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HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #1

Hello, hopefully you can tear yourself away from rewatching the Star Wars trailer for just one more glimpse of the Porg creature... because it's Wednesday! Time for another dev diary for 1.5 “Cornflakes” update and the as-yet unannounced DLC. We have been covering several big features in the diaries leading up here, so now it's time to also look at some smaller features from our "bag of tricks" :)

Control Groups
This might actually be one of my favourites :D 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. 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.
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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.
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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!”
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Minimap can be toggled to a closed state if you like, and you can still use pings through keyboard shortcuts.
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Kick From Faction
With Cornflakes it will now be possible to kick nations from your faction in the form of a new diplo action.
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Since this stuff tended to lead to some exploiting in the past (players picking off members one by one etc), we have been working on how AI sees this stuff to make it handle a few things… Kicking is possible in war time also and we have been putting a lot of time into dealing with how HOI4 handles wars in code. Basically the underlying system has been completely remade to stop war merging and the like from ruining your wars, or getting nations dropped or included in ways you wouldn't expect. Its one of those non-sexy things that you can't really show but that is going to make things feel a lot better and avoid edge case bugs messing up your day. This also allows us much more flexibility with how we may want to handle wars in the future.


That's it for today, see you all again next week for more updates!

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Guys / Gals

This thread is to discuss the dev diary, not Pdx DLC policy, which has been debated ad nauseam. Stay on topic of the thread. - Had a dad
 
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skipped the excellent concise list of features.

PLENTY of weeks left for DDs - thinking now that these first features are the low hanging fruit, and the more complicated features will be described later, closer to release. I just wish they would give us some taste of all of the planned content (again, planned, doesn't have to be committed), so we can give feedback. They can easily describe a feature without screen shots. By the time they get to a DD for the most complex features, there will be less time for feedback, and they won't be able to make any changes because its too close to release date.

I believe that this minimap introduction is the first mention of what is in the next DLC. You know PDX, after the lash out of fans for the release pushed they aren't going to promise anything that isn't 100%. and i don't blame them. Because you have thousands of people that all want completely different things and expect it to be in the game by the next DLC and have no idea the implementation or how the guts of the game works. Little or no knowledge, but excessive amounts of expectation and self entitlement. So unfortunately them keeping things quiet is in direct response to negative (not constructive) feedback such as the paragraph below.

I understand why they made the minimap paid content, it is in all due reality, the best choice, I don't like how with EU4 the AI gets harder to beat, because I don't have a DLC, and since I have the season pass and mostly play big mulitoplayer-sessions with friends. Its fine by me.
Also they have to make this DLC big so they need to put in some stuffing somewhere.
What worries me, that we have neither seen anything regarding the navy (which could mean naval rework is smaller than expected) or about chinese civil war mechanics, which could mean that those are also not as extensive as some of us hope.
I made a list from the announcment DD for this patch:

This entire paragraph is complete conjecture.
 
I heard it suggested that the 'kick faction' feature is behind a paywall? If so, that's bullcrap. The reason it exists, and why I've been using a mod to replicate that effect for months, is because the AI is stupid and drags alliances into suicidal wars. (Or, actually, I save the game, tag the other country, force THEM to leave the faction, then tag back to my country.) Any feature that exists to correct errors in the AI's stupidity should not be behind a paywall. Just getting the pre-emptive: "don't do it!" Before you do it.
 
I heard it suggested that the 'kick faction' feature is behind a paywall? If so, that's bullcrap. The reason it exists, and why I've been using a mod to replicate that effect for months, is because the AI is stupid and drags alliances into suicidal wars. (Or, actually, I save the game, tag the other country, force THEM to leave the faction, then tag back to my country.) Any feature that exists to correct errors in the AI's stupidity should not be behind a paywall. Just getting the pre-emptive: "don't do it!" Before you do it.
Where did you hear its behind a paywall?

"podcat, post: "Free. If we dont specify its safe to assume its in the update and not the DLC."
"podcat,Kick From Faction
With Cornflakes it will now be possible to kick nations from your faction in the form of a new diplo action"

If you look in the very first paragraph of this DD, podcat states "1.5 "Cornflakes" " as an update. If you look at the last feature that he mentions "kick from faction" it informs us that it is in the Cornflakes update not the unannounced DLC as you are assuming. All you gotta do is read the DD.
 
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Cheers for the DD Podcat - that bag of tricks of yours if full of tasty treats :D. Reckon the minimap would be my favourite - playing a nation across a large geographic area (so Britain, Australia, Japan, USSR if the Japanese get involved, France if it lives long enough, the US, Germany (or anyone else) if it goes on a rampage) involves a fair bit of tedious map-micro at the moment, and the minimap will make this quicker and easier, and reduce mouse-scroll RSI - my fingers particularly approve of this DLC :).

That said, other features also tops - love how control groups is everything and not just armies. Consolidating divisions and keeping XP also brilliant, and that work on managing how wars and factions are organised sounds like it'll be very promising as well :cool:.

One quick question/idea - any chance of a hotkey to toggle the minimap (or anything else in the bottom-right corner) on or off?

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

So it's a kind of 'average of the combined divisions' level of XP? The tooltip in the DD suggested that the 'receiving' division would just keep its XP. Both reasonable, and if former then even better :D.

