For the Motherland - Developer Diary 10 - Theater View and Other Goodies

[Danmark Rising]

Would it make sense to put a button on there somewhere so that you can turn on and off AI control of a theater from that screen so that you don't have to go back and forth between that and the OOB? Just an idea.

[tedescooo]

Nice improvements. I just hope the allies AI will effectively act in the designed theaters.

[davidcronin99]

" There is also some general information about the theater at the top, you can for example see where AI theaters are planning invasions and from where they plan to stage them from."
Will players be able to see this in the intelegence screen?? I've always felt that inteligence and politics are the weakest aspects of the game, and dont even come close to showing how important they were.
Personaly I think you should try and expand this feature to allow more co operation between allies, so the head of the faction, ie uk germany, sets dates for attacks. And the other nations can report if they can meet the deadline. So as the uk you could stop Ai Usa from landing a large force at brest for no reason and encourage the to land on a date you set. This way you could set the landing time for your own forces and theirs to be the same... You could aply this to sicily aswell....
This could be used for naval and air power aswel... ie request usa bomb germany by day, then you do it by night... or asking usa to escort convoys from their ports and then you can meet them coming in...
It would also allow ussr to request a second front being opened, or a minor nation like romania requestion germany launch an offensive to relieve their own front. It would mean Italy could request the africa corps without Human intervention...
If the ai could use the option properly to control its armies, then we might actualy see the japanese conquer the pacific by planing invasion times and following them through to clear the area, rather than just capuring a few ports and puting almost its entire army into china... and then visa versa for the usa.
It would also give the allies the advantage of ultra and by the ai potentially knowing you are going to launch operation sealion for examplr, you might find the rn waiting for you.
If it was done properly than the battle of britain mite happen( ive never seen the ai do it or sealion at all) because the ai could set the thatre to strategic bomb britain for example, and the theatre would request bombers... Also it might be an idea to have seperate hqs for navy and air force.
You should really go to town with this cause it would really fill a hole in the game where the ai doesnt co operate or tak advantage of the air power, and rarely does it perform an effective landing...
Please reply to this... id like to know what you think cause i really think this would have potential...

[Fi-x]

Unassign all button
thank you very much

[1alexey]

I would crawl over broken glass to kiss the feet of whoever made the final decision to add the one-button leader-removal tool. I have been begging for this for years. THANK YOU!

My guess is that Johan is the "last acception instance" so you can PM him for adress.

Nice improvements!
/oftopick could we get the "Subsidise ALL" button? please?!

[Nieldo]

I hope the unassign all button is not a single click, there needs to be a confirmation message otherwise mistakes will be made and peoples leader selection will be accidentally removed in the middle of barbarossa.

Also, any new developments in the air unit UIs or combat mechanics?

[madprofmike]

ooohh look at all those wonderful toys...hee can't wait!!!!(looks like I will have alot of work for my W.I.P. mod after all )

[JAF1327]

Oh...my...god!

This is how I feel now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GmEj...eature=related

I agree, shut up and take my money.

I dreamed last night I was playing FTM on the 22nd of June, and was as happy as a spider-pig sitting on the couch with homer.

[Curious]

All these additions are great! Im exited about 'For the Motherland' ... I cant wait!

Q: Do you have any plan to improve the functions of the Statistics/Ledger interface?
What I mean is for example if it could be possible to click on a name of a General (while inside the Statistics/Ledger) and get straight to that General in the Leaders Organizer or to that General's Division (on the map)?

The Ledgers used to be more advanced on earlier HoI games I think.

I asked for that Statistics/Ledger feature from the first day HOI3 came out. My pleas fell on deaf ears. It's beyond comprehension that PI had that feature in HOI2 and dropped it in HOI3. Sometimes I have to hunt and hunt and hunt to find a particular unit or leader. The lack of this feature makes HOI3 much more difficult to manage than HOI2. Overall HOI3 is a much better game than HOI2, but excluding this feature from HOI3 was a giant step backwards. Very disappointing.

[StephenT]

I hope the unassign all button is not a single click, there needs to be a confirmation message otherwise mistakes will be made and peoples leader selection will be accidentally removed in the middle of barbarossa.

That was my first reaction too. All the people thanking Paradox for the 'Unassign all leaders' button will be cursing their name the second or third time they click it accidentally and have to spend ten minutes reassigning all their leaders in the middle of a war...

Unless of course they thought of that already, and have an "Are you sure?" confirmation box.

[Cybvep]

The "Are you sure?" confirmation button doesn't sound as sth which is hard to implement...

[PaxImperator]

That was my first reaction too. All the people thanking Paradox for the 'Unassign all leaders' button will be cursing their name the second or third time they click it accidentally and have to spend ten minutes reassigning all their leaders in the middle of a war...

