Inconsistencies across the game

[Sun tzu1]

As the title says let's help developers to remove inconsistencies across the game with the hope that they will change those modifiers for the good of the game. I am talking thinks like most of the air spirits debufs doesn't implemented if the total amount is negative. Germany has +10% accident chance however it isn't included in equations untill it becomes positive like with the spirit Air Crew Surveys which give -25% accident chance. Then it becomes -15% with the inclusion of Germany's air spirit. This is consistent for other air spirits as well. In addition, it seems like fort defense modifier doesn't work at all. I don't know why. We don't know what does submissive operation cost does. I want to point these kind of things and help devs to fix them hopefully.

I want your participation to this thread as well by pointing out inconsistencies across the game.

 

[billcorr]

For what it is worth, 32 minutes ago, this long-time forum member also observed that HoI4 is inconsistent (I believe that the topic is "supply"):

 

[Zenbeast]

It's what happens when you develop a game for a decade+ and staff changes, goals change, etc.

 

[billcorr]

It's what happens when you develop a game for a decade+ and staff changes, goals change, etc.

In other endeavors, the production team works hard to prevent inconsistencies.

This is seen in movie making where the Continuity Editor makes sure things are consistent.

But point take about developing a game for a decade+.

 

[stormsand9]

But point take about developing a game for a decade+.

Speaking of which, with India's new focus tree in GOE, shouldn't you remove the link to your old 2021 india thread about Artillery and anti-aircraft guns from your comment description thingy? India with GOE starts with artillery researched and can get a faster bonus to researching anti-air, as well as numerous very quick 35 day focus' that add 1 military factory so you can begin production of those things in 1936.

 

[Kanitatlan]

This is what happens with any software product unless you apply ruthless refactoring and, in the case of HOI4, is much much worse if you have to maintain support for a wide variety of different versions of the product - in this case all the with/without DLC options. It's obviously a complete nightmare and desperately needs a different business model to relieve the "different versions" problem. I have enough problems with my customers, some of whom require maintenance of compatibility with 10 year old versions of the product. Paradox has my sympathy so I'm not going to be as critical as others might be.

 

[BurningEGO]

I believe we are speaking about inconsistencies generally speaking so my biggest concerns about "inconsistency" is when one starts the game.

Lots of ships (many which are modern and more powerful than 1936 destroyers) are missing from countless countries, and some more than obsolete models, are present, and even present as cruisers / coastal ships. Yugoslavian Dalmacija (for example) was built pre-1900 and she is present as a coastal ship when many ships are ommited or had to make it as weaker ships. I have had this debate several times to be honest. Portugal had 34 ships or so by 1936, yet we can only see 9, and many of the ships being ommited were stronger than the destroyers that are present, so I don't know what kind of criteria was used.

Also many countries have far stronger militaries / stationed men at game start than others. Demilitarized Bulgaria has more men than Portugal, Portugal which historically was performing military reforms since the 1930's. Also Portugal had more men / soldiers than USA but in-game USA has countless times more men than Portugal. There are a lot of inconsistencies like these.

Army templates are, at large, also a joke. I cannot speak for everyone but I know that Portuguese templates are extremely unreal. Just on the main infantry division, which Portugal had 5 historically speaking, we should be speaking about 100k men. If you multiply these 5 divisions in-game we will end up with 33k men due to how small the Portuguese divisions were made by the devs.

Also many of the modifiers that one starts the game with just doesn't make sense if you compare X country with Y country. Portugal for instance starts with Unstable Republic modifier (which imo doesn't make sense since the government by 1936 was more than stable and only got more stable as time passes) that hits Portugal with a -0.50% weekly stability, while Spain on the brink of civil war has a -0.30% weekly stability debuff. Can you see where this is going?

As for national focus, there are also a lot of things that barely make sense too. Arsenal of Alfeite (national focus) takes 140 days (!!!!!) to complete for Portugal, and the Arsenal by 1936-1937 was pratically already completed after more than 1 decade of construction. And you got countless countries with semi-fantasy dockyards or naval focus that take 35 days to complete. And with the introduction of experimental facilities and secret projects, you got a lot of fantasy going on for countries like Iraq with Babylon Project (Babylon Project that started around 1988-1990), which gives a facility to a 3rd world country when countless historical places belonging to 1st world countries (some that are even present via national focus) where research and experiments were conducted don't give any.

