Dev Corner | Thermodynamics

[Zwirbaum]

I really like the look of this. A simple, elegant way to add depth to the economic game. As bonus, if you remember to add coal to Nova Scotia I'll finally have a reason to invade my hometown!

 

[t2odankfilthy]

Could we possibly get a mechanic to have better control over trade? I’m thinking of smaller countries with a lot of one resources (Hungary, Portugal, Malaysia) not being able to use Export Focus or Free Trade, to trade the resources they have a lot of, but rather a lower export law to avoid trading away too much coal and losing the factory bonus. It would be neat to have sliders to adjust the amount of said resources traded which then dictates the bonuses from the trade law. For example if a country is trading away everything at 50% but oil at 0% and steel at 100%, it would still average out to 50% and receive the same bonuses as Export Focus.

 

[herr anfsim]

Am I reading this wrong or is the concept that ‘energy’ will be exclusively tied to a new ‘coal’ resource and that other significant energy sources (such as hydro power and petroleum) will not produce energy?

I am also a bit concerned with how comprehensive the distribution of coal will be. My general impression is that new features (for instance dams) are often added to only a few of the countries/areas where they historically were relevant, and I wonder whether this will be the case here too making a lot of nations less viable or fun.

Sorry about sounding negative, but having seen a number of features introduced with varying degree of success, comprehensiveness and post release support, im not totally sold on an energy system that from my limited understanding sounds a bit ‘half way’.

 

[CaptainBruh]

Base energy demand per factory type should be different. At minimum, make it three separate defines instead of one so that it's moddable.

Ideally, equipment and ships would have variable energy costs associated with them so that, for instance, it costs more energy to produce battleships than it does to produce infantry equipment, just as it currently costs more steel to do so.


That's the opposite of economies of scale. Under economies of scale, factories would consume less energy as their number increases, not more.

It also makes little gameplay sense. Small countries are already buffed by having ahistorically large starting industries and focus trees that expand their industries by ahistorically large amounts.

The only good reason for scaling energy demand in this way is to not force small countries to trade for 8 coal before they need to. A better solution would be to allow resources to be traded in increments smaller than 8, and in exchange for Economic Capacity Surplus (the currency of the International Market) instead of civilian factories.


A better design goal would be to buy as much depth and choice and possible for as little complexity as possible. HOI4 doesn't get mechanical overhauls very often. It would be real disappointment if you didn't use this opportunity to fix as many of the fundamental shortcoming's of HOI4's economy as you can.


This suggestion is based on states, but I think it could easily be based on regions instead to increase performance.


Building suggestions:

• Synthetic refineries should consume coal and require energy to operate
• Dams should produce flat amounts of energy, not percentage reductions in local energy usage
  • Since dams can't be manually constructed, these amounts can be customized and vary from dam to dam
• Energy demand should be assessed by production line, not by factory
  • Unassigned factories don't require energy
  • Production lines can be prioritized to receive energy in the same way they receive resources

Vehicle suggestions:

• Some ships should consume energy instead of fuel
  • Without Man the Guns, probably Pre-Dreadnoughts and Coastal Defense Ships
  • With Man the Guns, a coal-fired engine module, based on pre-1936 tech and included in the relevant historical ship designs
• Convoys should consume either energy or fuel
  • Convoys unlocked by a pre-1936 tech should consume energy
  • Convoys unlocked by a 1936 tech should consume fuel
    • These should have a higher base speed than pre-1936 convoys to them harder to hit
    • They should probably have a higher production/resource cost, just like armored trains do compared with civilian trains
  • Newer convoys should automatically be used when available in the same way armored trains are used as soon as they're available
• Trains (and rivers) should consume energy
  • More on this below

State-based industrial logistics:

