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HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #2

Welcome to another bag of tricks dev diary for 1.5 “Cornflakes” and the unannounced expansion. Today we have several smaller features and improvements for you and all are connected to equipment in one way or the other.

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:
all_of_it.png


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.

boosted_line.png


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:
99cd63a5e0512bf62ea830ab90e4df95.gif


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.


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.
Captured Equipment.png

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Getting rid of stuff you don't want

There are sometimes situations when you just want to get rid of some of your equipment stockpiles. Death or Dishonor added the ability to convert equipment, but that is not always applicable. For people who get the DLC we have now added the option of straight up cleaning out your stores of stuff you don’t need or want anymore. To avoid exploits around surrender where someone in MP would try to destroy things to keep them out of enemy hands these are held in a special “being destroyed” storage, and will be accessible to the conqueror if you fall within 90 days.
destroy.png


Also finally there is another way available to all. Lend Lease has been changed to allow to send equipment that isn’t originally yours. This means that you can give captured stuff to your allies etc.
lendlease.png


Sending equipment that isn't yours like this will however not give you any XP (you wasn't the one who did research and development after all).

See you all next week for more updates and details!

Also, do you need more friends to invade and annex? Tell them to take a look at our new stream starting later today, Blitzkrieg for dummies! As always on Twitch: https://go.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive .
 
I really like the captured equipment feature!

This maybe minor, but I am one of those guys @billcorr is referring to who knows all weapon names (well most all the small arms & some others), that there should be some penalty for using non-core weapons. Maybe higher attrition rates for non-core weapons? If we had supplies as a thing in the game I would have higher supply usage for them.

Note I have been saying non-core weapons. Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Belgium, Turkey, Iran & Lithuania all used the same rifle caliber. Britain painted a red band on U.S. caliber rifles to show they used different ammo ( U.S. made Enfield rifles in both .303 & .30-06 during WW I and when the .30-06 rifles were later shipped to Britain after Dunkirk the British needed to be able to quickly tell the difference and this practice continued even when importing weapons like the M1 Garand which had no British caliber version). So weapons could be given 'cores' and if you are using weapons (from Lend-Lease or captured) that don't match your cores you have higher attrition rates. This also works very much for things like Tanks when you don't have a lot of spare parts for them.
I really dislike this idea, and I don't think it's remotely suitable for vanilla. BlackICE maybe, as I know that mod loves more for the sake of more, but expecting people to know what 'core' equipment is and how they get it, and having the seemingly random modifier of 'oh, apparently this particular equipment type is giving me greater attrition'... no. It's convoluted and would, I think, be needlessly confusing for the player.
It could indeed work well for the really big mods such as BICE, though I agree for the mods which simply fiddle around with vanilla its probably too much extra detail.
In particular equipment such as armor and vehicles. The germans as we all know used every type of truck they could find and many of them were next to useless as soon as a part broke.
 
Would it be possible to add a button to "destroy all outdated equipment"? I love the ability to destroy unwanted stuff, but clicking through 8 different biplanes and another 12 outdated and obsolete other planes would be much similar with a "destroy all" button
 
Would it be possible to add a button to "destroy all outdated equipment"? I love the ability to destroy unwanted stuff, but clicking through 8 different biplanes and another 12 outdated and obsolete other planes would be much similar with a "destroy all" button

Outdated equipment should be scrapped for resources to be used to create new equipment.
 
Would it be possible to add a button to "destroy all outdated equipment"? I love the ability to destroy unwanted stuff, but clicking through 8 different biplanes and another 12 outdated and obsolete other planes would be much similar with a "destroy all" button

Perhaps a system where you can tick a box to choose what you want destroyed? Then have it destroy each variation which was ticked.

Could have a sort of "select all" as well coupled with it.
 
very nice, very nice indeed, but can you please fix the subs? please, pretty please? Convoy raiding is a joke and impossible to have any real affect on an enemy...
 
Just like: Ban communism, improve nationalism, support Southamerica, Mexico, central America, influence on England, France, etc.

Umm, wasn't communism already banned by the Nazi's before the start of the game? I distinctly remember a speech by Hitler where he mentions taking that specific action.

Also, what stops Germany from promoting fascism in the Americas now? Go spend the PP. Hitler gives Germany enough PP to flip a few countries.
 
Umm, wasn't communism already banned by the Nazi's before the start of the game? I distinctly remember a speech by Hitler where he mentions taking that specific action.

Also, what stops Germany from promoting fascism in the Americas now? Go spend the PP. Hitler gives Germany enough PP to flip a few countries.

For some reason the NSDAP isn't at 100% at the beginning of the game.
 
Very good changes to the production interface!
@podcat Did you add a way to select all the filters again? With the new filters, showing all Production lines again after having only one selected will be even more clicks.

May I suggest that shift-klicking on the only selected filter reactivates all the other ones?
 
Why do you keep adding bandages instead of actually solving problems?

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:
View attachment 309811

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.
A GIF doesn't turn a minor improvement into a major one. What people have been asking for, practically since day one, is the option to add a production line directly under an existing one. That would be a solution, not just a cheap bandage.

Getting rid of stuff you don't want

View attachment 309806
The main reason why players kept asking for the option to get rid of equipment is the terrible scroll-fest of the air wing creation interface. The obvious solution there are sort and filter options. Those are still missing. Meaning: that interface is still atrocious!

I keep telling the same thing: You guys desperately need an UI specialist. Because this is just sub-par. Last time I posted I wrote about you guys not aiming for "good", just "good enough". Sadly this right here isn't even good enough.

Also, you keep including these "fixes" in "tricks". That's a misrepresentation at best. Very bad style...
 
The overflowing abundance of names associated with captured equipment might be a bit ...expansive .

In the example provided in the original post, captured equipment had names such as:

  • MP 38
  • Leichte Feldhablitze
  • Opel Blitz
along with lost equipment with names such as
  • kbsp wz 38m
  • karabin wz 98a
  • phased plasma rifle in 40 watt range
  • and something called "support equipment"
Kudos and respect for those gamers who know what is what. Very impressive.

You know your weapons, buddy.

View attachment 309925

Imagine the international potpourri of nomenclature as you review all the accumulated domestic and foreign equipment in your stockpiles.

But I'm sure that the good designers will keep it simple for us monoglots.
Equipment should never just have its flavour name, or should always say, for example, art 2 or inf 1 etc. This is a pet hate of mine.
 
Finally I can get rid of all the obsolete, captured equipment that's been clogging up my stockpiles. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
 
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.
This makes me remember the chinese's Guerillas' Song
"没有枪,没有炮,敌人给我们造"(no need to worry about guns and canons,(cos) our enemy will make them for us!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GgBBbcnU94
 
I don't think anybody from Paradox has clarified on that yet. There's been speculation it's intelligence & spies, but time will tell, I suspect.

Didn't podcat say it was something to do with bugs and the debug build they're running? I distinctly remember that from a previous dev diary thread.