What would be the solution for the Research Slots?

[GeneralGustavo]

Well, I’ve been seeing a lot of content piling up in the game, and eventually creating a bottleneck of things to research and do. I’ve read some threads about it, and I’ve been seeing some heated discussions.


The main “solution” to the problem, which is the increase in the number of slots, seems to be a taboo that would destroy the game. One of the points brought up for this is that MP players would have much more comfort and ease in their single-focus playthroughs, while SP players doing their simulations/RPGs can’t even unlock the minimum needed to develop in the three military branches.


I’ve seen that many people agree with how the limited slot system is now—either because they’re used to it, or think it’s balanced, or even think that changing it would only bring more problems—but I wanted to hear new opinions again on this subject.


For you, is there any problem with the research system? If so, what point bothers you the most? And what would be your solution to that difficulty or problem?

 

[GSP Jr]

I think the research system now presents you with real hard choices. Which is probably what designers want.
However, with the amount of new and enlarged tech trees, more slots or more speed buffs would seem to be in order.

A mod that gives all player countries 10 or 15 slots would probably be popular. Be right back, hold my beer.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

i don't like magic in allegedly non-magic game systems. tech slots and country-specific modifiers gained via focuses often cross the line into things which can only be explained using magic, not ww2 resource tradeoffs.

if brazil or liberia conquer usa, they can reach 5 tech slots. if ethiopia or norway conquer usa, they can't. even at same compliance values, factory count, etc. this is a simple magic/fantasy class system in that regard, not a technology system. norway just has lower intelligence in their stat card.

similar can be said for some of the more extreme country-only modifiers. it's one thing for mio to give some small boosts based on expertise at the time. it's another to get a permanent +15% attack because your name is x. you can do it, but it's silly in a historical game that otherwise tries to abstract good reasons for troops to fight better or poorly (general leadership, training/experience, equipment). but now these dudes had an inspirational speech, thus they will forever be better by 60% of the training to get to regular! even 10 years later!

you could even make a case that everyone has too many slots rather than too few. the problem is the inconsistency. inconsistency in implementation, inconsistency in reasoning for that implementation.

 

[GeneralGustavo]

I think the research system now presents you with real hard choices. Which is probably what designers want.
However, with the amount of new and enlarged tech trees, more slots or more speed buffs would seem to be in order.

A mod that gives all player countries 10 or 15 slots would probably be popular. Be right back, hold my beer.

If it takes too long, I’ll drink all the beer hahaha.
I feel the same way, but I also think that 10 or 15 slots is a lot — it would just make them change research times and end up being more of the same.
Maybe the most reasonable thing I’ve read is separating the research slot focuses into their own dedicated tree, so they’re not tied to national focus branches, but still keep the same criteria.
Also, adding extra slots that can be unlocked through things like “reverse engineering” or “capturing academies” after conquering a country, and one more for the major powers.

i don't like magic in allegedly non-magic game systems. tech slots and country-specific modifiers gained via focuses often cross the line into things which can only be explained using magic, not ww2 resource tradeoffs.

if brazil or liberia conquer usa, they can reach 5 tech slots. if ethiopia or norway conquer usa, they can't. even at same compliance values, factory count, etc. this is a simple magic/fantasy class system in that regard, not a technology system. norway just has lower intelligence in their stat card.

similar can be said for some of the more extreme country-only modifiers. it's one thing for mio to give some small boosts based on expertise at the time. it's another to get a permanent +15% attack because your name is x. you can do it, but it's silly in a historical game that otherwise tries to abstract good reasons for troops to fight better or poorly (general leadership, training/experience, equipment). but now these dudes had an inspirational speech, thus they will forever be better by 60% of the training to get to regular! even 10 years later!

you could even make a case that everyone has too many slots rather than too few. the problem is the inconsistency. inconsistency in implementation, inconsistency in reasoning for that implementation.

I think I can say I agree 100% with what you said, but I believe I can bring up one point of disagreement.
The historical focuses are indeed problematic in many aspects, but I don’t think it’s such a big issue to have unique key points for some countries — especially if we focus on historical accuracy, since major powers have a lot of history to justify such bonuses. The real problem lies in the alternate history path and trying to balance that with the minors.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The historical focuses are indeed problematic in many aspects, but I don’t think it’s such a big issue to have unique key points for some countries — especially if we focus on historical accuracy, since major powers have a lot of history to justify such bonuses. The real problem lies in the alternate history path and trying to balance that with the minors.

