Hearts of Iron II Research Assistant 2.0

[Executor]

If you've ever wanted to know exactly which tech team will finish research on a particular tech the fastest, then this program will tell you. No more trying to guess whether a skill 6 team that matches 3 components will be quicker then that skill 8 team with 2 matching components, now you can know for certain.

You'll need Microsoft .NET Framework 4 installed to run the program (available for download here). If you're not sure if you have it installed yet, try downloading Research Assistant and running it, if you get an error, odds are you don't have .NET 4 installed.

Download Research Assistant (32-bit): Forum attachment (View attachment hoi2ra32.exe) or Mirror #1 (UptoBox) or Mirror #2 (RapidGator) or Mirror #3 (DepositFiles)
Download Research Assistant (64-bit): Forum attachment (View attachment hoi2ra64.exe) or Mirror #1 (UptoBox) or Mirror #2 (RapidGator) or Mirror #3 (DepositFiles)
[EXE last updated 5/18/2010]

Note that my program isn't fully complete yet and probably still has some UI bugs and other issues. There's also a few features I still want to implement but since they're not crucial I decided to release this version for the time being.

A few other notes:

• After loading a save, tech colors are as follows: red = deactivated, orange = unmet prerequisite, green = researchable, black = researched, purple = currently researching, blue = researchable and have blueprint.
• I've only tested with Arsenal of Democracy so far. Therefore, use with HoI2 at your own risk.
• It should hopefully work with mods. Just go to the Settings tab, click on the "..." button and find the mod folder, select OK, then exit and restart the program.
• Obviously, if you complete research on a tech that modifies the research_mod variable, or change a minister that modifies tech speed, or deploy a new rocket test site, etc. this will affect any techs currently in progress and thus their completion date.
• When loading from a save, Research Assistant uses the full size of any nuclear reactors and rocket test sites in the country, not their current size. If the building has just been deployed, or the province is being bombed, current size will not equal full size so the research calculation will be slightly off.
• In AoD versions prior to 1.04, there are a couple research bugs (bug #1, bug #2). Researching a tech after it's historical year does not speed it up, so if you're using a AoD 1.02 or 1.03, make sure the option to "Emulate post-historical date research bug" is checked off in the Settings tab. The other bug involves research times changing based on which tech slot the team/tech combo is in. This will mean any predictions made by Research Assistant will probably be off by a few days.
• In the Settings tab, the Reload button isn't functional yet, just restart the program after changing a game path.

Please report any bugs you encounter.

 

[Raph]

Very cool, great work! I'm looking forward to try it out.

 

[Akhenaten]

Gonna give it a try, thanks!

 

[Executor]

So can anyone report if the program is starting OK? Are your savegames being properly listed? Any discrepancies you've found in the research calculations? Any crashes? Any slowness issues? Or is it miraculously working perfectly for everyone?

Any questions about how something works? I probably should've noted earlier that the "Early Research:" and "Late Research:" fields represent how much less or additional time the research will take due to the current date compared to the tech's historical year. For instance, say you begin researching a 1937 tech on Jan 1, 1937 and it says "Late Research: -10 days" then that means that compared to a situation where the historical year was completely ignored (or the early research/late research modifiers were set to 0), the research actually ends sooner, because the late research bonus begins speeding up research starting on the 2nd day of the year. So by mid-1937 while conducting research on a tech with a historical year of 1937, the tech team would already be going 9% faster compared to the start of the year (assuming default AoD 1.04 settings).

The way I like to use the program is whenever I need to start a new research project, I save the game, alt-tab to Research Assistant, and select that new save from the list. That way you shouldn't have to worry about the modifiers since the program can get the proper ones for the selected country from the save. I then check which available team will research the tech I want fastest, then go back into the game.

 

[Akhenaten]

It's working great so far! no crashes or weird behaviour.
Just one minor thing: maybe it's just me but I'm finding the light blue ETA text a bit hard to read, could you maybe change it to white or black?

edit: I'm using a save from Japan, just realized the background changes

 

[Executor]

Great to hear it's working fine. Yeah, the background changes in the program. If you watch carefully in-game, each country has a different background in the tech screen and my program just mimics that.

You can change the text colors yourself. There should be a settings.ini file in the same directory as the Research Assistant program (the first time you exit the program it'll create one). In the "UI.Colors" section, there's a "TechResearchTime" line. The color is written as a RGB value (Red, Green, Blue), with 0,0,0 being black and 255,255,255 being white and everything else somewhere in between. Just fiddle around with the color till you're satisfied.