Unless of course they thought of that already, and have an "Are you sure?" confirmation box.

I was thinking the exact same thing.

Worries about that 'unassign all' thing aside, this dev diary looks very promising. I'm also happy to hear that a leader filter is at the top of the priority list if time allows it.

EDIT: Curiously, the first screenshot is taken as the UK but the on-screen background is the German one. Work-in-progress weirdness I presume?

EDIT 2: In the front planning screenshot again, I see that the two fronts have a different artwork photo--one of Africa, one of Asia. No idea how you've done that, but very nice touch.

[Sirveri]

We have also been keeping our ear to the forum and fixed two things people have been requesting. First of all many of you start off a game by reorganizing leaders and we have made this simpler. There is now a button for unassigning all your leaders with one click.

PANTS CREAM TIME!!!!!

Thank GOD, this will save me so much time on starting a new game!

[ecnan02]

Is there any possibility of getting a feature where we can assign territory owned by allies/enemies/neutrals to theaters?

This feature will allow players to divvy up responsibilities between theaters much more effectively. This will prevent the silly situation wherein one theater AI cuts in front of another by going through neutral and or friendly territory.

[podcat]

That was my first reaction too. All the people thanking Paradox for the 'Unassign all leaders' button will be cursing their name the second or third time they click it accidentally and have to spend ten minutes reassigning all their leaders in the middle of a war...

Unless of course they thought of that already, and have an "Are you sure?" confirmation box.

there is

Would it make sense to put a button on there somewhere so that you can turn on and off AI control of a theater from that screen so that you don't have to go back and forth between that and the OOB? Just an idea.

yeah I will probably do that. there is room and some of this stuff will be off for manual theatres.

My guess is that Johan is the "last acception instance" so you can PM him for adress.

Nice improvements!
/oftopick could we get the "Subsidise ALL" button? please?!

I made the list of stuff and johan put in the button. He does a lot more management stuff these days, but he keeps rotating between projects adding awesome stuff in each one that nobody else has time for

[SAS]

Love the improvements!

Nice to hear Johan is still getting dirty in the sandbox.

[Metalist]

Theater Interface looks very cool.

[Tankist/45]

I know i posted this once already:

"My wish: Implementing soviet guard units awarding system. As said based on gathered experience in battles and maybe victories count. Can be only graphical/naming changes and/or with slightly improving the unit stats."

Some chances to see it in For the Motherland?

[Herbinator]

A nice glimpse of some Theatre queue aspects.
Just curious, Is there an Army Group queue?

[Chromos]

Hi!

This looks great! Very good additions to the game!

I still have "some" questions..

1)
Will there be a possibility to take manual control of f.e. an Army Group under an AI-controled Theater?
Or ist that to complex for the Military AI to handle? F.e. thinking that the troops are not there anymore an drequesting new ones?


2)

All these additions are great! Im exited about 'For the Motherland' ... I cant wait!

Q: Do you have any plan to improve the functions of the Statistics/Ledger interface?
What I mean is for example if it could be possible to click on a name of a General (while inside the Statistics/Ledger) and get straight to that General in the Leaders Organizer or to that General's Division (on the map)?

I support this request, and also some more sliders for a better overview if new units are added..


3)

I know it's a bit late in the game to mention this but I would like to see the "Build" button be more than an all or nothing approach. I normally don't want to swamp my production que with one theatre and leave all the other ones out. This becomes more relevant depending on who you play, USSR being the worst offender. Maybe click on the unit pic in that window then request quantity then it builds. Otherwise I'll probably continue to do it all manually

I also strongly support this request. As I suggested earlier, I would also much like to have this request been done to the deplyoment pool. So you could build different units and then let the theater drag them out of that pool instead of giving new prodcution orders? A new button "take from pool" ?

4)
Can we assume that you have done more work on the military AI to let the theaters request no more "insane orders" like it did before.
(AI allways asks for many(!) troops for its Theaters especially tanks..)

5)
I also think of the production AI that Lothos is doing in that regard.
In Std HOI3 the Military AI was requesting/assiging the build order.
Then we got the .lua files from Lothos..
Now we have the Military AI request system useful back in the game..
Just wonderig about the combination of those two features..

An option to define the Military AI in .lua-files for those "modders" among us comes to my mind.. Possible?


Thanks for your attention, and again:
Looks great! Definatley a very god direction IMHO!
And thanks to Johan for "helping out".


I can already hear them say when someday HOI4 is out: How awesome/great HOI3 is and how "unplayable" HOI4 is...


Kind regards,
Chromos