HoI3 1.4 and the future

[Surt]

If there isn't already a summary about each General and formation about combats and win/loses like ie.

General Verlierer participated in the losing defence of Berlin on 23 september 1943 etc.

 

[Cpack]

- I really miss the ASW mission for ships and for modding reasons, an ASW mission for planes.

- I miss a summary statistic for Air battles.....don't ever get an overview over this permanently popping up air battles (I'm I good? Do I loose battle over England?

- Same for Convoy battles (Lost convoys? Sunk convoys?)

 

[unmerged(162341)]

I really would like to see new command structures for naval and air forces.

The new counters and sprites could look like this:

The most needed and most important thing
Bravo man!!!!

Please Paradox guys, think about this ,its is the peace of puzzle that HOI III lacks most obviously and it was obvious from the day game is released.Airforce and naval strategic chain of command.

 

[Pugmak]

Iirc, the original escort carriers were reworked transport ships.

Having some ability to modify ships after they're built, within reasonable limits, would be rather nice to have.

 

[unmerged(192670)]

Change the ruling party and the government through in game actions would be nice.

And fix some of the countries starting governments, for example Brazil in the game is right wing when it should be left wing, all the ministers are left wing by the way just not the government form

 

[Pugmak]

Here's one from way outfield...

Have the ability to build Q Ships. They'd be a branch off of the cargo hauler transport, not the troop hauler transports. The ability to build them would be opened up through naval techs. They'd accompany resource convoys as anti raider protection.

Edited to add:

Also, with specific research through amphib tech and naval doc, the ability to build dedicated amphib command and control support ships from the transport ship and, later on, light carrier line.

AGC -- Amphibious Force Command Ships (WW2 model, built from transport ship) - http://www.navsource.org/archives/10/01/0101.htm

Such ships don't carry cargo or troops. They'd work as bonus to amphib assault by lowering the malus associated with such.

LCC- Amphibious Command Ship (Cold War model, built from a light carrier) - http://www.navysite.de/ships/lcc.htm

Also, techs in the naval area that allow for the creation of amphibious support specialty ships such as:
LST (Landing Ship-Tank) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Ship,_Tank which made landing armor assets possible.
RoRo (Roll on/Roll off) ships which were first built in 1940, made beach side landing of the massive supplies and logistics, including land transport vehicles, warfighting vehicles, engineering equipment, artillery and the huge stockpiles of ammo, food, medical supplies, etc that made large landings possible.

That's just a short list of what made the amphib campaigns doable. Took lots of infighting between the Navies and Armies of the countries that developed em. The fights over dollars in tight economies just about killed the idea of amphib assault development in the cradle during the mid to late '30s. That would have made things much more difficult later.

 

[jackda]

Johan, about 1.4 :

Can we have more informations about what it is going to change more precisely, about Soviet's manpower , laws , paratroopers ?


Thanks

 

[rommel_sniper]

Johan, I think I have read this post late but I would like to help to improve xD
I don't know it has been said already but I think not:

Apart from optimization and that what I think game needs is a adaptation of the nations between different scenarios.
Has no sense Germany with no theoric investigations nor in 36 nor in 44. Or with same National unit in 36 than after D-day. That makes the game ahistorical in bad way and makes a bad impression, appart from making les playable.

I hope to see my point. Cheers.

P.S: And put cores for "Euskadi" nation, because I can't give them the independency jaj

 

[unmerged(102827)]

1- the possibility to have a list of name for the regiment, so if is created a new regiment the name is taken from the list;
2- The air units should be constituted like the land divisions with single parts, so a fighter wing should be constituted by 3 (or 2 or 4) fighter groups (a group is equivalent to a land regiment), that should be useful also for the creation of the CAGs;
3- A command chain (like the land command chain) also for the naval units, so a group of naval divisions can be grouped in a naval squad but every division and also the squad maintain a leader, idem for the air units;
4- The possibility to upgrade the main parts (engine, hull, etc) of a ship so a battleship level 0 could be upgraded to level 1 but should be present an option different to the normal units upgrade in manner that the ship is put in production with the new characteristics but at a cost inferior to that of a new ship.
5- Naval jack for the naval units.
6- partisans with a link with a political party, so, for example, we can have monarchical or communist partisans.

EDIT

7- Should be present the option to make the reserve units normal units

 

[Danevang]

Ships should be built in a port.

One thing I'd reallt like to see in HoI3, (maybe in an expansion?) is ships being built in specific provinces. I mean, it's pretty unrealistic that you could for start building a battleship, loose all your ports, reconquer them, and deploy the battleship once it's completely built. Large ships are built in shipyards...in ports.