i am not sure we really disagree here. it is possible to represent historical advantages w/o relying on this kind of interaction. in real history, these nations had people & resources that others did not, and parlayed that into the advantages in question. in updates we get more and more of these properly represented: mio, research facilities, etc. to the point where "we're called ethiopia so it's traditional warfare forever" looks a little odd. you're still paying a premium for naval doctrines even after becoming the #1 naval power in the world.

instead of using a "focus", those can be represented mechanically. we see this with production resources already (although inability to make steel mills looks awkward when you can make synthetic refineries). same for resources like manpower, advisers who are available, starting equipment & factories, and starting generals.

focus bonuses try to represent things which happen that are in the minutiae of a country, or don't fit the scope of hoi 4 otherwise. in actual history, these advantages had causal consistency with their scenarios. hoi 4 allows wildly different historical interactions...focuses have an extremely bad habit of disregarding what has actually happened in the game.

 

[Reni Malaj]

One solution would be to hard cap research slots to 4: army, navy, airforce, industry and only manage research through speed. Major countries (more than 100 factories) would get to boost an area of research further. Focus trees would offer opportunities for extra boosts (kind of like SF doctine specialization works: everyone gets one spec, another at 1940 and special counties get the third in their tree).

 

[LordWahu]

To be completely honest, what I would like to see is the GTD special projects extended to the entire tree. Research can be enhanced by building new facilities, which creates a nice link between research power and industrial power

This of course has quite a few balancing problems and even more UI problems, and is only the mere shell of an idea. But research by increments, where doing the research provides somewhat random results, woudl go a long way to making it all feel more natural

 

[GeneralGustavo]

One solution would be to hard cap research slots to 4: army, navy, airforce, industry and only manage research through speed. Major countries (more than 100 factories) would get to boost an area of research further. Focus trees would offer opportunities for extra boosts (kind of like SF doctine specialization works: everyone gets one spec, another at 1940 and special counties get the third in their tree).

I don't think I quite understood your idea, just the part about having a research space for each area.

To be completely honest, what I would like to see is the GTD special projects extended to the entire tree. Research can be enhanced by building new facilities, which creates a nice link between research power and industrial power

This of course has quite a few balancing problems and even more UI problems, and is only the mere shell of an idea. But research by increments, where doing the research provides somewhat random results, woudl go a long way to making it all feel more natural

I'm also not entirely sure how your idea would work. Would it be something like Stellaris's research system? Using labs to research something from "random" options?

 

[herr anfsim]

I think consistency really is key to improving how research is solved. Right now, maximum number of slots and bonuses available to a nation is largely random, depending on the individual developer responsible for the specific focus tree and the ‘flavor of the month’ at the time the tree was created.

There is no universal logic to research capacity (outside of spying and special projects) which I think makes any comprehensive rebalancing difficult as it would mean fidling with a huge amount of focus trees.

I would prefer if they went back to tieing research to industrial capacity. Its not perfect, but it is way better than inconsistent randomness, and better represents the difference between majors and minors. I also believe old tech should be cheaper and that allies should be able to share licences for modules.

 

[jimfinbinlin]

While I disagree vehemently with the decision, the devs seem dead-set on maintaining both the research slot disparity (for "hurr durr flavor" reasons) as well as the overall balance between number of tech and slot (or just, total research time in general). So unfortunately, I don't see research slots changing.

So, what I would like to see is something else: not to the slots themselves, but just a catch-up mechanic. Each tech already has a year, and gets increasingly more costly to research ahead of time. Just continue that, but on the opposite side: techs get increasingly easy to research when behind. That should be very helpful, for example, for certain minors who start with literally zero air or navy techs, and have to start from scratch, even though the first tier of tech is from 1933 or 1922 respectively.

 

[GeneralGustavo]

i am not sure we really disagree here. it is possible to represent historical advantages w/o relying on this kind of interaction. in real history, these nations had people & resources that others did not, and parlayed that into the advantages in question. in updates we get more and more of these properly represented: mio, research facilities, etc. to the point where "we're called ethiopia so it's traditional warfare forever" looks a little odd. you're still paying a premium for naval doctrines even after becoming the #1 naval power in the world.

instead of using a "focus", those can be represented mechanically. we see this with production resources already (although inability to make steel mills looks awkward when you can make synthetic refineries). same for resources like manpower, advisers who are available, starting equipment & factories, and starting generals.

focus bonuses try to represent things which happen that are in the minutiae of a country, or don't fit the scope of hoi 4 otherwise. in actual history, these advantages had causal consistency with their scenarios. hoi 4 allows wildly different historical interactions...focuses have an extremely bad habit of disregarding what has actually happened in the game.

