Hearts of Iron IV - Development Diary 5 - Production Lines

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Will we need to spend IC to repair damaged infrastructure (after the bombing, sabotage, battles)? I hope yes...
 
I can see 6. 5 of them are being used in production. I think we see oil, rubber (tire) and iron, but I have no idea what the rest is. Fighter uses aluminium, I guess. Artillery can be using explosives. No idea on the globe though.

Planes are certainly going to consume aluminium. This is where the new system becomes interesting:
Jet fighters like the ME-263 had a serious heat-problem. Only tungsten could solve that. Without tungsten, the planes suffered heavy damage from overheating. The Brits were aware of that. So they pre-emptively bought all the tungsten they could, mainly from Germany's main supplier of that resource: Turkey.

In no previous HoI-game this could be modelled. HoI4's production system offers a ton of new possibilities to simulate real history problems. The jet fighter-issue only being one example.

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#any factory
I applaud PI for that solution. I was worried that you had to manually assign factories from a list, total micromanagement hell. Now with you only assigning "any factory", the production of that assembly line might be spread all over the country. What does that mean in regards to strategic bombings? Will you target specific factories or simply select a ressource you want to disrupt?
 
The interface looks smooth and really nice gj :).

In the picture the 3 units all need Iron. If you had less iron than needed to make the units how will they be affected. Would all of them get an equal production hit or would it start with the arty?

The allocated factories are alittle hard to "read" imho. Maybe its because i think the factory icon looks more like a graph than a factory (the chimneys are high making the building way too small imho). Also the factories themselves are hard to read because you need to count theres no easy to read number which tells you the amount of factories in the production line. The more production lines you get the more important this instant information will become.
I would make a single factory picture then let the number of factories used in the production line be shown in numbers and maybe even let the progression bar run on top. So if theres 7/15 factories in the line let 7/15 of the factory be shown at 100% opacity while the rest is a bit faded. Also that would make it possible to make the interface a bit "prettier" by letting the lines from the headlines (materials, Equipment, Factories) run through in the underlying production lines. Though i dunno if thats even going to make a noticable difference or if im just nitpicking now :D
I have made a rather ugly paint sketch to try and illustrate. (so much for not having proper picture editing tools available at work ^^)

prod_line.png

EDIT: also does the ressources show the amount you have yet to use or the total amount?, is there going to be an easy way to quickly see how much you have left or how many % of your "supply" you are using.
 
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resources.png

I take it these resources are;

Oil.......Aluminium........Rubber
?????......Iron..............Tungsten
 
View attachment 107383

I take it these resources are;

Oil.......Aluminium........Rubber
?????......Iron..............Tungsten

Oil, Aluminium, Rubber
Tungsten, Iron, Chromium

Will the MODEL pictures be same size as in HOI3?

No, they are different size. you can just measure in the screenshot if you plan a mod, but chances are we change stuff a bit before release
 
Excellent stuff. How many strategic resources are there? Is stockpiling gone entirely?

I guess that when you bomb a certain type of factories, the IC level goes down, but since units are not assigned to specific factories, you cannot "target" specific stuff in the production line and things that are lower in the production line will be affected first, correct?

There's currently 6, not counting Raw materials, but that could change. Stockpiling resources is gone anyway, more than that I cannot say.

And yes, lowest lines suffer from shortages first.

Ah, elegant. Another question, do you build production lines for consumer goods and factories as well? Do you manufacture "tools" and turn them into factories?

No, you don't build either. A certain amount of Civilian IC will be considered reserved for consumer goods, and tools production is assumed to be where most of your IC is going when you start up a new line.

IRL industry was often concentrated. In HOI3 there was no benefit in concentrating IC in one place - in fact, it was better to build IC in many different provinces in order to make it more difficult for STRATs to target them all in a given amount of time. Will there be an incentive to concentrate IC in a given region/province/whatever in HOI4?

Which IC type is used to build more IC? :D Can you convert factories to a different type?

There's no direct advantage to building, say, 10 IC in one state as opposed to 5 in 2, but we have discussed a few ideas about the differences of concentrated vs spread industry.

Civilian IC is used to build IC etc, and yes, you can convert industry to other types.

This sounds good to me, really looking forward to the game.

Can you convert industry from civilian to military?

Can you stockpile strategic resources?

Does each factory in this production folder correspond with a specific factory on the map or is it abstracted across?

1)Yes.
2)No.
3)Abstracted. Although currently factories do "remember" what they were tooled for and the system will use the best picks if you disband some lines and then start up similar ones.

