Hearts of Iron IV - 33rd Development Diary - Supply

[Nicolas I]

When a person constructs an uneccessarily wordy response, incorrectly uses terms whilst also incorrectly spelling them I just laugh as that the only fitting response.

If you find 3 lines "unnecessarily wordy" your analysis capacity must be quite limited.

Why "incorrectly uses terms" ? I used a definition of the false dilemma fallacy you can find here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Incorrectly spelling is an easy insult on a multinational forum using english to discuss games made by a Swedish company whose staff also makes mistakes in that language frequently. That is also attacking the surface of things instead of the argument (ad hominem or abusive fallacy). Would you have said to Einstein that is theories were stupid because he made spelling errors in english ? (by the way I am using a fallacy here).

Maybe you laugh because you have nothing to answer, argument of silence ?

I could also use an appeal to authority argument saying I'm a professor in communication/jourmalism teaching about fallacies to my students...

 

[RickInVA]

Real life also requires you to not know that with probability 0.75, a war will break out over Danzig in 3 years, 9 months.

Come now, the one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Are you trying to say that in real life commanders don't know that they have no fuel, but have ammo? My point is that in real life you don't replace the whole item to fix one part. If I am out of milk I can just buy milk, I don't have to buy the whole shopping list every time.

 

[jamesd]

So they are sending crews out in the tanks without any training?

Not necessarily. They could be trained on the older generation of tanks that equip the training divisions, or could be survivors from tanks that have been knocked out, or they could have very limited training as many Russian tank drivers had in June 1941.

Rather than nit picking on what's probably the least important point in my post, why not look at the substance of it?

 

[Aries666]

If you find 3 lines "unnecessarily wordy" your analysis capacity must be quite limited.

Why "incorrectly uses terms" ? I used a definition of the false dilemma fallacy you can find here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Incorrectly spelling is an easy insult on a multinational forum using english to discuss games made by a Swedish company whose staff also makes mistakes in that language frequently. That is also attacking the surface of things instead of the argument (ad hominem or abusive fallacy). Would you have said to Einstein that is theories were stupid because he made spelling errors in english ? (by the way I am using a fallacy here).

Maybe you laugh because you have nothing to answer, argument of silence ?

I could also use an appeal to authority argument saying I'm a professor in communication/jourmalism teaching about fallacies to my students...

The term you incorrectly used and spelt was manichaeism. Nor was what I said a fallacy in the context of the comment I responded to. Far from having limited analytical abilities, I simply choose not to engage with a person who openly attempts to insult my intellegence, quite unccessarily. For my actual thoughts on the matter see a few posts previous.

 

[dizzle3]

Even if you get the equipment you will still not be in supply, we track supply status too, it isnt JUST equipment you currently have

This is interesting and potentially makes a big difference. My understanding is this

We have in effect two systems of stuff getting shipped around one for "supply" and one for "equipment"

The "supply" system:

• is pretty abstract, and is basically tracking your ability to move stuff into each region from your capital (or other location if capital is cut off)
• you aren't actually required to spend resources or factories to make any stuff
• overall looks like a huge improvement compared to hoi3 to be honest
• being out of supply in this system makes you lose organization, move slower, not fight as effectively and take a lot more attrition (which I suppose means lose more men and equipment)

The "equipment" system

• is a process of moving equipment from a central stockpile to your units to replace losses
• volume and speed of equipment transported is in some way constrained by the above supply system
• equipment costs factories and resources to produce
• being unable to get enough equipment to the front will reduce your units combat stats directly since most of this is from equipment

I guess a few remaining concerns/questions that come to mind

1. can the constraints in the "equipment" transportation system be bypassed by moving and disbanding units?
2. does the equipment stockpile act as a kind of resource stockpile? Will we end up with for example Germany being unable to make new tanks but perfectly capable of throwing a bunch of old tanks into combat if it is starved of oil? Or Japan being able to operate the existing navy without needing to keep hold of the Dutch East Indes.. the only downside being crippling new ship production?
3. Will refineries be in game, if so what do they do?

Given we haven't played the game it's hard to say how material these could be. It feels like a good many of us were expecting something along the lines of this:

• a fuel system something like the "supply" system above
• no significant oil costs on production of tanks/planes/ships
• something like refineries to do oil->fuel conversion, and basically no fuel or oil stockpiles
• some kind of factory and resource costs for supplies
• the equipment system as described, it makes a lot of sense for new tanks to have to be moved

 

[Nicolas I]

"Could be better" is a poor criticism if you don't specify how...