• Add a state attribute to all production lines, representing where the factories in that line are
  • A state's production lines can only have as many total factories as their state does
  • Dockyards can only be built in states with at least one port, and ships will deploy in the state in which they are built
  • User interface
    • Add equipment icons corresponding to a state's active production lines to the state info panel, possibly in what is now the State Modifiers panel
    • Add equipment icons corresponding to a state's active production lines to the state map mode
• Calculate each state's net energy and net resource usage
  • Energy comes from local coal, minus coal exports, plus local dams; it is consumed by local production lines and synthetic refineries
  • Other resource surpluses and deficits are calculated similarly
    • Fuel/oil obviously isn't used by production lines, so a state's net fuel output will be based only on its non-exported oil production
• Add each state's net energy and net resources to the national pool
  • States that don't have a supply hub connected to the capital via sea or railroad are excluded
  • If a country has a national deficit of energy or any resource, production lines suffer the penalties associated with their local deficits
  • If a country has a national surplus of energy or any resource, production lines will attempt to "import" their required energy and resources from the capital until the national surplus is depleted
• State-based "imports"
  • Each production line in a state that has a supply hub connected to the capital can attempt to take energy and resources from the national surplus to cover its deficits
  • If done by sea, the required convoys and energy/fuel are calculated as if the state was an independent country trading with the capital
  • If done by rail, the required trains and energy are calculated based on the number of tiles of railroad connecting the state's hub to the capital

Trade:

• The same calculations for energy, fuel, and trains apply to trade between countries

Because this system would be agnostic as to where resources in the national pool were extracted, it hopefully wouldn't be too taxing on game performance. As I said above, production line, energy and extracted resources could also be grouped by region if this state-based version proves too granular.

I don't think having several lines producing the same equipment would be a hardship for players, especially since that's how ships are already produced.

Trains should absolutely be using coal, and so should synthetic refineries! And if my unassigned factories are using energy that would be very frustrating as a player

 

[styroler]

Am I reading this wrong or is the concept that ‘energy’ will be exclusively tied to a new ‘coal’ resource and that other significant energy sources (such as hydro power and petroleum) will not produce energy?

I am also a bit concerned with how comprehensive the distribution of oil will be. My general impression is that new features (for instance dams) are often added to only a few of the countries/areas where they historically were relevant, and I wonder whether this will be the case here too making a lot of nations less viable or fun.

Sorry about sounding negative, but having seen a number of features introduced with varying degree of success, comprehensiveness and post release support, im not totally sold on an energy system that from my limited understanding sounds a bit ‘half way’.

I’m worried about the same things just based on the history implications. The devs seem to have designed a system which somehow makes coal the most important resource on the map, and then plan to put in in very limited quantities all over the map. They are aware this is a game about WW2 right? Coal is probably the most abundant resource in the world at this point in history (at least in comparison to the other resources they include in game like Tungsten or Chromium). And WW2 was literally the period that coal power began to decline and be replaced by Natural Gas and Oil (not to mention up and coming technologies like Nuclear). I’m not saying I’m opposed to coal and power being represented in the game; but representing it in a way where most nations won’t be able to sustain their own power consumption even in peacetime, making military factories functionally more efficient on civilian economy, and making dams (which for some nations, including major powers like Italy, were the primary source of power) provide a slight consumption reduction, makes me question the overall benefit that this system has.

Don’t get me wrong, I want power in the game. I just don’t want power to instantly become the worst mechanic in the game. This feels very unbalanced to say the least, and it feels like they’re addressing the disarmament problem of endgame from the exact opposite direction that they should be. I have to admit, I was initially excited when I first read this Dev diary as I was excited for this new system, but after rereading the dev diary a few times and seeing some of the dev responses explaining how it actually works, I am becoming pessimistic about this system very quickly. Great concept, poor execution.

 

[Zenbeast]

Right now I like the addition of coal as it'll make for interesting strategic play as people work to secure additional coal to fuel their industry. I do think there should be war support/stability penalties for not powering your factories, as civilians would certainly be in an uproar if they couldn't get their goods.

The combination of the addition of coal AND the naval changes makes me think that sub spam will become more common as it'll be harder to contest naval dominance and you're rewarded for sinking enemy trade more. However, no more cheesy naval invasions sneaking through, so it'll be extremely hard to beat the Allies.

