6 Years Later and the Battleplanner Still Outright Sucks :/

[safe-keeper]

IIRC in HoI3 you can draw theaters on the map to delineate what army covers which area, although it was purely cosmetic IIRC. Would be great if we can define frontlines in that way so that we can pre-plan which frontline will cover which section after an offensive without ending up with overlaps or gaps.

I've long thought that the best approach could be to expand on the Garrison system. Use it to draw up sectors for your army, set objectives for offense as well as defense, add an option to forbid the army's divisions from leaving the sector, or for other divisions to enter, and give alerts if an army secures the entire sector, or is forced to withdraw outside its boundaries. Perhaps there could even be a way to designate high-priority objectives that the army would work extra hard to capture or hold on to.

The Garrison order can already be used offensively as divisions seem to try to take provinces that are in the designated area, so it wouldn't need much love to be a viable operational tool.

Then again, I guess the best option would be to keep the arrows, and also give us a system that allows us to draw up operational areas armies and army groups need to stay inside.

 

[kaguravitro]

In my last USSR game I tried using the battleplanner to hold the line. It totally failed and I kept having to manually extend frontlines to plug gaps

Battle planner is bad to retreat, there's no deep defense with a back up line.yes that is a problem, but the system is not built to do it.Without it, can hold a big front, can hold a transverse line in Turkey, Mexico even France but not open line as USA or Russia, or china.
Having speed helps, mobile warfare retreat better.

 

[LordWahu]

Spoiler

To be honest, while I would like to see a more streamlined and manageable approach to warfare, like making Corps the basic on-map unit instead of divisions (and a Corps = 3-5 Divisions + Support Assets like Special Forces, Heavy Independent Tank Battalion a la those Tiger tank groups, etc) and fewer provinces or dividing most states into like 2-3 tiles...

Yeah, I'd be interested to see if a Victoria 3 warfare system could work in HoI5. For one, I think it would give your generals a ton more personality and identity. Instead of them just being 'Stat Modifiers' for your armies that you god-micro, I like the idea of leaving them with the responsibility of warfighting while you the player is in charge of coordinating the war effort, making sure the industries, politicians, agencies, and military staff fall in line.

That's not to say you don't have any say on the warfighting. Maybe you can designate strategic objectives like "The Caucus" or "Guadalcanal" and etc. Maybe for totalitarian regimes you can even activate something like Force Attack and Last Stands to give your armies/generals more buffs temporarily at the cost of straining your general's loyalty and perhaps adding stress on your nation leader that worsens the more you expend 'Influence' on the different military, economic, political actors in the game.

Also, it would be neat if generals had actual character traits and identities because imagine putting Patton in charge. On one hand you can see him play the high risk high reward aggressive style of warfare, but the downsides could be that he sometimes overplays his hand and might suffer more casualties than you/the public would like OR he could get himself in a scandal like the slapping incident and that would also mean you'd have to demote or suspend him temporarily.

Right now in HoI4, there's no meaningful difference between Rommel and a Paulus besides one does more attack damage. Whereas historically their level of initiative and proactiveness was night and day. Something that isn't modeled in HoI4. There's no different 'style' of warfare the generals have, just 'he does more Attack/Defend/Logistics/Planning' which is kinda... dull.

Plus, I'd like to see generals rise in prominence or fall out of favor. I'd like to see something that prevents players from just instantly putting Patton in charge of your best army in 1936 when he only really rose to prominence in 1942-1943 during Operation Torch. He took over Frendenall after his poor performance in the Kasserine Pass, but no one back then expected Frendenall to do poorly and so Patton was chosen to succeed him. In HoI4 there's no reason to ever pick Frendenall for anything besides... garrison duty?

