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HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #1

Hello, hopefully you can tear yourself away from rewatching the Star Wars trailer for just one more glimpse of the Porg creature... because it's Wednesday! Time for another dev diary for 1.5 “Cornflakes” update and the as-yet unannounced DLC. We have been covering several big features in the diaries leading up here, so now it's time to also look at some smaller features from our "bag of tricks" :)

Control Groups
This might actually be one of my favourites :D Was reminded about this in a forum thread about UI improvements people wanted and realized I had totally forgotten how nice it was. You can now hit Ctrl+number to save any selection, and then hit the number key again to bring that up. It works with any selection, not just divisions, so you can mark areas, air wings etc and jump between them quickly. Double tapping the number key moves camera to the selection.
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Consolidate Divisions
Sometimes after hard battles, or when cut off from reinforcement and supply you can end up with a lot of divisions a low strength. Sometimes you need them at full strength right away and can’t wait for them to fill up normally. The DLC will come with a new feature that lets you consolidate divisions together into fewer, full strength (or as close as you can get ones). Units will move towards the strongest division and transfer over their manpower and equipment when they get there. The system also handles doing it with many divisions in which case it will try to form as many full strength divisions as it can.
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Minimap & Pinging
A minimap is something HOI4 was designed to live without, but there is clearly a part of the community that really miss it, so you can now get it as part of the DLC if you want. It also comes with some new functionality for multiplayer. You can ping the map to illustrate to allies of things you are discussing, like where you want them to defend or push, or as a quick reminder like “watch out here the russians are about to encircle you!”
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Minimap can be toggled to a closed state if you like, and you can still use pings through keyboard shortcuts.
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Kick From Faction
With Cornflakes it will now be possible to kick nations from your faction in the form of a new diplo action.
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Since this stuff tended to lead to some exploiting in the past (players picking off members one by one etc), we have been working on how AI sees this stuff to make it handle a few things… Kicking is possible in war time also and we have been putting a lot of time into dealing with how HOI4 handles wars in code. Basically the underlying system has been completely remade to stop war merging and the like from ruining your wars, or getting nations dropped or included in ways you wouldn't expect. Its one of those non-sexy things that you can't really show but that is going to make things feel a lot better and avoid edge case bugs messing up your day. This also allows us much more flexibility with how we may want to handle wars in the future.


That's it for today, see you all again next week for more updates!

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Guys / Gals

This thread is to discuss the dev diary, not Pdx DLC policy, which has been debated ad nauseam. Stay on topic of the thread. - Had a dad
 
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A minimap as part of a DLC is, for Paradox, a shameful act.
As Podcat said, only a part of the playerbase has in fact requested this feature. Seems like a perfect thing to be part of a DLC to me.
 
Can't we also have a feature to dismantle/demolish the foreign produced equipment and use the resources to our own equipment production?
Back in the day they drove old equipment into bogs or out on the ice (to sink when spring came). The 40's wasn't all that big on recycling IMO.
Besides. Dismantling some foreign equipment, refine the materials and build something new out of it wouldn't really be labor/time efficient.
 
Removing the minimap (which had been part of every nearly Paradox game up until now) and then adding in back in the DLC seems dangerously close to the policy of "selling a broken game and charging for fixing it" that opponents of the DLC system accuse it of leading to. Certainly, I am more than happy to pay money for added gameplay features, but when a company starts nickle-and-diming me for "not having to pull my hair out in frustration" features (which is what everything advertised here amounts to), my instinct is not to pony up, but rather to back off of the game entirely.
 
To bad there isn't a feature a lá Arma 3 of just drawing on the map for all your strategic needs, phallic or otherwise.
We had this in HOI3 (added in one of the expacs), but people complained that it wasn't tied into the AI.
 
When will hear about possible new focus trees or countries which will be featured in the next update :D:D:D
 
Removing the minimap (which had been part of every nearly Paradox game up until now) and then adding in back in the DLC seems dangerously close to the policy of "selling a broken game and charging for fixing it" that opponents of the DLC system accuse it of leading to. Certainly, I am more than happy to pay money for added gameplay features, but when a company starts nickle-and-diming me for "not having to pull my hair out in frustration" features (which is what everything advertised here amounts to), my instinct is not to pony up, but rather to back off of the game entirely.
IF they had removed it, I would agree with you. However, what you (and almost everyone else) seem to forget is that HOI4 is NOT an upgraded HOI3 but instead a new version of HOI built from the ground up. So NO, they did not remove the mini-map (and message settings, division leaders, etc.), they simply didn't create them for the new game.
 
I hear ya. The team mostly agree it doesnt really fit anymore in HOI4 (cant remember if HOI2 had it, but HOI3 did). It comes with some problems to solve though, but its something we are thinking about and I suspect it will change. If not for 1.5 then a later patch

You played HOI2? There's a running story on the forum that you don't give a hoot about the feutures that worked well in AoD and Darkest Hour.
 
So release is pretty close as you may not have time to implement it. November launch confirmed? ☺
Remember the DD about the Project Management process? This is probably one of those 'small' things that might be squished in at the end IF they have the time and resources (free developers) to do it.
 
You played HOI2? There's a running story on the forum that you don't give a hoot about the feutures that worked well in AoD and Darkest Hour.
Neither AoD NOR DH were developed by Paradox...they were part of the 'license the code and we will publish your 'mod' effort after the poor reviews of HOI3.
 
Back in the day they drove old equipment into bogs or out on the ice (to sink when spring came). The 40's wasn't all that big on recycling IMO.
Besides. Dismantling some foreign equipment, refine the materials and build something new out of it wouldn't really be labor/time efficient.
Instead of stocking useless foreign outdated equipment, why not?
 
IF they had removed it, I would agree with you. However, what you (and almost everyone else) seem to forget is that HOI4 is NOT an upgraded HOI3 but instead a new version of HOI built from the ground up. So NO, they did not remove the mini-map (and message settings, division leaders, etc.), they simply didn't create them for the new game.

You are right that they technically didn't remove it (although do note that the engine 4 is built on is derived from the engine they used to build 3). However, these things were simple anti-frustration features that we always got for the base price of the game in the past, and now are expected to shill over money for.