to expand...
you can simply revert back to an older version (Right click on the game in steam -> properties -> betas -> opt into past versions in this list.)
as a sidenote 1.11 patch is No Step Back
 
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Are there any plans to limit the number of divisions fielded by the player and AI? It could be tied to the number of available factories or perhaps a new resource, like food or grain. It also could improve performance a lot
 
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I’m having trouble understanding how dams work in HOI4. Are the dams currently in the game meant to represent hydroelectric power plants, or can regular water reservoirs also be included?

This could be important, especially if you’re planning to add energy as a resource to the game.

Also, are you considering introducing standard “thermal power plant” buildings as well?
 
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Question have you given a thought into adding Thermoelectric plants as a state building where you burn some oil to get a simillar efect to coal?
Also as a suggestion I would say that a Dam should already give the state a waiver on all the industry energy in a given state. They are already rare as it is and historically A Dam generates huge amounts of energy. A nuclear plant on the other hand makes total sense to me that it should be a percentage reduction.
I believe it was already asked but will coal also work for ships?
 
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Ollfardh said:
It's not bad, but it feels like another missed opportunity (after Götterdämmerung) to add Uranium to the game and make Nuclear capability more realistic.
Click to expand...
Uranium would be a resource that probably does not matter at all until ~1942/1943, and it's importance only increase (or even skyrocket) after that date, making it a resource that is completely ignored for the first half of the game. I'm not a fan of adding a resource that could matter only in some runs.
 
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Will either Centralized or Decentralized industry techs be affected by the power implementation in any way? Centralized industry is underutilized and I think it could actually benefit from this system.

One thing that always annoyed me is that one major disadvantage to decentralized industry which is not modeled is that setting up a bunch of decentralized factories connected through infrastructure should be a lot more straining on your logistical network than setting up large interconnected factories. You’re essentially adding tons of trucks and trains to your roads and railroads shipping manufactured parts back and forth all over the country. Concentrated industries are a lot less logistically straining, since you basically just drop off input goods on one end and pick up finished equipment on the other. Obviously there has been no way to model this until now, but giving concentrated industries a power discount or decentralized industries a power consumption increase could help rebalance these techs somewhat.

Right now there are too many bonuses on the decentralized tech which make it kind of a no brainer pick for most nations: factories vulnerable to bombing? Pick decentralized. Planning a large conquest where you rapidly increase your factory count? Pick decentralized. Changing equipment a lot? Decentralized. Not sure if any of these situations will happen to you in game? Decentralized is still probably the safer bet. The only reason I would pick centralized industry is if I’m playing a small nation which is not at risk to bombing and not changing factory numbers or equipment a lot (basically just China).
 
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I hope that playing for small countries won't become too difficult. I enjoy playing for small countries like Hungary and becoming a large country like Austria-Hungary. However, not all small countries have access to important resources like steel. Now, we may need to import coal in addition to the critical steel resource. We also need to develop our industry to compete with larger countries.
 
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Andreu said:
Finally! I've been waiting for this for a long time.

The only question is: will the dams now provide energy?
Click to expand...

Right now Dams and Civilian Nuclear Reactors provide a reduction in the energy factories from this state are using. (Local Energy Consumption Modifier), so let's say if the modifier would be -25%, then factories located in such state instead of consuming 100 energy would now consume 75 energy. (Random numbers are random)
 
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A exciting new addition! Given that there's now another resource to manage, will there be new QOL features to help manage all the extra trade ?
 
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Zwirbaum said:
This is the current debug display that allows us to see energy demand & consumption, and how much it impacts the industry. In this case we have 26.7% energy needs satisfied, and it means that each of our CICs provide 4.2 IC daily, MIC provides 3.7 IC daily and NIC provides 2.1 IC daily. Of course as usual, reminder that all values are subject to change.​
Click to expand...
Does the 26.7% energy needs satisfied mean that the factories are working at 26.7% of it's max output and that it needs more coal overall, or are you suppose to increase your economy law to get the factories up to 100% output?

I know numbers are subjected to change, but this paragraph makes me think the base output of a CIC is 15.7 being reduced to 4.2, which is a rather big change compared to the current CIC outputting 5.
 
In what ways can you disrupt your enemy's energy production ? Stirring up resistance to reduce ressource extraction should work I assume, where possible, but can one disrupt the coal chain through convoy raiding or damaging/capturing railways, isolating factories, or does coal magically turn into energy teleporting to factories accross the world as soon as it's extracted ? Adding a new resources is a really good opportunity to give some more love and importance to industrial logistics, even if just a little... notably to convoys - them being more important for the industry to run could also make navy more impactful.
 
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Wrongwraith said:
Currently we are letting Industry in states with Dams or Reactors require less coal.
Click to expand...
That is all well and good however, I read that as the energy requirement is calculated on a state by state basis, each state will have a unique energy requirement and the calculation needs to go through all the hundreds of states. (If this is true) this is concerning for me as it has potential to introduce another set of medium complexity calculations to the game, I already can't reach 1943 without alot of lag, I'm not a coder of anything but, wouldn't a system where "X factories consume Y energy and Z coal/reactors/dams produce Y energy be less of an overhead? (all caculated as a per country basis not per state)
 
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How will trade laws play into this?

At the moment, trade laws seem to just throw a total percentage of all of your resources on the market, and you have little say on which of those resources are put on the market. Additionally, some nations like Turkey & Greece have decisions/National Spirits that they need to do that increase the amount of resources that go onto the market.

My concern is that trade laws like Free Trade and Export Focus will nerf your industry even more than Civilian Economy already does.
 
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