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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 .
 
10/10, this makes everything way more accessible.

Is there a chance the lack of resources is better shown on the production tab? Right now the -x% output is kind of vague and tough to plan around.
 
Oh sweet, the production menu is going to be so much easier to manage with those changes!

Have you considered separating naval and land production into two tabs? I understand that you can just set the filters, but it still feels clunky to me having them all in the same list. Though I guess then you get problems with resource priority...
 
Hmm... using equipment captured in battle seems like a nice idea, but other than German use of Russian equipment, did it happen that much? But then again the only reason this might be annoying is that you'd end up with stockpiles full of random weapons, but this already happens, and this DLC will give you a way of getting rid of the stockpile.

All-in-all seems like a good change.
 
@podcat Nice improvements. Capturing equipment should help ai Germany out with it's production shortages, and we all know people have been advocating for stockpile destruction and LLing captured equipment. Would have been nice if we also could see allied stockpiles in SP to facilitate LL.
 
Oh sweet, the production menu is going to be so much easier to manage with those changes!

Have you considered separating naval and land production into two tabs? I understand that you can just set the filters, but it still feels clunky to me having them all in the same list. Though I guess then you get problems with resource priority...

Also thought about it, but than it is hard to define a ranking, where the resources should be prioritised if it's not in one row
 
I was hoping to see a revised focus tree. But at least we have the ability to drag and drop now. :p I know this might not be popular opinion, but I really think you guys should fix up the Polish focus tree with this next update. It's extremely lacking.
 
Hmm... using equipment captured in battle seems like a nice idea, but other than German use of Russian equipment, did it happen that much? But then again the only reason this might be annoying is that you'd end up with stockpiles full of random weapons, but this already happens, and this DLC will give you a way of getting rid of the stockpile.

All-in-all seems like a good change.

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. And of course the Italians used any Western equipment the Germans allowed them to keep.
 
Hmm... using equipment captured in battle seems like a nice idea, but other than German use of Russian equipment, did it happen that much? But then again the only reason this might be annoying is that you'd end up with stockpiles full of random weapons, but this already happens, and this DLC will give you a way of getting rid of the stockpile.

All-in-all seems like a good change.

Germans used equipment from everyone. They used Czech tanks, French and British trucks, etc.
 
Arg, you are so cruel. People expected to see another focus tree overhaul. Instead you give us news about interface changes. >_<
Did anybody from the dev team say that?
Nope. I said it would be another shown at some point. Its going to be a couple of weeks before you see that one.

Do encircled divisions yield more loot?

The amount you get is based on what you destroy, and if you overrun a division you will destroy more - so yes.

The changes to the production menu have to be one of the best minor changes
If you had to code it, it wasnt a minor thing :D its probably our most complex UI and we had to redo a lot of it :) Luckily I wasnt the one stuck with it :)

in the case of destroying stockpile equipment - do we get the used materials back (all or parts of it)?
No, its purely scrapping them. We considered it, but it would have very large and wierd impacts on balance for production that we werent keen on (or have a very small effect which is kind of no effect).
 
Do encircled divisions yield more loot?

Encircled divisions destroyed will yield a "lootbox", which you can open for some exciting equipment! No worries if you are not a strategic genius, though, you can buy more lootboxes in the store for only $0.99!

Just kidding.

Note to self: pitch this to sales

in the case of destroying stockpile equipment - do we get the used materials back (all or parts of it)?

No, but we are planning on adding more ways to get more resources.
 
If you had to code it, it wasnt a minor thing :D its probably our most complex UI and we had to redo a lot of it :) Luckily I wasnt the ones tuck with it :)
That begs the question. Will drag-n-drop also be possible with the CIC production? It's usually there that you end up with important repairs or new builds that you might want to move up in the queue but not always through shift-clicking it to the top.