Future DLC Discussion

[Corvinas]

I'm really doubtful the next DLC will be received positively. Users will be looking for new focus trees and a revamped Japan tree, but for that to pay off you really need to improve underlying systems first, which presents an overwhelmingly large problem.

I mean of course that MtG needs to be integrated so they can redesign the naval system and be able to model a Pacific War naval theatre better. But this seems like a DLC-level problem by itself, even without any new focus tree content. And without new trees, will people think it is worth it?

And if all they do is release new focus trees without a naval redesign, when much of those countries' focus is on the Pacific theatre, then I think people will feel they fall short of expectations.

And if they release a new Japan tree without a new China, then the Sino-Japanese conflict will be a let down. And "just" remaking WtT, again, probably won't go down well.

I think the best chance they have is actually to ignore Japan and China first, release an updated naval system with one or two new SEA nations (Siam, British Malaya), and then next DLC do a "country pack" with the WtT nations. But do it with the A team, because GoE showed the B team just aren't up to the job.

MtG should be integrated, it's obsolete today. And it is 6 years old, everybody who wanted it has already bought it.

 

[herr anfsim]

The developers have previously said that the vast majority of effort is spent on focus trees and fixing said focus trees post release, so I expect the next DLCs to be more mainly focus trees, with som adjustments to existing mechanics and the occational gimmick feature.

Seeing as the majority of effort is spent on focus trees and the team is mostly geared towards creating such content, I wonder to what extent they would be able to significantly improve or change the core game and add more meaningfull core mechanics. My guess is that they would struggle, and that a HOI5 will need to have the "technical team" on board.

 

[LordWahu]

The developers have previously said that the vast majority of effort is spent on focus trees and fixing said focus trees post release, so I expect the next DLCs to be more mainly focus trees, with som adjustments to existing mechanics and the occational gimmick feature.

Seeing as the majority of effort is spent on focus trees and the team is mostly geared towards creating such content, I wonder to what extent they would be able to significantly improve or change the core game and add more meaningfull core mechanics. My guess is that they would struggle, and that a HOI5 will need to have the "technical team" on board.

I would like to point to the Dev Corners that have been posted over the last two months to show that they are actively showcasing three major changes: Industry, Diplomacy, and Naval mechanics

Though we don't know the full extent of these changes, from what was said in the Naval corner they have massive sweeping changes to how that is going to work, and the faction mechanics already look like they're really going for something major as well

 

[Lamartine]

The developers have previously said that the vast majority of effort is spent on focus trees and fixing said focus trees post release,

Link? Myiimpression is that Arheo is guarded about describing how things work behind the scenes out of concerns that it's taken out of context

 

[Cornutus]

When GtD was released, players LOVED how hard Sealion was. The forum was alive with excitement at finally facing a challenge.

I saw a bunch of threads saying the opposite.

What matters at the end of the day are implications: should the game increase realism or become more accessible by sacrificing realism in favor of simplicity + "memes"?

The problem is HOI4 is not progressing any further as a WARGAME IMHO. NSB was the last time the core of every wargame -- the combat model -- was improved. And that was when? Whopping FOUR YEARS AGO. Since that HOI4 DLCs are not about war -- combat -- but about shallow fluffy stuff. Or even refurbishing old things and selling them as brand new. Like:

1. What are MIOs? That's no more than a new UI to designers. Yes, very convenient yet no more than UI. Turn every node of the MIO tree into a separate designer and that will be it. The engine had tools to check for available designers so you can build a tree. It would have been a clickfest but MIOs haven't introduced anything new apart from power creep in another department.
2. Special Projects is a face-list to tehnology tree and that's why there're tightly integrated with it. Add resource and CIC consumption to research tree and one will have Special Projects.

Agreed.

If there's one area HOI4 is lacking: it's the warfare mechanics. They can simulate Western/Eastern front WW2, but struggles simulating any other front.

In reality a WW2 game needs to simulate at least 4 "war types":
1. Western/Eastern European warfare
2. WW1/Interbellum warfare (Spanish Civil War, Greco-Italian war)
3. Pacific land warfare (Singapore, Guadalcanal, Philippines)
4. 18th-19th century warfare (Sino-Japanese war, where there's virtually no artillery, no machine guns, sometimes no rifles involved)

HOI4 is nice if one think of it as a WWII-themed Dragon & Dungeons. But as a WWII wargame HOI4 really sucks. IRL there were no unit cycling, annihilated unit could not return to combat in no time; there were no free mana provincial supply and artillery could not magically turn stones into arty shells; there were no unlimited supply in capital hubs and if you overrun country's industrial base its army won't hold long in a capital tile, there were no Landkreuzers Ratte, no War Elephants that have staying power of an top-notch infantry division and a punch of a tank one etc. IMHO after NSB the game clearly changed development direction and it feels more like the management is trying to shake off whatever WWII-ish things are still left in the game.