 

[JiM_cz]

Thanks a lot, I'm gonna test it tonight

 

[unmerged(203649)]

Works great for me. Good job and thank you!

 

[JiM_cz]

I've just tried it and it looks awesome, thanks.

I'm just surprised that the research funding slider influences which team is the fastest..? I would think that the order should be the same shouldn't it?

 

[Executor]

I'm just surprised that the research funding slider influences which team is the fastest..? I would think that the order should be the same shouldn't it?

Sometimes tech teams will by coincidence happen to take the same amount of time to research a tech. Say for instance we have tech team #1, which is advancing through a component at 23% per day, while team #2 is doing 22% per day. Both will take 5 days to reach 100% and thus finish that component (any leftovers past 100% are not carried over to the next component btw). But say you reduce research funding so that research is slowed to 90%. Now tech team #1 is doing 20.7% research per day, but #2 has dropped to 19.8% a day. Team #2 will now take 6 days total to finish that component, since after 5 days it's only 99% complete. Team #1, however, is in this case unaffected by the decline in research funding, because it can still finish the component in 5 days. This is a very simplified example, as there are 5 components per tech and tons of little variables that often come into play (particularly the early/late research modifiers), but I hope it illustrates how changing the funding slider could cause that to happen.

As a sidenote, I've found a couple relatively minor bugs with the current research calculation which I hope to have fixed when I release a newer version in a few days:

• Currently when you load a save the program is using the size of the largest nuclear reactor rather then adding up all the reactors in the country as it should. For rocket test sites, though, only the largest test site in the country counts, and the current version of Research Assistant correctly loads that.
• After you switch ministers, they don't actually take office for a period of time. When you load a save in Research Assistant, it is using any research bonuses they provide immediately, when it should only do so when the minister switch process is complete.

 

[Keioel]

It even works with the Cold War Tech Tree of course it doesn't have the proper names but HEY can't have everything

 

[Executor]

It even works with the Cold War Tech Tree of course it doesn't have the proper names but HEY can't have everything

Is that a mod? The program loads all the names from the CSV files in the config subdirectory of the game, so it should be getting the right ones. If not, then there's probably a bug.

 

[Inner Circle]

Nice work Executor!

 

[Keioel]

Sorry yes meant Nomonhans mod...it loads EVERYTHING in the tech tree. This thing is awesome hehe

Is that a mod? The program loads all the names from the CSV files in the config subdirectory of the game, so it should be getting the right ones. If not, then there's probably a bug.

 

[Sayd]

Great to hear it's working fine. Yeah, the background changes in the program. If you watch carefully in-game, each country has a different background in the tech screen and my program just mimics that.

You can change the text colors yourself. There should be a settings.ini file in the same directory as the Research Assistant program (the first time you exit the program it'll create one). In the "UI.Colors" section, there's a "TechResearchTime" line. The color is written as a RGB value (Red, Green, Blue), with 0,0,0 being black and 255,255,255 being white and everything else somewhere in between. Just fiddle around with the color till you're satisfied.

Please, set an option to force program not to change background. It may be nice feature, but looks weird without settings to make all texts visible.

 

[Executor]

Sorry yes meant Nomonhans mod...it loads EVERYTHING in the tech tree. This thing is awesome hehe

I downloaded and installed the Cold War mod and all the new techs seem to have their proper names. Can you be more specific about what was displaying a bugged name?

Please, set an option to force program not to change background. It may be nice feature, but looks weird without settings to make all texts visible.

Yeah, I'm going to add an option in the next version for a black background for anyone having issues with the text. The text seems fine on my computer, but brightness settings vary a bit from monitor to monitor, and I might also in the future look into altering some of the colors for better contrast.

 

[Keioel]

My bad Executor that's why I went back and edited my post to say it loads everything, meaning the names, I think it was just an anomaly because I had forgotten to load 1.04 the first time I opened it, once I installed 1.04 there were no problems.

 

[Tonioz]

many many thanks, Executor.

I use HoI2 RA very often for MP games to plan techs in advance before each session.

 

[Executor]

New version now available (download links in the first post).

Changes:

• Fixed bug with loading wrong nuclear reactor size from a savegame if the country had reactors in multiple provinces.
• Fixed bug with minister taking office delay not being taken into account.
• Added option for black background.
• When loading from a savegame, techs you are currently researching are shown with a purple name.
• Added option to display time difference between tech teams in the team list.

 

[unmerged(172138)]

Is it possible to add a feature that gives us what will be the next fastest research?