Air Combat Wish List for next DLC

[sterrius]

When it comes to dogfighting, it really is. The math is already beyond what most players even know or understand.

The only reason I'd want altitude in the game is to make it impossible to intercept certain kinds of bombers with old fighters.

that can easily be done by changing a little how interception work and how Defense, Attack and Agility play their roles in the formula.

If it was up to me for example i would remove agility from the Speed Upgrade and let it become a fixed stat.
its such a important stat that it removes the thinking and purpose of having a upgrade sytem.

Adding +1 mechanic to a system players already can´t understand is not gonna help us much.


Both air and Naval need just fixes and a reform in their systems to make it easier to understand. At least easy enough that most players will understand why they are losing. Otherwise they don´t understand the situation and just get fustrated. Stopping any attempt to learn it.


After that we can worry about more urgent implementations like Planes actually traveling from A to B instead of teleporting.
and a way to make it easier to defend your own airspace from bombers. (Maybe a mission that allow the plane to quickly identify states being bombed and deploy there, changing to a close airfield if one is available).

 

[walt526]

The only reason I'd want altitude in the game is to make it impossible to intercept certain kinds of bombers with old fighters.

Couldn't you accomplish this by requiring that the difference between air attack and air defense be within a certain range of each other in order for the interception to be successful? For example, interwar fighters have 9 air attack while STR1 has 25 air defense. Let's set the required difference to less than 15. Now the interwar fighters are useless at interception against STR1 (and better).

Going down the list...

Interwar fighters would be useful against TAC2, but not TAC3.

FTR1 could shoot down STR1, but not STR2. FTR2 could shoot down STR2, but not STR3.

On the other hand, HFTR could disrupt all STR (and Jet STR), as could rocket interceptors.

I think that addresses your concern, which I share. And it shouldn't require a major rewrite of the code or introduce esoteric mechanics.

 

[Secret Master]

Couldn't you accomplish this by requiring that the difference between air attack and air defense be within a certain range of each other in order for the interception to be successful?

Except that aircraft stats are modified by differences between speed and agility in air to air combat. And you can boost agility in many ways that are not related to the base stats of the plane. We're talking design companies, air doctrines, engine boosts, aces, and so on.

So, you'd want to set those thresholds so that there is nothing, say, an Interwar Fighter could do to get enough air attack to overcome the air defense stat of the B-29.

 

[sterrius]

So, you'd want to set those thresholds so that there is nothing, say, an Interwar Fighter could do to get enough air attack to overcome the air defense stat of the B-29.

if it was up to me.

-> Light plane Designer would only give Speed. (PS: Japanese designer would give speed plus +5% agility for carrier fighters only).

-> Upgrading Speed on a plane would no longer improve agility. (Speed is already a good buff for combat).
-> pilot would stay the same. Its fair experienced pilots and aces to have better perfomance.

Doctrines ->
Strategic destruction -> Give +10% agility but to Heavy Fighters only.
Battlefield support -> stays the same. Your fighter is Worse (less air superiority mission bonus) but your CAS can actually kill a few fighters.
Operational Integrity -> +5% agility Fighters but on the end of the tree.


Agility is so essential to air combat formula that if you remove most of its buffs/debuffs air combat becomes a much easier system to balance by playing with
Attack/Defense/Speed.

With my changes above outside of training pilots you would find it very hard to stack Agility. Keeping planes mostly on the playing field they are supposed to be.

 

[walt526]

Except that aircraft stats are modified by differences between speed and agility in air to air combat. And you can boost agility in many ways that are not related to the base stats of the plane. We're talking design companies, air doctrines, engine boosts, aces, and so on.

So, you'd want to set those thresholds so that there is nothing, say, an Interwar Fighter could do to get enough air attack to overcome the air defense stat of the B-29.

Why not write the code such that this mechanic was simply based on the base stats of the planes? I don't think that this would be possible via a mod, so some rewrite of the code is going to be necessary. There's no reason why you couldn't ignore the buffs from doctrines, variant upgrades, aces, etc. for purposes of calculating that inferior fighters couldn't disrupt/intercept enemy bombers.

It's certainly a more tractable solution to this concern than introducing altitude as new variable, IMHO.

 

[wosung]

Think about how bad agile Japanese fighters performed against 2nd generation US fighters. Brute speed and max ceiling IRL is way more important than agility. Not least b/c it anables a pilot to break off andf run awy if necessary.