Please read before posting/criticizing. I precisely specified how: HOI4 could have been better with fuel/supplies included within the new supply system. That idea is clearly not that dumb since the developers thought to implement it in the early development of the game and even showed us this in DD#6. They have the right to change their mind, I have the right to regret that they backed off.

EDIT:Furthermore, Aries666 wasn't presenting a false choice. The person he was replying to was complaining about change. They were saying the HOI4 system was inferior to the previous system. It was a binary comparison, so Aries wasn't making a fallacy. At most he was oversimplifying the issue by dismissing the previous system as broken.

Did you read what the person he was replying wrote ? It began by "Most of the changes are awesome and appreciated" I would not qualify this as complaining about all changes. He never said the proposed system was inferior, he was addressing the lack of fuel and ammo in the new system.

Most of the changes are awesome and appreciated, but I can't get over the lack of fuel and ammo?...

 

[RickInVA]

It didn't make any claims to his point, just that I don't take kindly to someone attempting some intellectual one-upmanship and totally failing.

As to the discussion at hand. I can empathise with peoples desire to have a system that works both from a gameplay perspective and from a realism perspective. However, I would prefer something that works as a game as opposed to something that works in the inner imagings of my head. To that end HOI3 (our best previous reference point) was a system that failed in gameplay terms and was barely realistic anyway. In HOI4 we are presented with a more streamlined system that should enhance gameplay and will be slightly less realistic. For me this is perfectly acceptable because when I play a game I accept that it is exactly that and don't try to rationalise or approximate it to real life.

Which is your choice entirely. My choice, when I get to make it, is the opposite. I will almost always choose the option that is the closest to reality, regardless if it makes for an easy or even good gaming experience. Why? Because in real life things are hard! As the saying goes, if it was easy everyone would do it. Yes, there are games that are not trying to embrace realism. When I want that experience I play Risk or Axis & Allies. When I want a gaming experience that is closer to reality I play War in the Pacific or War in the East (I have not tried War in the West yet).

HOI has always been farther towards the reality games on that scale. I would like to see it continue to move more to that side. Parts of HOI 4 are moving that way, the Division Designer, experience, unit modifications, and the new factory system seem to me to be moving the game in that direction. The new resource system (with no stockpiling), the lack of an OOB and Divisional Leaders, and now the Supply System are, to me, clear moves the other way.

It is like the Devs can't decide what the game should be like. Or that some of them want "A" and some "B", so depending on who is in charge of what we either get detail or simplicity.

I, like most people, know what I like, and one of the purposes of this forum is to agitate for what you like. Neither I, nor any of us, need to prove that what we like is "better", and won't because we all have a different idea of what better is. I won't change your mind and you won't change mine. When I take my time to post it is not in an effort to convince other posters to change their minds, it is in the, almost forlorn, hope that one of the Devs will read one of my posts and say, "You know, I had not thought about it like that, maybe we should try to change it."

 

[Nicolas I]

...My point is that in real life you don't replace the whole item to fix one part. If I am out of milk I can just buy milk, I don't have to buy the whole shopping list every time.

You don't understand, if you are out of milk you must buy a cow each time and discard it when it's empty.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

I fear that the current system will be like that to many people familiar with WW2-era logistics - it will actually be more confusing than HoI3's system initially, because it works in a counter-intuitive fashion.

Nah, I really doubt it because it seems really simple. I seems that at its root we have the very simplistic EU IV model where provinces can only support x men (modified by terrain, climate, season, tech and development) and if we go over that limit we will lose men to attrition. In HOI IV supply seems to be the same, just as long as supply area (group of provinces) x says it has enough supply (produced locally, received over land, air or port) to supply the amount of troops in that location the troops will fight at 100% efficiency, suffer either reduced or no attrition and 100% of the needed equipment/manpower will teleport from the stockpile to the divisions just like supply/fuel in HOI III with arcade mode enabled. The catch is that it seems that no supplies are actually produced/transported anywhere in the game as it is only a modifier, a flag that modifies the division fighting ability/effectiveness, reinforcement speed, attrition, speed, etc.

 

[Aries666]

Which is your choice entirely. My choice, when I get to make it, is the opposite. I will almost always choose the option that is the closest to reality, regardless if it makes for an easy or even good gaming experience. Why? Because in real life things are hard! As the saying goes, if it was easy everyone would do it. Yes, there are games that are not trying to embrace realism. When I want that experience I play Risk or Axis & Allies. When I want a gaming experience that is closer to reality I play War in the Pacific or War in the East (I have not tried War in the West yet).

