6 Years Later and the Battleplanner Still Outright Sucks :/

[Yourss]

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.

It remains to be seen if the Vic3 system will work well, all we have is dev diaries, which are very subject to change.

For me at least, I don't find issuing individual attack orders along a line to be engaging or innovative gameplay.

Appointing leadership, allocating troops, defining short/long objectives, prioritizing supplies/air support, logistic concerns, domestic stability, intelligence resources, technology, unit design. These are just a few of the systems that the game has to offer that interconnect into quality gameplay.

The power of individual unit control cripples the importance of other game systems. Sure, politics, production and technology are important before big wars kick off, but once you are in the thick of things, unit control pays off far better than trying to get a new tank variant out. Basically, wars need to be slower in most cases (but not all)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

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.

That's my point though, they are affected. Some realize it more than others, though. There are the obvious cases, like earning achievements and not receiving them, or being unable to paradrop with no description why. But there are also subtle things that drag perception of the game that most people don't associate with UI input gouging. The latter is a significant part of why "late game is tedious" is a common complaint. Part of that is lag or the game being over before declaring a winner, but a significant chunk of it is also simply fighting against the controls to do what you want in the first place.

 

[Haze340]

I've never been a fan of the battleplanner. It is a cool concept, but the problem with any system that allows you to draw both large and small operations is that the second those operations fail you have to go back and redraw everything. Microing individual divisions ends up being far more simple and allows you to react quicker. Having to wrangle the AI isn't very enjoyable either.

Given that it is such a fundamental part of the game I don't see a major rework happening. What I'd settle for is the ability to finetune the behavior of the unit controller and the battleplanner as a whole. Being able to lock the province width of a frontline, disable/enable creation of new frontlines, frontline depth ( NSB should have added this ), a reserve system, etc.

 

[Jorlaan]

I don't use it, period.

I will catch flak for this and I do not care. It's how I play and it almost never leaves me at the mercy of the braindead AI. I don't care about a few more bonus' when I can't rely on the thing to work in the first place. Planning bonus be damned if my army won't stay in place and do what they're supposed to do to begin with.

 

[DaJay42]

The worst failure case is probably playing as a landlocked nation surrounded by enemies. Whenever you take or lose any single province, the entire front line gets deleted, all units reshuffled to the other end of the country, and thus the battle planner just throws the entire war for no reason.

 

[newtlord]

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!?

The problem with the battle planner, fundamentally, is that it is unable to competently distribute units on the map. The proposed Victoria 3 systems avoids this problem by not having units on the map at all, but instead having the exact position of armies abstracted. This may not be a good solution for Hearts of Iron, which after all is focused on the details of war in a way that Victoria is not, but it does have the potential to avoid much of the hair-tearing frustration the battle planner causes.

 

[sergeixxivxii]

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.

Speed 1 MPs ;-)

 

[safe-keeper]

The problem with the battle planner, fundamentally, is that it is unable to competently distribute units on the map. The proposed Victoria 3 systems avoids this problem by not having units on the map at all, but instead having the exact position of armies abstracted. This may not be a good solution for Hearts of Iron, which after all is focused on the details of war in a way that Victoria is not, but it does have the potential to avoid much of the hair-tearing frustration the battle planner causes.

Exactly this.
Also, no one's saying it has to resemble the HoI4 battle planner in any way in the first place.

 

[mpop]

Battleplanner says it's green 80% win chance. Press play. Loses a lot of manpower and out of manpower as small nation.. AI counter attacks, wins. Better not use it. Better to micro.