 

[Harin]

Think about how bad agile Japanese fighters performed against 2nd generation US fighters. Brute speed and max ceiling IRL is way more important than agility. Not least b/c it anables a pilot to break off andf run awy if necessary.

From the little bit I have read about air combat, it seems the most used tactic was to seek an altitude advantage, zoom in, try to hit something, and keep zooming the heck out of there. If your airplane had the speed and climb, you could come back and try to do it again. The unfortunate pilot stuck in a slower plane could not get away and had to dogfight until the fast fighters ran out of fuel/ammunition. Since many fighters carried less than 30 seconds of ammo, this gave the slower plane a chance to survive, I guess.

I am sure that is over simplification, since speed is often a function of who-saw-who-first, combined with altitude effects and climb and dive characteristics.

 

[wagnerleung0079]

Dont like all the complicated stuff u suggest.Airwar is complicated enough as it is. There are so many problems in that and dump more complicated stuff like stallspeed or an airplanedesigner would kill it finally.

Sorry to hear that, most of the problems you have mentioned should be well aware by dev already, and should be fixed in long ago. I am not the game dev but I quite know the limitation of the game coding from all the years I struggle and fail on modding. I would try to suggest a mechanic to solve the problem you mentioned that is compatible with the current game mechanics. The current mechanic is not that complicated, it just badly optimist.

At the Moment we have the problem that there are too large and too small airzones at the same time.
Too small because u have to split up your fighters into ~7 airzones over Germany and France to deal with the beaming bombers so only a small part can attack the incoming bombers besides the fighter II with 1000km range could cover all of Germany, France, Denmark, Italy up to Rome, Hungary and half of Poland.
Then in Rusia the Airzones are too large. You have to cover airzones that reach hundreds of km behind the front to use your CAS properly. But the CAS should not fly hundreds of km behind the front. The do nothing there. They should bomb enemy divisions at the front. Even worse if u invade USA from the caribian. The hole eastcoast is one big airzone. To have complete efficiency for your planes to support the fighting in Florida they have to have the range to reach the canadian border. The also dont have to be there. The fighting is in the very south.

This is due to serval reasons I can think of, the R&D team did not use a good reference when they designing the stat of CAS, many CAS after 1940 like SBD SB2C and D4Y) have a range well over 1200 km the range of CAS III, the A-1 Skyraider first flight in 1945 even have the range of about 2000 km . Or maybe they won't use those reference because the air mechanic were too simple that dev needs to nerf the range of CAS to make them mechanically distinguish from the TAC bomber.

So long story short, the easiest way to solve your problems to increase the range of CAS.

The more complicated solution is the plane would participate in every land battle within its range radius when they are doing ground attack missions. The mission is designed to attack enemies that are in land battles anyway. If you want to micromanage it, you can choose which land battles from which state you want them to involve or not involved in. Ditch the mission efficiency for Ground Attack.

Also the jets are absolute useless at the moment. There huge speed has no benefit cause when fighters attack each other the agility make the different. Also jets are a different type of planes. Your existing elite flying corps could not use the Jetfighters amd Jetbombers. You have to create new green squadrons and delete the elite ones. Also Design companies dont benefit to jets.

The reason why agility has way more weight in air combat compare to max speed is because agility is used on two modifiers are dependent on agility which are stats multiplier and agility disadvantage, however, only one modifier is dependent on speed which is stats multiplier.

To increase the importance of speed we can add a new modifier called "speed disadvantage" which work similarly to the speed disavantage into the Combat formula. The Combat formula would change from this

to this

Or to my new mechanic is this

Your existing elite flying corps could not use the Jetfighters amd Jetbombers. You have to create new green squadrons and delete the elite ones. Also Design companies dont benefit to jets.

I think they should add a conversion mechanics into the game that let squadrons retain some of the Exp after changing their gear. It is quite common in and after wwii JU87 change to FW190 F, F-51 change to F-82(heavy fighter) change to F-86 (jet fighter).

Finally thank you for your comment, I will add these things. I mention into the wish list, hope the dev would see it and patch it in the next dlc.

 

[wagnerleung0079]

When it comes to dogfighting, it really is. The math is already beyond what most players even know or understand.

The only reason I'd want altitude in the game is to make it impossible to intercept certain kinds of bombers with old fighters.

Yeah, the math and programming are beyond what most players even know or understand. Pointing out what to change is easy but how to change is hard. I hope the concept and the math part would ease the workload for dev.