If I as Germany was building the Bismarck in Kiel, the ship should be bound to Kiel, and if I lost Kiel during the construction of the ship, the ship should be lost as well. As in real life, you shouldn't be able to create the Bismarck in no specific place, and then drive it around Germany on a (huge) truck, to decide where you want to place it. Heh.

Perhaps a way to model this would be to have the ship deploy emidiately after construction is started, and then make the ship unable to move for the duration of the construction time? Or something...

Having the Bismarck under construction in ie. Kiel would be more realistic, and would certainly give me a much greater motive for fighting to the last man for Kiel. Also I wouldn't be able to "cheat" by placing ships in recently conquered ports where they really couldn't have been built, etc.

 

[womble]

First of all, let me add my voice to the chorus of "thank you"s for spreading some good news about 1.4 and the game's future. It's good to hear the AI's getting a good tuning up. Below are a few pet niggles that I'd appreciate in a future expansion or even, maybe, squeezed into the 1.4 schedule.

Strait control: does it work? If it works we should be told precisely what we have to do to make it work: which provinces need what forces; whether land or sea has priority. A table listing all the straits and the names of the provinces would be a start. Before you publish the table, it'd be worth having a look at whether some of the strait control parameters are a bit SNAFU. If it is a dead concept (at least for the player vs the AI) that should also be made explicit.

How is it determined who a country surrenders to? Publish the algorithm so people don't get all "!!!1eleven" when France surrenders to Japan. No coding necessary.

Supply could be made very much more comprehensible by allowing the player to determine the "supply source" location for any given supply network, rather than leaving it up to the game engine to randomly place and re-place it. At the moment there's little you can do to impove your logistical state when operating across water from your capital, even in the long term because by the time your Infra improvements have popped, your front line has moved, you've captured a broader swath of territory and the supply engine moves your supply source and the supply delivery route away from the areas you've been improving for months. Effectively you cannot manage supply at the moment, only demand.

Your game would seem a lot more professional if the text boxes in the game had even vaguely standard text manipulation functions, and if the ones present worked correctly and consistently. I don't expect the End key to take my cursor to before the last letter in the line, it should go to the End. Copy-paste and ctrl-drag/ctrl-cursor/shift-cursor combos should work too. Allied to this would be the ability to Ctrl-click entities to add them to a selection, or at least shift-click them to remove them. Drag and drop for all entities that currently require click-move-click, or clicking up/down butttons would be a boon too. These should all have been the first functions coded so that you could use them all over the place.

 

[Modo]

The tying of builds to provinces is a more general concept. A tank factory can't be simply switched to do aircraft parts, so if you go down that route, IC centres should have specialized capabilities. Maybe builds other than ships could be transferred to finish somewhere else, but not if all of your tank/aircraft/artillery factories are gone. This is definately expansion material, but might bring the game too far away from war, and too close to an economy manager.

 

[KungMarkatta]

The tying of builds to provinces is a more general concept. A tank factory can't be simply switched to do aircraft parts, so if you go down that route, IC centres should have specialized capabilities. Maybe builds other than ships could be transferred to finish somewhere else, but not if all of your tank/aircraft/artillery factories are gone. This is definately expansion material, but might bring the game too far away from war, and too close to an economy manager.

I am no expert. But I think that in the 30s and 40s a tank factory could quite easily be switched to produce aircraft parts. I might be wrong though.

 

[hegemon]

I am no expert. But I think that in the 30s and 40s a tank factory could quite easily be switched to produce aircraft parts. I might be wrong though.

Not all parts, but yes. It doesn't matter anyway. The abstractional IC is very good idea, and they should stick with it. It is Grand Strategy Game after all, not Settlers

One word about building ships. It is common that hull of a ship is being built in one place and then it is taken to other shipyard for armament placement.

 

[Johan]

How is it determined who a country surrenders to? Publish the algorithm so people don't get all "!!!1eleven" when France surrenders to Japan. No coding necessary.

For each country at war with France..
1) add up all french IC occupied by that country.
2) add +1 for each french province occupied by that country
3) add +1 that country is faction leader.
4) add +5 if french capital occupied by that country.

then the the country with highest value is who france surrenders to.

 

[unmerged(131628)]

One possible idea for the expansion:

The ability to build equipment separately from training the personnel. This would solve two problems:

1. Reserve units could be built and mobilized properly.
2. Manpower laws can now be optimized without increasing the length of construction of equipment, such as a battleship.

Also, it might allow an advanced concept, such as two manpower pools: One of trained/skilled men, and one of unskilled/inexperienced men.


