In regards to everyone’s dislike of being able to immediately start producing reinforcements of things like tanks/aircraft to replace combat losses for a simple adjustment to IC, I’d like to get rid of IC and propose the following idea for the developers. It’s long but I think it’s definitely worth the read and a great idea (much more realistic and certainly would create a refreshing change from the boring same old IC we’ve had ever since HoI1).
There will not be IC, instead ‘money’ will be the driving factor and be based on the size of your national manpower (only national/core territories will provide 100%, and conquered territories will only add a much smaller percentage of their base manpower to you), and for the normal sliders that we spend IC on in HoI3, money can only be spent on running ‘factories’, ‘supplies’ and ‘resource/unit trading’.
To simulate a country going to war and requiring less consumer resources, the change of ‘laws’ in your diplomacy tab, can simply multiply the current money being earned by your economy by an appropriate percentage. Problem solved and one less frustrating slider to worry about (Consumer goods).
‘Reinforcements’ are taken care of with the manpower/recruit pool, and any researched unit upgrade costs will automatically be deducted from ‘supplies’ at your capital (regardless of where the units are).
The sliders can be prioritised in order of importance, and the good thing about this, is that you only spend as much as you want to and there is no waste, as any money not spent is not taken from your money total. Unlike IC, where if you don’t use it all, its wasted.
Factories are for production and will be built in the current manner of HoI3 where you click on a province details, but instead of IC it has manpower and factories (specific types). The amount of Manpower and infrastructure within, determines how many people can work and generate you money efficiently. If you bomb the infrastructure the money from that province will decrease. In addition choosing to bomb factories instead of infrastructure will decrease production rates to be the same % as damage percentage Eg 40% damage to factories in a province will see them only making 18 Tiger tanks a month instead of 30.
Choosing to build a factory will cost you a certain amount of money and manpower for approximately 4 months to build. For each factory you possess, it will cost you a set amount of money each day, unless you mothball it (then it not cost anything). Each factory will have a start up time before units from the factory will be added to the appropriate unit pool, which is to represent that once you start production of an item, you can’t start pumping the new unit out the very next day, and represents the build time for each type of item being built (some units like Tigers or fighter planes could be assembled in a matter of days or a week, but people forget that it took weeks to adjust/setup the tools to build the engines/electrical components etc, and then transport it all to the one place before assembly even took place). Eg for an aircraft factory it may take 50 days to start and complete a fighter, and off the continuous production line it can complete 60 per month (2 per every day after that). So for a aircraft factory in continuous production, by day 51 just two fighters will have been built, but by day 61 twenty fighters will have been built, by day 81 sixty fighters and so on.
Tied into my other idea of having sliders to adjust a division’s composition that moves in brigades sized increments. There will also be an ability/slider to only release units of a particular type from the completed production/deployment pool to the front line units to replace combat losses (of that identical type of unit in divisions) if the number of units in the completed production/deployment pool is above ‘x’ amount (which enables you to build up/construct a division and not be frustratingly one or two units short and necessary for a new brigade to be deployed).
Switching Production items
For factories that have been mothballed, their start up time, will not be reset or start from 0% again as long as they are continuing the exact same production item (it will simply pick up where it left off).
If you want to change the unit being produced from a factory, then two things could happen. If you are building a unit similar to what’s already being made, Eg switching from Panthers to JagdPanthers (tank destroyers), or from a Pz3 to Hetzer (because they share the same chassis), then the start up time to start producing the new unit type will be halved. If however it’s a complete change like stop making Me109’s to produce Stukas or Panzer 4’s to instead make Panthers, then the factory will need to be retooled and the start up will be from 0 again. All theoretically uncompleted items in a factory that changes production will simply be scrapped (but the raw materials consumed in the start up time will be refunded).
The costs of running each factory every day will prevent people from being able to spam them; in addition each type of factory will consume resources Eg steel, energy, rubber etc.
If you click on the factories button for that province, it will bring up a screen where you can build factories for the following
Armour (includes tank destroyers, self propelled artillery), artillery (includes AT/AA & artillery rockets), aircraft, rockets, trucks/halftracks, Shipyard, sub pen, synthetic fuel, synthetic rubber & academy’s.
Units produced from your factories will be updated daily into your production pools.
Once you click on the factories tab within a specific province, you can select the type of units you would like it to produce. Eg, for an aircraft factory you can only select one of, interceptors, multi-role fighters, jet fighters, close air support aircraft, naval bombers, medium bombers or heavy bombers (it will also show how much of each type of unit that the factory will produce a month). The option to produce each type of unit will only be the latest researched type for that category. Eg for interceptors, if you have researched Fock Wulf 190’s you can’t start a new build order of the old Me109’s. Although if a factory is still making Me109’s when the new Fock Wulfs are researched, you can continue to make the Me109’s indefinitely (but the moment you switch production to something else that factory will only be able to make interceptors that are Fock Wulf 190’s).
There will also be a factories tab from the main screen which will bring up a summary page of your factories, with more tabs for the different types. Eg it will show the costs of your factories, what items are being produced, and how many a month in total, and how many you have completed in the production pool. In addition it will also allow you to change the units being produced at each specific factory if you wish.
In addition there can be graphs showing you how many units of each type have been produced over the last 6 months (maybe also show you how many are lost as a result of strategic bombing or convoy losses carrying replacements/reinforcements), as well as the amounts destroyed in battles, and a prediction of what future production amounts will be.
Aircraft wouldn’t take very long at all to form into air fleets (probably 100 aircraft per squad) which unlike a division doesn’t need cohesive building. So once 100 planes is reached a squad could be deployed immediately, and it will automatically start to train the pilots in their new aircraft, and they will be able to reach say a maximum of 10% experience over a period of say two weeks.
