After reading a few of hellfish and myths ideas these last couple of days, I've been tinkering with an idea for a whole new screen; the Companies screen (or Business, not sure of the name).The screen would contain a list of all the nations companies. For this post I want to connect companies with both research and production. But beware; this is a loong post 
Concept:
A company is here defined as any non-doctrine research team, and inherits the skill level of the research team. Companies that are "main researcher" (see below) are occupied and can not be used for other purposes. Companies are given an amount of IC, depending largely on sliders and if there's a war ongoing. A free market, fully democratic, right wing government (USA or UK) would give almost all it's IC to the nations companies, while a country with a centrally planned economy, dictatorship and left wing government (SU) would not have companies at all (companies will have no IC). Example: US has 400 base IC, sliders gives 90% of it to companies, leaving the US with a mere 40IC. The 40IC is considered state IC, and is sort of like the "state company". The 60IC for companies are divided dynamically with respect to skill and number of components.
This will replace the peace time modifiers of course. In wartime, the percentage will be calculated differently, say 60% of base IC is given to companies.
The companies have two main activities, technology and production. Both are covered below.
Technology:
Now, many people, including me, feel the tech tree in HOI2 is too simplistic. However, I don't want to go back to the days of HOI1. Under the current system, a company (or doctrine research team) researches a technology, and are paid x$/day. I want to "expand" this concept a bit. I want to decrease the level of abstraction for technologies. By that I mean that instead of researching a new infantry division, you'll research components (new rifles, anti-tank weapons etc). These components are already grouped in the current system, and I like to keep it that way. So when you want to start researching something, you'll either choose to research a component or a full tech. Maybe give a small bonus to researching a full tech. This is simple to implement, and simple to learn as you can keep the current system if you wish by simply choosing to research full techs as normal. The annoying "double-researching" (ie. having to research basic infantry rifles twice) is also fixed, as the component, not the tech, is the smallest researchable part. It increases (slightly) micromanagement only for the times you feel the need to research components specifically. What's this got to do with company you ask? Not much yet.
In the Companies screen, you can now choose to help out research by spending the IC of a company on technology. As opposed to HOI1, where IC was all that mattered, IC now speeds up research. As Germany, this is the current researches:
- IG Farben: Basic Machine Tools
- Konrad Zuse: Improved Computing Machine
- Heinkel: Basic Interceptor
- MAN: 75mm gun turret
- Mauser Werke: Basic small machine gun
To help out Zuse, you hire Siemens (paying them $). To help out MAN, you hire Rheinmetall.
The "hired help" will not do as much work as the primary researcher (and is cheaper too), so for the MAN & Rheinmetall case, speed multiplier will perhaps be 1.25. For the case of Zuse & Siemens, there's several components to be researched. Siemens only have 80% component match, so for 4 of the 5 components, research multiplier will be 1.25, and for the last component 1.125. These numbers are of course not balanced in any way, and will of course be adjusted for skill levels There'd be a maximum number of helpers, say 4. For a penalty, you can switch between the main researcher and one of it's helpers.
Production
I want to mention hellfish idea for a new leadership system. It's a great idea, and it's very easily implementable. I like to add a small change however. Let a big army have junior major generals and junior lieutenant generals. So an army of 12divisions, will have one FM, 4LGs and 12MGs, and maybe even a general as 2nd in command. There's a reason I want to do this of course. The whole army is composed of smaller groups. So if you have that "grande" army, and you want to split it up, you'll go into "leader view", select a leader, and then press "seperate". When including LMs you can now very easily seperate a part of your army. The proposed leader view is another unit specific view. Ie a tab on the selected unit screen.
Units on the map represents armies under the current system. I like that, it's very sensible. However, when producing and deploying units, we produce and deploy divisions, not armies. So instead of deploying single divisions (a nightmare in times of buildup), we'll produce and deploy whole armies. When ordering a new army in the production screen, you should assign leaders and specify size. If you don't assign leaders, some will be assigned automatically. That way, the leaders will be occupied in training, so the unit won't magically be proper trained. When production is done, you can deploy the whole army as one unit on the map, instead of clicking the ~30clicks it usually takes.
I still haven't mentioned companies. Just read on. It'll be there
Let's remember the research paragraph. You assigned a few main researchers, and a few helper researchers. But you probably haven't assigned all of your companies to research. There's still a small bunch left. They can be used for construction. Companies however, are not very good at training. They specialize in R&D and production. Which leads me to think that there should be a separation between production of materials, and training of men. Although I don't want to first produce stuff for an army, then train it as that would be too much micromanaging. Training is fairly cheap IC wise, but takes time. Production can be very fast if assigned enough IC, but is IC heavy. I want training and production to be parallell processes, so I can do training and production at the same time. Say you want to produce an army of 12 divisions. 9 divs is INF, 3 divs is MOT. INF has a training time of 3 months, MOT has 4 months. Minimum time is therefore 4 months to get finished, so both INF and MOT will be training for 4 months. This can give a small experience bonus to INF. However, 9INF+3MOT requires a deal of materials and supplies just to get started training. It should therefore cost some supplies to start basic training right away, with obsolete materials that is. Of course, the main material (guns, trucks etc) needs to be produced. This costs 100IC/day. In countries where the state owns everything, the state will bear the whole burden, but in free market economies, the state will rather pay businesses to make supplies and material. Enter companies. Remember that each company has a given IC. The state now reduce the required state IC by outsourcing to companies. So when producing your army, a few IC is required to do training, and the production itself is split among your available IC and the companies you hire. By using companies, you can also achieve better effiency. The state will get no bonus, while companies can get a reduced production time & cost if it has a matching component. Skill level should also be taken into account. Maybe set government skill to 3...
