War Effort - Open Beta & Developer Diary!

[WindingArc]

The obvious solution for me is that overland trade should cost trains. Right now its a bit ridiculous that as Norway its more expensive to trade with England than to trade with Siam.

I agree that it should cost trains when there are railroads and industry, but it's more complicated than that.

For example, how would Mongolia trade if railroads were the only measure of overland trade capacity and trains the only potential marginal cost? It has no railroads and no ports. Colombia is another illustration of the limitations of railroads: it isn't landlocked, but it has an inland capital with no rail connections to its own ports or to other countries.

Trade connections don't take intranational disruptions of supply into account. If Germany cuts off the Caucasus from the rest of the Soviet Union, the Soviets could still export oil to other countries, for instance. Trade connections also don't take opportunities for international routes into account very well. Norway has always been the most glaring example to me: Germany occupied it in large part to secure its supply of Swedish iron - a rail route that is represented in HOI4 - but in HOI4 Sweden will never use a Norwegian port to establish a trade route because it's not mechanically possible.

 

[LordIII3]

Uhh more statistics, I really like that

Is there also the plan to add some all game summation stats? Like over all casualties/kills, tanks, ships and Airplanes lost/destroyed or one about overall civillian and military factories built?

 

[Mattias88]

I agree that it should cost trains when there are railroads and industry, but it's more complicated than that.

Yes, I agree it is

For example, how would Mongolia trade if railroads were the only measure of overland trade capacity and trains the only potential marginal cost? It has no railroads and no ports.

Then it has to build railroads first. They should probably be more generous with giving nations trains and train technology at the start of the game too.

Colombia is another illustration of the limitations of railroads: it isn't landlocked, but it has an inland capital with no rail connections to its own ports or to other countries.

Then they have to connect to ports first.

Trade connections don't take intranational disruptions of supply into account. If Germany cuts off the Caucasus from the rest of the Soviet Union, the Soviets could still export oil to other countries, for instance.

This I agree is a big problem in realism, but one thing at a time. Really, all resources should have to travel to the factories using them. Like if all my steel is in one part of the country and all my factories is in the other, how does it work? However it would be a nightmare to manage so probably best to leave it, for now. I guess its sort of represented by infrastructure increasing resource output. However that doesnt explain why I can own territory in South America and use the resources in my factories in Europe without needing to transport them.

Trade connections also don't take opportunities for international routes into account very well. Norway has always been the most glaring example to me: Germany occupied it in large part to secure its supply of Swedish iron - a rail route that is represented in HOI4 - but in HOI4 Sweden will never use a Norwegian port to establish a trade route because it's not mechanically possible.

That is true, maybe they could add warm water ports as a thing, but would probably also be annoying and difficult to manage.

I think your points are good and valid, but would be complicated to implement. However adding a similar calculation for trade that we have already, but that uses trains instead of convoys should not be too much trouble.

 

[WindingArc]

Yes, I agree it is

Glad to find another enthusiast for a better overland logistics! It's close to the top of my wish list for HOI4 features, and of the four regions that still could use more national flavor - Scandinavia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the South America - the first three featured important fights for overland supply routes during WWII. I'm hoping one of the patches focusing on them will include some kind of supply/trade rework.

Then it has to build railroads first. They should probably be more generous with giving nations trains and train technology at the start of the game too.

Then they have to connect to ports first.

I take this view as well. I'm just not sure the HOI4 developers would. With that said, there are very few resources or building slots which don't have a supply connection by port or rail to the capital of their owner.

This I agree is a big problem in realism, but one thing at a time. Really, all resources should have to travel to the factories using them. Like if all my steel is in one part of the country and all my factories is in the other, how does it work? However it would be a nightmare to manage so probably best to leave it, for now. I guess its sort of represented by infrastructure increasing resource output. However that doesnt explain why I can own territory in South America and use the resources in my factories in Europe without needing to transport them.

It probably wouldn't be too hard to implement an inefficient, capital-centric model of resource extraction. It would essentially be the inverse of the supply system (which is already an inefficient, capital-centric model of logistics).

HOI4 already tracks which states have supply connections to the capital to increase resource output in them. The supply system already tracks the supply demands of military units and determines whether they can be met based on supply hub capacity and available trains, trucks, and convoys. In theory, all you'd need to is give resources a transportation cost in terms of hub capacity and train/convoy usage, and then assess that cost against local infrastructure in states with resources and in capital states.

If there's, say, enough port and rail capacity (and the requisite convoys and trains) in London and and British Malaya to ship rubber from the latter to the former, then the United Kingdom could import rubber from its colony. If either London or Singapore runs out of hub supply capacity and the units there can't be supplied from the remaining state supply capacity, then either import requests would go unfulfilled or units would receive less than 100% supply.

You could make a similar calculation in states with industrial complexes: the average resource consumption of each factory/dockyard would need to be supported by the available hubs, trains, and convoys to represent shipment of traded/extracted resources from national capitals to the industries consuming them. If local units consume more than the state's supply capacity, there would have to be enough leftover hub supply capacity for the local industry. If not, either local units would go undersupplied or the country would suffer a production efficiency penalty from a lack of resources based on the proportion of the nation's total industry that went undersupplied.

That is true, maybe they could add warm water ports as a thing, but would probably also be annoying and difficult to manage.

HOI4 could probably get away with representing only port capacity and not which ports remained ice-free year-round. Even discounting their winter closures, northern Swedish ports still didn't have enough capacity to satisfy German demand.

I think your points are good and valid, but would be complicated to implement. However adding a similar calculation for trade that we have already, but that uses trains instead of convoys should not be too much trouble.

