Gearing Limits (and bonuses)

[unmerged(10646)]

I'm hoping that HOI2 will introduce some kind of gearing limit (or possibly a gearing coefficient) for various types of weaponry.

IIRC, during WW2, the US produced 120+ CVs, 20+ BBs, hundreds of cruisers, thousands of destroyers, and tens of thousands of merchant vessels. However, this immense naval production couldn't possibly have translated into tanks and halftracks and even more absurd numbers of aircraft than were already being produced. Similarly, the USSR couldn't possibly have translated their huge tank production into an utterly dominant navy, no matter how much they might have wished (hypothetically) to do so.

In HOI, I couldn't hope to produce a realistic US Navy while still maintaining a semi-capable ground force due to all production being considered the same. And as the USSR, I could produce an unrealistic number of capital ships (given the number of slips available) if I chose to give up some ground capability.

One solution, I believe, is to give a naval-production bonus for controlling certain provinces (Norfolk, Philadelphia, Cornwall, Marseille). Navies would be generally a very expensive, time-consuming thing to build unless you owned enough naval production capacity. This would have the simultaneous benefit of putting germany and the USSR at a distinct naval disadvantage unless they could capture the UK or some other strategic ports, regardless of how much IC they held via general conquest.

Tim

 

[Soapy Frog]

Yep some kind of gearing limits would be a huge improvement to HoI!

 

[unmerged(12895)]

I agree that gearing would be a useful thing. Perhaps dividing production up into a few basic sectors: Div'n I: production of means and tools and research (higher value here increases general gearing rate, and required for industrial development); Div'n IIa/b: consumer production; Div'n III: military production broken down into land, air and naval sectors.

This might sound a bit poxy, but the actual gearing rates can be partially predetermined (US: higher naval), and actually out of direct control of the player. Ie: if your build queue includes massive naval production, your economy automatically and over time gears towards naval production. The indicators can be just that: indicators of your economies predisposition for various types of production. A democracy like the USA with a large Div'n I production can more readily convert to "war" than one like, say New Zealand.

New "features" are good, but gearing is a reflection of player actions, not an item directly under player control.

 

[Cpack]

Sure, this brings us to the factory discussion:

For example:
For every harbour you have, you can build 2 capitalships (CV, BB, CA) and 10 smaller ones (DD, TP, SS) at the same time.

So you are limited by harbours or coastal provinces.
This could solve the ship production problem


The problem in HOI is that you can switch your total production into one type navy, airforce, army.
But in real life, you can't just switch from Battleshipproduction in harbours to aircrafts.

So one other solution could be to give parameters of production at the beginning.
For example:
Navy: 30%
Airforce: 20%
Army: 50%

If you now want to change maybe 10% wise from Navy to Army, you have to wait, lets say 6 month to get 20% navy and now 60% army.

This was a quite simple way of tweaking production.
The other way is to give real factorys like other proposals.

 

[Killerjes]

An old idea of mine for HoI was factories for each tech.
For simplicity it might be abstracted (unlike EU2 where you build a specific factory in a province).
It calls for some kind of gearing limit - how to implement exactly I'm not sure.
However, once you invent for instance "Improved medium tank 70mm" you can only build a limited number of tanks (i.e. production time for an entire DIV is "long").
As time goes by you gearing limit allows you to retool factories that was building for instance "Basic medium tank 50mm".
So months after inventing the new tech, production time becomes "short" and you are able to build several divisions at the same time with the new tech.

Another twist to this is my idea of "Mixed Divisions" - no army fielded entire divisions of just one tank type.
Light tanks and armoured cars were used for scouting, supporting infantry used trucks or halftracks.
Therefore you would still well into the war build light tanks and maybe older models, because they are cheaper to build and the production facilities are there.
That means that your divisions can be quite different concerning equipment, vehicles and tanks.
This could all be abstracted and calcualted by the computer, or maybe implemented by having lots of different types of for instance armoured divisons?

What do you think?

 

[Chaplain]

I am very strongly in favor of Wif-style "gearing limits" of some kind. Keep it simple, but they will add immeasurably to the fun decision-making processes, especially in the 36 scenario.

 

[Belissarius]

Gearing limits would be great but i'd like to see the ability to change them in the game. I'd like to be able to invest in factories to improve my tank production or naval yards to increase my ship building. Static gearing limits limit the player too greatly. Granted the change should be realistic. realisticly i dont see USSR being able to invest in ship yards fast enough to out produce the US in ships during the current time period, but i do see them being able to significantly increase their own ship production.

 

[Reichsmarshall]

I am very strongly in favor of Wif-style "gearing limits" of some kind. Keep it simple, but they will add immeasurably to the fun decision-making processes, especially in the 36 scenario.

WiF has good gearing limit rules, but it's difficult to translate that into an equivalent for Real-Time. If HOI2 were to be turn-based instead.... well then....