Dev Diary #6 -Production & Buildings - 15.October 2009

Welcome to the 6th Edition of our AoD Development Diary.
Today's Topic is all about the new Production System and Buildings.

This is maybe the part of the game we changed the most.As you can see on the attached screens, you can now lengthen and shorten serial builds. Gearing works a completely different way and has become much more important. There are now , besides political settings,techs which can increase your max gearing efficiency.



For every new Production Line you start and open up,you now have a minimum retooling time of 90 days were machines are adjusted and the pre planning of the production process is simulated. In this 90days, IC's are used & consumed, but no resources.Resource Consumption also rises with rising gearing bonus.You can also now upgrade production lines, e.g. you have that Panzer.II line now running for 2 years and you already have that 30% gearing bonus but now you want to switch to Panzer III. No Problem. You can upgrade lines with a click, they will retool to the new model and keep a large amount of that precious gearing bonus for the new Panzer III model.



You can also idle production lines to not loose gearing bonus and start them again later, but it will cost a small amount of IC for upkeep purposes. This comes in handy for units like Convoys or Escort were you never exactly know if you will need them in the future or not.



What really amazes me is that when you plan very detailed in advance what to produce when and how much under which circumstances, you really get an huge advantage over other players who just simply insert parallel runs for quick and short dated success.



For Emergency Production runs we created a new feat called rapid production. You can now increase production speed by up to 50%. We have build in three steps of speed : normal, increased and super fast. At each additional level above normal you increase the amount of IC assigned to that production line. Its not cost-efficient at all but if you really need something in a very short time frame and don't care about the costs, this is going to be your tool of choice. In my experience good for Infra (which now also improves IC and resource efficiency if extended), convoys, radar and AA.

You may also have noticed our double slider system in the IC allocation area. With "Advanced Sliders" set to on, you can now also define min and max levels of IC distribution. Works really well and is in my eyes an absolute killer feature of AoD.



We also integrated a new slider called "Infrastructure", here you can assign IC to repair destroyed buildings, Installations and Infrastructure. A small amount of all this gets always repaired for free, but investing some spare IC into this area might speed it up around 50x times. I urge you to take care you always spend some on repairing or you might as well wake up one day with your country laying completely in ashes because no one cared to do some rebuilding.

On to Buildings : We created a sub menu for easy access and overview of buildings, and we also integrated three new important buildings:

• Synthetic Oil - Responsible for Energy-Oil Conversion
• Synthetic Material - Responsible for Oil-Rare Conversion
• Nuclear Power Plant - Gives Free Energy on Map when build
  (cost can be defined in misc.txt)

Of course the efficiency of those 3 mentioned can be improved via new techs we created. We also have conversion sliders now with whom you can determine the amount you want to convert.



Regarding the Money System : Unassigned MP now gives a small amount of $, simulating tax income from working class citizen in an non-mobilized state. Producing Consumer Goods now creates money on a large scale which you can divide onto the new Expense Sliders in the bottom right corner: Civil Sector Military Salaries, Espionage, Research and Nuclear Sites.



Civil Sector covers now the area of what was formerly the Consumer Goods Slider. You can influence Dissent largely with it -in positive as in negative view. This also gives some new strategies to play with – if you are selling a lot of resources and have accumulated some wealth, you can spend this money in expenses without investing a single IC in consumer goods.

Trade is now mostly done by money as it is the most cost effective way to trade. The new trade AIs will as described in previous DDs will make your decisions and trade a breeze and let you control on how to use your resources to your advantage. So in short, trading smart and hoarding lots of money actually gives you a serious advantage also in case of available IC.

Spending money on Military Salaries will take care of the issue that your Troops Moral and Org is always high. If you on the other hand cut spending here to almost zero, troops will have more attrition (simulating deserters), lower maximum org and moral.Raising them again from low funding to full funding e.g. in case of war, will result in a large time frame needed for them to get fully operational again. This somehow covers the Reserve-System from HoI3. But ours much better and simpler

Spending Money on Research,Espionage and Nuclear Sites mainly modifies in those areas efficiency and time consumption. Espionage progress is not linear with spending – giving research lower funding will enable you to fund more projects at the time while trading total cost with speed (meaning total research cost is lower at lower funding) Otherwise the "Rule of Thumb" is:
Full funding always leads to the best results in all areas ( if you can afford it ).

