Very specific idea about IC:
Like someone else said and what I proposed in my thread, the IC of a province should be based on the factories present in the Victoria state of that province. Now, I don't remember whether in the save file the factories were actually tied to any specific province or if they were in a state section - I can check this later. Anyhow, regardless of that I propose something like this (sorry for the ugly variable names):
Hoiprov_IC = Round(Vicstate_factory_value * C * (Vicprov_population / Vicstate_population) + Population_bonus) + Capital_bonus
(Round(x) is just a regular rounding function, which for example in C++ could look like y = int(x + 0.5f); )
If the province happens to contain a country's capital, then Capital_bonus is greater than 0, maybe 2 or 5 or so. It is to prevent certain countries from being without any IC at all.
Population_bonus happens at certain non-linear intervals of the total population in the correspond Victoria province(s). This is to prevent certain uncivilized nations from having abysmal IC (such as China). The exact intervals are to be determined, but the bonuses they give have to be rather small so it does not go on to generate huge ICs for example, once again, China and Korea. Note that this number is not necessarily an integer.
Hoiprov_IC is obviously the IC that is calculated. C is a constant which can be determined later, and perhaps be an user option.
Vicprov_population is the
total population of the province(s) that this HoI2 province corresponds to in Victoria. Vicstate_population would be the
average population in the state(s) these provinces lie in (average as in States_population_sum / State_number). A variant of this theme could be that only certain types of population would count, like clerks and craftsmen, but I think this would give less of an indication since the factory productivity in Victoria is non-linear to POP size.
Vicstate_factory_value is the interesting bit. It would be calculated with a formula I will soon describe for each state, and the actual value used in the equation above would be an average once again because if the HoI2 province corresponds to multiple Vic provinces then it may lie across state borders. In its most basic form I would want it to be calculated something like this:
Vicstate_factory_value = Heavy_factory_number + Medium_factory_number * D + Light_factory_number * E
D and E are constants less than 1, and for example they could be D = 0.5 and E = 0.25. The number of "heavy factories" is absolute, and the other numbers are relative to it. Why do I want to make a distinction between heavy, medium, and light industry? Well, essentially the IC in HoI2 is
mainly representing the industry usable to the war effort. Sure, it can produces consumer goods (at least in HoI1) but I think it is only a representation of industry capable of producing war related items diverted to consumer items. Hence, I split the industry into three categories where some factories are more worth than others to the war effort.
The actual classification of factories can be discussed. I would argue that artillery, tank, airplane, car, steel, electric gear, telephone, small arms, ammunition, machine parts, explosives and fuel factories are good candiates to be heavy ones. Steamer shipyards maybe also can be considered as heavy since they were probably rebuilt from 1920 or much earlier to build other kinds of transport ships.
Medium are more difficult, but I think regular clothes should be in since after all clothes are required for armies. Maybe clipper shipyards (also can be thought of as rebuilt). Cement and canned food could possibly also fit into this category. Everything else would go into the light factory category. Why? Because I don't imagine it being able to produce lots of stuff very important to the war effort. Of course this list is flexible.
You could also scrap the classifications altogether and make the system more flexible with a multiplier for each factory type. Maybe this is even desirable since it still takes almost the same amount of programming; it just requires a bit more typing in the data files. However, the general principle of evaluation of a factory's contribution to the war should still be applied.
That was all. By the way, coal with be a good choice for the "energy" resource in HoI2, wouldn't it? I don't know how much you have implemented already or how; I just toss around ideas right now.
