[1.4.1] Cant request license production

[Canacas]

1.4.1 no mods (6e42)
I have plenty of civ factories to spare (12 of 28 in use), I have sufficient relations, yet still can't send a request for lend lease (expected cost 6 civ factories).

Please see attached screenshots.


Edit: After doing some testing, it looks like the button gets grayed out as soon as the cost reaches 4 civilian factories, while my real capacity is 28 (16 if my factories used for trade is not counted).

 

[Canacas]

Alright so I did some testing around and there are something seriously wrong here.

While swapping some trading around I get the message that I wont have any civ factories left for construction if I go trough with the trade, I thought that was very weird so I clicked OK anyway, and then proceeded to the construction screen. There I see 13 factories are still being used on construction, yet when I go back to the trade screen I don't have any more civ factories I can use for trade.

 

[Alex_brunius]

While swapping some trading around I get the message that I wont have any civ factories left for construction if I go trough with the trade, I thought that was very weird so I clicked OK anyway, and then proceeded to the construction screen. There I see 13 factories are still being used on construction, yet when I go back to the trade screen I don't have any more civ factories I can use for trade.

This indicates what the problem is here.

When you get the message that you won't have any factories left for construction it actually means you have hit the limit of factories available for trade, since your not allowed to "reuse" factories you have received from exports for your own trade imports. So it seems that you are recieving 13 factories from exporting resources ( which can only be used in construction and not trading ).

It seems that licensing is using the same rules as trade here, in that these 13 factories are "locked" from being possible to use for both trades and licensing.

If you cancel trades for 3 CIC worth of imports I think it should free up the 3 factories you need for the licensing deal here.



So the bug here probably is that the UI is not clear about informing you about these rules.

 

[Canacas]

Yeah, saw your message in discord and started tinkering a little bit, you are right.

The bug here is actually that the pop-up indicates that I do not have any more civ factories for construction, when I do.
The secondary issue, but not directly a bug is that the UI does not tell me how many first class factories I have (that can be used for license acquiring and trade), compared to second class factories (not usable for trade or license acquiring). This should at least be stated in the license acquiring screen and hovering over the total factories count in the top bar should give some kind of breakdown.


Personal opinion: I do think this should be tweaked a little bit, as minors are the countries that historically and to some degree also in game has the most use for acquiring license production from other countries. These countries also have the fewest civilian factories and usually lack resources and have to trade for the basics, ending up not having factories left to purchase licenses making licenses underutilized and something thats used for MP cheese between majors more than minors buying from majors as it perhaps should be.
(Now Im going faar of base here, but perhaps there should be two ways to pay for licenses. Using civ factories(could even increase this cost a bit) or paying in political cost, example having 20% of your military factories on a german license will grow fascism 20%(xyz) and reduce your pp growth by 20%(xyz) as you are dependent on a foreign power.)

@podcat

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

Personally I find the whole factory availability UI confusing. What I usually want to know is how many factories I have free for construction, but this isn't automatically displayed, you have to calculate it yourself.

 

[Omghax]

Hi. Thank you for your report. I've added it to our database.