In the last DD thread, we had a question about logistics and what happens if your capital is surrounded. Some already have guessed the underlying system, but here it comes nonetheless.

Resources are now used for IC on a provincial basis – meaning that you can produce locally and dont need to ship ressources from colonies back and forth. We also made it that supplies now are produced at a province scale, the need to transport supplies to IC rich remote areas ( for example India ) has been greatly reduced. This also makes surrounding the capital ineffective, as the supplies are still produced in the remaining part of the country just as before.



There is also a lot of new game mechanics regarding that, witch I don’t want to waste too much time on - but at least let me tell that if you gain enough productive IC in remote places, we allow placement of units there (unit produced remotely) These mechanics are of course optional and can be accessed in misc.txt. This comes in handy for places like India(UK) or Korea(Japan).

Balancing factors are for example the slow growing province efficiency (for those who didn’t get it before – it’s a value showing the productivity of the province – a quick conquest will not give you any great gain for a long time even if many factories where captured intact – it also replaces the previously hidden non national and non annexed values from misc.txt).



To avoid spreading IC all around the countryside we are currently developing an IC-Concentration Modifier. It has the very neat effect of giving you some extra IC for every IC you put in a province were already Industry is located.
So expanding already IC rich provinces gives you more base IC then putting them on low industry provinces. In terms of illustrating this feat graphicaly,
just think of the compounded interest pattern your bank account works with.



I hope I could give you an small insight of the new production system.
Stay tuned for our next DD when it will be all about Land Combat !

 

A heck of a DD. Everything is lovely.

 

Lots of changes, very impressive.
I hope that I'll be able to master the new Production system.

 

Long and impressing DD! Keep up the great work!!

 

I am drooling. I REALLY want this game now. This diary just sold me. I am now much more looking forward to the release of AoD than to the release of HOI3 1.4 (yes, I meant 4).

 

Thanks for the very long Dev Diary

A question about gearing that I think you forgot mentioning, is it still added in the same way that it is in HoI2? To get 50% gearing bonus on building Battleships there you need to build 10 of them in serial...

Also retooling seems like somewhat of an exploit when it comes to long expensive builds like Carriers or Battleships. What if you start 10x lvl 1 ships, build them 99% complete then pause and research lvl 5. After this you only need to pay IC for 90days without any resources instead of 500days full cost to build them? Or did I misunderstand how it works?

"MP assigned to development projects" also sounds very exiting, is this nuclear, rocket and conversion sites?

 

I think i read somewhere, that retooling is only starting after a complete building of the previous unit.

 

Yes I think that would be logical and reasonable aswell, but in this Dev Diary wyK1NG- wrote "No Problem. You can upgrade lines with a click, they will retool to the new model" like it happens instantly, So this made me a little worried

 

Good job guys great long DD. Everytime i get on the AoD forums I keep wondering why I bought Hoi3. I can tell you I probably wont ever play hoi3 after this masterpiece comes out.

 

Awesome diary!

 

One more week I have to congratulate you.

I like a lot the way you're managing 'industrial specialization'. It's not as complicated as different type of factories (vehicle, airplanes...) would be, but you get more of the effects of the feature. That's the scope: complexity without complication. Just this issue worths the DD (and you've told us a lot of interesting things more!).

You and the people of HT (new EUIII expansion) are going to make this Christmast holidays really really playful

 

Wow. This DD really got me interested.

I couldn't imagine you would change HoI2 rules in such an ambitious way!

 

Well it is instantanius.. however you loose 50% of the current progress by upgrading the main division, or only 20% if its only brigades.

 

Thanks very much for the work

I'm growing more and more impatient

a question however :
will there be a maximum IC level per province (for example, never more than 20, desert=0 forest=5, ...)

 

PI should lern from you - its perfect! I hope for AoD style HoI3 expansion!!!
Just let us all pray

 

+1

Simply Awesome, great news!!!

 

yeah you guys, when you like it make some word of mouth propaganda for us.

we're still relativley unknown and most people dont know there is such an hoi game awaiting release .

so spreading the word in the forum through your signature or telling friends really helps supporting the current dev.
were more motivated when we see that the feedback grows !

 

Love it!

 

Thats what I do all the time!

 

Dont worry, u are already very famous in the spanish forum