HOI has always been farther towards the reality games on that scale. I would like to see it continue to move more to that side. Parts of HOI 4 are moving that way, the Division Designer, experience, unit modifications, and the new factory system seem to me to be moving the game in that direction. The new resource system (with no stockpiling), the lack of an OOB and Divisional Leaders, and now the Supply System are, to me, clear moves the other way.

It is like the Devs can't decide what the game should be like. Or that some of them want "A" and some "B", so depending on who is in charge of what we either get detail or simplicity.

I, like most people, know what I like, and one of the purposes of this forum is to agitate for what you like. Neither I, nor any of us, need to prove that what we like is "better", and won't because we all have a different idea of what better is. I won't change your mind and you won't change mine. When I take my time to post it is not in an effort to convince other posters to change their minds, it is in the, almost forlorn, hope that one of the Devs will read one of my posts and say, "You know, I had not thought about it like that, maybe we should try to change it."

Fair enough, it would appear we are on opposite sides of the coin.

 

[Axe99]

Nah, I really doubt it because it seems really simple. I seems that at its root we have the very simplistic EU IV model where provinces can only support x men (modified by terrain, climate, season and tech) and if we go over that limit we will lose men to attrition. In HOI IV supply seems to be the same, just as long as supply area (group of provinces) x says it has enough supply (produced locally and received over land or port) to supply the amount of troops in that location the troops will fight at 100% efficiency, suffer either reduced or no attrition and the equipment and manpower will teleport from the stockpile to the divisions just like supply/fuel in HOI III with arcade mode enabled. The catch is that it seems that no supplies are actually produced/transported anywhere in the game as it is only a modifier, a flag that modifies the division fighting ability/effectiveness, reinforcement speed, attrition, speed, etc.

Aye, I still think a few people that are coming from HoI rather than EU will be confused at first though. I like your explanation, you've done a good job of explaining it there, and I actually don't mind that the equipment teleports from stockpile to unit instantly as long as it's in supply (ie, I'm not pushing for hyper-realism here, just that tanks, planes and ships use fuel - I'm happy if the fuel uses Star Trek transporters to get there after being produced, I just draw the line about what I'm happy with when it comes to Star Trek transporters bringing it in from an alternate dimension). It'll work, I guess, but I've got a nagging feeling that it'll actually be harder to balance the game now, rather than easier - but that's only our problem if they can't sort it before launch .

 

[Nicolas I]

The term you incorrectly used and spelt was manichaeism. Nor was what I said a fallacy in the context of the comment I responded to. Far from having limited analytical abilities, I simply choose not to engage with a person who openly attempts to insult my intellegence, quite unccessarily. For my actual thoughts on the matter see a few posts previous.

I respect your opinions about what you like or want in the game, though I don't share them. I don't feel the need to misrepresent them to increase the value of mine.

I didn't insult your intelligence. What I was criticizing was that you presented the situation as a dichotomic choice between the good new HOI4 supply system and the bad "broken" HOI3 supply system. Take it or leave it. If this was the only choice, this forum would be mostly empty except for the developers diaries and some appreciating post for them. Many people, as myself, did say they liked many things in the new supply system, but proposed some improvements, that is far from rejecting any change.

Though the developers may sometimes (or often) find the "armchairs" critics irritating, the active forum community is an asset for Paradox and I guess some of their best advertisers.

 

[Aries666]

I respect your opinions about what you like or want in the game, though I don't share them. I don't feel the need to misrepresent them to increase the value of mine.

I didn't insult your intelligence. What I was criticizing was that you presented the situation as a dichotomic choice between the good new HOI4 supply system and the bad "broken" HOI3 supply system. Take it or leave it. If this was the only choice, this forum would be mostly empty except for the developers diaries and some appreciating post for them. Many people, as myself, did say they liked many things in the new supply system, but proposed some improvements, that is far from rejecting any change.

Though the developers may sometimes (or often) find the "armchairs" critics irritating, the active forum community is an asset for Paradox and I guess some of their best advertisers.

I can accept that. Indeed vibrant discussion often leads to better results. This post was a far better way to get your point across than the first, apologies for my previous harshness.

 

[henzington]

Hopefully the new supply makes it much easier to see how to handle and when supply problems would happen because the previous system was terrible for that.

 

[WilliamTheIII]

I truly love how the direction that the game is goin. My main concern is how the AI will be able to handle these situations. The game has come to a point where strategic planning and behind the scenes work reigns instead of the more tactical level we find with most strategy games. To me the game sounds more like a game where several people need to be playing at one time to really exploit the full potential of what is bein offered. Please do a dev diary on how the AI will give me the feeling that I'm playing against Stalin or Hitler instead of playin against a 4 year old who's only objective is too rush in blindly like an idiot.

