Hi all, circumstances recently forced me to spent 16 days doing practically nothing but play HoI. (honest!) This was an excellent opportunity for me to gather my thoughts on things I'd like to see in the sequel.
I know some of these have been mentioned before, but I figure that the more people who sound off about a particular issue, the more attention it's likely to recieve. It's the squeaky wheel, gets the grease
I also realise that some of these will probably simply not apply to HoI 2 because of differences in the interface.
1. Transfer buttons - I find that transferring divs between armies in a province is a big hassle. If you have 3 armies in Paris, and want to move a certain div. from one to another, your only options are to merge all 3, then split them again, rename them, re appoint their leaders etc. If you also have an air unit there, then you don't have that option.
The only other ways are to march the receiving army to an adjacent province, along with the div it is receiving and merge them, or redeploy the moving div and wait a week to send it where it's going.
I know I've mentioned this in 1-2 previous posts, and was surprised no one sounded off in agreement. Is there some transfer method I don't know about that this isn't an issue for other people?
2.Easily sortable leaders - Finding particular leaders can be a real pain in HoI. If your looking for that specific Lt. general who has commando AND offensive doctrine, it can take awhile to find him.
I'd like options to see only leaders who have a certain rank and certain traits. You could checkmark the traits and rank you were seeking, and the list would update to include only leaders who matched the criteria you selected.
3.Allied transports - I think it's critical that allies should be able to move eachothers units on transport ships. As it stands now the only way for Rommels tanks to get to Libya is either by loaning them to Italy (which isn't likely to send them to Africa) or capturing Gibralter and sending German ships to the Med.
4.Military Control - There should be some option to limit your military control of allied units and return control when your done.
Perhaps you could select which units you wanted control over (certain Italian transports so as to send Rommel to Libya ) and then you could return those units to their owners control when you chose. That way you don't have to run a whole bunch of extra units for the rest of the war, just because you needed to do a certain specific thing in 1940. It's too much responsibility!
5.Paratroops boarding Transport planes - I noticed something EXCEEDINGLY annoying in my recent games. When you have more than 1 transport plane and more than 1 paratroop in the same province.
Suppose you kick off an invasion with a paradrop behind enemy lines. One paratroop boards his transport and is dropped on his target. The transport returns to base. Your other paratroop then boards for his mission and he always boards the transport with ZERO org!
I realise that there are some fairly simple solutions to this problem (like keeping different para-transport combo's in seperate provinces) but there are rare instances when this isn't an option. Also, it just makes sense that the paratroop would board a plane that was good to go.
BTW, I'm playing CORE, so I'm definitely PAYING for the use of paratroops On a related note, when troops board transport ships, you should have the option of choosing which transport fleets they board when there is more than one in the zone.
6.Province flagging - This is probably a pretty long shot, but I'd love to be able to flag a province for weather changes so that I would get a popup when a thunderstorm cleared up. If there is a juicy enemy fleet next to my stack of naval bombers, it can be tough to sit there and watch that one sea zone (with so much else to do) waiting for rain to lift so I can attack. Likewise with TAC bombers awaiting a chance to attack land units etc.
Even more useful would be flagging a province for enemy activity. If SOV moves some div's out of moscow I could get a popup and so decide if it's ripe to attack now. Or if SOV adds Div's, I could check to see if I need to reinforce fast to resist a counter offensive.
There could be 2 types of warning. If units are added to a province (an enemy fleet just appeared next to my NAV bombers, attack before they leave!) This way the Bismarck couldn't run the English channel and not be noticed by the British player because he's too busy in the far east. You could also get a different popup if enemy presence in a specific province decreases.
These popups should be as configurable as all the others so as to avoid "popup hell" And remember you pop up revilers ( ) you wont get any of these pop ups unless you consider a province or sea zone important enough to flag in the first place.
I know some of these have been mentioned before, but I figure that the more people who sound off about a particular issue, the more attention it's likely to recieve. It's the squeaky wheel, gets the grease
I also realise that some of these will probably simply not apply to HoI 2 because of differences in the interface.
1. Transfer buttons - I find that transferring divs between armies in a province is a big hassle. If you have 3 armies in Paris, and want to move a certain div. from one to another, your only options are to merge all 3, then split them again, rename them, re appoint their leaders etc.
If you also have an air unit there, then you don't have that option. The only other ways are to march the receiving army to an adjacent province, along with the div it is receiving and merge them, or redeploy the moving div and wait a week to send it where it's going.
I know I've mentioned this in 1-2 previous posts, and was surprised no one sounded off in agreement. Is there some transfer method I don't know about that this isn't an issue for other people?
2.Easily sortable leaders - Finding particular leaders can be a real pain in HoI. If your looking for that specific Lt. general who has commando AND offensive doctrine, it can take awhile to find him.
I'd like options to see only leaders who have a certain rank and certain traits. You could checkmark the traits and rank you were seeking, and the list would update to include only leaders who matched the criteria you selected.
3.Allied transports - I think it's critical that allies should be able to move eachothers units on transport ships. As it stands now the only way for Rommels tanks to get to Libya is either by loaning them to Italy (which isn't likely to send them to Africa) or capturing Gibralter and sending German ships to the Med.
4.Military Control - There should be some option to limit your military control of allied units and return control when your done.
Perhaps you could select which units you wanted control over (certain Italian transports so as to send Rommel to Libya
) and then you could return those units to their owners control when you chose. That way you don't have to run a whole bunch of extra units for the rest of the war, just because you needed to do a certain specific thing in 1940. It's too much responsibility! 5.Paratroops boarding Transport planes - I noticed something EXCEEDINGLY annoying in my recent games. When you have more than 1 transport plane and more than 1 paratroop in the same province.
Suppose you kick off an invasion with a paradrop behind enemy lines. One paratroop boards his transport and is dropped on his target. The transport returns to base. Your other paratroop then boards for his mission and he always boards the transport with ZERO org!
I realise that there are some fairly simple solutions to this problem (like keeping different para-transport combo's in seperate provinces) but there are rare instances when this isn't an option. Also, it just makes sense that the paratroop would board a plane that was good to go.
BTW, I'm playing CORE, so I'm definitely PAYING for the use of paratroops
On a related note, when troops board transport ships, you should have the option of choosing which transport fleets they board when there is more than one in the zone.6.Province flagging - This is probably a pretty long shot, but I'd love to be able to flag a province for weather changes so that I would get a popup when a thunderstorm cleared up. If there is a juicy enemy fleet next to my stack of naval bombers, it can be tough to sit there and watch that one sea zone (with so much else to do) waiting for rain to lift so I can attack. Likewise with TAC bombers awaiting a chance to attack land units etc.
Even more useful would be flagging a province for enemy activity. If SOV moves some div's out of moscow I could get a popup and so decide if it's ripe to attack now. Or if SOV adds Div's, I could check to see if I need to reinforce fast to resist a counter offensive.
There could be 2 types of warning. If units are added to a province (an enemy fleet just appeared next to my NAV bombers, attack before they leave!) This way the Bismarck couldn't run the English channel and not be noticed by the British player because he's too busy in the far east. You could also get a different popup if enemy presence in a specific province decreases.
These popups should be as configurable as all the others so as to avoid "popup hell" And remember you pop up revilers (
) you wont get any of these pop ups unless you consider a province or sea zone important enough to flag in the first place.