HOI Q&A Transcript | PDXCON | Page 2

Harin · May 28, 2021

Mousetick said:
Currently if you assign several armies to a front line all their divisions are mixed in and distributed along it as individual divisions, they don't stay grouped by army. If you assign an army group to a front line, the front line is sub-divided into sectional sub fronts and each army within the army group is assigned to a sub front. The divisions of an army stay within the sub front corresponding to their army. So you have two levels of fronts: the army group level front line, and the army level sub front line within it.

I believe what is being suggested is to create a third level of front line above the two existing ones, containing multiple army groups which remain separate and don't mix. Does that make sense?

This could be particularly useful on the Eastern Front.

View attachment 725244

Thanks for taking the time! It is much easier to see what is meant by layers. Like most good explanations, it looks so obvious now. What surprises me is that the third layer may go above the Army Groups, instead of under the Armies. My quick thought would be to keep divisions corralled closer together with a smaller grouping under an Army, if only to put limits on how far divisions can wonder off. I am guessing that due to how the logic works behind the scenes, it is actually better to have a new layer above the Army Groups, so those groups do not have the freedom/option of moving anywhere on the map?

Shaka of Carthage · May 28, 2021

Mousetick said:
Does that make sense?

Not yet.

So in game terms, your Front Line is the front I want to cover.
The Army Group is the Field Marshall.
The Army is the General and his assigned divisions. In your example they have 6 divisions per General.

Assuming the above is correct, the suggestion is to add a higher level of Field Marshall, that has Field Marshall's subordinate to him?

desphorin · May 28, 2021

Mousetick said:
Currently if you assign several armies to a front line all their divisions are mixed in and distributed along it as individual divisions, they don't stay grouped by army. If you assign an army group to a front line, the front line is sub-divided into sectional sub fronts and each army within the army group is assigned to a sub front. The divisions of an army stay within the sub front corresponding to their army. So you have two levels of fronts: the army group level front line, and the army level sub front line within it.

I believe what is being suggested is to create a third level of front line above the two existing ones, containing multiple army groups which remain separate and don't mix. Does that make sense?

This could be particularly useful on the Eastern Front.

View attachment 725244

This looks quite like the already existing FM orders no? The one when you shift+click the front.

I suppose if you want an extra layer to group say 2 or more FMs, then yea. But do countries historically have someone above FM to coordinate them??

Mousetick · May 28, 2021

Harin said:
My quick thought would be to keep divisions corralled closer together with a smaller grouping under an Army, if only to put limits on how far divisions can wonder off.

Yes that would be ideal but would need to be done automatically and heuristically - otherwise too much micro, IMHO.

I am guessing that due to how the logic works behind the scenes, it is actually better to have a new layer above the Army Groups, so those groups do not have the freedom/option of moving anywhere on the map?

Not really better than what you're suggesting ^^^ I think. But to cover the entire Eastern Front east of Romania you likely need to assign several army groups to the front. Currently if you do that the multiple army groups mix in to cover the same front, they're not each assigned to a section of the front. So in that regard a 3rd level as suggested would help a bit to reduce the shuffling that occurs when covering large fronts. And on paper it seems "easier" to implement than your idea.

This wouldn't solve other front stability issues or front limitations, such as inability for a front to straddle borders and having to constantly redraw lines as the front ebbs and flows.

Harin · May 28, 2021

Mousetick said:
Yes that would be ideal but would need to be done automatically and heuristically - otherwise too much micro, IMHO.

Not really better than what you're suggesting ^^^ I think. But to cover the entire Eastern Front east of Romania you likely need to assign several army groups to the front. Currently if you do that the multiple army groups mix in to cover the same front, they're not each assigned to a section of the front. So in that regard a 3rd level as suggested would help a bit to reduce the shuffling that occurs when covering large fronts. And on paper it seems "easier" to implement than your idea.

This wouldn't solve other front stability issues or front limitations, such as inability for a front to straddle borders and having to constantly redraw lines as the front ebbs and flows.

Yes, the smaller groupings I was talking about would be off the map, invisible to the player. Just a logical lasso to keep the divisions in smaller sub-groups under an army, so the area they can move around in is restricted to a local area.

Mousetick · May 28, 2021

Shaka of Carthage said:
Assuming the above is correct, the suggestion is to add a higher level of Field Marshall, that has Field Marshall's subordinate to him?

That part was not specified and is left as an exercise to the reader or the devs

But you're right - there needs to be way to indicate that such and such Army Groups are components of a larger structure for the purpose of front assignments. I don't know what the person who suggested the third level had in mind.

Perhaps rather than creating a higher level of command in the OOB, a quick and dirty way might be to use a Theater for that, but that would probably break too many other things.

Shaka of Carthage · May 28, 2021

desphorin said:
But do countries historically have someone above FM to coordinate them??

No, but Army Groups were not Field Marshall commands. That's why there are multiple General ranks.

Mousetick · May 28, 2021

Harin said:
Yes, the smaller groupings I was talking about would be off the map, invisible to the player. Just a logical lasso to keep the divisions in smaller sub-groups under an army, so the area they can move around in is restricted to a local area.

