Generals as advisors but not the opposite...

[Skoodge]

Well to be honest, the first time the devs announced we can create our own advisors from the field staff, sparked joy in my heart.
But, and there is but... Why it doesn't work vice versa? Why advisors can't be given field command? (Like with Himmler)
Some countries lack generals and marshals but have plenty of advisors.. Giving them the ability to get out from the office to stretch their legs could solve this problem.
Countries like South africa, Canada, The raj, heck even Italy with its abysmal number of generals available..
surely it can add more flavor to the game
What do you guys think?

 

[Herr B.]

I don't understand the problem. If your country lacks generals or field marshals, then you can create new ones by spending a few PP.

Besides that, Himmler was a disaster as a general. Even having him as lvl. 1 is to generous. He should have lvl. -3 or so.

 

[Fulmen]

On Himmler specifically: there is an event that allows you to give him field command. It's tied to the Wehrmacht vs. SS minigame PDX created.

 

[jared2122]

I don't understand the problem. If your country lacks generals or field marshals, then you can create new ones by spending a few PP.

Besides that, Himmler was a disaster as a general. Even having him as lvl. 1 is to generous. He should have lvl. -3 or so.

Some of us like unique visual flavor for the countries we play, instead of seeing 18 copies of these guys:

It's similarly satisfying to see a model of a Tiger tank when appropriate, rather than Generic Heavy Tank #1. Also, it's super lame that Italy in particular has to pay to create more generals just to cover its starting fronts. Alfredo Guzzoni is an example of an advisor who should be available as a field commander as well, given that he commanded at least two different field armies for Italy.

 

[Dryhad]

There's a couple of issues with this.

First of all, think about how promoting a general to the high command works currently. You choose an advisor trait based on whatever general traits that general might have earned, and how good they are depends on the general's level. That's two vectors, and both of them lose definition in the process (because only one general trait gets carried over, and a 10+ point level scale is reduced to three possible grades). Already you can see that reversing the process isn't feasible because there is less information encoded on the advisor side than on the general side, and that isn't even getting into the stats that generals all have that are not represented in advisor form at all. At the very least there would need to be some standard settled on to fill in these gaps, and it would need to be balanced against the rest of the game, and there would be so many different possible ways to do it that we may still be waiting on NSB to release had Paradox committed to adding such a system.

Another issue that a lot of players don't seem to pick up on is that advisor portraits aren't general portraits. With the release of NSB, Paradox went through (presumably in some automated fashion) and added advisor equivalents for every portrait in the game - even those which are never used as generals in vanilla. This can be done because shrinking and rotating a full-sized image is easy. Unshrinking an advisor portrait (and never mind the rotation and the little bit of paper that partially covers it) will get you a blurry blob of pixels. If you're imagining that every advisor in your high command could be turned into a full general with their same unique portrait, think again.

 

[Herr B.]

Some of us like unique visual flavor for the countries we play, instead of seeing 18 copies of these guys:

Well, then the solution is easy: Make more generic portraits. Making enough portraits for every nation in the game is a ton of wasted time and money.

It's similarly satisfying to see a model of a Tiger tank when appropriate, rather than Generic Heavy Tank #1.

Well, for me things like that are not relevant at all. I don't get why people care about graphics.

 

[Call Me Vandal]

I don't understand the problem. If your country lacks generals or field marshals, then you can create new ones by spending a few PP.

Well op obviously didn't suggest this just so that minor countries could have more generals, that was just a positive side effect that he foresaw.

For me at least, it's the fact that the devs came up with this awesome new character system where you could assign your officers to desk jobs or field command (or both) according to your whims, but then decided that no, actually, there are officers who can only be assigned to desk jobs, and that field command would be restricted to certain individuals for no real reason. It's like, they've already done all the hard work, why not just make the advisors available as generals, just like generals are available as advisors?

There's a couple of issues with this.

Not really. They'd just have to make the advisors into proper generals, just like everyone else. Yes, they'd have to be given stats; yes, they'd have to be given full-res portraits. That's fine. This doesn't have to be done by tomorrow or anything.

 

[Dryhad]

Not really. They'd just have to make the advisors into proper generals, just like everyone else. Yes, they'd have to be given stats; yes, they'd have to be given full-res portraits. That's fine. This doesn't have to be done by tomorrow or anything.

Then why is the proposal "allow advisors to become generals" and not "just add a bunch more generals"? Because people generally don't think in the terms you're saying. They see advisor characters with advisor-sized portraits and they think all the hard work has already been done, why can't Paradox just flick the switch to turn them into generals? If you think really there should be more scripted generals why would you demand that they be these specific characters? Surely weird random additions like Josef Depre in Yugoslavia fill your requirements just fine, and Jared's to boot. Even if you ignore the fact that the OP specifically proposed an entirely new mechanic to facilitate this, this is a weird way to ask for more scripted generals.

 

[Skoodge]

I love a healthy debate!
After thinking about the issue i went digging into the game files, surprisingly there are full size portraits for advisors as well as generals (for example, richthoffen from germany which is CAS advisor).
Main issue by @Dryhad is the stat vector, it is true according to the current system that every "genius" will be level 8 general minimum but in game all of them are level 4-5. A simple conversion method can be applicated to deal with this, giving random stats according to level (lvl*3 and spread between 4 variables) and dedicated traits like "panzer leader" for armor advisors. Also another trait like "pulled from office" or "field incompetent" can be applied.
New problem arises: Many of the advisors (specially air) are not generals for Heer (field army) nor admirals, so we will get bunch of pilots commanding foot soldiers..
Maybe Air revamp in the future could solve this.

 

[Dryhad]

After thinking about the issue i went digging into the game files, surprisingly there are full size portraits for advisors as well as generals (for example, richthoffen from germany which is CAS advisor).

Unfortunately this is only true for a handful of cases, and most of them are either Air Force or civilians so runs into the other problem you mentioned. By my count there are nine such unused full-sized portraits for characters who appear as advisors, the majority of which appear to be USAAF and Luftwaffe officers (such as von Richthofen) presumably commissioned in the anticipation of an Air Force equivalent to generals and admirals which never made it into the final release. Realistically, there are only two who could be added as commanders, General He Yingqin of Nationalist China and Admiral Nishizo Tsukahara of Japan. Certainly not the kind of thing that could be applied generally to every advisor.

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

There are mods that add extra generals for some nations.

And it seems to me that this would be a good DLC feature, since artists need to get paid for the new portraits. Maybe put it into the Suggestions forum based on feedback here.

BTW I would really want the formula for converting Adviser level to General/Admiral skills and traits to be completely moddable. This is the kind of thing that can be improved by iteration and the community does a better job of that than devs with deadlines to meet.

 

[jared2122]

Well, then the solution is easy: Make more generic portraits. Making enough portraits for every nation in the game is a ton of wasted time and money.

Well, for me things like that are not relevant at all. I don't get why people care about graphics.

I realize there are an alien race of HOI IV players who just want to use counters or don't care that the same portrait is a general for 40 other countries. I likewise don't understand them at all