 

[DPKdebator]

We even made a separate Arcade Mode for supply which of course nobody used (what self respecting player would pick something called "Arcade Mode"?)

I admit to using Arcade Mode.

 

[Will Steel]

Hooray, finally the supply dev diary!

This now gives rise to a few questions I have for @podcat and the devs:

1. Is it possible to capture enemy's supply? I recall many people saying that in HoI3 if you captured a supply hub of the enemy, you also captured and gained control of those supplies stockpiled there and could use it for your own armies. This is a valid and realistic strategy, making protection of major resource stockpiles vital. Is this possible to do in HoI4 anymore, or have supply hubs been removed?

What if I, playing USA, capture Tripoli's main ports (Tobruk and Benghazi) that form Italian Libya's main supply hubs? Should I not gain at least some of the resources that might've been lying around the docks and warehouses in the port city?

2. How come so many screenshots have rotated maps? Are we allowed to rotate our maps like in Sengoku or EU-Rome?

3. Can you release that dog as an unofficial mod some time after release? Particularly in the debug console as a part of the UI.

 

[Will Steel]

I admit to using Arcade Mode.

Same here. I tried learning more about the supply system but as a noob I failed and since then I have always played in the arcade mode.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

"Supplies" might not be stockpiled, but they are still pretty much a resource in the map. Look at the screenshots. Korea, for example, can provide 10 "supplies", and can import 50 more, although, currently, it is only using 1,4.

My question is, what if, instead of integral part of Japan, Korea was a puppet or even an independent nation? Could they import Japan's unused supplies? It would be very weird if they couldn't, but the DD didn't mention that.

If I understand you correctly, you seem to be thinking there is a sort of model where each region produces supplies and the supplies that aren't consumed in a region can be shifted around to neighboring regions. So in the screenshot Japan can 'export' supplies to the Korean region, since not all of it's local supplies are being used.

I'm pretty sure that's not how the model works. What I think happens is that every region has a local supply that represents whatever can be scrounged up locally PLUS there is a bonus that represents the amount that could be realistically shipped from the country's capital if needed, PLUS you get a bonus from adjacent regions whether or not those adjacent regions are using all of their supply.

So in the screenshot Korea gets 10 local supply. It also gets 13.10 spillover supply, which is the 25% of the 'local' supply of neighboring Japanese-controlled regions (so the neighbors have a total local supply of 52.4). Finally it gets 37.4 supply from the capital (limited by the min infrastructure in the chain).

In the hypothetical case where Korea is it's own independent country that's not allied with any neighbors, then I'd expect the home Korean region controlled by Korea would have something like 10 local supply plus 40-60 supply "from the capital", and no spillover, because none of the adjacent regions are controlled by allies.

The thing is that supply isn't manufactured, so the supply number is just a measure, for each region, of "roughly how many basic infantry divisions could we support here if we needed to". As far as I can tell, there is nothing like a global transport capacity or global supply limit. If your country has say 20 regions that each have say 10 local supply and 40 supply from the capital, then you could theoretically have 20*(10 + 40) = 1000 divisions happily supplied at once, the supply from the capital isn't divided among them, it goes to each of them. Of course, you might not be able to build the equipment to deploy 1000 divisions, and perhaps you would even have trouble keeping up with the equipment attrition on that many. But they would still be all "in supply".

Interesting question: does the "capital" supply capacity depend on the size of the nation? Would some theoretical independent one-province island nation with excellent infrastructure be able to supply 50 infantry divisions in it's capital?

 

[kingtiger]

After reading this entire thread and seeing the good and the ugly, I cant seem to understand how Paradox skipped or missed the main issues of HOI3 in the supply system they are using now in HOI4. I feel that this is just arcade supply dumbed up or down, however you take it, to pacify the fact they had no real insight on how to code a system to accomplish supply at all. I would love to have seen a fuel and a supply system independent of each other and that supply depots could be used to store supplies at intervals through out the war which I think actually did happen, but there has to be an easier method to simulate this fuel and supply issue and Paradox completely threw up the hands and said not touching it, lets arcade it and call it a day.

Sad that business caters to the masses of glitz and make it simple stupid for all, so they will buy the game and we can roll in the money. Very sad about this diary, this has to be a major drawback for me as well as other areas that Paradox choose to glamour up instead of make it more realistic for us long time players or should I say the old farts like myself. Well Paradox you had me going to the store to buy once more but I don't want to play an EU/CK game in HOI4, I want the challenge without the fluff, I wanted new ideas to fix the flaws of past mistakes and I have not seen it here with supply system from what has been said and discussed. Sigh.