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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 .
 
More good stuff, all of it.
The Drag/drop and the collapse-able entries, save space for the important stuff.

Is there a projected date yet for the DLC?

Please, take my money, I can't wait, like a six year old when the packages start to appear under the tree........
The devs never give release dates untill its 2 weeks till release but I'd go with 13.12.
 
The devs never give release dates untill its 2 weeks till release but I'd go with 13.12.

I know, but it can't hurt to beg, can it?
 
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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.

Call me dense but, Am I correct when I say that the Bug with building 2,000,000 Inf Equipment has been fixed? If not, it would be pretty scummy to lock this feature behind a payed DLC.
 
Paradox, please make it so that if you capture equipment more advanced then yours, then you can reverse engineer it and gain research bonuses. This would be pretty true to real life history and make people more afraid to let their divisions get encricled.
 
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.
Another basic UI feature locked away behind a paywall... Don't like the idea of capturing equipment in battle being a DLC feature, either. DLCs should contain major changes and stuff like focus trees, not simple improvements to the UI or basic gameplay.
 
PLEASE FIX NAVAL REPAIR BEFORE RELEASING UPDATE. I do NOT want to have to manually split my fleet and assign them to different naval bases. It ruins the entire game for me.
 
wow PDX. Captured equipment only available to DLC purchases. Stop locking basic stuff behind a paywall. That's just as absurd as when you guys locked requesting lend-lease behind a paywall.
 
wow PDX. Captured equipment only available to DLC purchases. Stop locking basic stuff behind a paywall. That's just as absurd as when you guys locked requesting lend-lease behind a paywall.
No in battle capture is available to DLC, you still capture equipment after the surrender of your enemies.
 
wow PDX. Captured equipment only available to DLC purchases. Stop locking basic stuff behind a paywall. That's just as absurd as when you guys locked requesting lend-lease behind a paywall.

Maybe that fix took a significant amount of coding and QA and that investment needs to be returned upon. This is not basic stuff, it is a completely new mechanic in the game. Unless you'd prefer to return to the HoI3 model of all DLC and patches locked behind a paywall? :rolleyes:
 
Will we ever get drag-and-drop to arrange armies on the bottom bar and within the different theaters? Will we ever be able to rearrange the order of the theaters similarly?
 
These are some good looking features. About the AI why cant the devs just integrate an AI mod into the base game? I'm sure most of the modders wouldn't demand outrageous compensation, just give them the next dlc free or something. Since one mod that would be great is the Better Mechanics: Front Line AI. It makes fighting nations much better/challenging since the frontline AI is improved to properly reinforce the border and wont keep troops in useless areas and helps mitigate attrition. But if theres a bigger reason the devs cant just use players mods/ideas then forgive my ignorance.
 
Use the bidding feature from M.U.L.E. (old game, the copyright probably has expired by now!)
Thanks to Walt Disney and Company, no it hasn't...no copyright on anything 'younger' than Mickey Mouse has expired unless EXPLICITLY put into the public domain by the lawful copyright holder.