So, I think the national focus tree serves precisely to represent a timeline of what happened during that era, and based on what was done, you earn bonuses that reflect those events. Trying to change this concept would be quite disastrous for the developers. I've already accepted that this part will only truly change when we have a Hearts of Iron V, since then they'll be starting from scratch—and hopefully in a more organized way so they can continue updating and tweaking things like they do with Stellaris.I still think some things could be improved, but any change would be a headache for them. (I just wanted my idea for the secondary focus slots, haha)

 

[L-Histidine]

One solution would be to hard cap research slots to 4: army, navy, airforce, industry and only manage research through speed. Major countries (more than 100 factories) would get to boost an area of research further. Focus trees would offer opportunities for extra boosts (kind of like SF doctine specialization works: everyone gets one spec, another at 1940 and special counties get the third in their tree).

I don't know if making the slots specific to a field is desirable, but yeah I'm not sure why HOI4 does variable research slot count instead of giving everyone the same 1-4 slots and varying research speed between countries.

 

[herr anfsim]

I don't know if making the slots specific to a field is desirable, but yeah I'm not sure why HOI4 does variable research slot count instead of giving everyone the same 1-4 slots and varying research speed between countries.

My guess is that ‘it just happened’ without much of a plan or analysis of consequences. Based on previous discussions with the devs, number of slots is solely down to the individual developer and there is no plan or overarching intention with regards to how research should be approached.

The game would probably benefit from some more direction and leadership.

 

[seattle]

My biggest gripe with the research system hasn't been fixed since 2016: there is no queue!

Gameflow constantly gets interrupted when a tech is finished. Then you only have 30 days to pick another one. You have to browse multiple tabs to find one that is not ahead of its time.
Just add a bloody queue... it works with the MIO traits and it made MIOs that much more tolerable. Why not add an intelligent queue for research?

 

[Emoneh]

i am not sure we really disagree here. it is possible to represent historical advantages w/o relying on this kind of interaction. in real history, these nations had people & resources that others did not, and parlayed that into the advantages in question. in updates we get more and more of these properly represented: mio, research facilities, etc. to the point where "we're called ethiopia so it's traditional warfare forever" looks a little odd. you're still paying a premium for naval doctrines even after becoming the #1 naval power in the world.

This is silly. The timespan of the game is much too short for you to be able to conquer a load of land and transmute this into a world-leading research engine. Ethiopia had no naval tradition. If magical naval superman spawned in Ethiopia, okay, maybe he could turn that around but he'd still accomplish less than if he was born in Britain instead. This is not EU4. You cannot completely re-engineer your whole society in 10 years.

For you, is there any problem with the research system? If so, what point bothers you the most? And what would be your solution to that difficulty or problem?

• The game has no real support for countries that had little-to-no research and industrial capacity. My beloved Mongolia used entirely Soviet-designed and produced weapons, but in the game this is only really represented through shared equipment names. Mongolia can quite easily outfit its small army with domestic weapons; licensing and lend-lease are just there to plug a few gaps. This is fundamentally a diplomatic problem. The game does not represent the diplomatic control that this sort of thing gives a major power. Albania is another example that used 100% foreign equipment. Italy gave them a lot of equipment in the 30s, not just out of generosity but to gain influence over the country. Currently in game, there's no real reason for them to do this.
• The ability to reverse-engineer captured equipment for a research bonus to that tech. I think this a good and realistic way for minors to catch up a bit, and to give countries that are at war a lot a bit of a tech edge over those that sit back, which again I think is realistic.
• This is a little crazy but I think it would be cool if equipment you research had random stats (within a range, so weapons 2 is pretty much always better than weapons 1), and then you could re-research something (more quickly than the initial research time) to get another variant of it. You could 'focus' on one stat, so say you might want a very cheap gun or a very reliable gun, and fix that, and the rest are random. Maybe you could reverse-engineer captured equipment to get something closely distributed around that's stats. Majors, with more research capacity, could take more rolls at something and end up with better weapons than poor minors. Licensing and lend-lease would become more relevant, because the major would have actually better equipment, not just more of it. Countries could get country-specific bonuses, to be a bit more likely to get good equipment in whichever area. This would also support multiple cosmetics at the same tech level, which I think is neat. I think this is more realistic than 'a gun is a gun is a gun' or the fiddly but deterministic equipment designer. You put the boffins to work and they come up with something, but you won't necessarily always like the result.

 

[Ollfardh]

Maybe tie research slots to the new facilities mechanic? Germany starts with a land warfare facility, so they get a research slot exclusively for tanks/weapons/artillery. UK has a naval facility so they start with an extra slot that can only be used for naval research, etc. For smaller countries it's going to be hard to construct them, so they will have to wait longer for extra research slots.