Game balance is one thing, now applying different criterias to each country, is another. If you do X thing to one, you should do X thing to another.

 

[pick-goslarite]

And with the introduction of experimental facilities and secret projects, you got a lot of fantasy going on for countries like Iraq with Babylon Project (Babylon Project that started around 1988-1990), which gives a facility to a 3rd world country when countless historical places belonging to 1st world countries (some that are even present via national focus) where research and experiments were conducted don't give any.

You can build Brasilia with a 35 day focus and Bangladesh rises up from Pakistan months after Pakistan gets their independence (IRL it took 30 years and a genocide that started in the 60s). I've had to realize thst rhe game is not just abstracted but largely uninterested in exploring the real history of the time period so that people who get rhe DLCs feel like they are getting a powerful and fun country even if that country could be far more fun as a very hard challenge. The fact that you can pretty easily conquer all of Arabia as Iraq in the 40s is absurd. I think that you should be able to, but it should be far more of a challenge. Imo just play BICE or RT56 or with Portugal make a more historical mod that tweaks and expands what is already there. I've given up on trying to LARP historically in Vanilla SP. The East India Company buying the world for nothing and Nuclear Gandhi was the final nail in the reality that this is not really a hsitorically based game. Its more of a game inspired by history, but telling whatever story the devs want to tell regardlless of whether it educates or allows one to explore the history of this time period.

 

[Lamartine]

The East India Company buying the world for nothing and Nuclear Gandhi was the final nail in the reality that this is not really a hsitorically based game. Its more of a game inspired by history, but telling whatever story the devs want to tell regardlless of whether it educates or allows one to explore the history of this time period.

+1

 

[Kanitatlan]

You can build Brasilia with a 35 day focus and Bangladesh rises up from Pakistan months after Pakistan gets their independence (IRL it took 30 years and a genocide that started in the 60s). I've had to realize thst rhe game is not just abstracted but largely uninterested in exploring the real history of the time period so that people who get rhe DLCs feel like they are getting a powerful and fun country even if that country could be far more fun as a very hard challenge. The fact that you can pretty easily conquer all of Arabia as Iraq in the 40s is absurd. I think that you should be able to, but it should be far more of a challenge. Imo just play BICE or RT56 or with Portugal make a more historical mod that tweaks and expands what is already there. I've given up on trying to LARP historically in Vanilla SP. The East India Company buying the world for nothing and Nuclear Gandhi was the final nail in the reality that this is not really a hsitorically based game. Its more of a game inspired by history, but telling whatever story the devs want to tell regardlless of whether it educates or allows one to explore the history of this time period.

Forget things like that, more dramatic is the fact that I can relatively easily conquer the Soviet Union as Finland without any pre-war expansion. All I need is Finland itself.

 

[billcorr]

Inconsistency of icons:

A player would expect "Stronghold Networks" to have anti-air capability, as promised by its icon:

Credit to FlameGuy3416 for that idea:

Originally posted in "Hygge Gaming"

 

[billcorr]

Speaking of which, with India's new focus tree in GOE, shouldn't you remove the link to your old 2021 india thread about Artillery and anti-aircraft guns from your comment description thingy?

Thanks!

I've edited the footnote.

 

[Sun tzu1]

Interestingly enough this post become active after a week I posted it. Anyway, I'll edit the my first post accordingly to communities wishes. However, please refrain from imposing super histrocilaty or super-althistoricality. These are the two things I see on the forum every time in every post. I think those posts aren't useful for devs as well.
However, there was a post about divisions' and navies' situation at the start versus the historical situation. I think that post was very helpful. We are here to support the game we love so we need to give positive criticism. Please continue to post here as well but not in a pessimistic way with a hopeful way even though every one of us has suspicions .