The screen:
If you've actually read all the stuff above, you'll know that for each new production project or for each new research project, you'll assign one or more "helping" companies. You'll want some way to manage that, and a Company screen will do the job. Here you can remove companies you are paying to help out, and attach them to other projects. The screen will include a list of all companies, similar to the diplomacy screen. Click a company to see what it is doing. The list can be filtered by companies doing main research, companies helping out with research and companies involved in production.
Conclusion:
Letting companies have a role in production and research is a natural thing considering the timeframe. Allowing them to cooperate on research projects and be hired by state run production projects allows for greater flexibility and a more realistic model of both production and research.
In terms of micromanagement, it will increase it slightly both in research and production. A little more micromanaging will be involved when wanting to speed up a crucial research ('41 infantry as SU comes to mind). It also requires the user to check which companies that will help out on a research project. The same goes for each new production project. Beeing able to produce whole armies will however drastically decrease micromanagement.
Pros:
- Simple. The system is not that different from the current system, and is not hard to learn. If the user wants to, he can use the old system.
- The activity of companies are directly correlated with the government system. That gives a higher sense of reality.
- Removes the stupid peace time modifier. Democracies will rather be handicapped by the fact that they have to pay companies alot to help out in research and production.
- Increases depth in both research and production
Cons:
- Added micromanagement, allthough not much micromanagement, it will be felt.
- Harder for the AI to keep up. It shouldn't be hard to get the AI to spend it's money on companies, but spending it intelligently is harder.
- Lower abstraction level for research. Some people might not like it. Suddenly the number of possible research projects ~quadruples.
- Split in training and production. It will lead to the inevitable "I want to send out my untrained (or without proper equipment) guys!"-post. It's of course possible to let that happen with a malus, but I don't like that.
- The fact that you had to read a really long post
- I'm sure you fine gentlemen can find some more...
I've tried to keep focus on implementable ideas. As most of you know, Johan has made a thread asking if there's interest in getting the source code for all games and improve within limits of an NDA. If it ever becomes a reality, I will certainly join to improve a few basic things. Implementing good ideas will be alot of fun
Concept:
A company is here defined as any non-doctrine research team, and inherits the skill level of the research team. Companies that are "main researcher" (see below) are occupied and can not be used for other purposes. Companies are given an amount of IC, depending largely on sliders and if there's a war ongoing. A free market, fully democratic, right wing government (USA or UK) would give almost all it's IC to the nations companies, while a country with a centrally planned economy, dictatorship and left wing government (SU) would not have companies at all (companies will have no IC). Example: US has 400 base IC, sliders gives 90% of it to companies, leaving the US with a mere 40IC. The 40IC is considered state IC, and is sort of like the "state company". The 60IC for companies are divided dynamically with respect to skill and number of components.
This will replace the peace time modifiers of course. In wartime, the percentage will be calculated differently, say 60% of base IC is given to companies.
The companies have two main activities, technology and production. Both are covered below.
Technology:
Now, many people, including me, feel the tech tree in HOI2 is too simplistic. However, I don't want to go back to the days of HOI1. Under the current system, a company (or doctrine research team) researches a technology, and are paid x$/day. I want to "expand" this concept a bit. I want to decrease the level of abstraction for technologies. By that I mean that instead of researching a new infantry division, you'll research components (new rifles, anti-tank weapons etc). These components are already grouped in the current system, and I like to keep it that way. So when you want to start researching something, you'll either choose to research a component or a full tech. Maybe give a small bonus to researching a full tech. This is simple to implement, and simple to learn as you can keep the current system if you wish by simply choosing to research full techs as normal. The annoying "double-researching" (ie. having to research basic infantry rifles twice) is also fixed, as the component, not the tech, is the smallest researchable part. It increases (slightly) micromanagement only for the times you feel the need to research components specifically. What's this got to do with company you ask? Not much yet.
In the Companies screen, you can now choose to help out research by spending the IC of a company on technology. As opposed to HOI1, where IC was all that mattered, IC now speeds up research. As Germany, this is the current researches:
- IG Farben: Basic Machine Tools
- Konrad Zuse: Improved Computing Machine
- Heinkel: Basic Interceptor
- MAN: 75mm gun turret
- Mauser Werke: Basic small machine gun
To help out Zuse, you hire Siemens (paying them $). To help out MAN, you hire Rheinmetall.
