HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #1

[fabius]

First all great additions. Like somebody above said, sometimes the small things make a big impact.

Anybody else read consolidate divisions and think that consolidate is begging for a kampfgruppe division reorganiser/creator mechanic?

 

[Lykanion]

it amazes me when things like hot-key selection, which have been part of Paradox games for many years (see e.g. EU), apparently have to be "re-invented" for every game. Even when they use the same engine (see EUIV). So it takes years to implement this "new feature" that has been old for years. Was the thought process like "It has proven to be very useful, of course we do not want it for the new game"? Just amazing...

Still glad there's progress.

They don't need to "re-invent" these features, but they have to "re-implement" them, adjusting to the specifics in each game. It takes time, and HOI4 didn't have enough time. The release was delayed by a full year as it is. Of course, control groups and the like usually classify as nice-to-have-but-not-really-necessary features, and these get cut first. I'm glad that they've started to add them in patches.

That being said, I'm rather surprised that the minimap is part of the DLC. But whatever, hurray for the minimap I hope you can drag your mouse on it to scroll the map.
And I really can't wait to see how the reworked war relations play out!

 

[Emre Yigit]

IF they had removed it, I would agree with you. However, what you (and almost everyone else) seem to forget is that HOI4 is NOT an upgraded HOI3 but instead a new version of HOI built from the ground up. So NO, they did not remove the mini-map (and message settings, division leaders, etc.), they simply didn't create them for the new game.

I would not go that far.

As I don't play multiplayer I don't see much of a need for it. Would I be put off from it being pay walled as part of A DLC? No. Kind of a meh feature for me.

As Podcat said, only a part of the playerbase has in fact requested this feature. Seems like a perfect thing to be part of a DLC to me.

I imagine that relatively few people request a feature and fewer yet support its implementation; podcat's assumption that this means only a minority wants is is misleading, because we can never know.

I also find the disappearance of the minimap - a feature of every Paradox strategy game since inception - from the game (if indeed "by design choice" whatever were Paradox thinking?) and its re-introduction via DLC appalling, so I'm sorry but I have to disagree.

The notion that HOI4 is a completely new game, and therefore "features" need to be re-invented and re-introduced is a notion other game studios have had before. In no re-iteration of a simulation or stragegy game series has it proved successful in the long run.

 

[zeekater]

Regarding 'consolidate divisions':

perhaps instead of merging the divisions, you can transfer all equipment from one division to another, but still keep both divisions. That way you can send the division without equipment to get some rest and refitting in the homeland.

The experience is then kept for each division, logic being that merging two 50% health (equipment/manpower), 50% XP divisions does not result in one 100% health, 50% XP division. Some XP should be lost because it represents experience in working together, not individual experience.

 

[podcat]

Not wanting to assume anything but when consolidating divisions well we lose org/exp??
Or well it stay the same as what division it's being consolidated to??

@podcat - when you consolidate divisions do the plundered divisions go back to a recruitment/training stage or are they gone completely?

I should have been a bit clearer on this. A big point of it is that XP and other such per division things are retained, so it will move experienced soldiers over and you may end up with an overall more experienced division

 

[alssindi123]

Since divisions seem to be getting a lot of work, can we please get an encirclement alert?

 

[D3m0]

When I first saw the minimap screenshot I got pretty excited until I've read about the icons being placed by the player and not dynamically showing combat.
I would much prefer that or something like green and red dots showing units as the EU4 minimap does.

 

[SrgChris]

Cornflakes looks like it's going in a great direction, but the choice between what is paid and what is free-in-patch seems really odd this time around.

You guys got absolutely roasted for putting Spearhead orders as paid, so you do the exact same thing with Consolidation?

Honestly stability and war prep should have been paid DLC, rather than the minimap. If you dont have the DLC, the game can function completely fine with National Unity.

A minimap is such a basic feature, it's hard to believe only "pro players" or some in the office were interested in it xD Pinging is a nice touch, but honestly, that should be the paid feature, while minimap should be free.

Control groups are neat, but like some mentioned, it's a bit surprising they weren't in the game. I assumed they were, and just never bothered to use them imagine my surprise.

 

[smurfopax]

Who cares about a Minimap? I play on a 34" 3440x1440 Display and have sometimes trouble to see what is happening when i don't zoom in.

What use will the Minimap have except moving fast to another part of the World (Double Click on a Army stationed there has the same effect)? I personally see no advantage in a tiny map when the main map does the same. Maybe someone could enlighten me for what else i could use the Minimap?

 

[lrbaumard]

2 things
1. this dev diary has so many things in i really like. That minimap will make playing UK a lot easier
2. I had no idea control groups were a thing in any paradox game... Am gonna try it in EU4, will make keeping tabs on armies and navies a lot easier esp in larger empires!
All round a great DD for me!

 

[Dan1109]

Very nice bag of tricks! All great new mini-features certainly a great improvement. Just want to remind you that seamen and airmen are troops too! Not seeing any love for the other branches of service, which continue to be the weakest part of the game.