A) Unit cycling did happen. Verdun and Rzhev are examples off the top of my head.

B) Stuff like ammunition becomes tricky from a game design perspective.

If you want a game accessible to a "non-sophisticated" player, you need to reduce the number of things he needs to manage. Adding something like ammunition is likely to eventually become "a nuisance" after the first 1-2 runs, when you realize how to manage it, and now have to just click, click and click.

In order for it to become meaningful, you need to make it a tradeoff: like ammunition (long-war) vs equipment (short war) in terms of IC.

Otherwise it will be like MIOs: looks cool at first, then you get used to it and it becomes a chore.

C) Rest is agreed. HOI4 blatantly went into fantasy territory, without even trying to cover up, which killed immersion.

I disagree with almost everuthing here.


Nope, when you play for 1k+ hours you want some crazy things like restoring monarchy, reforming Persian Empire. Maybe elephantry is too much but whatever.

I have over 1k hours for sure. Never was interested in doing crazy unplausible stuff. Never played Iran, or any non-European country (besides China & Japan).

Civil wars are boring because they are all built around "Snaking"/exploiting AI's desire to build static frontlines. You don't really have interesting civil wars, unless they are artificially handicapped.

It's not fun to play majors all the time. What sense in ending WW2 in 1942 as USA? But minors can beat majors only with buffs or early expansion.

There's a solid difference between "having the option to play as a minor" and "being able to conquer the world as Luxembourg in 20 years".

Probably enhance old aircraft models for the start? And add few more? Prototype vehicle pack is shit and crazy. Helicopter-tank? Seriously? I would never buy this pack for money.

Interesting take. You're from a very different camp than I, helicopter tanks seem to be directed to "meme players" but for some reason you don't like it.

Not the problem of NF trees. Problem of zero testing. And in principle a bad plan for countries rework. They promised us Islamic Revolution for Iran, but then they put it on the back burner.

I think by this point, the level of quality PDX Gold delivers with regards to national focus trees is pretty well known.

GOE's focus trees weren't the first to have quality or testing issues, nor will they be the last.

You can pretty much expect upcoming trees for Chinese factions to be of similar level.

It's too easy now to beat Japan as USA. There should be some challenge. Some planning has to be done. Now for Sealion you should do some planning. Bomb out submarines at least, get green air etc.

I am pretty sure there are a ton of people who would whine that "Navy has become too hard" if big changes to the Pacific war are applied.

As is, a number of people struggle with navy, saying "it's too hard to understand".

Right now you can literally auto-plan China as Japan. All you need is collaboration government. And obviously current chinese NF tree is not good enough. In fact you have one path as nationalist china and two as Manchukuo.

Well, if Japan wouldn't be able to push China, people would whine how Japan doesn't get a game.

You either need to downplay those people's interests, or make "Bells & Whistles" DLCs.

 

[Cornutus]

I would like to point to the Dev Corners that have been posted over the last two months to show that they are actively showcasing three major changes: Industry, Diplomacy, and Naval mechanics

Though we don't know the full extent of these changes, from what was said in the Naval corner they have massive sweeping changes to how that is going to work, and the faction mechanics already look like they're really going for something major as well

Lol, Industry, Diplomacy and Navy are literally staying the same.

There's no announcement that "we're completely redesigning the systems", they're just adding a limit to factories by adding coal.

For factions, they're adding a couple of new bonuses, but the underlying stuff stays the same.

Same with Navy & Diplomacy: it's not like we're getting something completely new. It's just minor enhancements that are unlikely to make the game feel very different.

 

[LordWahu]

I saw a bunch of threads saying the opposite.

I will point out that those threads became the "I love the new Sealion" threads from all the people who came to counter the idea that it was too hard. It was a change that people rather liked, but were not vocal about until someone said otherwise

Lol, Industry, Diplomacy and Navy are literally staying the same.

There's no announcement that "we're completely redesigning the systems", they're just adding a limit to factories by adding coal.

For factions, they're adding a couple of new bonuses, but the underlying stuff stays the same.

