Developer Corner | International Market

[benjay2]

Are 2d and 3d graphics fixes for the plane designer still on the to do list or is that cancelled?

 

[Eruth]

I can easily trade all this equipment changes for this:

I don’t think it’s an either or type deal hete

 

[Perikles]

For the trade convoys are assigned. Will there also be a proper trade route between seller and buyer, which can be raided or is it just teleported like the fuel LL on "at once".

 

[LordWahu]

Will the chances of the AI allowing market access be affected by a spy's "pressure trade" mission, or their "diplomatic pressure" mission?

 

[Land0fCotton]

So regarding the infantry MIO, will this alow
Us to have more means to make a more “elite”
Division? Or will the effect go into effect for all your infantry divisions?

it would be neat if you could set which MIO would want a particular division to benefit from.

 

[C0RAX]

So regarding the infantry MIO, will this alow
Us to have more means to make a more “elite”
Division? Or will the effect go into effect for all your infantry divisions?

it would be neat if you could set which MIO would want a particular division to benefit from.

you can do that, make 2 variants of infantry equipment with different MIO''s and then limit the divisions to that specific equipment

 

[KnyazSuvorov]

Honestly, the devs are doing stuff that is highly respectable and long awaited. No need to produce weapons as a minor anymore.

"Proxy wars, here we go!"

 

[TheRealPalpy]

So just a question about modability. Will you be able to change the costs of equipment's to be based on a variable such as money?

 

[Serensius]

Sounds really cool! Didn't think this was in the cards for HoI 4. Will this replace all the old focuses and events for "buying" equipments from other nations?

 

[Miguelinileugim]

> Losing market access to a country will not cancel an ongoing contract with that country.

So it will be paused?

 

[Miguelinileugim]

Instead of magic boxes you could just use money. The player doesn't need to see this money but it could be used to buy stuff. Diplomatic contracts and events could use money but that'd be too much of a rework probably. Magic boxes are such a clunky roundabout solution and the only advantage I see is maintaining the calculations in factory time rather than money. But if you just made each factory with no % variables make like 1 million a month base (1 money unit) then the end result would be the exact same except far saner and shared across every calculation instead of having separate factory costs everywhere.

 

[Red Mapoleon]

For the MIO, I'm assuming once you start the path of one of the mutually exclusive path, you can't switch. You can't research soft attack at the start of the game and then later in the game switch to piercing?

 

[the_diss]

as stated in thing we are not doing section, no warship sale via this market due to the non conformal ways ships work

Guess I'm not the only one who understood "trading ships" as merchant ships.

 

[C0RAX]

For the MIO, I'm assuming once you start the path of one of the mutually exclusive path, you can't switch. You can't research soft attack at the start of the game and then later in the game switch to piercing?

yes

 

[Tehrozer]

Will the trade laws be changed so that they influence this system in some way like adjusting the costs of exporting and importing weapons? Say having anything other than free trade could raise costs of buying armaments from other countries?

Will the economic balance of the game be adjusted to compensate for this new system? All countries had their economies enlarged or limited in various ways to work around the limitations of the current system and lead to outcomes more in line with the expectations. This international market though would throw it all off and likely require some deep changes to get things back to where they are now. Were these balancing issues investigated and could we expect some kind of a overview of existing economic values like changing the starting factories/resources or perhaps even changing the output of factories and tech bonuses?

Will the license system also be made part of this international market? In real life licenses were by far and large commercial agreements signed on the free market a far cry from the current representation. Perhaps it would be better if licenses were something integral to these equipment contracts so that when one says buys tanks from US they can also tick a little box to add a license agreement at a extra cost allowing to build the same design in your own country (and perhaps no longer with that weird production penalty that is currently applied?).

Could this system could support mechanics which would force a country to give up a % of its military production to the international market? It seems that the current way it works the player/AI has absolute control over what is sold and therefore it is easy to assume that it will be of little use especially in MP as players would be reluctant to part with their guns. Furthermore currently if I remember right all but 5 countries start with equipment deficiency with many nations lacking 70% of weapons for all their divisions (on top of usually having very few of them) making the probability of being able to buy any of the international market even smaller.

 

[Eruth]

Instead of magic boxes you could just use money. The player doesn't need to see this money but it could be used to buy stuff. Diplomatic contracts and events could use money but that'd be too much of a rework probably. Magic boxes are such a clunky roundabout solution and the only advantage I see is maintaining the calculations in factory time rather than money. But if you just made each factory with no % variables make like 1 million a month base (1 money unit) then the end result would be the exact same except far saner and shared across every calculation instead of having separate factory costs everywhere.

I want them to stick with their no money stance (which they have repeatedly reiterated is non-negotiable) because it’s unique from other games, and as long as a mechanic doesn’t suck I like it when games do stuff differently.

 

[MobiusTwo]

I'm prepared for a lot of downvotes, but with all due respect, I question the design decisions made here. I don't really understand the purpose of the "International Market," when one can simply ask for lend-lease when they are in need of equipment. While it is true that lend-lease is only for countries at war, and while it is also true that some countries such as early game China will typically need all the equipment they can get, generally, if you are playing carefully, you should not be running major equipment deficits. Paying for equipment in the form of factories does not seem like a good trade outside of niche scenarios, especially when you can use your factories to build military factories, and subsequently equipment, for yourself. In the long term, you will be setting your military-industrial output back.

