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Developer Corner | Military Industrial Orgs.

Greetings all!

Today marks the first occasion since the release of By Blood Alone where we take a deeper look into what is coming next. As you may recall from the BBA development cycle, we had an early set of 'Development Corner' diaries, which serve as an opportunity for us to reveal a narrow look at a specific mechanic or design without revealing too much about the wider context of future releases. Today's offering, as well as the next couple of diaries, will be in much the same spirit - you'll just have to wait a little bit longer to get the full picture. Scandalous and polarising, I know.

/Arheo

Hello there, it's me, C0rax. Now you can get all excited because it's time for some Dev Corners in which we will show you some WIP looks into the new features we have been working on. So without further ado this week we will be looking at…


Military Industrial Organisations (MIO's)

This is all very much a work in progress (WIP), you are going to see WIP mock ups, and some details are still being finalized as well

Feature Intent and Goals

Intent:
Create a sense of a living organisation the player can interact with rather than a static bonus as with current design companies.

Why is this important you ask? Well previously we had to provide static modifiers and sometimes change them via scripted decisions or focus rewards. By creating a more organic system to upgrade your design companies you the player can now decide what these upgrades are and tailor them to fit your playstyle. Additionally we can now reward the player for using a design company as opposed to simply having you save up a resource and click a button, rewarding you for putting effort into them.

Goals:​

  • Allow the player to define their designer direction.
  • Integrate design companies into production
  • Provide a framework for national specialisms that can be used on the world stage


Military industrial Organisations (MIO’s)​

So first here is a rough structure of an MIO

contains​

  • Name
  • Icon
  • Size (Level)
  • funds (XP)
  • Task Capacity
  • Departments

departments​

  • 0-1 Design team
    • 3 departments
      • Max 13 traits each
  • 0-1 Industrial manufacturer
    • 3 departments
      • Max 13 traits each

Each departments contains​

  • Name
  • Category’s
  • Trait tree
  • Trait icons

Task Capacity​

  • Size determines how many tasks a MIO can handle
    • Researching
    • Producing
    • Designing

Defaults:​

  • 2 task Capacity
    • + scripted increases
    • + trait increases

This structure allows us to represent MIO’s in a way that expresses the specialisms of the various organisations that designed and produced war materials during the period. You can now represent a company like Bofors AB who designed and produced anti tank, anti air and naval guns seamlessly and expand each of those specialisms as you see fit. Investing in the right MIO is critical to upgrading those specialist departments in order to gain the bonuses you need for specific stats.

Task Capacity:​

An MIO of course can’t work on a number of infinite simultaneous projects. For this we have task capacity that limits how many things your MIO’s can work on balancing. This is an important thing to balance, since producing too much equipment with an MIO will lock you out from using it for research or designing equipment. For ship production this is actually important for producing ships in parallel so you might want to invest in the manufacturing department for task capacity so you can really ramp up your naval production.


Levelling & upgrades​


Research cost and Production cost is used to calculate MIO funds that it gains when it is used.
An amount of MIO Funds is required to increase your size and pick a new trait.


image2.png

image (17).png


Skill Trees
  • Split roughly along the same lines as current design companies​
  • Possibility for country unique trees​
  • possibility for content prerequisites (National focus or decision locking etc...)​
image (16).png

image (19).png

image (20).png

Departments and Tasks​

Industrial manufacturers (IM's)​

  • Assigned to production lines (Task)
  • Skill trees provide production specific bonuses

Design teams (DT's)​

  • Applied to research (Task)
  • Applied to equipment both via equipment designers and normal variants
  • Skill trees provide Stat bonuses
  • Can be applied retroactively to equipment at cost
  • A move away from pay mana get reward


So that's a lot of high-level structural talk so you understand the core concepts of the MIO Feature and so I'll now show some of the WIP flows of actually using these structures and systems.

Researching​

image8.png


image (18) (1).png


image10.png


Equipment variants​

image13.png

image (13) (2).png

image1.png

image (14).png


Production​


image (15) (1).png


Well that wraps things up for this week, I Hope you enjoyed it and as always please leave questions and comments below and I will do my best to answer them. Join me in two weeks for another dev corner showing another feature coming to you in the near future.
 
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Really awesome to share such a early WIP with us! Thanks!
  • Will the MIO grow based on how often we use it? For example for Equipment Produced? Representing experience in a field they are employed so that they get better the longer they work a certain field?
    • If so will they each track their experience in a field so a Company building Tanks for 4 years cant easily produce top tier Planes on a whim?
    • Or is this represented with the Different Trees and the trees are set up in advance so its more of a player decision which MIO they want to use?
  • How many MIO can we employ that are competing in the same field? For Example Porsche and Herschel both done Tanks.
  • Will the MIO be centered around "I want X so i command a company to do so" or are there mechanics in place that simulate a more open economy and a contract system they compete in?
    • I think historically it was more of a race to a contract -> "Military wants X" -> several company's ran to the drawing boards to come up with a solution -> the "best" won the contract.
 