Same with Navy & Diplomacy: it's not like we're getting something completely new. It's just minor enhancements that are unlikely to make the game feel very different.

Just with what they've shown in navy, they've already made a significant amount of the Meta options completely unviable. And what they've said that they're intending, both in the dev corner and in the replies, shows that they're committed to making this a proper change, making carriers viable, making doomstacking unviable, and making naval an important part of the game the way it should be

Industry the change seems minor, but that small change is going to completely change how expansion and exploitation is going to have to be run. The snowball effect is going to start becoming a detriment, and the standard timelines are going to have to be completely reworked

As for diplomacy...no more "Yugoslavia joins the Co-Prosperity Sphere" is kind of a big deal

 

[Lamartine]

For factions, they're adding a couple of new bonuses, but the underlying stuff stays the same. Same with Navy & Diplomacy: it's not like we're getting something completely new. It's just minor enhancements that are unlikely to make the game feel very different.

I think that we're arguing definitions now. By this standard, no Paradox DLC has ever given players something completely new.

No Step Back was just a couple of selectable tank bonuses and minor enhancements to logistics. Stellaris Biogenesis added some buffs to Bio ascension and new ships that use food instead of metal. Victoria 3 Charters of Commerce rebalances world trade without tearing down the old system, and now companies have minor bonuses too.

We don't know yet if the newest DLC will succeed. Maybe it'll fall flat, but the Devs do not lack ambition. As LordWahu pointed out, adding coal could be a huge nerf to the snowballing we've had since 1.0, the naval meta is being retooled and they're trying to stop Yugoslavia from joining the Coprosperity Sphere. If those changes are implemented successfully then the game will feel very different.

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

Me looking forward to an upcoming DLC after 4000hrs in HOI (and having seen TOA and GOE).

View attachment 1335993

With this chariot apparently incapable of steering, are you subtly implying we gonna get even more railroading?

 

[Joshua Happytree]

are you subtly implying we gonna get even more railroading?

An unexpected angle on this. Nah, I'd say a DLC lifecycle looks like this.

An upcoming DLC in dev diaries

RL DLC at launch

DLC after War Effort, as it'll forever be since devs have been moved to a new "Ferrari"

So not that bad, steer you will. In three months after launch. Let him who dare to say War Effort does not improve the product cast the first stone

Disclaimer: May well be this tme the management is serious about QA, quality of content etc. So we'll see, no offense intended...

 

[Joshua Happytree]

Unit cycling did happen. Verdun and Rzhev are examples off the top of my head.

1. Well, we should define what each of use mean by unit cycling. I mean how quick a unit beated hard enough it's not able to fight any more and retreats whatever orders are can be restored to (near) initial combat capabilities. So was Rzhev like this?
2. RL
   1. In a war of national survival like WWII was people are fight to near death in most cases. Until further prolonging combat would mean extreme losses for a tiny if any further damage to the enemy. So what drives unit retreat (where retreat and not surrender is possible) is a loss of manpower, war materiel and lack of supply.
   2. Subject to TOE a mot/mech/armour div needs close to a thousand or few thousands tons of supply per day for intense fighting. Unless a division is located next to a forward Petroleum-Oil-Lubricants and likes storage facility (undiscovered and not destroyed by enemy which is a big if) it normally has no more than a day or two supplies stores of its won.
   3. If you switch to a severe austere mode you can extend this to few more days but no more. And that's if you're in defense against a secondary prong of attack of your opposition. If you're on the main direction you'd hardly be able even to delay substantially. If you don't deal significant damage you don't delay, you're a cannon fodder for attacker.
   4. So IRL a unit cannot fight without a significant connection to supply network. It quickly turns into self-survival stragglers that have little impact on a wider picture.
   5. A RL unit on hasty retreat loses MOST of its war material and suffers a lot of casualties. So a unit cannot be reorged quickly.
3. HOI4 -- the main driver for unit retreat in HOI4 is "Harry Potter-ish" metric of organisation and the loss of it. So really destroying a unit takes a day or two at best whereas retreating has no @extra price" and after retreat a unit recovers fighting strength within a mere day or two.
4. Consequences: HOI4 combat is no different from completely made-up combat of mana, wizardry and magic wands. IRL whatever a country's industrial base is a unit disobeying orders and retreating due to inability to fight has LONG reaching consequences on country's war materiel stores -- "Quintili Vare, legiones redde!". In HOI4 pushing a division to retreat buys you a day or two before it MAGICALLY restored to nearly original fighting power. Combat implications:
   1. Encirclements:
      1. RL: Creating a fully encirled pocket conrolling even a large territory is a dream of every high-level commader. People psychologically needs fairness so they would distribute supplies evenly and become unfit for combat en masse.
      2. HOI4: one should not encirle too many divs in say mountains as it'll tie up a lot of your divs and take forever to clear it up. One better let them ESCAPE the pocket to deny them org-cycling.
   2. Capital supply hub and dIsconnect between industial base and military units:
      1. RL: arty guys don't shoot stones by burning grass so for them to function one needs to have an industrial base AND connection to the consuming units.
      2. HOI4: if country's capital is not the industrial heart of the country then severing this connection leads to nothing. Shells and bullets are magically transported from a fully encirled chemical and metalworking plants to capital supply hub so the worst offense in HOI4 is push enemy divs to be fully encircled in and around the capital. One may well lose this battle if one's short on supply network.

