Developer Diary | Small Features #1

[CanterburyITA]

I have been really critical of the air designer since it was released. If the presets feature lets us have historical 2d and 3d art (aka HOI 4 is not all biplanes vs biplanes) and lets us further customize designs as desired then this is an unambiguous improvement. Thank you.

It is disappointing we can’t save templates across games or have designs whitelisted via mods for ironman, but I understand that the game engine lacks the ability to save arbitrary data in this way outside of a save game file.

One way to work around this would be to serialize the design in some way to a text string and provide a copy/paste button (or barring that is not possible, just a text box that can be selected from and copied/pasted into). This could work like old Nintendo carts with a password system. We know the game engine is capable of generating strings.

 

[KnyazSuvorov]

I will be cruel:
Why create new support regiments? What benefit does this give? How does it make the game better?

If you ask me: this gives zero benefit and is a pure waste of programming resources. I don't see the logic.

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

Easy for who? Nations with fancily reworked focus trees with no regards for balance?

Total Mob + 100% Stab leave just 5% to be nulified by a lucky roll in Civil War leader switch. Albeit that's far from "easy", I agree. I doubt many players even use that resource to get any random generic traits, let alone re-roll to get something that specific.

Spoiler

 

[Eruth]

Okay... We're going to ignore the debatables of the rest of this diary to talk about the middle-finger you just gave your community as a whole (especially modders) with Presets... (This will be a bit passionate, but I don't care at this point. Disagreement tally be damned.)

In short, you just said...
"We're going to give you half of what you asked for, with historical presets ONLY that we determined through half-backed research and didn't bother to playtest, but it's moddable so you modders can do custom presets for yourself."

Do you have any idea how Lazy that makes you guys sound? This is a bare-basic feature people have been asking for since NAVAL designers... to SAVE and LOAD designs across games. You finally get around to the idea after adding three more designers, but can't be bothered to do anything more than hard-set Historical templates? With no way for common players to save alterations we'd like??? Say "we'd like to do it" as if there is no reason (and without giving explination) as to why you couldn't do it right now????? And then say "But it's moddable for metas!" as if that's the only thing modders care about???????

Modders don't care about "Meta," we care about "Gameplay." Something you guys have seem to lost understanding of since you don't playtest. Yeah, cool, we have another tool to use... Can you not pressure us into using it so you can avoid adding this feature youself? Because if you're going to treat modders like they're part of your QA and Testing Staff... We're all going to tell you to get over yourself, as a collective company, reguardless of which of your Execs or team-leads thought it was a good idea to braodcast "We're lazy so the modders can do it," in a "Developmer Diary" which at this point should be renamed "Community Outreach Blog."

They've said in multiple places that adding save/load presets would require them to make an entirely new & programmatically complicated system that would require significant rewrites of the existing designer code. The current feature is just an alteration of an existing system (AI presets).
Coding a game isn't as easy as 'snap of fingers and now it's done.' You have a limited currency of time and you have to figure out which features to spend it on. I agree that saving presets should be a priority, but there are lots of other things that need to be priority as well. Some things are far more complicated, difficult, and risky than others; saving presets appears to be one of those things.
Also, where did you get the idea that this was designer FOR modders? It was designer for everyone; it just happens to be something that modders can use. I appreciate that they mentioned in the DD how the modding worked because I'm always curious about how changes will impact my own mod; didn't entirely cut off the inevitable 'is it moddable' questions tho.

 

[Lean_XD]

Okay... We're going to ignore the debatables of the rest of this diary to talk about the middle-finger you just gave your community as a whole (especially modders) with Presets... (This will be a bit passionate, but I don't care at this point. Disagreement tally be damned.)

In short, you just said...
"We're going to give you half of what you asked for, with historical presets ONLY that we determined through half-backed research and didn't bother to playtest, but it's moddable so you modders can do custom presets for yourself."

Do you have any idea how Lazy that makes you guys sound? This is a bare-basic feature people have been asking for since NAVAL designers... to SAVE and LOAD designs across games. You finally get around to the idea after adding three more designers, but can't be bothered to do anything more than hard-set Historical templates? With no way for common players to save alterations we'd like??? Say "we'd like to do it" as if there is no reason (and without giving explination) as to why you couldn't do it right now????? And then say "But it's moddable for metas!" as if that's the only thing modders care about???????