 

[wagnerleung0079]

that can easily be done by changing a little how interception work and how Defense, Attack and Agility play their roles in the formula.

If it was up to me for example i would remove agility from the Speed Upgrade and let it become a fixed stat.
its such a important stat that it removes the thinking and purpose of having a upgrade sytem.

Adding +1 mechanic to a system players already can´t understand is not gonna help us much.


Both air and Naval need just fixes and a reform in their systems to make it easier to understand. At least easy enough that most players will understand why they are losing. Otherwise they don´t understand the situation and just get fustrated. Stopping any attempt to learn it.

The easiest way to descript the altitude system is:

if you are not in your max speed altitude, your fly speed would reduce. If the enemy is fly higher than your ceiling altitude you cannot attack them.

Bombing and AA accuracy would decrease when the altitude increase. You need to develop new tech to compensate for it.

After that, we can worry about more urgent implementations like Planes actually traveling from A to B instead of teleporting.
and a way to make it easier to defend your own airspace from bombers. (Maybe a mission that allow the plane to quickly identify states being bombed and deploy there, changing to a close airfield if one is available).

I believe to solve the first problem they should develop an Area of Effect system that allow planes to do their mission in term of their range, instead of which state they are assigned to. The game cannot rely on its pre-existed state system too much for every case.

I think it is unsolvable for them, it is not because they cannot do it, they use it in the animation. I guess, just an educational guess in programming-wise, it would need too much RAM for calculating air combat with the path system to a point that it would make the game gradually unplayable.

The image from the pre-alpha dev blog

 

[sterrius]

The easiest way to descript the altitude system is:

if you are not in your max speed altitude, your fly speed would reduce. If the enemy is fly higher than your ceiling altitude you cannot attack them.

Bombing and AA accuracy would decrease when the altitude increase. You need to develop new tech to compensate for it.


I believe to solve the first problem they should develop an Area of Effect system that allow planes to do their mission in term of their range, instead of which state they are assigned to. The game cannot rely on its pre-existed state system too much for every case.

I think it is unsolvable for them, it is not because they cannot do it, they use it in the animation. I guess, just an educational guess in programming-wise, it would need too much RAM for calculating air combat with the path system to a point that it would make the game gradually unplayable.

The image from the pre-alpha dev blog

1-> There are multiple ways to emulate altitute and a plane not having a chance by messing with the stats we already have. No need to add a whole new system most will never understand.



2-> You don´t need to have a perfect system.
i can think a few ways of making a abstract system that while far from perfect it would be easy to understand and give us something. THis is actually something the hoi4 players want since 1.0.

I will put one idea below. A very simple one that use the current system.


Lets say i will go with 200 Fighters from London to North France trough the channel. There is a enemy squadron of 200 in the channel and 200 in north of france.
The game will make a order of the provinces the plane used.
London > Channel > North France.

On London and in the Channel the Squadron will have a "ghost copy" to represent it passing through those provinces.

When it reach the time to calculate combat (3 times/day). The game will calculate battles on order.

London -> No detection, no combat -> 0 dmg.
Channel -> Enemy on air superiority detect them. They defend themselves, 10 planes lost and 5 planes damaged . THat damage is "Saved" and passed to the real squadron in north france.
North france -> 190 planes, 5 of them damaged. Will face 200 german planes. Damage is calculated.
They go back to base, repair, replenish and, repeat in 8 hours.

the game don´t even need to calculate all of this in 1 hour. It can make that calculation once each hour. As long its below 8 it will not break the current system. (but i find it hard to impossible to cross 8 states in this game).

I see very little impacts on performance (it will have a slight increase % on total plane squadrons on the game, but thats it) and the game basically just improve the systems already in place. Something far more easy than trying to re-create the system from scratch.

Its perfect? far from it. Its a crude abstraction.
But it does emulate a squadron being intercepted.


PS: I know questions like. "What if UK also sends 200 fighters to the channel? " will happen, but im just giving a example.

 

[Secret Master]

Why not write the code such that this mechanic was simply based on the base stats of the planes?

That might work.

I suppose you could just put a hard block in as well. Plane X at tier Y cannot ever attack Bomber A at tier B or higher.

 

[wagnerleung0079]

1-> There are multiple ways to emulate altitute and a plane not having a chance by messing with the stats we already have. No need to add a whole new system most will never understand.



2-> You don´t need to have a perfect system.
i can think a few ways of making a abstract system that while far from perfect it would be easy to understand and give us something. THis is actually something the hoi4 players want since 1.0.