Navy

Naval Convoys - in addition to hard coded naval paths defined at game start up, need to also define "x" alternate routes through other sea regions (will take just a little bit of extra time at game start up, but worth it). If convoys attacked, need to re-route to sea regions which intel tells you that you don't have enemy naval superiority. Also, convoys should disband if attacked with inability to assign naval units to that region and no alternate routes left. The "base" feature for this (for humans) is that humans can assign a naval path for convoys, which becomes the primary route, superseding routes and alternate routes defined at game start, but subject to same auto-mated rules if convoys attacked.

Naval Escort Missions - No naval mission scoring done on naval paths that have convoys going through them. Navy is oblivious to convoys, which throughout history has been the primary reason for a navy, to protect trade! Here is the feature request - all ships assigned to "Escort Mission" are part of a virtual pool, split up between sea regions that have convoys assigned (active convoys, ignore the non-active convoy routes determined by naval pathing at game start up). Escort Missions do not need to be assigned to regions that have Patrol missions already assigned. For a human player, AI will not assign your ships to escort mission, but if a human does, the ships are auto split across regions using same rules for AI. If human doesn't like this feature, then simply don't use Escort Missions (which are rarely used anyways).

Naval Transport - yes, this is a tough situation to deal with, but the paths used by active naval transports must be added to the list of paths used by active convoys. Shameful to see Allies sending several dozen naval transports but not having escorts assigned to those paths.

Naval Nudge - need ai_strategies to assign patrol/SD, raiding, escort scores to sea regions. Need access to naval threat, per sea region. As convoys are the natural target of any naval asset, need target opportunities value (supply/resource/transport) determined by allied ships in that region (when you do attack a convoy, there are many convoys that you saw but could NOT attack, air coverage should see most). This should be incorporated into naval region scores.

Air

AI needs to build airbases, when airbases are full and has loads of planes in stockpiles.

Human and AI must be allowed to build air bases on faction member provinces. The airbase however belongs to the owner of the province.

AI needs to learn to share the sandbox better - when human allied air units are assigned to bases, AI must atleast remove some of its planes to allow the human to have space. Airwings which are candidates for removal would be ones that a) don't have missions assigned, which there can be many b) missions which have not had enemy contact within "x" (defines) days. Also, ratio of MIC or AirForce size should be used in this determination. Tired of seeing USA ariforce not bombing GER to hell, due to it not being able to base planes in ENG's overcrowded max airbases, even though the Battle of Britain was won years ago.

All of the features so far have been great, but too much focus on land (which will be primarily enjoyed by GER/SOV players). USA/ENG have more fun with Navy and AirForce, and if I wanted to focus solely on land, I would play RISK. Spread the love.

Seamen and airmen are troops too!!

 

[Fulmen]

Control Groups
This might actually be one of my favourites Was reminded about this in a forum thread about UI improvements people wanted and realized I had totally forgotten how nice it was. You can now hit Ctrl+number to save any selection, and then hit the number key again to bring that up.

At last. I've been moaning for them for over a year.

It works with any selection, not just divisions, so you can mark areas, air wings etc and jump between them quickly. Double tapping the number key moves camera to the selection.

This is going to save hours of scrolling in multiplayer, fantastic!

Consolidate Divisions
Sometimes after hard battles, or when cut off from reinforcement and supply you can end up with a lot of divisions a low strength. Sometimes you need them at full strength right away and can’t wait for them to fill up normally. The DLC will come with a new feature that lets you consolidate divisions together into fewer, full strength (or as close as you can get ones). Units will move towards the strongest division and transfer over their manpower and equipment when they get there. The system also handles doing it with many divisions in which case it will try to form as many full strength divisions as it can.

Definitely something that will come in handy and help avoid micro.

Btw will this take into account the experience level of the men being used as reinforcements to the reinforced division? 5000 seasoned veterans shouldn't bring the average XP of the division they're going into down as much as 5000 green recruits.

EDIT2:

I should have been a bit clearer on this. A big point of it is that XP and other such per division things are retained, so it will move experienced soldiers over and you may end up with an overall more experienced division

Ah, looks like you already answered this.

Minimap & Pinging
A minimap is something HOI4 was designed to live without, but there is clearly a part of the community that really miss it, so you can now get it as part of the DLC if you want. It also comes with some new functionality for multiplayer. You can ping the map to illustrate to allies of things you are discussing, like where you want them to defend or push, or as a quick reminder like “watch out here the russians are about to encircle you!”

A minimap will be useful but the ability to ping your teammates? Absolutely awesome! The amount of screaming on TS trying to get a teammate to notice an encirclement opportunity or the threat of one... Let's just say you're saving a lot of vocal cords and ears with this one.

This might just be my favourite dev diary so far. You've not been secretly lurking in multiplayer games have you?

EDIT: Btw you might want to have some kind of spam filter with the pinging, just in case there's a troll who starts spamming pings.

 

[ItsThatGuyCalledScott]

Because your adding alot of new ui features I highly request the feature of being able to sort divisions by Rank.As i find myself all to alot of the time scrolling down hundreds of divisions looking for green infantry to train up.Their needs to be a way to switch over the double click feature to be able to double click units of the same rank so i can sort out my army's easier. Love what your doing though podcat keep it up.