What about supply production? It isn't listed with any of the industry types.

You will need to wait for a future DD for that, I'm afraid.

While I understand that adding new factories will reduce the overall efficiency, how does removing a factory increase the efficiency of the production line?

In game terms? Generally it allows some more rounding up. In realism terms you could say some experienced men transfer to keep working on what they know :)

Are upgrades still available for already built models? How will that work, generic or you would also need to assign factories for it?

How they work depends on how extensive a rework we consider them. Small things just appear for free on existing units, while more extensive "upgrades" actually require you to build new equipment.
 
The interface looks smooth and really nice gj :).

In the picture the 3 units all need Iron. If you had less iron than needed to make the units how will they be affected. Would all of them get an equal production hit or would it start with the arty?

The allocated factories are alittle hard to "read" imho. Maybe its because i think the factory icon looks more like a graph than a factory (the chimneys are high making the building way too small imho). Also the factories themselves are hard to read because you need to count theres no easy to read number which tells you the amount of factories in the production line. The more production lines you get the more important this instant information will become.
I would make a single factory picture then let the number of factories used in the production line be shown in numbers and maybe even let the progression bar run on top. So if theres 7/15 factories in the line let 7/15 of the factory be shown at 100% opacity while the rest is a bit faded. Also that would make it possible to make the interface a bit "prettier" by letting the lines from the headlines (materials, Equipment, Factories) run through in the underlying production lines. Though i dunno if thats even going to make a noticable difference or if im just nitpicking now :D
I have made a rather ugly paint sketch to try and illustrate. (so much for not having proper picture editing tools available at work ^^)

View attachment 107382

EDIT: also does the ressources show the amount you have yet to use or the total amount?, is there going to be an easy way to quickly see how much you have left or how many % of your "supply" you are using.

The arty, being the bottom of the list, should suffer the shortage.

It may be better to show numbers, although one neat feature of the factory rows is you can click to set an exactly number quickly, and you should quickly become used to the 3 rows of 5 format so you can tell how many are assigned at a glance. However, it's not the final UI so we may end up changing things.

The resource numbers show the amount left, IIRC ENG has 150 Iron and 100 of the others in this example.
 
There's currently 6, not counting Raw materials, but that could change. Stockpiling resources is gone anyway, more than that I cannot say.
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Nickel would be a good resource if you wanted to add more. It was Important for use in metal alloys requiring strength or heat resistance. It was only mined in a few places worldwide; Ontario, Petsamo, New Caledonia and in the soviet union. The loss of Petsamo prevented Germany from getting this resource.
When it was alloyed with aluminium it could make light weight pistons giving better aircraft engine performance. The M.E.262 had a very short engine life because the turbine blades would burn out due to the unavailability of Nickel. Nickel alloys were also very useful for the high temperatures in nuclear reactors.
 
What about captured factories? Will they keep some of their efficiency to emulate the Panzer 38(t) stuff?

Probably not, and there's no guarantee that the Czechs would have useful stuff in production when you annex them.

Is there a difference between 1 line with 15 factories and 15 lines with 1 factory each? (All produce the same equipment)

I don't think so, besides that the 15 lines will clutter your list :)

Edit: Actually, I suppose the larger line will gain more Efficiency as stuff starts being produced and will be a better deal once the first units have rolled out.
 
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Will you need to do trade deals and run convoys to get strategic resources to your homeland like you do with metal, coal and oil in HOI3?
 
How come "Artillery" is one model of equipment? Surely to fit in with the level of detail of Churchill Tank and Hurricane, you would need to have artillery be a little more specific, 6" Howitzer for example.
 
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This looks great! A major - but promising - change from HOI3.

I was glad to see the confirmation on the issue of converting consumer IC to military IC. It would be hard to emulate the US production monster if you where not able to switch from producing fridges to artillery. Or ask Germany if they want total war and see an architect multiply their production!
 
Strategic Resources are not accumulated in pools. Instead, they represent the potential flow of resources into your factories.

So no more "hamster strategy" and we are unable to collect beans for winter...
This FLOW thing makes me sooo unsecure...
I need my precious pools!!! ;)
 
It may be better to show numbers, although one neat feature of the factory rows is you can click to set an exactly number quickly, and you should quickly become used to the 3 rows of 5 format so you can tell how many are assigned at a glance. However, it's not the final UI so we may end up changing things.

Ah hadnt thought about that it could be used for quick setting the number of factories which is actually a nice feature.