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 :p imagine my surprise.

It makes pretty good sense at least from over my way. Spearhead was a mechanic, while the minimap is a UI feature, so they're functionally quite different. A minimap is also likely to be pretty easy to balance DLC/non-DLC builds around, while things like war support/stability/national unity require re-writing a whole bunch of script (and presumably code) to work, and are fundamental to the game so locking behind DLC limits their further expansion. The minimap is also something that's not going to be used by everyone (while war support and stability are whole-of-game-for-everyone features).

At the end of the day, something has to go in the DLC, and I'd argue the person selling the goods is the one who has the right to choose, so it's a bit hard to criticise any DLC/patch allocation decisions other than on the issue of how it might be perceived by us punters (which, to be fair, is what you did - I'm just talking it out :) ).

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?

Quicker, easier and removes pressure on RSI-inducing amounts of scrollwheel for me, and that's if it doesn't include any information on whether there's conflict going on in the world (little red/green dots for battles on the minimap would be a great little 'global summary', for example). Double-clicking does have the same effect, but the minimap cuts the number of clicks in half (and reducing clicks as a way of improving UI is something that's been recognised as a good thing for a long while now). It won't get a lot of use as some countries (a Norwegian playthrough, say), but as others it'll be a lifesaver - I used it a ton in HoI1-3.

we have neither seen anything regarding the navy (which could mean naval rework is smaller than expected).

At no point have the devs confirmed that there'll be anything naval in 1.5 (and I'm most definitely keeping my eye out for it :)). As someone who'd be perfectly happy if about (nay, more than o_O) three-quarters of all future DLC was just naval, I'm probably about as keen on more naval content/improvements as anyone, but I grudgingly acknowledge that there are other elements of the game that need love too :eek:. However the devs decide to approach it, I'm confident that at some stage naval will get it's turn in the spotlight :).
 
Paradox devs like the new propaganda iteration of Star Wars? That says a lot tbh.
 
Nice, basic mechanical functionality (minimap) which was in the beta of the game, stripped out so you can charge for it later.
making false claims falls under the "trolling/ inflammatory posting" provision of the forum rules
 
I don't get some of the people that are totally OK with minimap as DLC as if it would be the most normal thing on the world. I just looked through my steam library and from Ego Shooters to flight simulators, Grand Theft Auto to Hard-Core Strategy Games, they all have Mini Maps. In fact HOI4 appears to be the only game that I have played that does not have any kind of mini map and now you are gonna sell us that "feature" back? Totally no money grab!



Yeah sure, just your normal strategy gamer QA... "Mini Map? Naaah I like scrolling myself to death!"

I'll be waiting for the message settings DLC then.

Dude, tbh, a lot of us will find it far more useful to bookmark provinces, airwings etc. than to have a minimap. Bookmarks are free in the patch.
 
I don't get some of the people that are totally OK with minimap as DLC as if it would be the most normal thing on the world. I just looked through my steam library and from Ego Shooters to flight simulators, Grand Theft Auto to Hard-Core Strategy Games, they all have Mini Maps. In fact HOI4 appears to be the only game that I have played that does not have any kind of mini map and now you are gonna sell us that "feature" back? Totally no money grab!

Just because other games have included it, doesn't mean that it didn't take time to develop. The cost of those minimaps is included in the base cost of those games. Had HoI4 had a minimap at launch, then it would probably have not included something else (everything takes time and resources to develop), so we'd have paid for the minimap already, and then have to pay for another feature now instead. Something has to go in the DLC, and the free features in this DD are pretty handy - in effect (roughly), those people that don't get the DLC have minimap (and whatever else is in this DLC) fans to thank for their shortcut feature :).

In the case of the minimap, as responses in this thread show, not everyone uses it, and it's a UI rather than a mechanics/AI feature - which makes it perfect for DLC - those who want it, pay for it, those who don't, don't, and it's not a whole lot of work with the code to balance the game for people playing with and without minimaps.

Plus, there's the whole "Paradox are the developers/publishers, they should get to choose what goes in DLC and what doesn't".

Now - if the minimap was the only thing in the DLC, and they were charging $100 for it, there would be a (strong!) argument that it was overpriced, but the minimap being in the DLC seems reasonable enough to me.
 
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Neither AoD NOR DH were developed by Paradox...they were part of the 'license the code and we will publish your 'mod' effort after the poor reviews of HOI3.
That's fine, I was just pointing out that some people genuinely believe that @podcat is intentionally ignoring good features from previous versions of HOI, because he's either an idiot or malicious.

"It wouldn't work with the current design philosophy of the game" is not a satisfactory answer apparently.
 
This DLC is part of the expansion pass right
yup

Can you give an example of a problem that comes with the removal of autojoining?
Germany rushes netherlands, you are britain and you dont have time to offer them entry before they fall. now germany has annexed thwm. among other stuff

I heard it suggested that the 'kick faction' feature is behind a paywall?
dont listen to porgs

Nice qol features. The important question that no one has asked is @podcat what sandwich fillings did they have last week?
tuna and cucumber sallad
 
Germany rushes netherlands, you are britain and you dont have time to offer them entry before they fall. now germany has annexed thwm. among other stuff

Isn't that what "guarantee" is supposed to cover?