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HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #2

Welcome to another bag of tricks dev diary for 1.5 “Cornflakes” and the unannounced expansion. Today we have several smaller features and improvements for you and all are connected to equipment in one way or the other.

Building your own stuff
Managing production lines is something you do all the time, and thus we want the interface to help you as much as possible. We have done several things to help out with this, like allowing you to collapse entries:
all_of_it.png


The UI now also has more filters, so its easy to just look at lines lacking resources, lines used for upgrade, lines going straight to stockpile etc. Its also possible to assign up to 150 factories to a line (not naval production lines) by using the x5 and x10 toggles.

boosted_line.png


Toggling on x5 lets you put down 5 factories with each click so its easier to manage big lines (this part is still a bit more work in progress than normal and may see changes before release though).

We have also added drag-and-drop to the production interface and the civilian construction interface too. It makes reordering and changing priorities a breeze. See the future! In moving pictures:
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Hopefully this will make it a lot easier to manage things for everyone and if it proves popular we may start adding this to other interfaces too.


Taking other people's stuff
At the end of combats it will now be possible to capture enemy equipment. The divisions involved will grab stuff depending on participation (higher level maintenance companies help a lot here if you want to take full advantage of capturing). If the equipment isn't something the division needs it goes back to your stockpile. This one will be available for people with the DLC.
Captured Equipment.png

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Getting rid of stuff you don't want

There are sometimes situations when you just want to get rid of some of your equipment stockpiles. Death or Dishonor added the ability to convert equipment, but that is not always applicable. For people who get the DLC we have now added the option of straight up cleaning out your stores of stuff you don’t need or want anymore. To avoid exploits around surrender where someone in MP would try to destroy things to keep them out of enemy hands these are held in a special “being destroyed” storage, and will be accessible to the conqueror if you fall within 90 days.
destroy.png


Also finally there is another way available to all. Lend Lease has been changed to allow to send equipment that isn’t originally yours. This means that you can give captured stuff to your allies etc.
lendlease.png


Sending equipment that isn't yours like this will however not give you any XP (you wasn't the one who did research and development after all).

See you all next week for more updates and details!

Also, do you need more friends to invade and annex? Tell them to take a look at our new stream starting later today, Blitzkrieg for dummies! As always on Twitch: https://go.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive .
 
I very much look forward to Bag of Tricks #3. Such great additions that are coming through! Totally better than the progress made in EU4 and the new DLC that's coming in three weeks!

I hope the next DLC will just bring us some focus tree changes and interface changes! God forbid it adds any new mechanics to the game! We don't want that!
 
New state-level structure? Proving grounds.

I'd suggest destroying equipment might yield some XP, representing testing of captured stuff for analysis of strengths and weaknesses.

Proving grounds. (would take up a build slot)

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New state-level structure? Proving grounds.
(would take up a build slot)

Eh, I like the idea of destroying captured enemy weapons for XP, but I don't think we need a whole new structure just for it. Feels like bloat for no real reason. Keep in mind we currently have no research facilities at all in the game, it would be strange to add one very specific type of research facility all on its own.

By all means label the "destroy captured weapons for XP" button "Send to proving grounds" though.
 
I second this. Land-based equipment for land exp; aircraft for air exp and nobody cares about boats. Probably a tiny fraction per IC-day equivalent of destroyed equipment.

If it is possible, I'd suggest you'd only get XP from enemy equipment that is of equivalent or higher tech level than your own - I don't think there's too much to be learned from studying Panzer IIIs, when you already have T-34s in the field.
 
This is all stuff I have been hoping for since I started playing, especially with regards to airplanes. Dear god, so many random planes from all the little countries. Now how about separating the naval production list from the army and air force production list? That would be nice. Have to say I'm very excited for this new update and DLC.
 
This has a basic write-up that probably makes capture equipment look more used than it was.

@UltimaGecko, Thanks for the article about repurposing captured equipment. http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/repurposing-german-vehicles-by-allied-troops/

I'd love it more if scrapping stuff would result in gaining resources, though...

The article mentions melting down captured equipment for the war effort (well, the next war).

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Was that ever done much? its not something I know about if so. We do model germany capturing stuff and and converting it to other things with the conversion feature.

oh actually I guess the Czech factories kept producing Pz 38(t) etc. So yeah I guess it was a thing.

Great changes Podcat!

Did you see the suggestion I made about improving Production Companies by giving them bonuses to XP cost for variants based on the sorts of things the companies were historically known to be good at?
 
oh actually I guess the Czech factories kept producing Pz 38(t) etc. So yeah I guess it was a thing.

