HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #2

[FrancescoT]

@Alech direct link to an external site with a forum is not allowed. Please remove it from your post asap or I'll have to remove it.

 

[FrancescoT]

Post removed.

@Alech friendly reminder, commenting or quoting on Moderator's post (yellow color) is not allowed regardless of the reason. PM instead .

No need to reply to this of course.

 

[Russian Bias lmao]

Why would anyone delete equipment while the storage cost in game is currently zero?

Because when you're fighting with 8000 fighter 3s you don't want any interwar fighters getting in your squadrons and destroying their stats. It's better for the wings to just be reduced in size since that way it won't lower any stats.

This could also be done by having "allowed equipment" for air wings, but I guess this works too.

 

[Meglok]

I am glad to see these tweaks and additions

While I agree these are nice "tweaks and additions", they are akin to repainting and rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It looks pretty and probably took a lot of effort, but if someone doesn't address the underlying problems this ship ain't gonna reach port.

Still waiting to see what is being done regarding what everyone complains about, issues with the ai, production, balance, the naval system, the lack of a Pacific war, the resistance and suppression issues, the remaining problems with the air system, etc etc. Bags of tricks, eye candy, and new focus trees won't fix those.

 

[Gort11]

Because when you're fighting with 8000 fighter 3s you don't want any interwar fighters getting in your squadrons and destroying their stats. It's better for the wings to just be reduced in size since that way it won't lower any stats.

Pretty sure you're worried about something that doesn't happen, here. Having an interwar fighter in with your fighter 3s doesn't make the fighter 3s bad - air combat is calculated on a plane-by-plane basis.

 

[Armacalic]

Pretty sure you're worried about something that doesn't happen, here. Having an interwar fighter in with your fighter 3s doesn't make the fighter 3s bad - air combat is calculated on a plane-by-plane basis.

Not true, the game works on averages, a fighter squadron of 50 tier III planes will have a noticeable advantage over all the planes in an enemy squadron made up of 49 tier III and an interwar fighter/Tier I/Tier 2.

 

[Russian Bias lmao]

Pretty sure you're worried about something that doesn't happen, here. Having an interwar fighter in with your fighter 3s doesn't make the fighter 3s bad - air combat is calculated on a plane-by-plane basis.

Are you 100% sure? When you click on an air wing it actually has stats, which are lowered when you insert older planes.

 

[Secret Master]

Not true, the game works on averages, a fighter squadron of 50 tier III planes will have a noticeable advantage over all the planes in an enemy squadron made up of 49 tier III and an interwar fighter/Tier I/Tier 2.

Basically, this.

Although the impact from a few lower tier airplanes has little impact when mixed with a lot of higher tier planes. And as far as I can tell, the lower tier planes die off much faster than the better planes, so the average will continue to improve over time as you produce better equipment.

And having 350 planes contesting the skies over air region X is better than having 300 planes in every case I can think of (unless you have so many bad planes it hurts range to that specific air region). If those inter-war fighters die gloriously and take even a few enemy planes with them, then I will cheer them on.

 

[Gort11]

Although the impact from a few lower tier airplanes has little impact when mixed with a lot of higher tier planes. And as far as I can tell, the lower tier planes die off much faster than the better planes, so the average will continue to improve over time as you produce better equipment.

It kinda sounds like you and I agree - a single old plane in a ton of new ones is not going to have a big impact overall. If 2% of your planes are old (IE: One in fifty), I'd expect to see the wing do about 2% worse in combat. From what poster "Russian bias lmao" said it sounds like he's saying a single old plane in your wing will make it perform abnormally badly, like 30-40% worse.

I don't think that happens.

 

[Secret Master]

I don't think that happens.

I don't think it does either.

A while ago, I tested wings with multiple types of planes. I was doing it with strategic bombers (I was trying to figure out whether it made sense to quarantine all lower tier planes to a specific wing or spread them out).

What I learned was that a few lower tier planes didn't change the stats that much. And having more planes was always better than not having them, even if they were garbage (provided you didn't lose range by including them). It also seems like lower tier planes are the first to die off, so in the worst case scenario, they eat damage meant for other planes.

 

[Fulmen]

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:

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.

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:

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.

Very nice stuff, especially for Germany and USA who are dealing with hundreds of MIC without pause in multiplayer.

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.

Will this fix and bring back the issues that I already mentioned in the Twitter teaser thread for this DD? As follows:

This is definitely a new ability to LL captured equipment. Probably courtesy of that one thread that complained about excessive stockpiles of captured equipment.

I'm assuming this will also fix not being able to always LL license-produced equipment (sometimes bizarrely it works, but usually it doesn't). I'm also assuming this means lend-leased equipment will be re-lend-leasable, which creates a myriad of exploits bannable only by house rules. For example RAJ spams convoys, LLs them to ENG in '39, ENG LLs them to FRA, FRA LLs them to RAJ, rinse and repeat until RAJ is free within 2-3 months of the war breaking out. This used to be a gamey strategy people did until lend-leased convoys became un-re-lend-leasable in some patch.