Modders don't care about "Meta," we care about "Gameplay." Something you guys have seem to lost understanding of since you don't playtest. Yeah, cool, we have another tool to use... Can you not pressure us into using it so you can avoid adding this feature youself? Because if you're going to treat modders like they're part of your QA and Testing Staff... We're all going to tell you to get over yourself, as a collective company, reguardless of which of your Execs or team-leads thought it was a good idea to braodcast "We're lazy so the modders can do it," in a "Developmer Diary" which at this point should be renamed "Community Outreach Blog."

OK moding is like super easy, Any player that says UGH I can't save my design Paradox Fix, and does not consider moding it himself probably does not care enough about it. I have my little own Naval mod which makes designs more "Historical" and changes designs that ai builds
Also from how good I know Paradox, the lines will look something like this:

create_template_design = {
name = "Bismarck Class"
type = ship_hull_heavy_2
modules = {
fixed_ship_battery_slot = ship_heavy_battery_3
fixed_ship_anti_air_slot = ship_anti_air_1
fixed_ship_fire_control_system_slot = ship_fire_control_system_1
fixed_ship_radar_slot = empty
fixed_ship_engine_slot = heavy_ship_engine_2
fixed_ship_secondaries_slot = ship_secondaries_2
fixed_ship_armor_slot = ship_armor_bb_2
front_1_custom_slot = ship_anti_air_1
mid_1_custom_slot = ship_airplane_launcher_1
mid_2_custom_slot = ship_secondaries_2
rear_1_custom_slot = ship_heavy_battery_3
}
}
I will 100% make dozens of designs both for R56 and my little personal mod because it takes like two minutes to create a design (and 10-30 to research design on Wikipedia) but that is not a problem for a guy that wants his own designs to be "saved"

 

[Lean_XD]

So now when Germany swallows Czecho will they get the Panzer 38t tank design and some in their stock?

I hope

 

[Wombat69]

Given how there is literally no drawback to escalating your economy to war economy indefinitely, will ever there be a change to factor war exhaustion or have some kind of benefit to having a civilian economy at any point?

Right now, it's just a PP sink that you want as quickly as possible.

I think that there are two sides to this. If there are mechanisms to create war exhaustion for a nation, the player should equally have tools to counter them.

An example is the Darkest Hour Mod, although in a slightly different context. Multiple nations suffer from the Great Depression, but the player can invest in the economy to counter the effects. I could see some similar mechanics for war exhaustion being employed. Plus, it would be interesting to balance these countermeasures with production for example - would you rather risk producing less war material for more support by your nation, or would you risk being closer to your nation to capitulate by exhaustion but have production going at full steam?

 

[Wombat69]

Will it be possible to add flavor text to these presets? There were some mods that added custom descriptions for the tank techs of countries, and now that the research slots are the chasis instead of the tanks themselves some of that flavor got lost. Could one, say, add the history of the T-34 into the tooltip of the T-34 preset, as an example?

I like the concept of "Beutepanzer" - such as the modifications of the Pz 38 (t).

 

[Wombat69]

I will definitely mod my alt-history /never built designs but I wanted to ask how far did you go with Never built designs and concepts and what about designs that share the same hull/airframe/chassis time vise or literally like He 112 and Bf 109,
Panzer III and IV were based on the same chassis.
Scharnhorst and Bismarck fit in the same time frame and should be based on hull 1936 (pls return Scharnhorst her BB armor 1)
And about laid down but never finished designs like
Lion class which would share a 1936 hull with KGV
German M class would share hull with K and L class
Or H Class for Germany (two laid down both scraped)
And Alsace Class for France ( two Ordered and one maybe Laid down but France had much larger problems like Panzer Divisions crossing "unpassable" terrain for tanks
also what about refits, Andrea Dorias, Standards, and QEs were rebuilt and modernized to a great measure before and during the war

Not quite - the Pz III had 6 wheels and 3 rollers, while the Pz IV had 8 wheels and 4 rollers. That is one identifier to distinguish them. On another note, the amount of wheels and rolls is also a means to distinguish some submodels such as Pz IA and Pz IB, as an example.