 

[herr anfsim]

You cannot completely re-engineer your whole society in 10 years.

Yet that is exactly what many of the focustree paths and decisions are all about. You can change your ideology within months, conquer your neighbours and form a new fantasy empire (for instance arab or nordic empire) within a year or two, gaining all the conquered populations, industry and navies. Thats how HOI4 is designed, and having research slots be the only exception to this is weird and fits poorly with the rest of the game.

 

[Emoneh]

Yet that is exactly what many of the focustree paths and decisions are all about. You can change your ideology within months, conquer your neighbours and form a new fantasy empire (for instance arab or nordic empire) within a year or two, gaining all the conquered populations, industry and navies. Thats how HOI4 is designed, and having research slots be the only exception to this is weird and fits poorly with the rest of the game.

Some of the ideology stuff and a lot of the formables are a bit silly and I'd prefer they be toned down, but it's vastly easier to go from one regime to another in a few years (and there are many historical examples of this) than it is to go from a backwater to a world-leading technological power in a few years (and there are no historical examples of this). If you point enough guns at people, you can get them to profess to believe pretty much anything you like. Getting them to invent the V2 rocket is a little harder. If you want a pure CYOA, just use console commands.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This is silly. The timespan of the game is much too short for you to be able to conquer a load of land and transmute this into a world-leading research engine.

most of the techs are not advancing nuclear physics or pushing the limits of human knowledge. among the few that are, several of those have been moved to research facilities (which means ironically, conquering nations *can* use those to advance human knowledge). most techs are about making better iterations of equipment designs.

yes, a "highly compliant" usa really could teach ethiopia the blueprints if it wanted. it could also keep producing equipment. we can literally get millions of army recruits and hundreds to thousands of factories from these places, but we can't draw on the same willing participants to help make a better tank model sooner? really?

similarly, let's say it's 1950 and ethiopia has the largest navy in the world. it has been using it in actual naval battle for over five years. it is *nonsense* that a random country like say guatemala can unlock doctrines for less cost at that point.

If magical naval superman spawned in Ethiopia, okay, maybe he could turn that around but he'd still accomplish less than if he was born in Britain instead. This is not EU4. You cannot completely re-engineer your whole society in 10 years.

we are not "re-engineering" our society. we are gaining sufficient compliance from foreign society that we can utilize their already-existing progress and iterate on it...consistent with everything else related to conquest in hoi 4.

you don't need to change your culture to have a few guys work with a foreign population to iterate on one of their plane or tank designs. that's what a "research slot" is doing, for the most part.

 

[Emoneh]

most of the techs are not advancing nuclear physics or pushing the limits of human knowledge. among the few that are, several of those have been moved to research facilities (which means ironically, conquering nations *can* use those to advance human knowledge). most techs are about making better iterations of equipment designs.

yes, a "highly compliant" usa really could teach ethiopia the blueprints if it wanted. it could also keep producing equipment. we can literally get millions of army recruits and hundreds to thousands of factories from these places, but we can't draw on the same willing participants to help make a better tank model sooner? really?

similarly, let's say it's 1950 and ethiopia has the largest navy in the world. it has been using it in actual naval battle for over five years. it is *nonsense* that a random country like say guatemala can unlock doctrines for less cost at that point.


we are not "re-engineering" our society. we are gaining sufficient compliance from foreign society that we can utilize their already-existing progress and iterate on it...consistent with everything else related to conquest in hoi 4.

you don't need to change your culture to have a few guys work with a foreign population to iterate on one of their plane or tank designs. that's what a "research slot" is doing, for the most part.

All of the techs are pushing the limits of human engineering. Otherwise they wouldn't be techs; there would be no point in having them in the game. Yes, special projects are treading on a lot of toes here (just one of the reasons they are a bad addition to the game) but even for the remaining techs: it's not trivial to meaningfully improve a design that's been already been developed over a period of decades or centuries.

If you care to read my post you'll see that I'd like some form of reverse engineering in the game, and you can iterate on this using your regulation FOUR research slots, but conquering a world-leading researcher doesn't turn you into one. There's no way that Greater Ethiopia would have made as much use of Werner von Braun as America did. & even America only really put von Braun to work in the 50s, and his efforts only bore fruit in the 60s. In a war/immediate post-war situation, you can't really trust foreign scientists and your scientists don't appreciate yesterday's enemy being promoted over them. It takes multiple decades at minimum to create the culture required to be at the forefront of tech on everything. Kidnapping foreign scientists might speed this up a little, but it's still well beyond the timespan of HOI4.