 

[cissalc]

nice work, thanks!

 

[Impassive]

Man so many of these changes are really great Q.O.L changes that get me excited

 

[Qjuwert]

Regarding the x5 and x10 factory assignment buttons, I'd like to see them changed to x4 and x8. When playing as a nation with few resources, you depend alot on trade. And I always attempt to optimize my production lines with my trading, as not to waste resources.

 

[Gort11]

Regarding the x5 and x10 factory assignment buttons, I'd like to see them changed to x4 and x8. When playing as a nation with few resources, you depend alot on trade. And I always attempt to optimize my production lines with my trading, as not to waste resources.

That's an interesting way to approach the problem of resources only being buyable in multiples of eight, but I'd much rather just be able to buy the actual quantity of resources I need, instead of only in multiples of eight.

 

[son of the North]

Looking forward for the New Expantion. but I know that Germany´s focus tree is beeing rewampt. is any more countrys gona get a new Focus Tree?

 

[Axe99]

Looking forward for the New Expantion. but I know that Germany´s focus tree is beeing rewampt. is any more countrys gona get a new Focus Tree?

In another thread, one of the devs kindly told us that:

There will be a new focus trees.

Take from that what you will . I may recall Podcat saying that there was at least one more major getting a rework, but head's a bit hazy this morning, so unless you see Podcat's post or someone with a better memory confirming, don't take that as gospel.

 

[Pyro157]

In another thread, one of the devs kindly told us that:



Take from that what you will . I may recall Podcat saying that there was at least one more major getting a rework, but head's a bit hazy this morning, so unless you see Podcat's post or someone with a better memory confirming, don't take that as gospel.

My hope is that it is Japan - it's woefully underdeveloped compared to the other majors. The Soviet and American trees do need some improvement and alternate ideology paths, but Japan's tree doesn't offer much outside of conflict and militarization.

As for China, I'm actually OK if they continue taking their time. Again, the Second Sino-Japanese War is a huge area of history to cover, and although I helped write a TV Tropes article on it I've barely scratched the surface in my opinion. The trees from the China National Focus and 8 Years War mod are excellent models to follow, but Paradox will certainly need a lot of thought for the China-Burma-India theater.

 

[Axe99]

My hope is that it is Japan - it's woefully underdeveloped compared to the other majors. The Soviet and American trees do need some improvement and alternate ideology paths, but Japan's tree doesn't offer much outside of conflict and militarization.

As for China, I'm actually OK if they continue taking their time. Again, the Second Sino-Japanese War is a huge area of history to cover, and although I helped write a TV Tropes article on it I've barely scratched the surface in my opinion. The trees from the China National Focus and 8 Years War mod are excellent models to follow, but Paradox will certainly need a lot of thought for the China-Burma-India theater.

Japan would be cool (I agree that it's definitely one of the more 'scant' focus trees), but I suspect Japan's would best be done at the same time as China's (as there's plenty of potential for them to have a few linking focuses/event chains), so my best guess (of dubious quality ) is that we'll get none or both here. As you say, there may be benefit in having a China-focussed DLC rather than trying to squeeze it in here, so I wouldn't be disappointed if neither turned up this time around as it may well mean better down the track. I definitely hope we do get something that fleshes out China-Burma-India in the future, and I'm pretty sure that barring Podcat's twitter actually referring to Ragnarok, we will .

 

[Pyro157]

Japan would be cool (I agree that it's definitely one of the more 'scant' focus trees), but I suspect Japan's would best be done at the same time as China's (as there's plenty of potential for them to have a few linking focuses/event chains), so my best guess (of dubious quality ) is that we'll get none or both here. As you say, there may be benefit in having a China-focussed DLC rather than trying to squeeze it in here, so I wouldn't be disappointed if neither turned up this time around as it may well mean better down the track. I definitely hope we do get something that fleshes out China-Burma-India in the future, and I'm pretty sure that barring Podcat's twitter actually referring to Ragnarok, we will .

I wonder if the Army and Navy primacy trees will become more fleshed out, actually. Intense and bitter rivalry aside, the IJA and IJN were the most powerful military forces within Southeast Asia, although they were certainly outmatched by America and Britain. I'd like to see dedicated trees to Intelligence and decryption, plus further research into Marines and kamikaze ships.

Also, it's a little funny that the AI rarely deploys or researches Super-Heavy battleships until late-game, so Yamato-line ships seems to be quite absent most of the time, despite being the most famous Japanese battleship in public memory. On the other hand, I've seen naval battles between the Allies and Japan as China that make Midway seem like a food fight, especially in terms of ships sunk.