Development Diary #14 - 28th of January 2009

[mathers]

This feature looks awesome. And based on your mood you must be really proudof this: 2 dev answered a lot of question beating the responsiveness of many dev dir.

I have one feedback (Personal attitude to Tech system): In any game having to develop 10 times basically the same tech is much worse than every time significantly different one. In your design it has two practical consequence:

More variety in prerequisite would be nice. Interdepndncies between techs, the different components of an infantry division requiring different experiences etc.

More complex effect per technology. More significant feeling that you developedsomething. (It is better to get after a year of suffering 2 levelof attack than 10 times 0.2 level.) Have some 1 time tech in the middle of the war as well.

Summa summarum. This new tech system looks a big step toward the one used in the mod CORE. However the tech part of that mod was worse for spirit with those small steps.

[zeekater]

This is brilliant.

Someone mentioned Leadership percentage, perhaps a percentage of population? Perhaps modified by industry?

Capital... what is that, can't be capital ships because those will be in Naval...

Leadership percentage is how many of your leadership goes to officers in the army (ie: how many divisions you have), if not enough goes to the officers, you're divisions will suffer penalties.

Capital is probably the capital ships, and naval will probably be the naval doctrines.

Theory is probably for techs like radar, decryption, encryption...

[Juste]

cant wait for this game

[GuderianTA]

They are there for balancing purposes, they are there to slow down how fast you can produce newer divisions.
Otherwise you get the snowball effect: you produce lots of infantry, so your practical value goes up, so you get better at researching new infantry and better at building more infantry. So far so good
But, once you research that new infantry tech, you will still be good at building infantry AND at researching better infantry, since your practical value is still high. So by upping the price, you don't produce the new infantry as fast as you did the old infantry.
Which isn't right

How about this: each time you research a new tech, example: infantry small arms, your practical value DECREASES, to simulate the retooling of your industry for the new equipment.
So add a line:

on_completion = -infantry_practical

to the txt file for infantry small arms.

By lowering the practical value, you also add a very realistic and strategic choice:
do I keep producing the same Shermans or Churchills, since I can already produce them rapidly and in great numbers, or do I go for the better M26 Pershing or Centurion, which I can't produce as fast?
This was a real choice the British made, to postpone the development of the Centurion, so they could build more Churchills to quickly outfit their new tank divisions.

Looks great guys!! I do have a question though.

Back in the Production DD, you mentioned that in order for Practical to be maintained, you need to continue producing, as it will decay over time. But say later in the war, some nations might be low on MP and/or Leadership and are not gonna really be cranking out Infantry. However, seeking to maintain advantage, Germany plunges itself into a tech race and wishes to develope advanced equipment and small arms. However, despite this effort, Germany's Infantry Practical would decay because it's not producing any new Infantry Brigades, correct??

Should upgrading count for some sort of Practicals retention??

THESE ARE TWO VERY INTERESTING POINTS............ you reading this PI???

[Chaplain]

I strongly second GuderianTA's quotes. The first idea (zeekater's) is especially relevant because it was exactly this decision that the USA made with the Sherman. There was a German-trained U.S. officer - a colonel, I think; I'm at work and I can't remember his name or access my references - who was responsible for drafting American war plans prewar and he hit on exactly this point as the key to American victory. A Tiger may be a marvel, but 20 Shermans will kill it. And we can build 50 for every Tiger. Ergo, we win.

[TonRich]

Got to pay to upgrade them just like HoI2

I understand that units out in the field need upgraded…but what about units in a production run? Say for example after I researched PzIV’s I put a production run of 10 units. I understand we won’t get the gearing bonus as before but as each one comes out will I get the latest version (of that model)? So my run might be 2 PzIV A, and after a couple of research things get completed then the next 2 units are PzIV C, and then after a couple of more research projects get completed I get PzIV D, and so on. This would obviously stop when I get to the next level (Panther) at which point the balance of my order would be the highest level of the PzIV variant. Or do I have to place new orders for every variant as I research all the different things?

BTW: Great Update. I can't wait for this release.

[Wraith11B]

Capital is probably the capital ships, and naval will probably be the naval doctrines.

Theory is probably for techs like radar, decryption, encryption...

I think that Capital is for capital projects... you know, infrastructure and the like.

[Gen.Schuermann]

a possible exploit... why should the Soviet Union invest in officers before the purgue?

You may miss the greater conundrum: Why do a purge at all? Stalin purged because he was afraid of the strong officer corps, and since he was paranoid.
We may see similar things in other military dictatorships or countries in general with militarys of great importance. What i am trying to say is that i think the events are being a lot more dynamic in this game. I hope that those events will come or just will not, so we do not know, and so we cannot prepare. The war wont always start on Sept. 1, 1939, but exactly when your diplomatic moves make it to start.

what about buy techs?
remember small and poor countrys like Brazil '40 need to buy some techs from the richs

in HOI 3, will the small countries like Estonia be weaker, or stronger?

