For the Motherland Developer Diary 7 - Historical Elections and Foreign Ministers

[podcat]

While I'm working on multi-threading improvements for For The Motherland I figured we'd share some of the small improvements we made lately. Stuff we have seen mentioned on the forums or didn’t feel were quite up to standard.

First up is improvements for giving a bit better feel to elections. Countries now have correct dates scripted in for previous elections and can have country-specific term lengths, for example Sweden has 4 year terms before 1970 and Finland has a 3 year term at the start of the game in 36. This means that we can trigger elections on the proper days instead of everyone having elections at the same time the same year.

Another thing that has been requested multiple times by you guys on the forum is the ability to see ministers in foreign countries and their bonuses and effects, so we put it in. It's in the intelligence view, but you don’t need spies to find out this information as it wasn’t exactly hard to get your hands on.



Last but not least, static anti-aircraft batteries have gotten a bit of an overhaul. They are now much more resistant to bombings (for modders this is a scriptable value per building type now) and much more powerful (before a destroyer was better than even a fully upgraded level 10 AA), they also get a twice as strong boost for each level of the Heavy AA Guns tech than before. Hopefully this should give them a bit more importance in the game.

 

[podcat]

Ministers... what about assassination?

looking at historical attempts it was tried quite a number of time and without much success, so if we want to keep it historical it would be a frustrating feature that would only work 1/100, or unhistorical and wipe out all the characters we know that add flavor during ww2. Feels to me it would be best done in a mod with something like a decision/event series instead.

 

[Darkrenown]

Podcat, in the screenshot I see that domestic spies can no longer raise national unity as well as the announced change of not being able to lower neutrality. Are there now different mechanics to influence national unity positively, and will the freed-up interface space be used to show more countries in the scroll menu?

Raise NU will be back, it was just hiding for that screenshot

 

[Darkrenown]

It's actually something we are thinking about, not sure if it will make it in yet though.

 

[podcat]

Podcat, in the screenshot I see that domestic spies can no longer raise national unity as well as the announced change of not being able to lower neutrality. Are there now different mechanics to influence national unity positively, and will the freed-up interface space be used to show more countries in the scroll menu?

ah someone noticed Its temporary only as I removed it by mistake, but havent put it back in time for screenshot.

 

[podcat]

I agree AA should be able to damage bombers on their way to targets, but currently the engine doesnt really support it, mostly because the planes do not actually enter the province because of speed and when combats are checked. The changes in the dev diary were only for making them stronger for local defense.

 

[Darkrenown]

ah someone noticed Its temporary only as I removed it by mistake, but havent put it back in time for screenshot.

I was covering for you, but you ruined it!

 

[podcat]

Only if I keep objecting to them. :rofl:

what was your objection to showing ministers?

 

[podcat]

I noticed in the toolbar there is a new part concerning Theatres! What is this new section?

secret

Another Question:
Does this include, that we could raise/lower the resistance of buildings also via techs?
Or does it "just" means we could change it once in the buildings.txt?

its just scriptable relative each other how resilient they are.

 

[podcat]

whilst on the subject of spies can we finally please have the information they provide more varied? Ie make a bigger chance of getting the WRONG information about what the enemy has - like instead of tanks tell them they are mot, instead of mountain tell them they are plain inf etc (esp when u hover your mouse over units on the main map) + number and other such things about ic/economy etc etc...

not sure what I think about this. perhaps as a domestic mission to spread incorrect information. I dont think it feels right that your own spies dig up bad information. they can not find stuff out, but to get it wrong sounds a bit meh unless someone is feeding them bad intel.

perhaps as a future expansion idea or something. I'd like it tied in a lot with visible stuff on the map. could be a lot of fun in multiplayer

 

[podcat]

But they are already doing this! Or at least on the Intelligence tab, the info is very unreliable... If you delegate the info gathered in the Intel tab to the map, it would give you plenty of disinformation

unless I completely forgot how I did it it never actually tells you the wrong type on a unit or an incorrect position, it is only shown as unknown. sizes etc are given incorrect though. also its not really shown on map, just affect detection etc

 

[podcat]

Thinking about this a bit more, you could simply assume that your agents are spreading misinformation by default. Or tie it to Counterespionage for example. You don't really need a separate mission for this.

totally, but making it an active choice for the player where they have to think about which to pick for certain situations might be more fun (especially in MP). that way you can make the effect stronger too since you trade away something else.