Once you have taken a factory from the enemy, whether by capture, or they surrendered, all of the factories in the province/country will be destroyed. If you force an enemy to surrender then you will gain a portion of their trucks into your army. Eg Germany defeating France, 20% of all the French trucks at the time will be added to Germany’s truck pool. Could do the same for tanks and have a battalions created, Eg have one or two battalions of French Char tanks created and deployed in Paris for the Germans to control (auto deploy at the defeated enemies capital city). For the Germans they could also have a special modifier for the Anchluss of Austria and annexation of Checzslovakia where they get ALL of their trucks, tanks and factories etc.
Upgrades
When a new research tender has been granted, Eg Panthers have been researched, then in the tick box that comes up, you will be given a choice to either immediately discontinue the currently produced medium tanks (presumably Pz4), OR to complete just enough to be able to form a brigade in your deployment pool OR continue production to create enough battalions of Pz4’s to meet your current division build orders and then switch OR simply continue with the Pz 4’s until you adjust each tank factory production item at a later date.
Once you complete research to a module for existing units, it will take a set amount of time to upgrade the modules like it currently does in HoI3 (cannot upgrade a type of unit though! Only individual modules on a type of unit, Eg cannot upgrade Panzer 4’s to Panthers, though you can upgrade say the armour on Panzer 4’s with side skirts or change the gun armament from a 50mm cannon to the 75mm etc). The cost of the upgrades will be determined by calculating the entire amount of units the country currently has in divisions and in the completed production pool (not including units being constructed) and multiplied by a behind the scenes cost for each particular module researched, and the cost will be immediately subtracted from your supplies. The upgrade time will begin immediately and be the same globally for every unit (for a total estimate the amount of time will be approximately two weeks). For any battalions of the unit in question is deployed before the two weeks has finished, then they will still have the un-upgraded unit type and have the same percentage ratio as all the others of the same unit. For units produced as of the next day the research has been completed, they will not incur any additional supply costs (for simplicity sake).
Naval Production
For naval units, submarines will be like aircraft and will be made up of 10 subs per squadron. Destroyers will have 5 per squadron.
For all shipyards, their total value is added together into a total shipbuilding capacity pool, which will be just like IC in HoI3. Each specific squadron/ship will take a certain amount of points and time to build (like in the HoI3 production queue). Money and material resources (metal/rares/rubber) will be consumed by the shipyards depending on the amount of Naval IC points being used. Any unused IC simply goes unused and does not cost anything.
Once built ships can be deployed at any port (connected to the capital), however submarines and destroyers will be allocated into a pool similar to tanks. Where once there’s enough to form a squadron you can also deploy them at any port, although if/when they incur losses, they will need replacements from the pool of completed units. Subpens will be treated in the same manner as shipyards, but obviously only able to contribute points to making subs, not surface ships. In addition though, each sub pen in a province will provide 100% protection for one sub squadron from enemy air/bombing port attacks.
The reason for this is to represent the fact that ships took about the same amount of time to build, however to build a battleship and a light cruiser at separate shipyards for the same amount of in game factory cost, does not accurately portray the appropriate amount of materials each factory would have consumed to make their ship. In addition in multiplayer, people would forever just be raiding each other’s lightly defended ports in the attempt to destroy the factories there and reset the production of capital ships that could have been in the making for over a year. It could be a game breaking nuisance to have to leave sizeable forces in each port.
Militias
One of my previously mentioned ideas would be to make it so that there is a national manpower pool.
The larger your manpower pool, the more money you get as they are working in the economy.
From this you can set laws regarding drafts which will alter the percentage of men taken from the available manpower pool and after a period of 100 days will turn them into raw recruits.
From the production menu, you can then immediately form divisions together with raw recruits and items (artillery/tanks etc) that has been completed and sitting in your production/deployment pool. You can then immediately deploy the division, and will start to improve its organization. For Militia units however, that would take men straight out of the national manpower pool (not the recruits pool), and this unit would take a few weeks to assemble before it can be deployed (Could also make it possible to deploy militia units at a special Theatre HQ, like the British training natives in India etc).
Academies
However for units like Paratroopers, Marines, Mountaineers, these will be built at academy’s in the same manner as shipyards/submarines. Where a academy will grant a specific amount of IC to the production of specialist units and it will take men from the raw recruits pool and over another period of say 1 or 2 months create a specialist brigade. For each specific amount of IC being used for production by your academy’s, it will cost you a small amount of either money or supplies. The costs incurred to train a brigade along with a very lengthy build time to create academy’s will help prevent people from spamming specialist units (countries like Britain, Germany etc will start the game with one or two). Could also make it so that Academy’s also help add to your leadership pool for research (of doctrine techs) and officer training etc. (hopefully pioneers too, like in my ‘incremental slider of a division composition’ post earlier in this thread). Reinforcements of manpower for specialist divisions, will just come straight from the raw recruit pool, though could consume some supplies to compensate, or even have two sliders for the use of IC for Academys where some can go to new unit production and the rest to reinforcements. In addition with the introduction of Academy’s it would also present the perfect opportunity to introduce specialized training of other units, like training a infantry brigade to be elite or gain combat bonuses in urban/desert/jungle/fortress busting warfare etc. This could be done by selecting the unit, and then right clicking on the province with an academy, and a additional division order can come up (just like how strategic deployment option does) to say specialised training etc. Or like in HoI3 where there is the option to upgrade a unit, it takes it off the screen and could do the training through the Academy production screen.
Despite the lengthy read I still have many more finer details that I could add to the above, but will only do so if there are any questions, as I could go on for a dozen more pages about it.