I am really pleased to see this, as I did not expect design companies to be reworked before HoI V. I think the original implementation was adequate but there was much more that could be done with them and I'm pleased to see you doing that. It seems that we will, in effect, have a Design Company Designer.

I like this idea because I like the designers (the Ship Designer is my favourite part of the game by far!) but I suspect that it may not be universally popular. Some players (particularly but not only multiplayers) complain that the existing Designers involve too much repetitive micromanagement. They say they don't want to be pausing in mid-battle to design individual aircraft types; they want to get on with conquering/liberating/revolutionizing the world. So such players might be disinclined to purchase a DLC that features MIOs, as they think the vehicle Designers make the game experience worse and the MIOs will exacerbate that. Again, I stress that this is not my opinion, but it's been voiced often on these forums and on Reddit and Twitter.

I wrote a post last year explaining that I think the biggest improvement to design companies would be that they would only give their bonuses to certain designs (or variant numbers without the Designer DLCs) that were historically successfully. And these designs would be suggested to the player and preferred by the AI (unless the appropriate Game Rule was turned off). So if you built an aircraft with the same design as the historical Spitfire (1940 small aircraft frame, one Level 10 engine, eight MGs, etc.) then you would get the Supermarine bonus, but not otherwise. I thought this would appeal to several types of players:
  • Some players (particularly but only multiplayers) complain that the Designers involve too much repetitive micromanagement. This proposal would mean that if they want a good fighter as the UK they could choose the Supermarine design company and then forget about the details.
  • Some players really value replaying history. As France, they want to go head-to-head with a UK that has Spitfires. This proposal would give them that.
  • Personally, I really enjoy playing about with the designers (especially the Ship Designer) to fit the particular situation of my alt-history. This proposal gives me interesting trade-offs: get the design company bonus or design something more suited for my situation.
Right now my head is spinning wondering whether there's anything in my suggestion that could be salvaged within the constraints of the MIO system. And I think there is a big one for the AI. The usual HoI4 way is to write an AI that optimizes its MIO for the situation, which is a difficult task that is never really finished, and often requires revisiting as other parts of the game change. Have you thought about instead scripting MIOs for every company that will recreate the performance of its historically great designs? To stick with the same example, the AI UK would be scripted to make a Supermarine MIO that make bonuses that would work really well with the historical Spitfire and Seafire designs (so it has a research bonus for 1940 light fighters/small aircraft frames, designs with 8 machine guns, etc.). And these scripted AI MIOs would be available to players as well (subject to a Game Rule). That makes MIOs acceptable to those players who dislike the existing designers, because they could just choose the MIO that gives the broad outcome (a good 1940 light fighter or whatever) that they want.

The gigantic disadvantage with my revised suggestion is that it would require the team to deploy your human resources differently. Instead of having coders working on AI, you would need Content Designers to work on scripting designs. But I think it would still be worth it. The extra investment in scripting Content Designers would be responding to what is presently a common player complaint and I think it's a task that they would enjoy. And there should be absolutely no danger of the programmers being left twiddling their thumbs, because there are several parts of the game's core AI (I'm looking at you, Battle Planner!) that are a never-ending task and could always be improved by attention from a skilled programmer.

I realize this isn't the kind of suggestion that you can give an instant response to, but I hope it stimulates your thinking about this interesting new feature.
 
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Really awesome to share such a early WIP with us! Thanks!
  • Will the MIO grow based on how often we use it? For example for Equipment Produced? Representing experience in a field they are employed so that they get better the longer they work a certain field?
    • If so will they each track their experience in a field so a Company building Tanks for 4 years cant easily produce top tier Planes on a whim?
    • Or is this represented with the Different Trees and the trees are set up in advance so its more of a player decision which MIO they want to use?
  • How many MIO can we employ that are competing in the same field? For Example Porsche and Herschel both done Tanks.
  • Will the MIO be centered around "I want X so i command a company to do so" or are there mechanics in place that simulate a more open economy and a contract system they compete in?
    • I think historically it was more of a race to a contract -> "Military wants X" -> several company's ran to the drawing boards to come up with a solution -> the "best" won the contract.
  • yes the more research or equipment it makes the more funds it generates.
    • an mio has pre defined departments so that target specific equipment categories so if you have an entirely tank focused MIO its traits wont apply to aircraft
  • theoretically as many as you want you could have an mio focused entirely on medium tank destroyers if you want or just tanks in generalso the number is as many as are needed or wanted
  • its still a I want to research x or produce y and you pick an MIO to apply to it, ther is no deep representation of bidding and contracts
 
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Unrelated question but is there any possibility to add fuel cost for motorization (a fuel cost per truck so more trucks in logistical use = more fuel consumed)?
The lack of this feature has frustrated me especially since modding it in does not currently seem possible. Even adding it and setting the fuel cost to 0 in vanilla would be fine for me so I could add it to a mod (because I assume it was removed for balance/simplicity reasons).
 