And just one balance issue with the current game that bugs me:

Originally Posted by Wunderlicht

1. Define Factory/Training locations

It would be better, IMO, to buy and build 'Boot Camps' -if you will - whereby the units must originate from... instead of currently placing where ever is best. Specialized units, such as Paratroopers would have to be first trained to be soldiers and then taken to appropriate training to become paras. Navies would have specific unit type building locations, which would have to be targeted by enemies to hamper industry. Air units would have to be built by specific factories which are selected to build a specific unit type, me109, me190, he111, etc...

All boot camps/ factories would have contracts to build so many units per month, with hold orders available when needed by the player.

6. Scripted Army Operations

MY ALL TIME WANT --- Operations should be able to be planned out and be pre-scripted before the event. This is a good idea because it scripts the perfect offensive/defensive and allows the battles to unfold and be altered on the fly. The operational scripts can be saved separately and reused between games. This way Operation Barbarossa is planned before the attack and allows the user to be a true higher level planner and watch things unfold instead of reacting. Although changes and reaction can still occur... it is much easier to know that the army has a script and things can be changed rather than having to scan an entire front and making sure to remember to do things amongst the million other things that can happen during the same time. You could also create plans and alternatives during the low times and keep a library.

Perfect ideas

 

[Danevang]

The abstractional IC is very good idea, and they should stick with it. It is Grand Strategy Game after all, not Settlers
One word about building ships. It is common that hull of a ship is being built in one place and then it is taken to other shipyard for armament placement.

Infantry weapons, aircraft parts etc. are perfectly represented as abstracted IC, they are built in many factories, big and small, all over the country. But my point is, that a battleship is pretty stationary while under construction and stuck in one harbour. Even though it's armaments etc may be added later, it doesn't really change the fact that the ship is more or less finished and seaworthy when it leaves the ship yard. That is, it is basically built in one place, and can't be shiftet to another shipyard because the original one is suddenly capured by the enemy. An armored division doesn't really care where it's tanks are coming from, if one supplying factory is captured, another one could make the tanks. This is not the case with the battleship. How would you ie. build one without a harbour?

I guess my point is that a tank brigade represents many tanks built in many places, and a battleship represents one ship, built in one place.

It is Grand Strategy Game after all, not Settlers

I fail to see how deploying a ship when ordering it in the build menu will make the game more micro management or settlers like. You have to deploy the ship anyway, the decision of where to deploy would just be shifted from the end of construction, to the beginning. That's all.


As I said:

Perhaps a way to model this would be to have the ship deploy emidiately after construction is started, and then make the ship unable to move for the duration of the construction time? Or something...

The ship could be deployed at low strength, so that it would cost the same to get it to 100% as to build it in the way it works now.

It would add more realism, and a reason to guard those harbours even more. It's simply, in my oppinion, unfair and cheating when I as the USA reconquer Guam, and suddenly deploy 4 brand new aircraft carriers there, because they've been built in some absrtacted port, and then been teleported to Guam.



It's not a great problem as it is, I just think that it would be even more interresting with the deployment at the beginning, without adding any more management to the game.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

This has me excited now... haven't been able to play thusfar, can't wait to give this game a go.

 

[Shabz]

I fail to see how deploying a ship when ordering it in the build menu will make the game more micro management or settlers like. You have to deploy the ship anyway, the decision of where to deploy would just be shifted from the end of construction, to the beginning. That's all.

A perfect mechanism for this exists in EUIII. Provincialy tied building of units. If they could succesfully port it from EU to HoI3 in an expansion, it would be great. And only for ships. Not for ground or air units.

And I am all for separate command chains for ground, naval and air units. Also most definitely expansion material.

/fanboy I would like to thank Johan for the time and effort he put to bring 1.4 closer to us the players. We should all appreciate this, and willingness of him and entire team to listen and try to implement players ideas in this wonderful game. /fanboy out

 

[ashandresash]

General Commander suggestion (1 of 2)

As I've got a textwall, I divide it in two parts.

My proposals (reworking previous posts):

- Theater
- Designed by player
- Building advanced plans of attack/defense
- Primary and secondary objectives to AI-controlled units
- Intel and diplomatic operations to get more allied forces under your (limited) control

- OOB and officers
- Officers now in HQs primaly
- HQs bonuses depending on their MP
- HQs in a battle or attacked by air, penalized in their bonuses

- Experience and training
- Penalized promotion of generals
- Experience in combat improving both level and rank of generals
- Mission of training for divisions gaining experience (rather than law)
- Experience affecting unit performance against tanks and airplanes
- Experience affecting division speed in combat

And the development in the next one (sorry for extension)