Auto-management of supplies, etc.?

[SDAirborne173]

Will there be some aspects of auto-management in the game? Knowing how many factories ought to produce supplies, small arms, etc. seems extremely pedantic and resource consuming. Are there settings which allow you to automatically assign factories contingent upon what your troops/nation needs?

 

[BigBobBear]

i honestly hope there isnt, the production side of things is pretty much 1/4th of the game and if they made it so it was automatic it would ruin a major part of the experience

 

[AaGuns]

Absolutely not. Like BobBear said, it's a big chunk of the game and I don't even think there will, or should, be an option for this. Deciding what you're going to produce, on what scale, etc. is so important in a game like this, to make it automated would be crazy. Of course you can automate to a certain extent the amount of factories working on a particular project. Just set it to the max and it gets priority for any new factories that come online or get converted from civilian.

 

[LordOfWar16]

Paradox didnt want and doesnt have any automization in the game. HoI III basicyl played itself when you enabled the AI for every aspect and paradox was anything but happy with it. Even if you use the Battleplan AI it wont do everything on its own and only execute your orders and you still can have manual input. It wont be like in HoI III where it basicly locks out the player entirely untill he disables it again.

That said it really isnt that hard to keep track what your country needs. In the logistics screen it explicitly tells you of what you have a surplus and/or deficit, so you can adjust production lines quiet easiely accordingly. If you dont want to assign every single new factory manually you can simply assign more factories than you have (up to 15) to a production line and the factories will automaticly fill up the production line to that point.

 

[SDAirborne173]

But won't surplus and deficits be changing constantly? I don't want to have to keep pausing the game just to adjust my industrial output every other day.

 

[Voffvoffhunden]

There's no automation on the production side, but thankfully the production interface is both informative and accessible, and really provides you with all the information you need.

You won't need a binder on your desk to figure out how many anti-air units you're missing and how many factories should produce them, the game lets you see all that.
And it's quite fun to manage factories in HoI4!

It's a bummer we have to include all that terrible unit movement stuff!
(Just kidding, that's loads of fun too.)

 

[Voffvoffhunden]

But won't surplus and deficits be changing constantly?

There are a number of elements that mean you won't have to adjust it constantly. One is that you stockpile leftover material, so that you could potentially have a huge pile of recently outdated infantry equipment lying around to reinforce your troops while your factories are busy churning out improved equipment to gradually upgrade your divisions.

The interface itself will also tell you if you "need to" be producing more of something. Of course with war being what it is, you will sometimes have to make some hard choices, such as saying "actually, I can't afford the production capacity needed to upgrade my tanks, because my air wings need it a lot more right now."

It turns production into much more of an interesting strategic game, while making the means of interfacing with production simple.

 

[Bridger15]

Will there be some aspects of auto-management in the game? Knowing how many factories ought to produce supplies, small arms, etc. seems extremely pedantic and resource consuming. Are there settings which allow you to automatically assign factories contingent upon what your troops/nation needs?

I assume you are concerned due to the high level of tedious micro-management in HOI3 regarding these items. HOI4's production system is much more intuitive and easy to quickly make changes to. At the same time it's much deeper than HOI3. Automating it would take away a large chunk of your control over the game.

 

[SDAirborne173]

There are a number of elements that mean you won't have to adjust it constantly. One is that you stockpile leftover material, so that you could potentially have a huge pile of recently outdated infantry equipment lying around to reinforce your troops while your factories are busy churning out improved equipment to gradually upgrade your divisions.

The interface itself will also tell you if you "need to" be producing more of something. Of course with war being what it is, you will sometimes have to make some hard choices, such as saying "actually, I can't afford the production capacity needed to upgrade my tanks, because my air wings need it a lot more right now."

It turns production into much more of an interesting strategic game, while making the means of interfacing with production simple.

So is the production system more equitable to Victoria 1 in that regard?

 

[Voffvoffhunden]

So is the production system more equitable to Victoria 1 in that regard?

Don't think so (it's a very long time since I played Vicky 1), it's more a matter of factories being almost like resources you can assign and unassign to material production lines, rather than going in and specifying what each individual factory should be producing at any given time. It's therefore easy to say "three fewer factories should produce infantry equipment, three more factories should produce tanks."

You set up a production line for one specific kind of item, then assign up to fifteen factories to them. Over time they will become more efficient at producing the item, and therefore have a higher output as they streamline production at those factories. You can have as many production lines as you want, but if there are no factories assigned, they will not produce anything or consume any resources, just wait for you to assign factories.

You can unassign any number of factories at any time, and assign them to a different production line producing a different (or the same) type of thing. I recommend looking up some screenshots or some of the WWW videos to see it in action. Far easier to get a handle on when you see it, as it's a lot more visually intuitive than production in previous HoI games.

 

[Sur]

As the other have said its a big part of the game and for me I'm hopping it will really keep me busy in some parts of hoi3 I had to speed 5 until research finished.

I think it will also be an important part for any player to practise looking after production and gauging what they need and I wouldn't really trust the AI either.