Hearts of Iron IV - Development Diary 5 - Production Lines

[marginoferror]

I'm very excited about the switch to producing equipment instead of the brigade/division-deployment-as-production system.

Some questions:

1) For cap ships, the "15 factory limit" as a way of capping speed of production seems arbitrary and likely to result in truly weird outcomes. Why not require each individual capital ship to be a fully separate production line, and cap the # of factories of each at the amount required for "full speed" (minimum production time for that ship class and tech)?

2) Why not fold the concept of "raw materials" in with the concept of strategic resources? Is there something that's so essential to the idea of raw materials that they need to be tracked separately from other resources? Seems like an easy target for simplification unless raw materials are treated totally different for a good reason.

3) Can produced equipment be traded directly to other nations? If so, does the concept of "money" still exist to facilitate trading?

 

[aphrochine]

One under discussed item in this thread is how ship construction is going to be controlled. This is great. Gone are the days of the US producing 22 Carriers at once!!!

 

[No idea]

I like the fact that civilian industry and military one are being differentiated. By the way, could we get a "named" artillery piece (for example, the fabled 88mm. Of the germans) instead of just "artillery"?

 

[Alex_brunius]

1) For cap ships, the "15 factory limit" as a way of capping speed of production seems arbitrary and likely to result in truly weird outcomes. Why not require each individual capital ship to be a fully separate production line, and cap the # of factories of each at the amount required for "full speed" (minimum production time for that ship class and tech)?

It's probably a good idea to consider having all larger ships / capital ships at least as their own separate production line ( thus reading finished within x months instead ).


I share your concern with the setup but for smaller ships. All smaller / lighter ships and submarines will be possible to crank out with almost instant reaction from construction start with the lined out system.
For example a Type VII submarine would need roughly 65 times less material (tonnage), 43 times less crew, 21 times less money then a Bismarck class battleship.
Using a conservative 40 here and assuming Bismarck takes 2 years to build with "15 factory limit" we can launch our first submarine after just 18 days!!!
( which would be fairly ridiculous considering submarines took closer to a year to build historically )

It would be even worse if convoys ( which are cheaper yet ) are built using the same mechanic.

So either smaller ship production must have an extremely punishing inefficiency at the start ( first unit takes at least factor 5-10 times longer then the average ) or we will indeed get very weird results using the arbitrary max 15 factories.

Or they would need some kind of retooling time at the start where no units are produced to model the long initial build-times (242 days for the first liberty ships).

One under discussed item in this thread is how ship construction is going to be controlled. This is great. Gone are the days of the US producing 22 Carriers at once!!!

How so? It looks like you can launch an unlimited amount of projects building the same things still (until your naval IC is all used up). And why not, it is historical that USA is building 22 Carriers at once.

 

[illathid]

So, this is very exciting but I have a question. How would one actually switch the production line from say a medium 1938 medium tank to a 1940 one? The most obvious thing to me would be to just click the picture, but I don't want to assume.

 

[Sotahullu]

So, this is very exciting but I have a question. How would one actually switch the production line from say a medium 1938 medium tank to a 1940 one? The most obvious thing to me would be to just click the picture, but I don't want to assume.

I think you can just too that. However, I think you can switch somethings partially.

 

[Lazy_Boy]

I love the direction you guys are taking for production but I fear that limiting it to only 3 types of factories will hinder realism and cause balance issues. Imo military equipment should be divided further into equipment, vehicles, and aircraft. If it's already been hard coded into the engine at least consider that for a future expansion pack.

Also consider adding some kind of minor stockpiling to buffer sudden changes in convoys or trade deals. The size of the stockpile could be increased with money and limited by the size of civilian industry or something. I assume you're handling crudeoil/fuel for tanks/planes/ships in a completely different way because Germany would be completely broken without the ability to stockpile that.

 

[Bluestreak2k5]

I love the direction you guys are taking for production but I fear that limiting it to only 3 types of factories will hinder realism and cause balance issues. Imo military equipment should be divided further into equipment, vehicles, and aircraft. If it's already been hard coded into the engine at least consider that for a future expansion pack.

Also consider adding some kind of minor stockpiling to buffer sudden changes in convoys or trade deals. The size of the stockpile could be increased with money and limited by the size of civilian industry or something. I assume you're handling crudeoil/fuel for tanks/planes/ships in a completely different way because Germany would be completely broken without the ability to stockpile that.

I don't really see the need to break it even further down...

A factory is nothing more then a giant building with nothing in it, It's the machines/tools that you put inside of it that matter what is actually built. This is why you can convert all Consumer and military factories between each other, but that you shouldn't be able to convert to a shipdock... because a shipdock is something completely different.

As for stockpiling I agree with you 100%, there needs to be a way to stockpile things, at least somewhat...but not to limit that HOI# allowed you to stockpile several years worth of materials.

 

[telesien]

This is really amazing concept.

