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Development Diary #14 - 28th of January 2009

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King said:
I consider having the division not shatter as better combat performance.
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:D

Fair enough.

So overall a large army is a drain on leadership, and hence on research/diplomacy/espionage. In this way you've introduced a scaling/anti-blobbing factor rather like supplies.

Of course it also gives us the opportunity to make a sort of 'standing army vs drafted army' choice, but a more sophisticated one than was on offer previously.

I love it.
 
Johan said:
a few years of 100% focus at officers and no research, diplomacy or espionage may help.
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Aha! So adjusting the officer slider doesn't instantly improve your officer corps. That's one reason why you can't run 100% R&D in peacetime -- you want to start investing in your officer corps well ahead of the beginning of the war.

Incidentally, people should take a look at the left side of the screenshot. It looks like you get an estimated date of completion for currently-researched techs. A small addition, but one I will find very useful.
 
So how's your officer pool displayed then? Suppose I have a small army and have invested in officers for some time. I guess that it'll show as 100% leadership for my troops. Where will be the "reserve" (ie unused) officers shown?

Maciek
 
Oxonian said:
Incidentally, people should take a look at the left side of the screenshot. It looks like you get an estimated date of completion for currently-researched techs. A small addition, but one I will find very useful.
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I think the research time should also have a small factor of chance into it. Research is not a process of just going from A to B, so introduce a random factor to it that may increase/decrease the research time. Also, introduce a small chance for complete failure of research. You will have to start over again but will get a blueprint.
 
Johan said:
a few years of 100% focus at officers and no research, diplomacy or espionage may help.
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I hope that such things will be very good regulated, because there may be exploits.
I mean, you can spend 100% on research for two years, then to focus all on diplomacy and building, but just month before the war to spend all on intel and to receive up to date information.
 
Johan said:
So onto the technology interface, here is a screen shot.

alpha_jan28.jpg
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No techteams any more ? :)
 
PIT_AMERO said:
I hope that such things will be very good regulated, because there may be exploits.
I mean, you can spend 100% on research for two years, then to focus all on diplomacy and building, but just month before the war to spend all on intel and to receive up to date information.
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taking intelligence in the new HOI2 patch as an example you can't go from none to max level of intelligence in anywhere near such a short time.

Agressor said:
No techteams any more ? :)
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another person who doesn't read the Dev diaries
 
A few leadership questions/notes

Will leadership be available from conquored territory? How will officers work with naval units. Does each ship (or group of ships for DD) require an officer?

Its looking like officers could play a key role in whether to release puppet nations. Better to have an ally that can make more units with proper leadership, than for you to to make a few units with no leaders.
 
King said:
If build divisions and ot invest in officers tt means that the over all quality of your officer corps will drop, as divisions have fewer officer and NCOs than optimal.

Yes leadership is a limited resource that you need to make a strategic decision to use, officers and Research are linked. You build units to gain the practicals to reduce your research time.....
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Ahhh, sounds like Stalin's purges may have wholly new, and very nasty, effects :)
 
Agressor said:
I am not supposed to read them all, dude.
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i would make very much sense to me that someone who wants to know about the new game being developed would read all the development diaries.
 
I like the shift back towards the HoI 1 tech system. HoI 2 had more eye candy, which is good. But it had a lack of options. The complexity/diversity of this system is much better.

Is it just me, or is there no template like in HoI2 techscreen? That would make mod-ing the tech tree soooooo much more simple.

Thanks Johan/King/Everybody !


EDIT - One more comment: The colors are better too. More military drab, less blue and red. I like it!
 
I love the new research model, it sounds great.

I was also a bit surprised that milita has seperate techs, as first I thought why not just have them use older Infantry techs, but on further though it makes a lot of sense. Most nations using Milita won't be using regular Inf and vice versa, so spiltting them shouldn't be much of an issue. Also, splitting them means you can make the Milita techs a lot cheaper than Infantry, so you don't make Inf too easy to research or Mil too hard. And if you can only afford to build Milita you won't want to waste research on Inf anyway.
It also means certain nations like, say, China can have a bonus on research and building Milita without them also getting bonuses to Inf.

The Milita conversion tech makes me wonder too. Maybe it's just an oddly named tech, it does have the same symbol as the Infanty division tech (which I'm guessing makes them cheaper to build or supply, or it could just be the next model), but maybe it means there's a new feature. Something like Mobilisation in Vic, but it provides you with a bunch of Milita (at the cost of IC?) to simulate Volksturm divisions or similar last-ditch, scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel, contortions desperate nations went through. </wild guesses>

I know it's an alpha screenshot, but how done is the overall tech screen interface? I think it'd look better with the buttons along the top either seperated a bit between types or coloured/textured. E.g Inf and armour are both land units so seperate them slightly from escorts and capitals then bombers and fighters etc.

I'd also change a few names of the top buttons:

Escorts -> Escort ships (Not a biggie though)
Capital -> Capital ships
Industry -> Industrial
Secret - > Secret weapons
Theory - > Theoretical
Land -> Land Doctrine (assuming that's what's on here. Same for Naval and Air)

It just makes them a bit more obvious and sounds better what you say "Industrial technology" than "Industry technology".
 
There is obviously some concern with the multi-use of leadership, that a player can exploit the system by quickly going from one extreme (all research) to another extreme (all officers). I'm sure the system is open to some manipulation, but here is my theory on why exploits will be reduced.

Research: obviously the player would not want to under research. Over-researching results in inefficiency due to time penalty of tech. Over researching also makes a nation have less chance to build and therefore less practical knowledge, and less efficient than a nation that has time to build units.

Diplomacy: Seems like a potential exploit for an aggressive nation like Germany to minimize this. But the new politcal system will reward nations that can be included into the faction. I also have a hunch that diplomacy will be critical in getting trade agreements. Without good relationships, Germany will struggle to build stockpiles of oil and rare materials. Something that needs to be done in both peacetime (to stockpile) and in war. And if leadership (officers) can not be increased through conquest, it may be more efficient to have allies.

Espionage: Another item that seems to be exploitable (shut off in peace time). But I think the system will reward nations that perform espionage tasks to the point that nations will be denying gains if they 0 espionage, and worse have no-counter espionage activity to protect themselves. Another thing they can do is link the creation of "radar stations" to espionage investment. If 1 point of station requires 6 months to build at 1 point of espionage... a nation would need to be proactive about investing.

Officers: Its already been discussed that a nation would need to invest in officers to match production (or catch up) and to avoid division performance penalties. Obviously this is something that isn't going to be ignored. Maxing out right before war time may not help if each officer takes 3 months to produce and you need 30 officers. Likewise, PI could toss in an officer experience value in peacetime to reward making officers earlier in the game.
 
Devout said:
Diplomacy: Seems like a potential exploit for an aggressive nation like Germany to minimize this. But the new politcal system will reward nations that can be included into the faction. I also have a hunch that diplomacy will be critical in getting trade agreements. Without good relationships, Germany will struggle to build stockpiles of oil and rare materials. Something that needs to be done in both peacetime (to stockpile) and in war. And if leadership (officers) can not be increased through conquest, it may be more efficient to have allies.
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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.
 
Devout said:
Officers: Its already been discussed that a nation would need to invest in officers to match production (or catch up) and to avoid division performance penalties. Obviously this is something that isn't going to be ignored. Maxing out right before war time may not help if each officer takes 3 months to produce and you need 30 officers. Likewise, PI could toss in an officer experience value in peacetime to reward making officers earlier in the game.
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a possible exploit... why should the Soviet Union invest in officers before the purgue?
 
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