I will put one idea below. A very simple one that use the current system.


Lets say i will go with 200 Fighters from London to North France trough the channel. There is a enemy squadron of 200 in the channel and 200 in north of france.
The game will make a order of the provinces the plane used.
London > Channel > North France.

On London and in the Channel the Squadron will have a "ghost copy" to represent it passing through those provinces.

When it reach the time to calculate combat (3 times/day). The game will calculate battles on order.

London -> No detection, no combat -> 0 dmg.
Channel -> Enemy on air superiority detect them. They defend themselves, 10 planes lost and 5 planes damaged . THat damage is "Saved" and passed to the real squadron in north france.
North france -> 190 planes, 5 of them damaged. Will face 200 german planes. Damage is calculated.
They go back to base, repair, replenish and, repeat in 8 hours.

the game don´t even need to calculate all of this in 1 hour. It can make that calculation once each hour. As long its below 8 it will not break the current system. (but i find it hard to impossible to cross 8 states in this game).

I see very little impacts on performance (it will have a slight increase % on total plane squadrons on the game, but thats it) and the game basically just improve the systems already in place. Something far more easy than trying to re-create the system from scratch.

Its perfect? far from it. Its a crude abstraction.
But it does emulate a squadron being intercepted.


PS: I know questions like. "What if UK also sends 200 fighters to the channel? " will happen, but im just giving a example.

Very interesting example. If each squadron would fly through k( let k for any positive integer from 0-7 ), each squadron would take k+1 times more data to store the air combat data.You at least double the action squadron in the sky at any time. When the numbers add together in the mid of WWII, it seems that this won't be as little impact as it seems.
Btw if I turn on and turn off the STR CAS and TAC every just before and after the count time(8 hours interval), is my bomber not getting intercept?

 

[sterrius]

If each squadron would fly through k( let k for any positive integer from 0-7 ), each squadron would take k+1 times more data to store the air combat data.You at least double the action squadron in the sky at any time. When the numbers add together in the mid of WWII, it seems that this won't be as little impact as it seems.
Btw if I turn on and turn off the STR CAS and TAC every just before and after the count time(8 hours interval), is my bomber not getting intercept?

In theory you're right.
But in reality some issues never really arise. (Unless you want to break the game on purpose ^^).

this is the range of a F2 just for visualization.

1-> if there is no enemy on the state the plane is crossing there is no Calculation for detection, etc. (A enemy is there? NO). Its a simple yes/no calculation.
Its not much different from the ghost division mechanic already working in the game .

2-> If you use fighters you still want to avoid having multiple battles -> Mostly because you stack up damage if you fight multiple times in the same mission window.
Better to just have a airfield in the region you want to patrol or use a neighbor state for it. So you will not have Fighters from germany going to Westernfrance unless he have a total air advantage.

3-> This is really a mechanic for H. Fighters , TACs and S. Bombers to make them more realistic, but those planes are not only more expensive but used on more limited numbers and in fewer wings. (No point having Wings of 10 S. Bombers ,everyone knows they do no dmg if you don´t stack them).

4-> The game on 1.0-1.3 had a very silly MP Strategy of using very small wings. (Below 50). So you would have hundreds if not thousands of squads running around.
It could lag the game on the later dates but also shows the game can handle a good % increase of squads as long its not too crazy. (And im not even doubling the total amount of wings in the game as most countrys don´t even use the long range planes).

5-> Outside of Europe situations like in the picture become more and more rare. Or even impossible.
For example, you will not see this happening in the pacific with those gigantic areas.
China have only 4 air regions
USSR states are bigger.
You get the picture.

6-> About your last question. Once your plane goes off you are locked to that 8 hour mission result even if you cancel it. (It will operate as normal). Closing this exploit ^^.

 

[wagnerleung0079]

In theory you're right.
But in reality some issues never really arise. (Unless you want to break the game on purpose ^^).

this is the range of a F2 just for visualization.

1-> if there is no enemy on the state the plane is crossing there is no Calculation for detection, etc. (A enemy is there? NO). Its a simple yes/no calculation.
Its not much different from the ghost division mechanic already working in the game .

2-> If you use fighters you still want to avoid having multiple battles -> Mostly because you stack up damage if you fight multiple times in the same mission window.
Better to just have a airfield in the region you want to patrol or use a neighbor state for it. So you will not have Fighters from germany going to Westernfrance unless he have a total air advantage.