It's why i like EU4 and the other Paradox games. The generals and admirals were unpredictable in stats and quality. I wish HoI4 and HoI5 would have this unpredictability instead of hindsight 20/20 perspective where 'Duh, of course i'm gonna put Patton, Rommel, Zhukov, etc in charge of the best armies in 1936. It's obvious because they have bigger numbers "

This comment reminded me of two things I've always wondered

1) While tricky, it wouldn't be that hard to model this kind of thing using the WTT attribute system. The only mod I've seen really explore the possibilities is OWB though, and that was more a stat building system than a character building one

2) Why did LR not come with the option for Operation Vengeance and it's ilk? Using spies to try to assassinate enemy generals would have been an excellent bit of roleplay and strategy

 

[safe-keeper]

To be honest, while I would like to see a more streamlined and manageable approach to warfare, like making Corps the basic on-map unit instead of divisions (and a Corps = 3-5 Divisions + Support Assets like Special Forces, Heavy Independent Tank Battalion a la those Tiger tank groups, etc) and fewer provinces or dividing most states into like 2-3 tiles...

Yeah, I'd be interested to see if a Victoria 3 warfare system could work in HoI5. For one, I think it would give your generals a ton more personality and identity. Instead of them just being 'Stat Modifiers' for your armies that you god-micro, I like the idea of leaving them with the responsibility of warfighting while you the player is in charge of coordinating the war effort, making sure the industries, politicians, agencies, and military staff fall in line.

That's not to say you don't have any say on the warfighting. Maybe you can designate strategic objectives like "The Caucus" or "Guadalcanal" and etc. Maybe for totalitarian regimes you can even activate something like Force Attack and Last Stands to give your armies/generals more buffs temporarily at the cost of straining your general's loyalty and perhaps adding stress on your nation leader that worsens the more you expend 'Influence' on the different military, economic, political actors in the game.

Also, it would be neat if generals had actual character traits and identities because imagine putting Patton in charge. On one hand you can see him play the high risk high reward aggressive style of warfare, but the downsides could be that he sometimes overplays his hand and might suffer more casualties than you/the public would like OR he could get himself in a scandal like the slapping incident and that would also mean you'd have to demote or suspend him temporarily.

Right now in HoI4, there's no meaningful difference between Rommel and a Paulus besides one does more attack damage. Whereas historically their level of initiative and proactiveness was night and day. Something that isn't modeled in HoI4. There's no different 'style' of warfare the generals have, just 'he does more Attack/Defend/Logistics/Planning' which is kinda... dull.

Plus, I'd like to see generals rise in prominence or fall out of favor. I'd like to see something that prevents players from just instantly putting Patton in charge of your best army in 1936 when he only really rose to prominence in 1942-1943 during Operation Torch. He took over Frendenall after his poor performance in the Kasserine Pass, but no one back then expected Frendenall to do poorly and so Patton was chosen to succeed him. In HoI4 there's no reason to ever pick Frendenall for anything besides... garrison duty?

It's why i like EU4 and the other Paradox games. The generals and admirals were unpredictable in stats and quality. I wish HoI4 and HoI5 would have this unpredictability instead of hindsight 20/20 perspective where 'Duh, of course i'm gonna put Patton, Rommel, Zhukov, etc in charge of the best armies in 1936. It's obvious because they have bigger numbers "

I too would appreciate a more Vic3-ish approach to warfare. As much as I like being in control of divisions, and micro-ing individual units is a staple of strategy games... I'd prefer the approach you describe. More personality to generals and admirals and more focus on the bird's eye view of the war.

 

[GrandVezir]

Why did LR not come with the option for Operation Vengeance and it's ilk? Using spies to try to assassinate enemy generals would have been an excellent bit of roleplay and strategy

Two reasons come to mind:

1. Operation Vengeance was not a spy operation; radio intercepts may have provided the intel necessary to plan it, but Yamamoto's plane was shot down by regular USAAF fighters, not special operations units.
2. Since Germany has lots of good generals but kinda sucks at the spy game, the meta would quickly become: build an agency and go all serial killer on the German high command.