 

[Wombat69]

It would be interesting to change it so consumer good have some kind of basic effect on its own beyond taking away factories. For example by giving a stability bonus that scales with the % of factories expected to be given to consumer goods. The higher the amount required the higher the stability bonus one gets this way actually simulating your citizens having a large amount of consumer goods eg being wealthier. As economy turns to military production and access to goods is restricted the citizens dissatisfaction grows and stability goes lower. This though would be based on the base value so mostly by the selected law and not the modifiers. This way any negative economic modifiers increasing the required number of factories given to consumer goods wouldnt turn into half positives by also increasing stability. In the same way positive modifiers lowering the number of consumer goods required wouldn't then also carry a negative effect of lowering stability. I think that would be a nice little system to work with. It would also open up the ability to have changing the base value of required consumer goods be a far more impactful change as it would also impact the nation stability so say a national spirit lowering the base value of consumer goods required would indeed give you more factories to work with but it would also lower your stability so its a interesting trade off.

Unused civ factories (i.e. those that don't build or repair) could generate consumer goods instead.

 

[Lean_XD]

Not quite - the Pz III had 6 wheels and 3 rollers, while the Pz IV had 8 wheels and 4 rollers. That is one identifier to distinguish them. On another note, the amount of wheels and rolls is also a means to distinguish some submodels such as Pz IA and Pz IB, as an example.

I am a Navy guy you probably could have concluded that from my comment, but I wanted to ask you If Panzer IV and Panzer III were based on the same chassis, I heard that from somewhere but was never able to source it, my question is did Panzer IV start its design from Panzer III or were both designs made according to the Wermacht Specifications and it just happened that what we know as Panzer III was first one capable of being put into production or were they same-ish design made for different tasks and purposes

 

[Wombat69]

Good questions.

It is also, why I am pleasantly surprised that the developers are introducing pre-sets. No matter what choices they make, converting the game system stats to represent the hundreds of different ships, planes, and tanks during the war, through the medium of the designers, is going to create many points of debate. I hope the future debates can be civil. I know there are many players with a vast knowledge of WW2. It sounds like you know quit a bit yourself and can contribute to the future conversation.

IMHO, another possible benefit of the pre-sets is they may open the door to new things in the future, if not in vanilla, then in mods. I have played every major mod and so many others. I believe the talent and imagination of the HOI4 modders is something most everyone should try to experience.

Then there is the question how much detail is vested into this - many planes and tanks had submodels in particular (Pz III E, F, Me 109 E, F...) or even sub-submodels with revised/upgraded equipment (Me 109 F1 (20mm FF/M) F2 (15mm MG 151 - due to reliability), or Pz IV F1 (short 7.5cm), F2 (long barrelled 7,5cm)).

 

[Wombat69]

I am a Navy guy you probably could have concluded that from my comment, but I wanted to ask you If Panzer IV and Panzer III were based on the same chassis, I heard that from somewhere but was never able to source it, my question is did Panzer IV start its design from Panzer III or were both designs made according to the Wermacht Specifications and it just happened that what we know as Panzer III was first one capable of being put into production or were they same-ish design made for different tasks and purposes

They were build in parallel - the Pz III was designed to fight other armored vehicles, as it was equipped in the beginning with high velocity lower caliber AT guns (37mm, and later 50mm). The Pz IV was initially equipped with a short barreled 75mm L24 infantry support gun, but later upgraded to the longer barreled 75mm AT guns (as with the F2 model) to take over the AT role. The Pz III changed into the support role as Pz III M with the short barrelled 75mm L24. I find this rather ironic.

Note that both vehicles were designed to later upgrade to better armament - it was just that Pz III design could no longer support the recoil of the 75mm AT gun.

 

[Wombat69]

I will be cruel:
Why create new support regiments? What benefit does this give? How does it make the game better?

If you ask me: this gives zero benefit and is a pure waste of programming resources. I don't see the logic.

Imho it brings some structure into the layout. For example, while artillery batteries may be assigned to different infantry regiments, they are still part of the same artillery battalion.

 

[FORMICARIUS]

Middle East DLC Is more needed than Scandinavian (except for Finland)

 

[Almas]

So should you open up the improved heavy tank chassis presets you will find an entry called Tiger I and you will see the picture of the Tiger I tank and if you click it all the modules and roles and values will be set for you.