Right.

From an engineering point of view though, this may be a much more complex problem to solve than dividing the front line into sections (contiguous groups of provinces) and broadly allocating armies to them.

There is already a mechanism in the game that divides the front and allocate each army of an army group to a section. So in theory it should not be too "difficult" to extend this mechanism to divide the front among multiple army groups. This is what is suggested by adding the 3rd level. The goal for the player being to have each army being assigned to a section of the front as small as possible, by using many smaller armies and many army groups if necessary than may be typically done. A sort of band-aid to improve the situation and compensate for its shortcomings, not a real solution.

Shaka of Carthage · May 28, 2021

Mousetick said:
This is what is suggested by adding the 3rd level. The goal for the player being to have each army being assigned to a section of the front as small as possible, by using many smaller armies and many army groups if necessary than may be typically done.

Assuming I have the correct understanding (see above), why create a 3rd layer? Just use multiple Field Marshalls. And limit your divisions in an Army, say to 6 instead of 24.

Shaka of Carthage · May 28, 2021

Mousetick said:
This is what is suggested by adding the 3rd level. The goal for the player being to have each army being assigned to a section of the front as small as possible, by using many smaller armies and many army groups if necessary than may be typically done.

Assuming I have the correct understanding (see above), why create a 3rd layer? Just use multiple Field Marshalls. And limit your divisions in an Army, say to 6 instead of 24.

Volkskaiser · May 29, 2021

Mousetick said:
Currently if you assign several armies to a front line all their divisions are mixed in and distributed along it as individual divisions, they don't stay grouped by army. If you assign an army group to a front line, the front line is sub-divided into sectional sub fronts and each army within the army group is assigned to a sub front. The divisions of an army stay within the sub front corresponding to their army. So you have two levels of fronts: the army group level front line, and the army level sub front line within it.

I believe what is being suggested is to create a third level of front line above the two existing ones, containing multiple army groups which remain separate and don't mix. Does that make sense?

This could be particularly useful on the Eastern Front.

View attachment 725244

Exactly, a relatively easy solution that would significantly improve frontline stability, and prevent your army groups from constantly overlapping with eachother or, even worse, opening up undefended gaps between eachother on large fronts.

safe-keeper · May 29, 2021

I'm not sure why army group frontlines would be neccessary to keep frontlines from overlapping or not extending as far as you want them to. Surely just fixing that problem in the first place is a better solution than implementing some band-aid on top of it.

Mousetick · May 29, 2021

Shaka of Carthage said:
Assuming I have the correct understanding (see above), why create a 3rd layer? Just use multiple Field Marshalls. And limit your divisions in an Army, say to 6 instead of 24.

Volkskaiser said:
Exactly, a relatively easy solution that would significantly improve frontline stability, and prevent your army groups from constantly overlapping with eachother or, even worse, opening up undefended gaps between eachother on large fronts.

safe-keeper said:
I'm not sure why army group frontlines would be neccessary to keep frontlines from overlapping or not extending as far as you want them to. Surely just fixing that problem in the first place is a better solution than implementing some band-aid on top of it.

If you'd like to continue the discussion, I've created a dedicated thread:

Covering very long fronts with multiple army groups

This is the continuation of a discussion started by this post in the PDXCON Q&A thread: One thing we need more than anything is improvements to frontline stability, specifically the ability to write whole "fronts" with multiple army groups...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Apologies to the OP for veering off-topic and derailing this thread.

Porkman · May 29, 2021

I am pleased to see that the devs finally read The thread from 7 years ago. Or this one from 2 months later (With tons of rail maps) People have been banging a drum about the need to separate roads and rails since 2014, (see the #3 line of my sig)

It's nice to see that the new system looks very similar to what several people were saying back then (Hat trick to @Axe99 @Balesir @Alex_brunius) even down to the use of rivers for supply throughput if both banks are controlled.

Now one of the big questions I have is about the interaction of terrain + rail + normal infra + weather+ the optimal combat width in a province.

How is the game going to tell the player that it's not a good idea to send a 40 width division with heavy tanks into the Kokoda trail and how bad of an idea will it actually be mechanics wise?

Players have complained about how it's too easy to send 100+ Soviet divisions into the arctic circle to curb stomp the Finns because the logistical penalties are negligible.

Porkman 7 years ago said:
I'm wondering if you could get a result by having two different types of infra with levels that do different things.

In the game, infra affects two things primarily, movement speed and supply throughput.

So let's separate "infra" into "rails" and "roads".

Here's how it would work. Rails would increase supply throughput by a lot, increase normal movement speed by a little and increase strategic redeployment speed by a lot. This could be in 3 levels with 1 representing a small colonial railroad and 3 representing the big lines that were in Europe. Railroads would also only increase movement speed when moving between two provinces with rails.