Can't wait to see how it ties in with unit training, upgrades, supplies, lend-lease and the whole war in Atlantic

 

[Alex_brunius]

I love the direction you guys are taking for production but I fear that limiting it to only 3 types of factories will hinder realism and cause balance issues. Imo military equipment should be divided further into equipment, vehicles, and aircraft. If it's already been hard coded into the engine at least consider that for a future expansion pack.

I disagree. Guns, Armor, Steel, Equipment, Radios, actually most stuff were shared between everything from tanks/vehicles/aircraft/ships.

If a factory can switch from building furniture to building combat aircraft in a year they can switch from building tanks/vehicles/aircraft even faster, and in many cases wouldn't need to switch anything at all due to dealing with the 90% of production that is not final assembly but assembly of for example the machine guns, the nuts and bolts or the rolled steel that was used in pretty much all war equipment.


The split is motivated by the difficulties related to finding dockyard space to quickly expanding a navy or converting civilian into military production. Setting up tank/aircraft/vehicle/gun assembly lines never really was a limiting factor anywhere, it could be done in a matter of weeks or months even given the more primitive level of tech during WW2. Just look at the Soviet evacuating more or less their entire tank/aircraft industry east during the German invasion and having it up and running not many months later.

but that you shouldn't be able to convert to a shipdock... because a shipdock is something completely different.

The Factories does not have to only represent Dockyards but can represent all parts of the production chain from raw resources to a final outfitted ship, including trained workers ( that can be trained to do different stuff ). I am pretty sure there will be a cost to converting them ( for example months of downtime ) representing the cost to build new Dockyards / Tear down the old and re-purpose equipment and materials for different tasks.

As long as conversion is gradual and slow it is fine by me.
Actually it is even needed to provide a good model. How else can USA gear up for war (converting civilian industry into dockyards), or how else can Soviet change their dockyards into much more badly needed Military factories?


According to Wikipedia the Soviet Navy were building 219 ships in 1941 when Germany attacked, how many of those would you want to be forced to finish in HoI4 if you can't convert the Industry?

 

[Xulomander]

Wow, the separation of industry types looks very cool!

 

[vota dc]

Each factory produce 10 IC. What about countries with less than 10 IC? Also rarely in Hoi 2 and 3 minor countries had 10 IC of difference between them.

 

[mattyh1995]

Why Chromium?

 

[sgt.stickybomb]

If I am understanding this correctly, then this is like the IC of HOI3, with the exception that part of that IC is reserved to only making specific unit types. If so, I fail to see how this is an improvement.

 

[Joppos]

Each factory produce 10 IC. What about countries with less than 10 IC? Also rarely in Hoi 2 and 3 minor countries had 10 IC of difference between them.

The numbers are completely arbitrary at this point. My guess would be that whatever IC a factory ends up representing, a country having less than that would see that factory's efficiency linearly scaled down.

 

[Daelyn75]

I really hope the lack of pooling resources only affects IC, and doesn't touch Oil/Fuel otherwise it wouldn't make any sense. Nations did and still do stockpile oil reserves. I like that you cannot stockpile resources for industry so that the sub warfare will be more meaningful now. In previous HOI games, the only thing subs tended to do was to affect the supply of units outside the homeland, and forces the AI or player to start producing a lot of transports.

 

[RolandRahn]

Oh there might be, but you won't be ordering nukes from the production screen, more likely they will be produced automatically based on your reactor level and tech.

Could we see a more realistic nuclear arms race?

From my understanding, IF Germany would have spend more on her nuclear program and IF they would have made all the right decisions, due to limited access to key materials, it would have been a program with a capacity of one or two bombs/year.

On the other hand, in late 1945, the United States could have build 2-3 bombs/month.

So, can we get a more realistic model - a Germany desperately surviving (holding on to Norway, but fighting on France against the western allies and in Poland against the Soviets) being able to build 1 or 2 bombs/year, while a Germany that has defeated the USSR and access to everything west of the Urals being able to build more?

Some model that would calculate nuclear weapons production both due to the effort put into the project as well as due to the availability of resources?

 

[Boozdeuvash]

Each factory produce 10 IC. What about countries with less than 10 IC? Also rarely in Hoi 2 and 3 minor countries had 10 IC of difference between them.

First off, if 10 IC is the bare minimum, the rest of the game will be calibrated around this, I.E majors will end up with more IC, and equipment will require more to build comparatively.

Second, I would not expect very minor factions to have any military industrial capability at all. I don't think paraguay or siam were producing guns, they were probably buying Lee Enfields from the brits or a secondary power, like half the world in the 30's. There will certainly be the possibility to buy shipments of weapons since they are being treated as commodity. Then you train the troops with the acquired weapon, and that does not require factories if I understand well.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

So is civilian IC also the mechanic which you use to construct fortifications and provincial/state AA?

 

[Daelyn75]

So is civilian IC also the mechanic which you use to construct fortifications and provincial/state AA?

Good question.