Stuff like ammunition becomes tricky from a game design perspective. If you want a game accessible to a "non-sophisticated" player, you need to reduce the number of things he needs to manage. Adding something like ammunition is likely to eventually become "a nuisance" after the first 1-2 runs, when you realize how to manage it, and now have to just click, click and click. In order for it to become meaningful, you need to make it a tradeoff: like ammunition (long-war) vs equipment (short war) in terms of IC.

1. These are different things -- logistics network connecting industrial base to the fighting units and making production more specialized. HOI4 specialized IC into production lines, if you add ammo then it'll be just granulation of MICs that are already there. IMHO what will make the game more diverse is proper implementaion of logistics not the further granulation of production lest production will eat up all player's time.
2. Currently MILs represent end-to-end output of final product it's just another kind of production lines. What you mentioned is no more than addint another kind of production line. What COULD be interesting is breaking down production into two stages -- basic materials production and "final assembly". It'll better correspond to the reality of wartime repurposing of production capacities, secondly it'll add another whole new concept of production planning -- one could / should model in re-purposing into production which is good IMHO, that's another production modelling dimension.

 

[Cornutus]

I will point out that those threads became the "I love the new Sealion" threads from all the people who came to counter the idea that it was too hard. It was a change that people rather liked, but were not vocal about until someone said otherwise

Fair. But it wasn't one-sided, and even the forum (which mostly consists of above-average sophistication players) was split.

Just with what they've shown in navy, they've already made a significant amount of the Meta options completely unviable. And what they've said that they're intending, both in the dev corner and in the replies, shows that they're committed to making this a proper change, making carriers viable, making doomstacking unviable, and making naval an important part of the game the way it should be

Not really. All they did was make a "Home base" system that limited naval supremacy projection, and made naval supremacy more transparent.

Industry the change seems minor, but that small change is going to completely change how expansion and exploitation is going to have to be run. The snowball effect is going to start becoming a detriment, and the standard timelines are going to have to be completely reworked

It will definitely hinder minors and add resource chokepoints for industry.

But it's not an integrated effort. You just something besides building slots you have to be mindful of/soft cap, but there won't be a real tradeoff between "when should I mobilize my economy, and what will be the negatives" or "how much should I mobilize my economy". You'll still have the "more (mobilization) is better" approach for planning period of 4 years or less.

Moreover, the big issue is moreso the spawning of units by minors AIs that never demobilize and lag everything down. Adding coal won't fix that.

That being said, something is better than nothing. Coal won't change the game drastically, but will make it incrementally better.

As for diplomacy...no more "Yugoslavia joins the Co-Prosperity Sphere" is kind of a big deal

I think that's normally referred to as "Bugfix".

I'm fairly sure there was never an intent to have Yugoslavia join the Japanese faciton with Japan being AI.

I think that we're arguing definitions now. By this standard, no Paradox DLC has ever given players something completely new.

I want to be fair here, and am willing to accept that I could be wrong.

No Step Back was just a couple of selectable tank bonuses and minor enhancements to logistics. Stellaris Biogenesis added some buffs to Bio ascension and new ships that use food instead of metal. Victoria 3 Charters of Commerce rebalances world trade without tearing down the old system, and now companies have minor bonuses too.

Let's not exaggerate here, it's not about who wins the argument.

NSB introduced railroads and a tank designer that produces "tanks that cannot be repelled with pure defensive warfare". The ability to double-triple attack on your tanks (due to multiple turrets) is kind of major.