 

[Malickhoi]

To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed. It's just like you've been selling a car for more than a year without ABS for some reason and now you decide to include it : it's not exactly cutting edge technology anymore and can hardly be considered an 'improvement'. A 'corrective action' would be more appropriate

Those simple features making a 'come back' are good news nonetheless and a step in the right direction.
Can we even hope to have some form of ledgers back in the game as well ?

For instance, a very poorly coded, dirty, basic excel formatted list containing as few as 3 tabs:
- industrial : resources and industry by country / area
- military : available manpower, number of divisions, equipment and fielded manpower per country, planes and ships per country
- strategic : number of convoys sunk, buildings destroyed, per week / month / year and per country

The values shown in the ledgers could be influenced by the country's level of intelligence, which is already calculated in the diplomatic details tabs.

Thanks !

 

[Fulmen]

Because your adding alot of new ui features I highly request the feature of being able to sort divisions by Rank.As i find myself all to alot of the time scrolling down hundreds of divisions looking for green infantry to train up.Their needs to be a way to switch over the double click feature to be able to double click units of the same rank so i can sort out my army's easier. Love what your doing though podcat keep it up.

Hear, hear.

 

[James_Manring]

Its one of those things thats really for a part of the players only. When I had the betas and QA play they were basically split between "oh yes!!!" and "I like it the way it is and will keep it collapsed", so I think its a pretty good fit for DLC. I personally still like to use quick mouse zooming

A minimap is a historically expected feature in Paradox games. Putting it behind an extra paywall, while not being the end of the world, is kind of rude. Not having it since launch had made this game much more tedious when playing as a country that has expanded beyond a single screen width. Starting a play as Britain is very annoying on any reasonable speed for me due to how spread out my attention has to be. While I can deal with it, it has made showing the game off on my stream and convincing new people it is a game they can handle much more difficult. The primary concern I get from new people is about these kinds of interface constraints making it difficult for them to understand what is going on. Telling them that they will have to pay even more money to get into the game is not a very easy to sell point. I firmly believe putting the minimap into the free content so that it is part of the base game is the right move.

 

[XYN]

In my case there are some tears of sadness as well. And I'm really trying not to be too negative here, but... it amazes me when things like hot-key selection, which have been part of Paradox games for many years (see e.g. EU), apparently have to be "re-invented" for every game. Even when they use the same engine (see EUIV). So it takes years to implement this "new feature" that has been old for years. Was the thought process like "It has proven to be very useful, of course we do not want it for the new game"? Just amazing...

Still glad there's progress.

Wasn't the divisions consolidation also present in HoI 3 and HoI 2? That feature certainly was in EU3 or EU4 I think.

 

[Gamer_1745]

This is a general question, what features other than NF trees & new 3D models do you think should be paid for? I get that HoI 3 had a mini-map and one was not made for HOI IV, which I called for even before release of HOI IV, and now is an addition that you need to pay for. Everyone who cared to know knew that HOI IV was designed not to use a mini-map (they made a big deal that it didn't need one). Now they have made one because of popular demand, Thank You Dev team, why wouldm't it be a paid feature?

Or maybe I am just missing that any paid feature some group is going to disagree with?

 

[Gamer_1745]

Wasn't the divisions consolidation also present in HoI 3 and HoI 2? That feature certainly was in EU3 or EU4 I think.

Not in HoI 3, I haven't played HoI 2.

 

[davewolf]

They don't need to "re-invent" these features, but they have to "re-implement" them... nice-to-have-but-not-really-necessary features, and these get cut first.

Really? Features like hot-key selection, which are standard for most strategy games with a remotely decent user interface for years, that's "not nice-to-have-but-not-really-necessary", but simply essential. At least if you're going for high quality! But that's just me. In life I try to do an objectively good job, not just good enough to keep the number of complaints acceptable, as a lot of people/companies do nowadays.

BTW I've been a Paradox fan and customer for many years. Overall I paid quite a bit of money for their products. And I enjoyed most of them. But it's still disappointing to see features like the one above, that I consider 101's, missing almost every time I open up one of their new games.

As a somewhat-related sidenote, as someone with a very good knowledge of my native language, which isn't English, I offered to help with the corresponding localization. Of course not for free, since it would take at least hundreds of hours to fix all mistakes. The lack of response speaks volumes. (Literally "lack of response", since for my last message to the person in charge, I didn't even get a reply. At all...) To me it seems more and more apparent, Paradox too doesn't seriously aim for "good", just "good enough".

That makes me sad. It's just how I feel.

It takes time, and HOI4 didn't have enough time.

I'm old enough to have known the "good old days" when games/software in general just had to be "finished" on release. Because the infrastructure to deliver updates, like the Internet, simply didn't exist. Anybody remembers cartridge games, for example? Again, they had to be done by release. These days the customers pay to be beta testers! This is not anti-Paradox. It`s like that almost everywhere.
Since it isn't new I've gotten used to it. But at least I expect a respectable company to be honest about it. Just say that people are paying for a beta, not a finished product. But don't try to sell me something for what it isn't. Then you get a reaction like this, even from a fan.

Anyway, I've said my part. Make of it what you want. That's your part.