 

[LordWahu]

Two reasons come to mind:

1. Operation Vengeance was not a spy operation; radio intercepts may have provided the intel necessary to plan it, but Yamamoto's plane was shot down by regular USAAF fighters, not special operations units.
2. Since Germany has lots of good generals but kinda sucks at the spy game, the meta would quickly become: build an agency and go all serial killer on the German high command.

1) Radio stuff comes under spy stuff, so while it wouldn't be strictly operatives, it would probably fall under the umbrella of operations

2) A very fair point, but not an insurmountable one. It would have to be carefully balanced so it's ultimate utility is limited. Maybe it takes so long you can't do it very often. Or maybe it's random which general gets attacked. There are plenty of options to make it difficult to abuse, but preventing abuse would definitely be a major requirement

 

[Yourss]

This comment reminded me of two things I've always wondered

1) While tricky, it wouldn't be that hard to model this kind of thing using the WTT attribute system. The only mod I've seen really explore the possibilities is OWB though, and that was more a stat building system than a character building one

2) Why did LR not come with the option for Operation Vengeance and it's ilk? Using spies to try to assassinate enemy generals would have been an excellent bit of roleplay and strategy

I think by this era, using espionage to kill foreign generals had fallen by the wayside. It was still done domestically to "friendly" for political reasons, and sometimes it wasn't so much kill as "eliminate politically".

Generally, if you had the level of access to eliminate a general, you would be better served extracting operational plans, logistic information, or technology blueprints.

Offensively killing a general or even a politician, just doesn't have a good RoI, and tends to invite retaliation.

 

[Jafkka]

To be honest, while I would like to see a more streamlined and manageable approach to warfare, like making Corps the basic on-map unit instead of divisions (and a Corps = 3-5 Divisions + Support Assets like Special Forces, Heavy Independent Tank Battalion a la those Tiger tank groups, etc) and fewer provinces or dividing most states into like 2-3 tiles...

I would love a digitized Advanced Third Reich with the last version’s rule set and variants.
That game is well-streamlined. Just the right amount of complexity. Units are at the corps level.

 

[qer]

I too would appreciate a more Vic3-ish approach to warfare. As much as I like being in control of divisions, and micro-ing individual units is a staple of strategy games... I'd prefer the approach you describe. More personality to generals and admirals and more focus on the bird's eye view of the war.

How do we go from "The battle planner sucks" to let make the player exclusively use the battle planner to wage war in a Wargame!? You already need to have all the bigger picture in mind when playing the game, but it would be bonkers to remove the aspect where all your decisions need to come into play. It would be like baking a cake and then having a stranger eat it. For not to speak how good the Ai it's at managing frontlines.

TBh it feels in Pdx games like there are two types of players: Does that want a deeper experience, which are fine with micro and playing the game at speed 2, and thoose that want a more relaxed experience and an experience closer to an idle game with few hiccups. Either approach is fine, but one should not make a game exclusively for one of then, and getting rid of unit control seems like a huge downgrade and a total defeat of the series original vision.

 

[FLUX2226]

TBh it feels in Pdx games like there are two types of players: Does that want a deeper experience, which are fine with micro and playing the game at speed 2, and thoose that want a more relaxed experience and an experience closer to an idle game with few hiccups. Either approach is fine, but one should not make a game exclusively for one of then, and getting rid of unit control seems like a huge downgrade and a total defeat of the series original vision.

Either approach is fine depending on what you want your game to be, but HoI4 is being advertised specifically as a grand strategy game, not a wargame, implying that success in war doesn't rely on microing your 100+ individual divisions, but rather on how well you planned things on a bigger scale. This makes me think that the "no micro" approach would be more fitting. What we have now is a wargame within a grand strategy game.

HoI4 (the entire HoI series actually) is way too old now to do changes like completely removing micro, it would do more harm than good, but I still wanted to point this out.