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I like this; choosing a designer was always kind of a "do it early and forget about it" thing for me.
People's playstyles are different.... For me, design companies are a high priority for PP and I often cycle through two or three designers in each category. But I am role-player, and I enjoy imaginging different arsenals and companies coming up with their specialist designs.
 
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  • yes the more research or equipment it makes the more funds it generates.
Ah, so this is MIO-specific XP, not the XP generated by combat and training?

That completely changes the concept from my initial understanding. So MIOs that get 'contracts' for research and production get better.... That's a really nice design. :cool:
 
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Ah, so this is MIO-specific XP, not the XP generated by combat and training?

That completely changes the concept from my initial understanding. So MIOs that get 'contracts' for research and production get better.... That's a really nice design. :cool:
I realise now this isn't massively clear in our mock ups without all the peripheral information.

1683044425589.png

So this bar is the funds held by the specific MIO, when the bar is full the MIO increases in size.
 
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  • yes the more research or equipment it makes the more funds it generates.
    • an mio has pre defined departments so that target specific equipment categories so if you have an entirely tank focused MIO its traits wont apply to aircraft
  • theoretically as many as you want you could have an mio focused entirely on medium tank destroyers if you want or just tanks in generalso the number is as many as are needed or wanted
  • its still a I want to research x or produce y and you pick an MIO to apply to it, ther is no deep representation of bidding and contracts
This sounds super solid and fun. I can't wait to test this ingame!
  • Does this mean there is no Cap on MIO a player can have or is it limited by the Companys historically known(aka how many are implemented)?
  • Are MIO tied to a location on the map? For example gaining access to MIO of different country's if we take them over?
 
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This sounds super solid and fun. I can't wait to test this ingame!
  • Does this mean there is no Cap on MIO a player can have or is it limited by the Companys historically known(aka how many are implemented)?
  • Are MIO tied to a location on the map? For example gaining access to MIO of different country's if we take them over?
  • MIO's are still historical and pre defined just like current design companies
    • they can be unlocked later in the game and be can script them to because available at greater than size 0
  • We initially looked into this but it had some pretty serious problems and edge cases that would require significant amounts of works to other systems and assumptions made. because of this we chose not to have MIO's have a location and they do not transfer when you take over a country.
 
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  • MIO's are still historical and pre defined just like current design companies
    • they can be unlocked later in the game and be can script them to because available at greater than size 0
  • We initially looked into this but it had some pretty serious problems and edge cases that would require significant amounts of works to other systems and assumptions made. because of this we chose not to have MIO's have a location and they do not transfer when you take over a country.
Thanks for answering so many questions! Really Appreciated!
Just a couple more:
  • Does this mean we will get more Historical Company's added or are you only converting the existing ones for now?
  • How Mod able will the MIO be in terms of: Scripting the visibility and adding complete new ones?
 
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Thanks for answering so many questions! Really Appreciated!
Just a couple more:
  • Does this mean we will get more Historical Company's added or are you only converting the existing ones for now?
  • How Mod able will the MIO be in terms of: Scripting the visibility and adding complete new ones?
  • right now just existing ones
  • 100% Modable there's very few things that are not exposed via defines or are scriptable
 
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Any plans for consumer goods being a resource thats demanded? Maybe via civilian factories? And coal as a resource to make steel from iron?
 
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I like this idea because I like the designers (the Ship Designer is my favourite part of the game by far!) but I suspect that it may not be universally popular. Some players (particularly but not only multiplayers) complain that the existing Designers involve too much repetitive micromanagement. They say they don't want to be pausing in mid-battle to design individual aircraft types; they want to get on with conquering/liberating/revolutionizing the world. So such players might be disinclined to purchase a DLC that features MIOs, as they think the vehicle Designers make the game experience worse and the MIOs will exacerbate that. Again, I stress that this is not my opinion, but it's been voiced often on these forums and on Reddit and Twitter.