Does that mean, that the AI will finally use the matching sprites available to it? Including the sprites from the sprites packs? Including the right sprites for planes and ships?
If yes it would increase the value of the sprite packs and after years of buying them i would finally receive what i expected when i bought them

 

[Lean_XD]

Does that mean, that the AI will finally use the matching sprites available to it? Including the sprites from the sprites packs? Including the right sprites for planes and ships?
If yes it would increase the value of the sprite packs and after years of buying them i would finally receive what i expected when i bought them

But then AI Spitfires won't have a model of a gladiator and a photo of a Hurricane

 

[gauti20]

Nice Iceland "State Police" tease. Does this mean we can expect more Iceland features/flavors to be revealed in upcoming Dev diaries?

 

[Arheo]

I may regret this, but I guess it's a teachable moment and I've about had it up to my eyeballs with this kind of attitude.

Okay... We're going to ignore the debatables of the rest of this diary to talk about the middle-finger you just gave your community as a whole (especially modders) with Presets... (This will be a bit passionate, but I don't care at this point. Disagreement tally be damned.)

In short, you just said...
"We're going to give you half of what you asked for, with historical presets ONLY that we determined through half-backed research and didn't bother to playtest, but it's moddable so you modders can do custom presets for yourself."

"In short" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If you reword someone's statement - to summarize or not -you do not change the intent or sentiment: that is an intentional misquote.

We did not say any of what you suggested, nor did we intend it.

Do you have any idea how Lazy that makes you guys sound? This is a bare-basic feature people have been asking for since NAVAL designers... to SAVE and LOAD designs across games. You finally get around to the idea after adding three more designers, but can't be bothered to do anything more than hard-set Historical templates? With no way for common players to save alterations we'd like??? Say "we'd like to do it" as if there is no reason (and without giving explination) as to why you couldn't do it right now????? And then say "But it's moddable for metas!" as if that's the only thing modders care about???????

Free features are generally harder to apply resources for than paid ones. I know it isn't the done thing to acknowledge it, but I think it's better that we're open about the truth. We're a business. We're also passionate about HOI. Those two things just have to coexist - it isn't one or the other. That means a balance has to be struck: doing part of this now and part of it later is.. .well, a balance.

I clearly state that we all want to do saving/loading of templates as a next step.

Why isn't it happening right now? Because I decided there were more important things to focus on. I stand by that. I do not owe you my time to work on something you want for free.

And to clear up another oddity: making this feature moddable was not just for you. There are a dozen reasons why it's a good thing to have presets be moddable - maybe MP communities want to have restricted presets, maybe detailed historical mods want to give you some suggested designs, etc. If you choose to translate that into some sort of tacit insult, that's your choice: but it will make you look silly.

Modders don't care about "Meta," we care about "Gameplay." Something you guys have seem to lost understanding of since you don't playtest. Yeah, cool, we have another tool to use... Can you not pressure us into using it so you can avoid adding this feature youself?

This was an odd segue, but fair enough. If we didn't playtest, you'd find out pretty fast. I invite you to apply for a job here and come and show us all how it's done, though.

The latter attitude is something we (sadly) see often. It's fairly common amongst hardcore fans of almost any game or vice; the assertion that since 'I' mod/understand/use/engage with this game an inordinate amount, I have a better understanding even than that of the developers. It becomes a bonding sentiment amongst groups even, and is quite harmful. It's the same psychology that gives us fan gatekeeping.

And it's so easy to do. I even hear industry professionals speak exactly the same way when they're talking about a game they play instead of work on.

I honestly wish I knew how to tackle it constructively, but I'm not sure there is an answer. It's human nature - but that doesn't make the sentiment fact.

Because if you're going to treat modders like they're part of your QA and Testing Staff... We're all going to tell you to get over yourself, as a collective company, reguardless of which of your Execs or team-leads thought it was a good idea to braodcast "We're lazy so the modders can do it," in a "Developmer Diary" which at this point should be renamed "Community Outreach Blog."

We have a wide and constructive relationship with a lot of our modders. A lot of them seem pretty happy with this feature, and I recognize several in the comments here. You do not speak for the modding community: stop trying.

 

[Emanresu]

in base game you majors will have unique presets and most minors will share common presets but there's nothing stopping shared historic presets across multiple countries.

Ah! So Will Commonwealth Countries use - say- British Presets? Or on the other hand, will Minor Countries like the Commonwealth countries also have their Preset designs along with British ones? Does Canada, for example, have access to the Sexton, Ram, and ergo the Grizzly? More interestingly, will there be a "tech block" for accessing these design presets- Imagining something like Black Ice for example?