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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 .
 
@podcat does the destroyed equipment go to a secret storage server that @Secret Master can access? I know he's been talking about bugging you about it for ages. ;)

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!"
 
I love all of this, but I have a few questions relating to the subject of equipment:

A. Will people still be able to cheat the system by deleting encircled divisions and having their stuff magically transport back into the stockpile?

I think if someone destroys encircled divisions all of those supplies should go to the encircling armies. That would discourage and punish this abuse.

Wald

(Edited for clarity)
 
We have also added drag-and-drop to the production interface and the civilian construction interface too
'
Thank! Thanks you so much! I am weeping of joy that i will never have to do the annoying moving things around in the civilian construction menu again.
 
Useful improvements but I have to say the least useful DD so far, but I suppose every list of DDs for a release must have a weak one. Guess it is fitting if this is your last bag of tricks.

I am worried about the x5, x10 for production queues. This is simply a way to decrease button pushing when creating lines, or are lines actually merged into 1? I ask because of resource priorities. Also being able to reserve factories that are not yet available.

You lose control of prioritizing resources if you put 150 factories in one queue. What QoL feature would have been more simple is a view merge, optionally merging the view if you wanted, but leaving all lines still limited to 15.

The AI already has a huge problem with resource prority and factory reservation. I think this would even make it much worse.
 
Will it be possible to click on equipment in Logistics tab to open a window with information about it? (Like details of for example Infantry Weapons in Research tab, but with flag of origin country.)
 
For the question of the using of captured material, the Germans heavily relied on captured material during the desert war in northen Africa... Rommel himself surfed the desert with her "Mammuth", a captured british truck.
 
I disagree. The button represents what happens when you click on it. You click down the down arrow to make the expanded display fall open. You click the up arrow to make the expanded display roll up. An animation would make this clearer than a screenshot.

While "buttons" do show actions, these are not, strictly speaking, "buttons" in the UI sense - they are part of a larger UI element, namely the list of collapsible items, like this:

hoi_launcher.PNG





That said, my experience with UI is perhaps dated; I see Windows 10 uses the inverse orientation:

Windows10.PNG



Or perhaps Microsoft is consciously trying to be different from the Apple/Adobe style; or maybe there's just no real consistency to be had. I don't know; I've already spent way more time than I wanted to on this, so I'll just leave it here and let the devs figure it out ;)
 
Hopefully more stuff on other regions next week such as Russia! E.g restoring the Romanovs.
 
I love it, particularly the x5 and x10 markers for factories, and the options for getting rid of unwanted gear.

I like the idea of getting small amounts of XP for scrapping enemy things, representing them being tested to destruction.
 
How dare you suggest the Matilda II shouldn't be a light tank. :mad:
? I am confused, I think we are talking about 2 different things here. My question was referring for example to If I want a SPART version of a Cromwell then I get to see Sexton 2d art, or if I want TD Cromwell then I will see a Sherman Firefly or something like that. :)