 

[DominusNovus]

Again I fundamentally disagree with your argument that hydroelectricity has completely changed. The main reason hydroelectric dams cannot run all the time is because of water flow rate, not because of the addition of renewables. The physics and water flow rates of rivers have not fundamentally changed in 80 years. Every single region which relies on hydroelectric power was still required to have a backup fossil fuel generation capacity in the 1940s just as it is today. That’s why Italy was at 96% hydroelectric in WW2 and not 100%, because that 4% was the back up fossil fuel plants they had for when the hydroelectric dams had to be shut down.

And as for your argument about power range, your argument falls apart when you actually look at the real life examples. Hoover dam is within 500 KM of Los Angeles, and was part of the California power grid even at the time. NYC received a significant portion of its power from the Adams plant at Niagara Falls. The TVA was built to supply power to not just Tennessee, but the entire Appalachian mountain region including Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. Making Dams only state based would diminish their impact .

Also your argument for local power grids just doesn’t hold true. In terms of national grids the UK had a fully interconnected power grid by 1935, most of the German Grid was interconnected by 1942 (with over 24,000 of High Voltage Electrical Wires out of 34,000 today), and many nations like the U.S., the Soviet Union, and France had large regional power grids (the TVA being one of the largest). And by having the base power good be coal, then you would have to say that all power grids could easily be interconnected, because coal and other power producing fuels could be transported everywhere by road and rail, not just used in single regions. Maybe you could argue that dams themselves should get some intermediary treatment, acting as storage devices rather than producing the power good, but there’s no way you can argue that they weren’t part of the fossil fuel power infrastructure when they were integrated components of these vast multiple state (and in some cases fully national) power networks.

Again, I’m not arguing that power should be aggregated as a resource itself, but power fuel, which was absolutely aggregated by the 1940s and not reliant on small regional supplies, should be. Leaving it vague allows you to explain away things like how both coal and oil (hell even natural gas was introduced during the war when supplies of the other two main fuel sources ran low) can be converted into it and how hydroelectricity can contribute too, because your infrastructure is disrupting the resources through direct and indirect means all over the place (this isn’t coal network simulator after all).

I believe you’re arguing against a position I haven’t made. I don’t think power should be state based and specifically call out LA in my initial post.

But water levels do change. Look at a chart for Lake Mead. It spent most of the 20th century almost 200 ft deeper than it is now. For only 2 short periods did it ever dip near as low as it is now. And 1 of those was when they were filling Lake Powell.

 

[balmung60]

What is there not to love about the US hitting max squalor and overcrowding after building 25 factories in Texas? Have you even seen Texas? It's so small, it barely could hold the entire UK three times in it!

Yes, on a more serious note, the building limits can at times get ridiculous. Now that we're turning the attention towards resources and civilian economies, that is one more thing that warrants a closer look.

Oh yeah, the US caps out hilariously low on factories because it has so few states, especially with the entirely unnecessary consolidation of New England.

In a long game, the USSR or a successful Germany can outproduce the USA by virtue of simply having (or acquiring) more places to put factories.

It's completely backwards that the US's industrial potential taps out before other major powers when in reality, the other powers pretty much pushed their industrial bases to the very limit while the US still had room to expand.

 

[Fatallight]

Hope that "Economy of the Scale" was just a title for the dev corner and not a planned copy for the game but just in case: what you've described is the inverse concept, Diseconomies of Scale (see also: Wikipedia).

 

[Mardao III]

Can Nuclear reactors once builded be a bigger source of power when you do not have that much coal for your your Gibraltaro-Vladivostok German Empire ?

And if so yes , why not also adding uranium for them as a ressource too that come usefull only late game ?

 

[styroler]

I believe you’re arguing against a position I haven’t made. I don’t think power should be state based and specifically call out LA in my initial post.

But water levels do change. Look at a chart for Lake Mead. It spent most of the 20th century almost 200 ft deeper than it is now. For only 2 short periods did it ever dip near as low as it is now. And 1 of those was when they were filling Lake Powell.

I don’t understand what it is you want. Hoi4 is a state based game. The devs are not about to implement sub regions after developing the game for 10 years. So either dams are going to provide power to single states (which in the case of Hoover Dam is not going to be California, it’s going to be Nevada, a 1 building slot rural state) or it’s going to be the whole country. There’s no middle option. You are opposed to dams providing power to the whole country, and you are opposed to dams providing power to single states, so what is it that they’re supposed to do exactly?

