Can we give Battle Plans operational names like Overlord and Barbarossa?

[sandman2575]

As thread title says -- is it possible to label your different plans with operational names? Because that would be awesome. (It implies, maybe, there could be a list or menu that would give you a run-down of currently planned operations, which I'd also love.)

 

[Mac Lazer]

I don't think so, but I could be wrong. I do know that you can rename armies, though, so maybe you could call your army Operation Barbarossa or something? Naming battleplans is a system I would really like to see, if it isn't already in, that is.

 

[Sleight of Hand]

As thread title says -- is it possible to label your different plans with operational names? Because that would be awesome. (It implies, maybe, there could be a list or menu that would give you a run-down of currently planned operations, which I'd also love.)

OH MY GOD WHY ISN'T THIS ALREADY IN THE GAME!?!?!?!!?

 

[Cheesecakeczar]

It would be a fun bit of flavor.

 

[potski]

It would be a nice feature. But unfortunately not. The arrows and fronts are labeled with the name of the Army and number of divisions.

 

[Anichent]

It should be in for sure
If not launch maybe in an update or expansion.

As I was making my own plans for what I will do when I get the game I instinctively started giving them names

 

[sandman2575]

I *really* hope this is a feature that is in the game or that could be added. It's a small thing, but it would add a lot of flavor.

One of the things that most excites me about Battle Plans is that, for the first time, it will allow us to organize our gameplay around operations -- this is my hope, anyway. In all past HOI games, I always disliked how there was no ebb and flow to the war -- no 'pauses' really until you completely conquered an enemy. You could basically just shuffle your units around willy nilly all the time. There was no real sense of making a big operational push in a specific area, with specific objectives that either you met or failed to meet, thus bringing an end to the active operational phase.

I *really* hope the Battle Planner will allow us to have the 'tempo' of the war revolve around specific operations -- that operations will be the basic building-block of how we prosecute the war, in a sense.

(I guess this needs to be said: I'm not suggesting this is how HOI *has* to be played -- if players don't want to use the Battle planner and move all their units by hand -- that's fine by me.)

 

[sandman2575]

It would be a nice feature. But unfortunately not. The arrows and fronts are labeled with the name of the Army and number of divisions.

Right -- good point, and that's the right way to do it -- I wouldn't want the arrows and fronts to say anything different (certainly not the name of the operation!). So I guess the question is: might it be possible to somehow 'select' all the armies that have planned attacks (say, drag click a box over them) and then give that whole multi-attack 'snapshot' an operational name? What an amazing feature that would be.

 

[sandman2575]

It would be a fun bit of flavor.

I think it has the potential to be even more than that, though. It could be a very useful organizational feature. Imagine if on one of the right-hand-side of the screen collapse-able menus, like we have in EU4 and CKII, was a list of all the operations you currently have planned? Wouldn't that be helpful (and cool)? It might be a quick way too to quickly select all the armies currently involved in an operation (say you wanted to call it to a halt).

I just think this could be a great and fun way to keep all those arrows and vectors and fronts organized, since things will probably start to get pretty cluttered on that map, esp. if you play as a major power....

 

[gekkoguy82]

Interesting ideas! I wonder if you could just re-name the fronts that show up on the upper right side of the screen using your custom Operation name? I had already been wondering about re-naming those as say, army groups, thus creating a sort of ad hoc order of battle since there isn't one present currently. Naming the fronts as operations could be an alternative to my idea, but essentially uses the same line of thinking. Like where your head's at, sandman

 

[potski]

You can rename the theaters. So, yes, this is the obvious way to handle a big operation. Instead of having "France Theater" create a new theater as "Operation Overlord", and include the armies that will be taking part.

The theaters are very flexible to provide another level of organisation if you want. You can also use some colour scheme that conveys something to you, or use the different type of army icon to show which armies have amphibious plans etc.

 

[sandman2575]

Just giving a little more thought to how this could be made to work (...since this is way more interesting at the moment than my actual work )

What if you could do the following: to create an operation, first ctrl-leftclick on all the 'arrows' you want included under the operational heading (because there would have to be a way of selecting the armies different from just how you ordinarily select units on the map); once you've selected 2 or more armies, you get a prompt to give the operation a name -- type it in. Now, the Operation gets listed in a collapse-able menu. When you go to the menu and select the Operation, all the *arrows* for the armies involved 'glow / pulse' in that way provinces do in EUIV and CKII -- and maybe there's some sort of map overlay that shows up with the name of the operation.

Just some ideas -- but man would I love to see this kind of feature!

 

[Sparrow]

What's wrong with Blue Spoon?

 

[Nelfe]

You can rename division, army, theater, but not the battleplan. I hope one day we will be able to draw a battle plan, name it and save it to use it later.

 

[sandman2575]

You can rename the theaters. So, yes, this is the obvious way to handle a big operation. Instead of having "France Theater" create a new theater as "Operation Overlord", and include the armies that will be taking part.

The theaters are very flexible to provide another level of organisation if you want. You can also use some colour scheme that conveys something to you, or use the different type of army icon to show which armies have amphibious plans etc.

This is a great work-around and something I'll probably now use -- although ultimately I'd love to see something a little more robust along the lines I described in my last post.

 

[Pandoricus]

If it could also display on map when zoomed out if the battle plan is activated would be nice.

 

[xtfoster]

You can rename division, army, theater, but not the battleplan. I hope one day we will be able to draw a battle plan, name it and save it to use it later.

Battle plans are dynamic. They constantly change as units are added, the front moves, etc. It isn't like the purely cosmetic one in HOI3 where you just paint the map with your intentions, it actually changes as the situation changes