HOI4 Dev Diary - Fuel

[Michael Gladius]

My idea with food is that farms could also be used in trade, like civilian factories. Food production would also affect population and stability, as food shortages caused a lot of problems for the Germans and Russian alike.

Rations and ammo would be consumed like support equipment, and consumed at higher rates while troops are in combat. Like with oil, players would be able to decide whether the army or civilian population gets priority for food distribution, and damaging infrastructure would hurt this.

I'd also change economy laws to make civilian economy desirable. Civilian economy would now give bonuses to farms, civilian factories, and dockyards, while giving penalties to military factories, refineries, and infrastructure. Civilian economy would also require 80% of nitrogen production to go to farms.

 

[DocDesastro]

The problem of having farms in the game as strategical assets would mean we can bomb them and if tied in a way to stability, one could interpret this as 'starving out' a country, which is a no-go area according to forum rules (see: war atrocities).
However, I might see the need for having a kind of consumable to maintain armed forces like having fuel for ships and tanks. Abstracted 'supply' resource producible by civilian factories or by other mechanisms and storeable in depots would abstract and represent rations, medical supplies and ammunition so basically everything, the unit will need while idle or in combat. While in combat or training these numbers would be high, while idle these would be low but be needed. Lack of supplies could lead to attrition (deserting soldiers or at least not combat-able because of voiceable and unspeakable reasons). The problem is: how to produce these supplies? MIL seems the wrong way. CIV would slow down the game as building times rise and minors are bound to be helpless. So I can see the need for farms somehow - or something similar.

I hope, I would not make this too complicated, but what if CIV factories really could do only one of the following: to build, to produce consumer goods and to produce supplies. You have an incentive to keep CIV in wartime and not to convert everything into MIL.
Consumer goods are required by economy laws and population and you should have the means to make them to uphold or improve stability - we have the toasters already nowadays - some CIV stripped from your pool to sustain your people. Surplus of toasters could be traded like other strategic resources. See the CIV factory as doing something similar to the refinery. It produces strategic resources that are needed by your people and are exported according to market laws. And now the novum: you can allocate CIV to produce supplies. It would need the strategic resource 'produce' which will plop up almost everywhere in plains or hills, less in urban regions and even lesser in deserts or mountains with none in arctic. So usually, you have them and can trade surplus and improving infrastructure will improve these as well. Also, you might add need for steel as some items are metallic and maybe - if you want to go really crazy: chemicals (like ammonia which is also needed for rocket fuel and ammo) made by chemical plants (work like refineries). Those factories will fill up a bar similar to the fuel one and instead of fuel depots you might need military depots and good infrastructure to save more of those. This will really change the pre-war metagame.
The bad thing: more country development sim - and this is not everybody's cup of tea. A good suggestion to collect LOTS of 'politely disagrees'...
The good thing: more immersive and logical - and it gives agrarian countries something to trade.

 

[Michael Gladius]

Maybe farms could produce 'snivel gear' from organic materials (cloth, food, medicines, etc.), while 'support equipment' is produced from metals?

I'd also want farms to be connected somehow to population growth. Agrarian cultures are usually quite fertile and religious.

 

[DocDesastro]

I wonder, what would be if building factories would on the other hand, reduce the produce a province supplies - that means the more industrializing a country is, the bigger the need for produce for several reasons: producing consumer goods and making rations while having even less means to do so. Like an undeveloped landslot would actually do something, if you leave it as is - make 'produce' or fractions of it, if unsuitable area like deserts only making 1/10 of it while fertile plains do it at a 1/1 ratio. Unfortunately, the latter will have the most building slots. So basically, you are penalized a bit if you plaster everything with CIV and MIL but have trade tokens if you refrain from doing so.

 

[Michael Gladius]

In that case, I'd have civilian factories on upkeep, just like how ships have separate tabs for dockyards for building vs repairing. Infrastructure, especially, would need lots of upkeep in high-traffic areas. Extreme temperatures, flooding, and other natural phenomena would further add to the demand.