Charters of Commerce made it possible to build export-oriented economies in Victoria 3. Before that, it was unintuitive at the very least.

We don't know yet if the newest DLC will succeed. Maybe it'll fall flat, but the Devs do not lack ambition. As LordWahu pointed out, adding coal could be a huge nerf to the snowballing we've had since 1.0, the naval meta is being retooled and they're trying to stop Yugoslavia from joining the Coprosperity Sphere. If those changes are implemented successfully then the game will feel very different.

You call getting HOI4 to HOI2 resource level + bugfixing 9 years after release as a sign of ambition?

Not to mention that, what is the ambition?

HOI4 isn't a WW2 simulation or even a 1936-1945 historic game. It lacks diplomacy, its warfare system has deteriorated over the years, politicswise it's a "click n'go" system of national foci, economic management is "build factories and get powerful" which distorts results very quickly and has trouble representing majors & minors.

What's the ambition to sell in this game?

 

[Desseabar]

HOI4 is pretty close to a finished product as-is. You can always go through Stellaris-esque dramatic reimagination, such as reworking economic or political systems, but at a certain point there's diminishing returns.

There's no point making HOI5 as "HOI4 but better." At that point, why not continue HOI4 development? If we get HOI5 in the next few years, I'd expect some pretty dramatic changes: A 3D globe map, supply chain management, pixel-based frontlines, dynamic politics, or something equally distinct from the game today. But the lesson from Vic3 or Civ7 is that jumping to a new iteration is pretty risky; it's fixable eventually but requires a lot of work.

 

[Cornutus]

1. Well, we should define what each of use mean by unit cycling. I mean how quick a unit beated hard enough it's not able to fight any more and retreats whatever orders are can be restored to (near) initial combat capabilities.

It's not very common to see total anhilation of units, simply because the most of any unit consists of non-frontline units.

Even something as small as a WW2 infantry battalion usually has no more than 30% of its total manpower as actual combat troops. So many of these guys never get to the actual frontline.

Losing 10% in this case, is the same as losing 33% of your actual combat force. And many of those losses don't have to be in wounded or dead, many could be simply "MIA".

For example, it took 547 casualties (134 KIA & MIA) to force the 4th Panzer Division to abort its attack and be estimated to require 24 hours to reorganize by Corps Command (not divisional command, the superiors of the division!) (Battle of Gembloux 15 May, 1940).




Furthermore, it is quite customary for units to be "demoralized" even after minimal losses, especially when training is lacking.

You saw both in early WW1, where you can find numerous examples of highly-trained prewar soldiers either fight to the end (Gumbinnen 1914) or on the opposite, easily panic and withdraw (Bischofsburg 1914).

Generally speaking you need to destroy 10-30% of the enemy to demoralize from my understanding.

1. So was Rzhev like this?

My understanding is yes, I would likely need to dive extremely deep for that.

1. RL
   1. In a war of national survival like WWII was people are fight to near death in most cases. Until further prolonging combat would mean extreme losses for a tiny if any further damage to the enemy. So what drives unit retreat (where retreat and not surrender is possible) is a loss of manpower, war materiel and lack of supply.

Not really. It's usually that you lose a fraction of your equipment, you get demoralized, withdraw. You hardly ever see 10,000 or even 5000 men from a single division "last stand and die".

If anything, that's a situation when cooks, batmen and clerks grab guns and fight, aka very unusual and a complete catastrophe.

1. 1. Subject to TOE a mot/mech/armour div needs close to a thousand or few thousands tons of supply per day for intense fighting. Unless a division is located next to a forward Petroleum-Oil-Lubricants and likes storage facility (undiscovered and not destroyed by enemy which is a big if) it normally has no more than a day or two supplies stores of its won.

I believe that's a big exaggeration. A German tank company needs 40 tons of supplies per day from what I recall. 9 companies*40 = 360 tons for tanks alone.

Overall I would go around 600-800 tons of the top of my head.

And that's at peak combat situations, normally (when simply manning the frontline) it's way less.

1. 1. If you switch to a severe austere mode you can extend this to few more days but no more. And that's if you're in defense against a secondary prong of attack of your opposition. If you're on the main direction you'd hardly be able even to delay substantially. If you don't deal significant damage you don't delay, you're a cannon fodder for attacker.
   2. So IRL a unit cannot fight without a significant connection to supply network. It quickly turns into self-survival stragglers that have little impact on a wider picture.

Troops normally carry supplies for 3 days in combat units, and there's also battalion, regimental, divisional stores.