 

[SherlockWolfenstein]

BEVIN BOYS UK NATIONAL SPIRIT INCOMING

 

[Sourlol]

Power grids or riot

 

[FindFloppies]

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?

You can always go back all the way back to the days before Man the Guns, even. 1.5.4 - Cornflakes.

Or you can write a mod, or not load the DLCs you don't want to see.

You have lots of choices, but I doubt Paradox is going to rewrite it's newest DLC just because you don't like a new feature. Just roll back to older stuff if you want simpler.

 

[FindFloppies]

I’d prefer not to revert back, I’d rather they implement a way to teach us how to manage the additions they put into the game.

So you can't be bothered to learn how yourself? Maybe you need to play a less complex version...

 

[FindFloppies]

Will we have a possibility for mixed production with oil? If i have no coal but lots of fuel, i burn fuel to power cities...
How will the "coal liquidization" work? Energy+coal=fuel?

PS In 1936, 94% of italian energy production came from Hydropower. Pls add dams in northern italy <3

I mean, the three majors with the most oil also have tons of coal irl, so I would expect they have it in-game, so that probably won't be an issue, I wouldn't think.

 

[FindFloppies]

3. Will coal effect trains at all? To the best of my knowledge, many trains up until the 1950's and beyond ran on coal? Could this make an austerity train unique by having it be the first without coal?

Obviously, I don't know for sure, same as you, but, supply trucks in-game don't use fuel, so I would suspect supply trains won't take any coal, either.

Later EDIT: For the same reason, I doubt they'll modify the Synthetic Factories to force coal use. But I could be wrong.

 

[FindFloppies]

(I'm not proud of myself, but it was the first thing that came to mind when you explained it.)

That's ok. We've always known you were easily amused. We like you anyway. Most days.

 

[Wanderer3071]

It also may be worth rethinking the approach to resource availability through focuses and nation-exclusive decisions.

Currently, lots of new resource fields are hidden behind nation-exclusive options. Which is neat, it gives the nations flavor. But it's also not that logical. Either there are resources, or they aren't, regardless of who currently has their flag raised above that piece of land.

Let's take the Matzen Oil field of Austria for example. Only Austria can develop it via focus. Historically, the Soviets discovered and developed it in 1949. But when you as Soviets take Austria, you can't access it, because it's a focus choice for Austria only. Same for Anschluss, you peacefully integrate Austria, and now you lose access to something that physcially is there?

And I think China has similar problems. There are focuses in the Japanese tree to develop China, but when China takes over? Then nope, all those opportunities are suddenly gone.

Resource fields and extraction should get a unified framework I think. Focuses should help finding and developing those fields at low costs, but ultimately the fields should be accessible to the owner, whoever that might be at any given time.

I second this. Resource extraction should be decoupled from national focuses.

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

I’m worried about the same things just based on the history implications. The devs seem to have designed a system which somehow makes coal the most important resource on the map, and then plan to put in in very limited quantities all over the map. They are aware this is a game about WW2 right? Coal is probably the most abundant resource in the world at this point in history (at least in comparison to the other resources they include in game like Tungsten or Chromium). And WW2 was literally the period that coal power began to decline and be replaced by Natural Gas and Oil (not to mention up and coming technologies like Nuclear).

That sounds very solid. However, the problem which is once again blatantly ignored (at least for now, as there has been no mention of it) is logistics. Germany occupying most of Europe theoretically had just enough coal production on controlled territories to keep them all coal supplied; but re-distributing this coal over the areas where it was in short supply was a huge strain for the transport system (source: Wages of Destruction). In HoI4, we have resources "conveniently" teleport over thousands of kilometers for free, and having to move them by water is somehow a negative ingame despite absolutely being a positive IRL. Middle Eastern Oil and Singaporean Rubber are delivered to Berlin via obscure underground pipes no one gets to target or even maintain.

If the real life challenges of coal supply follow this vein and are perverted into making coal artificially rare right across its deposits, that would be a poor game design indeed.