 

[kaguravitro]

What I don't understand is why they didn't use map preload info to get like avenues to make tanks try spearhead with little groups like s player could do.
A player get info from the map that an ai cannot, I don't see that as a problem. No script attacks, just preferred paths.
A big issue I didn't see mentioned, is the partial front expansion. When use a field marshal the front get fill and have a dynamic expansion of every general, but if you over impose a reveal in a zone it in many case start to over extend. Maybe a option in battle planner to don't ecxede a front logger than the number of units could be fine and need.
What it's bad, her bad, are back line and they incapacity to swap into a front line.
What I do to evade the total destruction is set 2 field marshals, half the units and swap 1 at time and if I need mix in the first once it is possible or need, but is no fun, is like micro and ai cannot do it.
Script fallback lines should be good to, but even without it, at least ai should try to make it with rivers.

 

[qer]

Either approach is fine depending on what you want your game to be, but HoI4 is being advertised specifically as a grand strategy game, not a wargame, implying that success in war doesn't rely on microing your 100+ individual divisions, but rather on how well you planned things on a bigger scale. This makes me think that the "no micro" approach would be more fitting. What we have now is a wargame within a grand strategy game.

HoI4 (the entire HoI series actually) is way too old now to do changes like completely removing micro, it would do more harm than good, but I still wanted to point this out.

Grand strategy games are more of a marketing term than anything else. In a true grand strategy game things like division designer, equipment designer or espionage would make less sensr than controlling units. Also, I think that for a WW2 game it would be boring: the time frame is too short for deep strategic choice and removing unit control would remove most of the player choice in game, without even speaking about how will it affect MP.

 

[FLUX2226]

Grand strategy games are more of a marketing term than anything else. In a true grand strategy game things like division designer, equipment designer or espionage would make less sensr than controlling units. Also, I think that for a WW2 game it would be boring: the time frame is too short for deep strategic choice and removing unit control would remove most of the player choice in game, without even speaking about how will it affect MP.

I don't think it's just a marketing term in general, although for HoI4 it might be. Fair point about the division designer etc. though, but as I said, it wouldn't make sense to remove unit micro at this point. Even if executed perfectly, it would break multiplayer and singleplayer alike because everything relies on the current state.

 

[bitmode]

Grand strategy games are more of a marketing term than anything else. In a true grand strategy game things like division designer, equipment designer or espionage would make less sensr than controlling units. Also, I think that for a WW2 game it would be boring: the time frame is too short for deep strategic choice and removing unit control would remove most of the player choice in game, without even speaking about how will it affect MP.

I think the 1939 start would be way more popular if controlling units was so crucial to players. I would prefer if the game leaned more clearly in either the GSG or wargaming direction and committed to that. To my understanding, the difference between the two is a wargame is playing from the perspective of the joint chiefs of staff while a GSG is playing from the perspective of the "people in power".

For multiplayer, your argument could easily be made in reverse. If hoi4 started out as a game without direct unit control, the notion that you'd introduce having to juggle all these units in real time in different theaters would detract from the strategy.

 

[mursolini]

To be honest, while I would like to see a more streamlined and manageable approach to warfare, like making Corps the basic on-map unit instead of divisions (and a Corps = 3-5 Divisions + Support Assets like Special Forces, Heavy Independent Tank Battalion a la those Tiger tank groups, etc) and fewer provinces or dividing most states into like 2-3 tiles...

Yeah, I'd be interested to see if a Victoria 3 warfare system could work in HoI5. For one, I think it would give your generals a ton more personality and identity. Instead of them just being 'Stat Modifiers' for your armies that you god-micro, I like the idea of leaving them with the responsibility of warfighting while you the player is in charge of coordinating the war effort, making sure the industries, politicians, agencies, and military staff fall in line.

Victoria 3, is a game where economy and society are your game, and wars are supposed to be a distraction.
HOI is a game about a particular war.
Even then, let`s first see the V3 release version, so it doesn`t turn like battle planer.