You could have it so you can produce an annexed nation's equipment.
 
I would definitely like to see more research companies give specific bonuses. Tank companies are in a good place mostly, but there are too many infantry, artillery and industrial companies that do nothing except a 10% research discount.
 
Also capture aircraft caught on ground, capture ships moored in enemy ports - and then lend lease them would be cool
 
Cheers for the DD Podcat, and to all the team in general but particularly whoever had to beat the drag-and-drop functionality into submission :D. The changes to the production interface are very welcome - will make managing that side of the game quicker and easier, as well as making it easier to see what's going on - all win :). Not sure if it's on the cards or not, but if the penalty for missing resources was spread more broadly over production lines that might help with some of the UI challenges of managing that (as well as AI challenges and resource-management micro).

Equipment changes also look great - being able to capture equipment is tops. Does it make a difference who the winner or loser is? I don't have any real idea what I'm talking about, but have heard others round these parts mention that holding the field (so presumably winning in most cases) was important when capturing kit.

On the lend-lease, is there any thought (if there's not some way already and I've missed it) of just lend-leasing 'light tanks' or 'light tank I' instead of doing it by type/variant? Might be another little micro-saver.

Hmm... using equipment captured in battle seems like a nice idea, but other than German use of Russian equipment, did it happen that much?

It did, the Germans used a bunch of captured British, French, and Russian equipment. They also sent a lot of captured equipment to their Balkan allies. The Russians used German equipment until it broke. The Chinese used any captured Japanese equipment they could scrounge. Western allies, not so much, mainly due to the massive US factory output.

The british and russians didnt really need to use captured equipment as much, although I have read about russians using german equipment.

As far as I'm aware, captured equipment was a very big thing in the North Africa campaign, on all sides. The British even used the Italian 20mm AA guns they captured on their ships until the ammunition ran out, as well as one captured German submarine (HMS Graph). Not British, but same chain-of-command, here are some Italian tanks that have been tastefully redecorated for use by Australian troops :)

ac6f27185f0be332425883a76dd3f704--the-battle-kangaroo.jpg


Also the Germans copied the Dutch Snorkel for Submarines that they captured when they took the Netherlands.

They did, although iirc the schnorkel in its Dutch form wasn't great, and needed a bit of work before it became what it was - perhaps some kind of tech bonus from captured equipment could be in order?
 
Hopefully more stuff on other regions next week such as Russia! E.g restoring the Romanovs.
That shouldn't really be an option, unlike Germany, by 1922 all real monarchy sympathisers in Russia were either dead or emigrated. Also the rule of recent monarchs was in no way a "Golden age" of Russia, unlike Germany, that grown more powerful under Wilhelm, till their defeat in WW1

A "realistic" tree would consist of different factions of Communist Party clashing, yeilding "Russian national socialism", "Democratic Socialism", "World revolution faction" or historical "Communism in one country".
 
What I really really want is the ability to deny use of my airfields to my allies , they always seem to fill them with out of date aircraft with no orders

Yes please! And @podcat I do hope y'all have looked at why ai planes sit at airbases without being issued orders since 1.4.2.

This is where, if I had any photoshop talent, I'd take a screenshot of the auction house/exchange from an MMO, and shop in HOI4 equipment.

"I don't know why, but someone keeps buying my interwar fighters for 20 gold a piece."

"You fool! That's Secret Master preparing for our next MP game. You should have charged twice that amount. He's going to drown in planes now!"

First thing I thought of was Runescape, where for $10 you can buy 20 treasure chest keys.

ABOUT THE LEND LEASE:
Does anybody kow if you can find out somewhere which equipment your allies actually lack?

Right now, the only way is by opening the console and tagging to the country you want to look at. Cumbersome, time consuming, and impossible in MP or Ironman. This QoL feature has been requested for some time now.
 
HoI4 will use a common nomenclature for equipment (?)

On the lend-lease, is there any thought (if there's not some way already and I've missed it) of just lend-leasing 'light tanks' or 'light tank I' instead of doing it by type/variant? Might be another little micro-saver.

Good point.

Along those lines, the ability to use or lend lease captured equipment hints that the game will use a common nomenclature to describe equipment.
  • The game currently uses different names for the same piece of equipment.
  • Some players name their equipment using different names.
But as a micro-saver (!), it will be more straightforward to use a single descriptor.

Could it be that the HoI4 team will adapt a game-design philosophy of "one word has one meaning" and its inverse, "one meaning has one word" ?