The "hired help" will not do as much work as the primary researcher (and is cheaper too), so for the MAN & Rheinmetall case, speed multiplier will perhaps be 1.25. For the case of Zuse & Siemens, there's several components to be researched. Siemens only have 80% component match, so for 4 of the 5 components, research multiplier will be 1.25, and for the last component 1.125. These numbers are of course not balanced in any way, and will of course be adjusted for skill levels
There'd be a maximum number of helpers, say 4. For a penalty, you can switch between the main researcher and one of it's helpers.Production
I want to mention hellfish idea for a new leadership system. It's a great idea, and it's very easily implementable. I like to add a small change however. Let a big army have junior major generals and junior lieutenant generals. So an army of 12divisions, will have one FM, 4LGs and 12MGs, and maybe even a general as 2nd in command. There's a reason I want to do this of course. The whole army is composed of smaller groups. So if you have that "grande" army, and you want to split it up, you'll go into "leader view", select a leader, and then press "seperate". When including LMs you can now very easily seperate a part of your army. The proposed leader view is another unit specific view. Ie a tab on the selected unit screen.
Units on the map represents armies under the current system. I like that, it's very sensible. However, when producing and deploying units, we produce and deploy divisions, not armies. So instead of deploying single divisions (a nightmare in times of buildup), we'll produce and deploy whole armies. When ordering a new army in the production screen, you should assign leaders and specify size. If you don't assign leaders, some will be assigned automatically. That way, the leaders will be occupied in training, so the unit won't magically be proper trained. When production is done, you can deploy the whole army as one unit on the map, instead of clicking the ~30clicks it usually takes.
I still haven't mentioned companies. Just read on. It'll be there
Let's remember the research paragraph. You assigned a few main researchers, and a few helper researchers. But you probably haven't assigned all of your companies to research. There's still a small bunch left. They can be used for construction. Companies however, are not very good at training. They specialize in R&D and production. Which leads me to think that there should be a separation between production of materials, and training of men. Although I don't want to first produce stuff for an army, then train it as that would be too much micromanaging. Training is fairly cheap IC wise, but takes time. Production can be very fast if assigned enough IC, but is IC heavy. I want training and production to be parallell processes, so I can do training and production at the same time. Say you want to produce an army of 12 divisions. 9 divs is INF, 3 divs is MOT. INF has a training time of 3 months, MOT has 4 months. Minimum time is therefore 4 months to get finished, so both INF and MOT will be training for 4 months. This can give a small experience bonus to INF. However, 9INF+3MOT requires a deal of materials and supplies just to get started training. It should therefore cost some supplies to start basic training right away, with obsolete materials that is. Of course, the main material (guns, trucks etc) needs to be produced. This costs 100IC/day. In countries where the state owns everything, the state will bear the whole burden, but in free market economies, the state will rather pay businesses to make supplies and material. Enter companies. Remember that each company has a given IC. The state now reduce the required state IC by outsourcing to companies. So when producing your army, a few IC is required to do training, and the production itself is split among your available IC and the companies you hire. By using companies, you can also achieve better effiency. The state will get no bonus, while companies can get a reduced production time & cost if it has a matching component. Skill level should also be taken into account. Maybe set government skill to 3...
The screen:
If you've actually read all the stuff above, you'll know that for each new production project or for each new research project, you'll assign one or more "helping" companies. You'll want some way to manage that, and a Company screen will do the job. Here you can remove companies you are paying to help out, and attach them to other projects. The screen will include a list of all companies, similar to the diplomacy screen. Click a company to see what it is doing. The list can be filtered by companies doing main research, companies helping out with research and companies involved in production.
Conclusion:
Letting companies have a role in production and research is a natural thing considering the timeframe. Allowing them to cooperate on research projects and be hired by state run production projects allows for greater flexibility and a more realistic model of both production and research.
In terms of micromanagement, it will increase it slightly both in research and production. A little more micromanaging will be involved when wanting to speed up a crucial research ('41 infantry as SU comes to mind). It also requires the user to check which companies that will help out on a research project. The same goes for each new production project. Beeing able to produce whole armies will however drastically decrease micromanagement.
Pros:
- Simple. The system is not that different from the current system, and is not hard to learn. If the user wants to, he can use the old system.
- The activity of companies are directly correlated with the government system. That gives a higher sense of reality.
- Removes the stupid peace time modifier. Democracies will rather be handicapped by the fact that they have to pay companies alot to help out in research and production.
- Increases depth in both research and production
Cons:
- Added micromanagement, allthough not much micromanagement, it will be felt.
- Harder for the AI to keep up. It shouldn't be hard to get the AI to spend it's money on companies, but spending it intelligently is harder.
- Lower abstraction level for research. Some people might not like it. Suddenly the number of possible research projects ~quadruples.
- Split in training and production. It will lead to the inevitable "I want to send out my untrained (or without proper equipment) guys!"-post. It's of course possible to let that happen with a malus, but I don't like that.
- The fact that you had to read a really long post
- I'm sure you fine gentlemen can find some more...
I've tried to keep focus on implementable ideas. As most of you know, Johan has made a thread asking if there's interest in getting the source code for all games and improve within limits of an NDA. If it ever becomes a reality, I will certainly join to improve a few basic things. Implementing good ideas will be alot of fun
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