3-> This is really a mechanic for H. Fighters , TACs and S. Bombers to make them more realistic, but those planes are not only more expensive but used on more limited numbers and in fewer wings. (No point having Wings of 10 S. Bombers ,everyone knows they do no dmg if you don´t stack them).

4-> The game on 1.0-1.3 had a very silly MP Strategy of using very small wings. (Below 50). So you would have hundreds if not thousands of squads running around.
It could lag the game on the later dates but also shows the game can handle a good % increase of squads as long its not too crazy. (And im not even doubling the total amount of wings in the game as most countrys don´t even use the long range planes).

5-> Outside of Europe situations like in the picture become more and more rare. Or even impossible.
For example, you will not see this happening in the pacific with those gigantic areas.
China have only 4 air regions
USSR states are bigger.
You get the picture.

6-> About your last question. Once your plane goes off you are locked to that 8 hour mission result even if you cancel it. (It will operate as normal). Closing this exploit ^^.

Although this system might already much more complicated and need to set up more variable than my altitude system, screw it, is it possible to make it compatible with the range radius Area of Effect system? (Plane could project their effect though out its operation range radius but not just selected Strategic region. For Strategic region base missions like Air superiority Naval strike mission and Strategic bombing mission, their range penalty would be calculated in the same way as it is, but there will be no range penalty for province base missions like CAS and Port Strike. (You can choose which strategic region they need not to perform CAS and Port Strike)

 

[Hoi Neuling]

We will get an overwork in the Airforce and the Army.

First in Research & Development: It will be similar to the Navy where you can research Hulls and seperate Parts (like Guns, Torpedos etc.) as well as buildup with parts you need it. With the MtG DLC the Devs have experiance and can reduce the Time for Changes about 40 % to 50 %.

Second is the Geoscape with the fighting abilitys: There will come a second overwork (the first overwork we got in DoD until MtG for Airforce and for the Army to LaR). The Devs too don´t like it and make a second Rework. It have to be easy to manage (for normal Gamers which are over 90 %), but with more Player Decisions. The risk is to unbalance that, if it get to complex like in Hoi 2 and 3 it will be a Shopkeeper again because normal Gamers can´t play it (only the 10 % Experts).

Third and Main-Important: The Upgrade- and Rework-Managament for both in the Factory-Line. Here is the biggest Rework to do and no one of us knows how they will manage that. Atm we can upgrade the normal Versions of a Plane or Tank to a better Version of the existing one or an Underversion (like Tank-Destroyer or Carrier-Versions).

That will be very interesting to see the Changes of all that in the first Dev Dirays and Live-Vids on Twitch.tv. The DLC´s and Patches before managed the ballance of the Game for normal Gamers (90 %) and the Experts (10 %) very good.

 

[Eisscrat]

@Hoi Neuling

What the fuck are you talking about?

"There will be an overwork!"

There is no announcement that certain concepts will be overworked in the forseeable future. And even IF it get overworked. MtG crippled the Navysystem more then it it was before that. Now in that "improved" and "overworked" Navysystem you can sink all enemys with only submarines. Carriers in the pacific only fly one mission only light cruisers work also very well etc. pp.

Also logistic should be overworked somewhere in the future.
Even there nothing indicates an improvement in this part.

The occupationsystem get "improved" by paradox. Now u have hundreds of thousand dead soldiers by resistance fighters and thousands of destroyed light tanks. Also without LR u even cant build the cheap ACs and have to build first medium SPGAA. Now the nerfed them to the ground and u have to build light tanks to get a worse suppression for your garrisons then ACs. Even after 3 updates you are not able to send outdated tanks to garrisionsduty cause garrisons take the newest out of the storage every time even you forbid it.

After this "improvements" i dont trust Paradox one bit.
So dont talk about any overworks that turn everything to the good cause u have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[safe-keeper]

We will get an overwork in the Airforce and the Army.

First in Research & Development: It will be similar to the Navy where you can research Hulls and seperate Parts (like Guns, Torpedos etc.) as well as buildup with parts you need it. With the MtG DLC the Devs have experiance and can reduce the Time for Changes about 40 % to 50 %.

Second is the Geoscape with the fighting abilitys: There will come a second overwork (the first overwork we got in DoD until MtG for Airforce and for the Army to LaR). The Devs too don´t like it and make a second Rework. It have to be easy to manage (for normal Gamers which are over 90 %), but with more Player Decisions. The risk is to unbalance that, if it get to complex like in Hoi 2 and 3 it will be a Shopkeeper again because normal Gamers can´t play it (only the 10 % Experts).