Now roads would be similar, maybe in 4 or 5 levels, but they would have less of an effect on supply throughput (though still a small bonus) and instead add big bonuses to movement speed and suppression. (The bonus to suppression is because it's easier to control an area when it's a short easy drive from town to town.) Roads would also increase movement speed to any adjacent province, regardless of its infrastructure.

This way we can simulate colonial railroads, dense infrastructure areas like Europe, trackless wastes, or whatever. The highest levels could also be tied to tech, so China can't build autobahns at the beginning of the game.

The best case for moving and fighting would be having full railroad and full road, but depending on what you need more, (better supply throughput or tactical mobility) there would be tradeoffs to building one or the other.

(Also, I think rivers should be helpful for supply throughput as long as the player controls both banks.)

Axe99 · May 29, 2021

Heaps of interesting info there - thanks for posting Midgeman, and for all of the devs for answering

Midgeman_Official said:
will "strategic relocation" option be enabled only on railways and not everywhere as it was before?
Answer
we are looking into it. if it turns out ok thats our plan, but we'll see how it goes

If it could just be railways and rivers (waterborne transport was still hugely important during the period) that'd be super

Midgeman_Official said:
Rivers are a bit complicated. We played around with the idea of expanding their functionality in a few ways, but the costs of doing most of these things proved to be too high for now. Rivers will work in a similar manner to rails. but the player will need to hold both sides of a river for it to be a valid connection point between supply hubs.

Totally understand, but if you were ever able to flesh it out a bit more, and coastal convoys, you'd get plenty of encouragement from me

Midgeman_Official said:
and an industrial cap tax on active fighting.

This wouldn't be the craziest thing to have in a second world war-era grand strategy game, but understand if you want to try and manage it another way (particularly as it's already kind-of managed a bit by equipment = ammo).

Midgeman_Official said:
I think Iran/Iraq would be a good base for a country pack but places like Italy and Scandinavia would probably be ahead of it in the priority list.

Just so long as you do Haiti before Finland or Italy

Midgeman_Official said:
When will Sooty finally get his just rewards and a place in HOIV

Sooty-themed content pack confirmed!

safe-keeper said:
I like that strat-moves might be reworked somehow, for example to only be allowed on railroads (possibly using trains as a resource, like how we need convoys to move divisions on water?). Maybe you could also be able to strat-move troops using stockpiled trucks?

This is a pretty cool idea, Keeper of Safes

Mousetick said:
having to constantly redraw lines as the front ebbs and flows.

Oh aye, if this could be fixed, I'd be a very happy gamer

Rudolf Nechvile II · May 29, 2021

Midgeman_Official said:
Question by @HEKOHEKOHE3HAMKO!
Question
will peace conferences be updated?
Answer
not this DLC no. but its on our
Answered by
@podcat

I'm honestly really disappointed by this. It's been one of the most broken features untouched since launch and can sometimes singlehandedly ruin a game, especially as a minor nation. I get that people like the tank designer and that there needs to be content for the DLC, but seriously, it's been 5 years. It would also have fit in thematically with the Yalta Conference and the divisions that set the stage for the cold war.

Emren · May 29, 2021

Will you address how one naval invasion is only supplied through one port? So, two separate invasions will use two ports, but if they merge, they will switch to only using one port, and may all of a sudden be over the supply limit? That’s super annoying…

Voigt · May 29, 2021

This is not entirely true, currently all ports pool together their naval base levels in a supplyzone if they are connected.
So with a level 5 and a level 3 navalbasd in a supplyzone you get 24 incoming supply (level 8 x 3 supply per level)
The problem is if those naval bases are in different supply zones, since it just takes the highest level supply zone path, so then 15 incoming and that transfered to the next supply zone other, without using its level 3 naval base to bolster supply in that zone.

Axe99 · May 29, 2021

Voigt said:
This is not entirely true, currently all ports pool together their naval base levels in a supplyzone if they are connected.
So with a level 5 and a level 3 navalbasd in a supplyzone you get 24 incoming supply (level 8 x 3 supply per level)
The problem is if those naval bases are in different supply zones, since it just takes the highest level supply zone path, so then 15 incoming and that transfered to the next supply zone other, without using its level 3 naval base to bolster supply in that zone.

It would be good if it could use multiple supply zones (it can feel a bit strange when invading Europe and having the entire French and Netherlands coastline, that supply can only come through one supply zone's ports, for example), although I appreciate that might take a fair bit of work with coding. Same story in terms of supply exiting somewhere (for example, having to build lots of ports in one supply zone in the UK, because they can't ship things from Portsmouth, Liverpool and Glasgow at the same time.

Voigt · May 29, 2021

Since supply in NSB is drawn from supply hubs, I assume there will be no supply zones anymore.
There is of course still the question how multiple paths to the same hub are handled, or multiple hubs using the same connection back the the capital.
We need to see about that.

Just wanted to clarify what the current situation with supply zones is, and correct that in some cases it merges the naval base levels for the supply calculation.

General

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Captain

Major

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Corporal

• ← 2mm hole in reality

Major

Field Marshal

Ships for Victory

Second Lieutenant

Brigadier General

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Ships for Victory

General