That's not to say you don't have any say on the warfighting. Maybe you can designate strategic objectives like "The Caucus" or "Guadalcanal" and etc. Maybe for totalitarian regimes you can even activate something like Force Attack and Last Stands to give your armies/generals more buffs temporarily at the cost of straining your general's loyalty and perhaps adding stress on your nation leader that worsens the more you expend 'Influence' on the different military, economic, political actors in the game.

Politicans medling wasn`t exclusive to totalitarian regimes.

Also, it would be neat if generals had actual character traits and identities because imagine putting Patton in charge. On one hand you can see him play the high risk high reward aggressive style of warfare, but the downsides could be that he sometimes overplays his hand and might suffer more casualties than you/the public would like OR he could get himself in a scandal like the slapping incident and that would also mean you'd have to demote or suspend him temporarily.

Right now in HoI4, there's no meaningful difference between Rommel and a Paulus besides one does more attack damage. Whereas historically their level of initiative and proactiveness was night and day. Something that isn't modeled in HoI4. There's no different 'style' of warfare the generals have, just 'he does more Attack/Defend/Logistics/Planning' which is kinda... dull.

Plus, I'd like to see generals rise in prominence or fall out of favor. I'd like to see something that prevents players from just instantly putting Patton in charge of your best army in 1936 when he only really rose to prominence in 1942-1943 during Operation Torch. He took over Frendenall after his poor performance in the Kasserine Pass, but no one back then expected Frendenall to do poorly and so Patton was chosen to succeed him. In HoI4 there's no reason to ever pick Frendenall for anything besides... garrison duty?

Like what?
Unless traits are randomized each campaigns, this just means you have to jump more hoops of some sort of seniority game.

It's why i like EU4 and the other Paradox games. The generals and admirals were unpredictable in stats and quality. I wish HoI4 and HoI5 would have this unpredictability instead of hindsight 20/20 perspective where 'Duh, of course i'm gonna put Patton, Rommel, Zhukov, etc in charge of the best armies in 1936. It's obvious because they have bigger numbers "

In other paradox games you also know perfectly well at glance is this leader good or not, as soon as you get him.

I think the 1939 start would be way more popular if controlling units was so crucial to players.

late starts are unpopular in Paradox games, regardless of EU/Victoria/HOI3/4, so that is hardly an argument.
Usually it`s because you player can build army/state that is better by a wide margin.

I would prefer if the game leaned more clearly in either the GSG or wargaming direction and committed to that. To my understanding, the difference between the two is a wargame is playing from the perspective of the joint chiefs of staff while a GSG is playing from the perspective of the "people in power".

WW2 from perspective of chiefs of staff, that doesn`t have you controlling industry and techs, mobilization, ex, requires answer to the question, what happens to your production and so forth. In small scenarios dealing with small pieces of frontline or even full fronts, like Unity of Command, that is non-issue, but on larger scale, what happen to you if you managed to perform Barbarossa better, and German army is in control of Leningrad and Stalingrad and isn`t as bled out.

Or, if player is italy and is actually competently managing logistics, the entire "ww2 in the west" becomes absolutely different.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

TBh it feels in Pdx games like there are two types of players: Does that want a deeper experience, which are fine with micro and playing the game at speed 2, and thoose that want a more relaxed experience and an experience closer to an idle game with few hiccups. Either approach is fine, but one should not make a game exclusively for one of then, and getting rid of unit control seems like a huge downgrade and a total defeat of the series original vision.

Also, regardless of the choice, UI clarity + input efficiency has been a sore point in most pdox games for > decade. They have made QoL upgrades in each of the games I've played over the years, so I don't want to pretend it hasn't happened. But it's still one of the major weak areas in their titles almost universally (I have not played all of them, so can't comment on those I haven't).

Consider how players have to go about removing buildings when at the slot cap in EU 4, or all the manual updates needed to interact with the battle planner, or the years-long tooltip/paradrop range bug (range calculated from center of air zone rather than where the airport is, resulting in situations where the game falsely shows an active paradrop order). Or inaccuracies like the rebel screen in EU 4/HOI 4's weather expert doing nothing, etc.