For majors, I don't see the utility of the International Market at all. If you are Germany in a historical game, you want to build up your equipment to pump out as many troops as possible to cover all of your fronts. While you will get some equipment when you capitulate Poland and the Western Allies, you also need to save equipment for your years-long occupation of Europe. In these early-to-mid stages in the game, your equipment is too valuable to trade on the open market for factories, which you can already build a satisfactory amount of in the buildup to the war. Likewise, you don't need to buy equipment by the time you start the war, since by then, your industry should be self-sustainable. Once you reach this phase, you'll have no need to sell your equipment on the open market, because your factory count will be high enough to make the handful of factories minors can offer you in exchange for equipment relatively negligible, and you'll probably be embargoed by most of your prospective customers anyway. For most other majors, the same situations would likely apply. A particularly desperate Soviet player, an Italian player occupying half of Europe trying to form the Roman Empire, or a bored American player may find use for an International Market, but to me these seem like exceptions, rather than the rule.

Moving on in the dev diary, I'm not sure I entirely understand MIOs, but it looks like design companies are being reworked to where you pay factories/army XP/command power (unit of cost is not clear) to buff your design companies. This seems like a very roundabout way to solve the problem of "static" design companies - namely that nearly all of them provide a blank 15% research buff to the research category of one's choice. Some newer countries by virtue of DLC, and many mods have design companies that provide bonuses to attack, breakthrough, defense, production cost, etc. to increase the usefulness of the design companies, and ostensibly to encourage multiple playstyles/playthroughs with these different buffs. In these countries fortunate enough to have these useful design companies, and in mods where this is standard, I think the design companies fill a helpful and fun role in the game, where the challenge is finding the time to spend the political power needed to acquire the design company, all without the inconvenience of introducing a new UI menu.

Much like the tank/plane/ship designers, I fear that this new MIO system will have one or two "meta" choices that essentially invalidate all of the customization options available. If only one choice is "worth" using in these systems, it doesn't seem to me that it would be worth the effort to make another such system that forces players to go through the hassle of more clicking to accomplish the same meta design every game. I hope that I am proven wrong here, but my experience with the tank/plane designers makes me skeptical.

I apologize if this writeup comes off as overly negative, and like I said, I hope that these systems are more fun than I give them credit for once they are actually incorporate into the game.

 

[Eruth]

I'm prepared for a lot of downvotes, but with all due respect, I question the design decisions made here. I don't really understand the purpose of the "International Market," when one can simply ask for lend-lease when they are in need of equipment. While it is true that lend-lease is only for countries at war, and while it is also true that some countries such as early game China will typically need all the equipment they can get, generally, if you are playing carefully, you should not be running major equipment deficits. Paying for equipment in the form of factories does not seem like a good trade outside of niche scenarios, especially when you can use your factories to build military factories, and subsequently equipment, for yourself. In the long term, you will be setting your military-industrial output back.

For majors, I don't see the utility of the International Market at all. If you are Germany in a historical game, you want to build up your equipment to pump out as many troops as possible to cover all of your fronts. While you will get some equipment when you capitulate Poland and the Western Allies, you also need to save equipment for your years-long occupation of Europe. In these early-to-mid stages in the game, your equipment is too valuable to trade on the open market for factories, which you can already build a satisfactory amount of in the buildup to the war. Likewise, you don't need to buy equipment by the time you start the war, since by then, your industry should be self-sustainable. Once you reach this phase, you'll have no need to sell your equipment on the open market, because your factory count will be high enough to make the handful of factories minors can offer you in exchange for equipment relatively negligible, and you'll probably be embargoed by most of your prospective customers anyway. For most other majors, the same situations would likely apply. A particularly desperate Soviet player, an Italian player occupying half of Europe trying to form the Roman Empire, or a bored American player may find use for an International Market, but to me these seem like exceptions, rather than the rule.

Moving on in the dev diary, I'm not sure I entirely understand MIOs, but it looks like design companies are being reworked to where you pay factories/army XP/command power (unit of cost is not clear) to buff your design companies. This seems like a very roundabout way to solve the problem of "static" design companies - namely that nearly all of them provide a blank 15% research buff to the research category of one's choice. Some newer countries by virtue of DLC, and many mods have design companies that provide bonuses to attack, breakthrough, defense, production cost, etc. to increase the usefulness of the design companies, and ostensibly to encourage multiple playstyles/playthroughs with these different buffs. In these countries fortunate enough to have these useful design companies, and in mods where this is standard, I think the design companies fill a helpful and fun role in the game, where the challenge is finding the time to spend the political power needed to acquire the design company, all without the inconvenience of introducing a new UI menu.

Much like the tank/plane/ship designers, I fear that this new MIO system will have one or two "meta" choices that essentially invalidate all of the customization options available. If only one choice is "worth" using in these systems, it doesn't seem to me that it would be worth the effort to make another such system that forces players to go through the hassle of more clicking to accomplish the same meta design every game. I hope that I am proven wrong here, but my experience with the tank/plane designers makes me skeptical.

I apologize if this writeup comes off as overly negative, and like I said, I hope that these systems are more fun than I give them credit for once they are actually incorporate into the game.

They explained MIOs in the last dd. They gain XP when you use them which you spend on traits, and the unique ones all have unique upgrade paths and options.

 

[King Of Heroes]

The idea seems fine but I'm under the impression the current state of the amount of factories worldwide especially on minors and "guessed upon with no data" AI willingness to part with that meager amount of factories might drive this system into irrelevancy.

 

[XselenS]

Oh man, this is HUGE! WELL DONE! If this incorporates resource trade, holy shit. Finally, we will have a proper economic game to play in peace time. Equipment and MAYBE resource trade?