Third and Main-Important: The Upgrade- and Rework-Managament for both in the Factory-Line. Here is the biggest Rework to do and no one of us knows how they will manage that. Atm we can upgrade the normal Versions of a Plane or Tank to a better Version of the existing one or an Underversion (like Tank-Destroyer or Carrier-Versions).

That will be very interesting to see the Changes of all that in the first Dev Dirays and Live-Vids on Twitch.tv. The DLC´s and Patches before managed the ballance of the Game for normal Gamers (90 %) and the Experts (10 %) very good.

You know that there are words like "I think" and "I'm pretty sure" for when you don't in fact know something for sure, right?

 

[wagnerleung0079]

So here is the first half of the modified wish list after listening to everyone's reflection. They are mostly more urgent issues about air combat that need to fix rather than new mechanics wished to add to the game.

1. Planes should be flying but not teleporting
The current HOI4 flight system will just teleport planes to the mission area to do their missions until all the planes were shot down or player cancel the mission and teleport back to base.

Spoiler: range finding

Spoiler: flying mimicing

If HOI4 can do this animation to convince player planes are actually flying that means the game has a speed and distance mechanic and it also has a mechanic to calculate how much area of the strategic region is covered by the range of an air squadron. The dev very probably has the tool to make a mechanic allow the game to put out an array or list of provinces or strategic regions an air squadron would fly over from what time to what time. Using this mechanic to allow planes to teleport orderly from strategic region to strategic regions or using the "ghost mechanic" that @sterrius mentioned to mimic flying. To further saving RAM, the combat data of a flying squadron can be generated or loaded after it is detected by the enemy.





2. Fix the agility to save Jets
Players also identified that the jets need a buff. Their huge speed has no benefit because when air combat agility is the dominant factor of dealing damage. That may due to the fact that in the agility is used on two modifiers are dependent on agility which is stats multiplier and agility disadvantage, however, only one modifier is dependent on speed which is stats multiplier. Also, jets are different types of planes. The existing elite flying corps could not use the Jetfighters and Jetbombers. You have to create new green squadrons and delete the elite ones. Also, Design companies don't benefit from jets.

To increase the importance of speed we can add a new modifier called "speed disadvantage" which works similarly to the speed disadvantage into the Combat formula. The Combat formula would change from this

To this

Or even remove the stats multiplier to reduce redundancy

Furthermore, the game should introduce a conversion mechanics into the game to allow squadrons to change the plane they fly and retain some of the Exp after changing their gear. It is quite common in and after WWII JU87 change to FW190 F, F-51 change to F-82(heavy fighter) change to F-86 (jet fighter).

3. Fix the front line CAS.
Currently, planes need to have ranges that covered the whole strategic region to get no range penalty to ground attack enemies at the front line only when battles occurred. This problem becomes more serious in those big strategic regions in Russia and the USA.

To fix this problem, the next DLC could introduce a range radius Area of Effect system. Planes could project their effect though out their operation range but not just selected Strategic region. For Strategic region base missions like Air superiority, Naval strike and Strategic bombing, their range penalty would be calculated in the same way as it was, but there will be no range penalty for province base missions like CAS and Port Strike. (You can choose which strategic region they need not perform CAS and Port Strike.)

4. Smoothen the production system
Although it is not totally related to air combat mechanics, it still very annoying to deal with the organization system on the supplier side. Why do player need to start up a new production line manually after I start training a new unit or building a new carrier, while the game knows exactly what and how many we need. The next DLC should include an auto production line system, when I start training a unit or building a new ship the game would start up a production line for the needing equipment that are not currently producing. This system should be more complicated than the previous sentence that it can cover all the scenario player wants and what will happen in the game.

The things I can think of is

1. players can lock what equipment to produce with how many factories.
2. All but one factory would pull off from the auto production line after all demand is fulfilled. The last factory would pull off from the auto production line after the production line produces 1000 stockpile (players could change it themselves by either mod or in-game mechanics)
3. If a new production line enter or an old line is pulled off from the auto slot, the factories in the auto slot( total factory minus the amount of factory use in the lock production slot) will redistribute among the auto production lines according to the total IC cost of each production line in the auto slot.
4. Of course, players can turn off the auto production line system.

 

[Hoi Neuling]

Then you don´t read and hear correctly what the Devs are planing. That´s all what I have to say about it.