I play almost exclusively singleplayer, yet am a staunch enemy of the aircraft designer and to an extent of the tank designer as well, although the topic was already discussed to death and these particular two designers are almost certainly here to stay.

My reasons are one, that it is actually less immersive and takes away from the WW2 experience by basically removing iconic planes and tanks from the game unless you create and name them yourself, which is pretty underwhelming if i am honest. The only way i could see this somewhat redeemed is by having pre-defined historical variants that you can only build once you have all the necessary components researched and which the AI will use as well.
And if somebody says "Akhcyually, which Spitfire do you mean because there were 19 marks of Spitfire and 52 sub-variants?!?!". Yeah, well you can't even represent most of these changes with the current, "expanded" designer. So we have to finally agree on what level of abstraction we want between PLANE-THAT-FLIES and Joseph Smith CBE Spitfire-Design-Simulator-2023. And i believe the level of abstraction we had before the aircraft designer, was the most fitting one for what HOI4 represents in it's scope.

And second of all, it falls completely out of scope of the game in my opinion, especially the plane designer. The only real change the plane designer has brought was multi-role aircraft (which iirc weren't used anyway last time i was playing the game). Other than that, there is absolutely nothing that couldn't be represented by either improving planes with mana, or outright choosing a different type of plane.

Really, what meaningfull improvement over the old system has the plane designer brought us? None. Realistically, no plane in that era has varied this much that it couldn't have been represented by the old system and nobody really needed the new one.

Ships differed enough from each other, even within their supposed roles, designations and classes that the ship designer introduced meaningfull tools and options to work with. The tank designer i am sort of "meh" about it but it isn't nearly as bad and in my opinion forced and unnecessary as the plane designer.

Finally, i love the concept behind the new MIO's. However i feel as if it will make the plane designer even more obsolete and unnecessary, once it comes out.

In short, the Official-MrMcQue-Designer-Rankingis as follows:

MIO-Designer: Love it.

Ship-Designer: Love it.

Tank-Designer: Whatever.

Plance-Designer: Made the best out of a completely unnecessary, unimmersive and seemingly forced idea.
 
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I play almost exclusively singleplayer, yet am a staunch enemy of the aircraft designer and to an extent of the tank designer as well, although the topic was already discussed to death and these particular two designers are almost certainly here to stay.

My reasons are one, that it is actually less immersive and takes away from the WW2 experience by basically removing iconic planes and tanks from the game unless you create and name them yourself, which is pretty underwhelming if i am honest. The only way i could see this somewhat redeemed is by having pre-defined historical variants that you can only build once you have all the necessary components researched and which the AI will use as well.
And if somebody says "Akhcyually, which Spitfire do you mean because there were 19 marks of Spitfire and 52 sub-variants?!?!". Yeah, well you can't even represent most of these changes with the current, "expanded" designer. So we have to finally agree on what level of abstraction we want between PLANE-THAT-FLIES and Joseph Smith CBE Spitfire-Design-Simulator-2023. And i believe the lever of abstraction we had before the aircraft designer was the most fitting one for what HOI4 represents in it's scope.

And second of all, it falls completely out of scope of the game in my opinion, especially the plane designer. The only real change the plane designer has brought was multi-role aircraft (which iirc weren't used anyway last time i was playing the game). Other than that, there is absolutely nothing that couldn't be represented by either improving planes with mana, or outright choosing a different type of plane.

Really, what meaningfull improvement over the old system has the plane designer brought us? None. Realistically, no plane in that era has varied this much that it couldn't have been represented by the old system and nobody really needed the new one.

Ships differed enough from each other, even within their supposed roles, designations and classes that the ship designer introduced meaningfull tools and options to work with. The tank designer i am sort of "meh" about it but it isn't nearly as bad and in my opinion forced and unnecessary as the plane designer.

Finally, i love the concept behind the new MIO's. However i feel as if it will make the plane designer even more obsolete and unnecessary, once it comes out.

In short, the Official-MrMcQue-Designer-Rankingis as follows:

MIO-Designer: Love it.

Ship-Designer: Love it.

Tank-Designer: Whatever.

Plance-Designer: Made the best out of a completely unnecessary, unimmersive and seemingly forced idea.
Plane designer feels like it has no depth at all compared to the ship/tank designer
 
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MIO's are still historical and pre defined just like current design companies
I'm not sure I understand this. If all MIOs begin the game at size 1 and they all get customisable trees, in what sense are they historical/pre-defined?
 
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I'm not sure I understand this. If all companies start at size 1 and they all get customisable trees, in what sense are they pre-defined?
the departments available to an MIO are predefined, you get choices within those departments. so if you have a department for medium tanks then you are only going to get stats bonuses for medium tanks.
 
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