Especially for games like this where a single run takes hours, the inputs add up, and the poor UI has (many times) screwed people out of achievements. It's a big source of frustration that should be uncontroversial to improve. A bit less controversial would be what gets sacrificed for it, but IMO it's in a state where numerous existing features were not a good trade compared to making this stuff better. It also still remains part of the major barriers to bringing new people into the game.

 

[qer]

Also, regardless of the choice, UI clarity + input efficiency has been a sore point in most pdox games for > decade. They have made QoL upgrades in each of the games I've played over the years, so I don't want to pretend it hasn't happened. But it's still one of the major weak areas in their titles almost universally (I have not played all of them, so can't comment on those I haven't).

Consider how players have to go about removing buildings when at the slot cap in EU 4, or all the manual updates needed to interact with the battle planner, or the years-long tooltip/paradrop range bug (range calculated from center of air zone rather than where the airport is, resulting in situations where the game falsely shows an active paradrop order). Or inaccuracies like the rebel screen in EU 4/HOI 4's weather expert doing nothing, etc.

Especially for games like this where a single run takes hours, the inputs add up, and the poor UI has (many times) screwed people out of achievements. It's a big source of frustration that should be uncontroversial to improve. A bit less controversial would be what gets sacrificed for it, but IMO it's in a state where numerous existing features were not a good trade compared to making this stuff better. It also still remains part of the major barriers to bringing new people into the game.

I don't disagree with any of this considering I make an UI thread like two weeks ago, but what exactly has to do with my post? UI is important, and in relation to the thread, one of the biggest source of frustration in microing is how little tools we have specially compare to previous game due to the battle planner being intended to be the way to play the game.

Edit: Well either approach would probably take different UI approaches if that is what you are refering to, although I think a lot of the choices in the new titles (compare to the previous generation of pdx games) come mostly from a stremline line of thougth presnet thougth all the videogames sector.

 

[safe-keeper]

How do we go from "The battle planner sucks" to let make the player exclusively use the battle planner to wage war in a Wargame!? You already need to have all the bigger picture in mind when playing the game, but it would be bonkers to remove the aspect where all your decisions need to come into play. It would be like baking a cake and then having a stranger eat it. For not to speak how good the Ai it's at managing frontlines.

Let's see how it works out for Victoria 3. If they manage to make a deep, engaging system for warfare without having to micro individual regiments, great. No commander-in-chief (except maybe that guy with the funny moustache) would micro individual divisions in a real war anyway.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't disagree with any of this considering I make an UI thread like two weeks ago, but what exactly has to do with my post? UI is important, and in relation to the thread, one of the biggest source of frustration in microing is how little tools we have specially compare to previous game due to the battle planner being intended to be the way to play the game.

Edit: Well either approach would probably take different UI approaches if that is what you are refering to, although I think a lot of the choices in the new titles (compare to the previous generation of pdx games) come mostly from a stremline line of thougth presnet thougth all the videogames sector.

It is relevant to the discussion of the battle planner, because the # inputs to make it do what you want is severe. This is bad regardless of whether you cater to micromanagement styled players or not.

 

[qer]

Let's see how it works out for Victoria 3. If they manage to make a deep, engaging system for warfare without having to micro individual regiments, great. No commander-in-chief (except maybe that guy with the funny moustache) would micro individual divisions in a real war anyway.

Well Tbh in Victoria 3 timeframe there are a lot of examples of head of states leading the army like Napoleon III. Regardless Vic 3 is another example of how anachronistic the term grand strategy is: we can't control the armies yet we need to decide each factory production method.

It is relevant to the discussion of the battle planner, because the # inputs to make it do what you want is severe. This is bad regardless of whether you cater to micromanagement styled players or not.

I think in this case it was a try of making a simple system try to do a complex task, but I would put a big focus in that it is a desing choice. Hoi 3 had automation features, they weren't as dominat as in 4. Also, I think most of the UI issues go unaddressed because most players aren't affected by then.