If HOI4 calculated routes based on port capacity as I outlined above and assumed that all friendly and neutral countries were willing trade partners, as it currently does implicitly for overland trade, I think it could work. Countries would have to supply their own trains and convoys, and any shortages in port capacity could be resolved via trade opinion, with most countries assumed to have higher trade opinion of themselves than of any foreign country and low-autonomy puppets having higher trade opinions of their overlords than of themselves.

 

[FlinzP]

I like the changes to the lower difficulty levels even so I don't ever play them. Do you think it would be also possible to get some changes to the veteran and elite difficulties regarding political power gains. Production reduction is alright but I feel losing political power is far from equal between all nations. Some nations really need that political power since different events, decisions and focuses are kinda timed to it. I like custom difficulty for boosting majors but there aswell, I think gaining extra political power makes some AI nations to skip intended slow events and decisions with just putting all that extra political power in. This can cause historical setting matches to change pace more than preferred.

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

All-or-nothing armour scheme is now a 1936 tech - WAD? In that case, the icons should be condensed.

 

[Lamartine]

Can PDX should make a new subforum for War effort suggestions? (like the Senatus Populusque forum, but without weekly voting)

I'd thought of posting about the threads popping up suggesting War Effort content. I suspect that a separate forum probably isn't needed

• The line between War Effort on one hand and suggestion / bug fix on the other is blurry. And not enough people use the later two forms as it is.
• Simply labelling a thread as War Effort doesn't mean it's good content for a War Effort post.
• Simply labelling a thread as War Effort doesn't even make it any more likely to be noticed!

That said I will never not simp for more voting on the suggestion and the bug forms!

 

[PDXKatten]

They can be disabled with game rules but they start disabled by default? How is it then?

You do not need to have all of them enabled, you can choose which ones you want, etc. Thus creating an easier way for a player to personalize their experience ^^

Hope this answer helps!

 

[MERLIN CHANG]

When can you fix the problem that the icon and model of the tank plane are not the best match?
There is also the problem of the disappearance of the head of the Marshal of the Volunteer Army.
Many people have responded many times, but you haven't repaired them.

 

[DaredevilGR]

Any plans to let us access these stats in any way, shape or form? For example, I wanted to be able to access casualties inflicted by X nation, but that seems impossible to do. It is nice to add more stats, but please do not forget that we need some way to access them (unless I am missing something).

 

[CroarmyZG]

To me everything in new multiplayer interface looks too big except flag. I would resize everything on it except flag. Green is limit of background, orange profile picture size. And text size of text.

 

[XselenS]

I am loving the war effort patches. Well done. That said, will we ever see a fix for the auto-upgrade bugs and the sprite allocation bugs? They have been reported since the launch of BBA.

 

[general_de_golle]

Just realised that I have one little question to the devs and here this can be quickly viewed by them. Why the production cost of transport planes is so low? It is like he cheapest 1936 fighter. And good 1936 tact bomber costs 2.5 times more. I understand, that transport plane does not need weapons and some things related to planes partisipating in combat, but this is really low.

Maybe we can expect some rebalance for it in current or next beta?

 

[Herennius]

Just realised that I have one little question to the devs and here this can be quickly viewed by them. Why the production cost of transport planes is so low? It is like he cheapest 1936 fighter. And good 1936 tact bomber costs 2.5 times more. I understand, that transport plane does not need weapons and some things related to planes partisipating in combat, but this is really low.

View attachment 945540

Maybe we can expect some rebalance for it in current or next beta?

Just a guess, but this might have been a consequence of the 100-plane-wings change; you need more transport planes to get the same job done and they have made been cheaper to compensate. Probably less problematic/easier codewise than introducing a special wing size for transports, which then would mess up air field capacity use of the AIs again.

 

[Gyrvendal]

I appreciate this "war effort" thing where they try to put old content up to date, but I which they did more for balance, especially balance units and modules that are completely lackluster atm such as armored cars, or pbs of the aircraft designer such as the inability to scale naval attack on planes, lack of naval bomber designation for medium airframe, etc.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Just realised that I have one little question to the devs and here this can be quickly viewed by them. Why the production cost of transport planes is so low? It is like he cheapest 1936 fighter. And good 1936 tact bomber costs 2.5 times more. I understand, that transport plane does not need weapons and some things related to planes partisipating in combat, but this is really low.

View attachment 945540

Maybe we can expect some rebalance for it in current or next beta?

Might also be a way to limit paratrooper spam since the AI seems to have trouble defending against those.

 

[general_de_golle]

Might also be a way to limit paratrooper spam since the AI seems to have trouble defending against those.

AI can not use paratropers. Devs prohibited AI to use them before 1.6 patch. Since that old time AI can not paratroop(

 

[BrotherJonathan]

AI can not use paratropers. Devs prohibited AI to use them before 1.6 patch. Since that old time AI can not paratroop(

I meant as a way to stop the human player from spamming paratroopers.

 

[testxxxthe]

@Arheo
HI Please...
- Remove scenario 1939 no one play that, you waste time.
- Delete this trash Hearts of Iron IV\gfx\Videos, Hearts of Iron IV\common\videos, Hearts of Iron IV\interface\Videos and related folders and files.
- Air research for PER(Iran), In 1.11 fighter I and CAS I was researched. In 1.12 we cant design.
- UI Scale in 0.7, remove bottom is hidden. cant remove buildings fix this.
- Fix this in designers or rework tank designer(make it same to other designers, changing role of tanks with main armament not that bottom).

 

[CroarmyZG]

I also forgot can you fix that green box with red dot when exiting country tab, like for split second it shows that balance of power and it. Like that square is realy intrusive to eyes. This is screenshoted in MP game where host had all DLC.