1. 1. A RL unit on hasty retreat loses MOST of its war material and suffers a lot of casualties. So a unit cannot be reorged quickly.

This is a complicated issue to which I don't have a decisive answer to.

In North Africa: 100% yes simply because troops attrition way more on the retreat.

In Europe, I don't really have the statistics gathered.

It also heavily depends on what pieces of equipment we're talking about: rifles were usually carried, artillery (due to being a few km/miles away from the frontline) would usually be pulled out, tanks would frequently be immobilized and lost on the retreat. It also would depend how far the retreat takes place.

Usually stuff like machine guns, broken down tanks & AT guns get abandoned, as they're heavy/require towing and are deployed close to the frontline. But HOI4 doesn't really distinguish them from stuff deeper in the lines.

• HOI4 -- the main driver for unit retreat in HOI4 is "Harry Potter-ish" metric of organisation and the loss of it. So really destroying a unit takes a day or two at best whereas retreating has no @extra price" and after retreat a unit recovers fighting strength within a mere day or two.

That is indeed an issue.

The bigger problem is that organization has no relation to how much equipment a unit has. A bunch of Kuomingtang men with Dadao swords have the same org as a Wehrmacht battalion with mortars, machine guns and SMGs.

That kind of creates issues for advanced infantry equipment representation. Giving your boys automatic rifles gives them a lot more staying power (or at least delays enemy attacks), but you can't represent that in HOI4 using the stats available.

• Consequences: HOI4 combat is no different from completely made-up combat of mana, wizardry and magic wands. IRL whatever a country's industrial base is a unit disobeying orders and retreating due to inability to fight has LONG reaching consequences on country's war materiel stores -- "Quintili Vare, legiones redde!". In HOI4 pushing a division to retreat buys you a day or two before it MAGICALLY restored to nearly original fighting power.

The problem is likely to lie in the severe mismatch between war material losses, reparable losses and casualties.

The 4th Panzer division at Gembloux 1940 lost 500 men KIA, MIA, Wounded ( a very small number of manpower), and 45-50% of its tanks. How many of them were repaired and restored back to fighting condition in days, would be interesting to know.

• Combat implications:
  1. Encirclements:
     1. RL: Creating a fully encirled pocket conrolling even a large territory is a dream of every high-level commader. People psychologically needs fairness so they would distribute supplies evenly and become unfit for combat en masse.
     2. HOI4: one should not encirle too many divs in say mountains as it'll tie up a lot of your divs and take forever to clear it up. One better let them ESCAPE the pocket to deny them org-cycling.

• Capital supply hub and dIsconnect between industial base and military units:
  1. RL: arty guys don't shoot stones by burning grass so for them to function one needs to have an industrial base AND connection to the consuming units.
  2. HOI4: if country's capital is not the industrial heart of the country then severing this connection leads to nothing. Shells and bullets are magically transported from a fully encirled chemical and metalworking plants to capital supply hub so the worst offense in HOI4 is push enemy divs to be fully encircled in and around the capital. One may well lose this battle if one's short on supply network.

The problem is, most encirclements were of tactical or operational level. The number of strategic encirclements was always miniscule.

HOI4 smallest provinces/tiles are about 70km x 70 km. Too big of a scale for most encirclements.

1. These are different things -- logistics network connecting industrial base to the fighting units and making production more specialized. HOI4 specialized IC into production lines, if you add ammo then it'll be just granulation of MICs that are already there. IMHO what will make the game more diverse is proper implementaion of logistics not the further granulation of production lest production will eat up all player's time.

The problem is how production lines are depicted, namely discrete factories.

If you are a minor like Poland or even a small major like France or Japan, you'll be stuck with "1 factory production lines" for ammunition, like you sometimes are for infantry equipment. It will just become a nuisance until you have a floating decimal industry representation.

1. Currently MILs represent end-to-end output of final product it's just another kind of production lines. What you mentioned is no more than addint another kind of production line. What COULD be interesting is breaking down production into two stages -- basic materials production and "final assembly". It'll better correspond to the reality of wartime repurposing of production capacities, secondly it'll add another whole new concept of production planning -- one could / should model in re-purposing into production which is good IMHO, that's another production modelling dimension.

It's right from a realism standpoint, but from a gameplay standpoint, I'm not sure if it will add anything. How are "semi-finished goods" going to add to gameplay?



Overall though, I am actually surprised how much things HOI4 gets right about combat: but usually this is stuff devs established before 2016.