Historically speaking, they should buy the finished product rather than the tech... I really hope Paradox will try to implement some form of weapons market for minors

I paired all three quotes together, and i want to strengthen the importance of that - i believe the significance of each smaller nation will be smaller than in regular hoi. It will be an entirely different approach to play smaller nations. It would even make small scale southamerican wars FUN! Entirely different tactics, different units. you dont have the industry to largescale produce tanks or what, but only buy cheap alternatives or license-build. It will be really interesting.

[UniversalWolf]

Why not simply let the player rename the models to whatever he likes in-game? That way, everyone can be happy.

[uboat captain]

you could still use tech teams to provide a research experience bonus

[gunnergoz]

Well, I'm hopeful that this will all work out to something less abstract in the final game. I did read where the technology descriptions are in moddable files, so this may serve to scratch my itch for concrete advances and not just symbolic numbers that keep getting higher and higher.
To be honest though, will there be some connection between these different levels? Will level 4 armor defeat level 4 AT guns? Better yet, will there be a qualitative difference between a 75mm gun 25 calibers long gun and a 75mm 50 calibers long? Armor sloped at 15 degrees vs armor sloped at 25 degrees? Will the game be calculating such things or just abstracting them?
I know this is a work in progress, so I won't press the panic button and will keep my fingers crossed that there is going to be more concreteness in the final product.

[Cidal]

So what are the 4 sliders on the left derived from?

[dsteve3]

all true.

Very nice!

Will that date be in print in the game somewhere? Or will all the "levels" use the same date formula (level 2 = 1934, 3 = 36, 4 = 38, etc)?

Looks mod'ible to me; seems like it will have to have some kind of display in the game.

[dsteve3]

Also, we don't know how HoI3 will model the runup to the war. In HoI2 you can pretty much just sleep as GER untill 1939, events just hand you everything and start the war for you. In HoI3 it could be that the events have stricter triggers, and a lack of diplomacy investment could well be taken as not being interested in expansion. There was a fair amount of diplomatic dealing going on at the time, Austria and the Czechs didn't just leap into Germany's arms.

There might even be a more dynamic system than just events, the German player might need to set up the right condictions and make his own demands, we haven't seen what diplomacy options we have yet.

I'd really love to see a system that doesn't use events, but instead has "advisors" or some kind of planning schedule. Remember that Stoney mod? They had Germany promising to respect Austrian sovereignty as a pre-req to annex! Classic "wag-the-dog" manuever.

If there was more player interactions needed, it would help prevent exploits.

[King]

Agreed!

A question though: will the theories and practicals be specific in a limiting way to a nation? What I mean is... if your nation had no experience or practicals in a chosen area, would you still be able to research in that area (albeit at a much slower rate) ??

Yes of course, you just take a hit. You probably also want to build some low tech levels of that type to boost your practical.

[Danielos]

I don´t think the practical decay for a tech should be very rapid. For example Germany were practically disarmed between 1918-1935 and still managed to rebuild an advanced army, armoured force, airforce and navy pretty quickly...

[alanschu]

Will it increase to 100% when one above it is finished?

I imagine it's exactly the same as IC in this regard.

[MrCrush]

Sweeeeet... I'm starting to look more and more forward to this game.
I kinda wonder, are the blue/green icons indicating practical/theoretical values...?

[Airborne]

I don´t think the practical decay for a tech should be very rapid. For example Germany were practically disarmed between 1918-1935 and still managed to rebuild an advanced army, armoured force, airforce and navy pretty quickly...

Dont forget that germans tested some tactics and equipement in USSR in early 30's

[gunnergoz]

One would think that decay of doctrine/experience/tech would be slow, but would eventually reach a point where it reaches zero value, given enough time.

Imagine an organization that has all its collective wisdom based upon its collective experiences in year one and does not add any afterward - the collective wisdom would diminish (to great extent) with the retirement or passing of each member of the organization, as the years go by.

If the youngest members were about 20 year old on year one, they would be logically retired within 40 years, taking with them all the collective wisdom that they hadn't promulgated in policies, etc. What's most important is that they would be taking their experience. So, by year 40, one could expect that the collective wisdom of the organization would be depleted of its actual experienced members. That is a significant hit or decay to the collective wisdom of the organization.

Given that HOI3 does not cover a 40 year span, tech decay should not reach such drastic losses, but I could see it reaching a 10-20 per cent decay rate over a 10-year span, if no fresh infusion of technology was added to the base.