 

[BurningEGO]

Interestingly enough this post become active after a week I posted it. Anyway, I'll edit the my first post accordingly to communities wishes. However, please refrain from imposing super histrocilaty or super-althistoricality. These are the two things I see on the forum every time in every post. I think those posts aren't useful for devs as well.
However, there was a post about divisions' and navies' situation at the start versus the historical situation. I think that post was very helpful. We are here to support the game we love so we need to give positive criticism. Please continue to post here as well but not in a pessimistic way with a hopeful way even though every one of us has suspicions .

Well, they are inconsistencies too! Just not the kind you were looking for!

I am sure that the devs are aware of certain situations but they are probably either waiting for dlc in other to add / remove things or they see it as tertiary / barely relevant thing to the game, if you take everything else in consideration.

I have pointed the navy / army thingy more than once, and when I pointed several others like the massive swedish production (specially in comparison to the Portuguese tungsten production during this period), what I heard was that they wanted to make Sweden more relevant to ww2... And when you hear this kind of defensive arguments one cannot do much else. And in case you don't know Sweden didn't even produce 10% of Portuguese tungsten production IIRC, but in-game they pratically have half or close to that.

 

[Sun tzu1]

Well, they are inconsistencies too! Just not the kind you were looking for!

I am sure that the devs are aware of certain situations but they are probably either waiting for dlc in other to add / remove things or they see it as tertiary / barely relevant thing to the game, if you take everything else in consideration.

I have pointed the navy / army thingy more than once, and when I pointed several others like the massive swedish production (specially in comparison to the Portuguese tungsten production during this period), what I heard was that they wanted to make Sweden more relevant to ww2... And when you hear this kind of defensive arguments one cannot do much else. And in case you don't know Sweden didn't even produce 10% of Portuguese tungsten production IIRC, but in-game they pratically have half or close to that.

I wasn't saying what you are suggesting or pointing is wrong. Devs also can have questionable decisions they are some I don't like as well. You gave Portuguese divisions as an example which I should thank btw. But I can understand why they did like that. In the game if I am not wrong Portuguese has very low manpower at the start. If you enlarge divisions even more it will put Portuguese at 0 manpower. Of course this can be solved with buffs to the manpower or with the change of conscription law. I don't have much to say about the former just I don't like it. However, for the later it means you have to have higher WS at the start of the game. I think this was the case for Netherlands as well.
At the end what I am saying is that, this is a game which we can't simulate history 1 to 1. This game sole focus isn't simulating historical WW2 at least at the moment. However, they try to be historical for the historical lovers as well. But I can understand the frustration. One last thing there will be people who will not like what devs have done anyway. Most of those people gather in this forum as well. I think this is the reason why the forum is pessimistic

 

[BurningEGO]

I wasn't saying what you are suggesting or pointing is wrong. Devs also can have questionable decisions they are some I don't like as well. You gave Portuguese divisions as an example which I should thank btw. But I can understand why they did like that. In the game if I am not wrong Portuguese has very low manpower at the start. If you enlarge divisions even more it will put Portuguese at 0 manpower. Of course this can be solved with buffs to the manpower or with the change of conscription law. I don't have much to say about the former just I don't like it. However, for the later it means you have to have higher WS at the start of the game. I think this was the case for Netherlands as well.
At the end what I am saying is that, this is a game which we can't simulate history 1 to 1. This game sole focus isn't simulating historical WW2 at least at the moment. However, they try to be historical for the historical lovers as well. But I can understand the frustration. One last thing there will be people who will not like what devs have done anyway. Most of those people gather in this forum as well. I think this is the reason why the forum is pessimistic

There are worse places like the steam forums. I still remember when I saw chinese comments across HOI4 steam announcements or in other places. Those made me look like an angel.

You might be right, but usually across every Paradox title since EU2, the only "strictly historical thing" is the starting situation when you load up the scenario. Recently this has started to shift. As for the manpower you can provide modifiers. You don't need to increase laws. You can also directly increase the starting manpower pool. Which should be bigger. There were plans during war to increase total army numbers to 550.000 (afaik), and the pre-war army was about 200.000. If all those men could be armed, with everything, is another story that I am not going to speak of.

I would even dare to say that across all european countries Portugal should be one of the few that should be on early mobilization in terms of eco laws. But I don't want to derail the topic with non-inconsistencies.