HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #2

[Louella]

I'd suggest destroying equipment might yield some XP, representing testing of captured stuff for analysis of strengths and weaknesses.

 

[Ryousan2k]

Its nice, but I really wanted to see the other revamped Focus Tree

 

[Farin]

Great Job guys

 

[Nevrion]

Nope. I said it would be another shown at some point. Its going to be a couple of weeks before you see that one.

I'm not mad at you, but it feels like waiting for Christmas gifts and getting an Easter egg, instead Sometimes it's hard to wait ... and because there are no pre-announcements, it's a lot of speculation what we can expect ... and with that comes a lot of exaggerated hope.

 

[ferrisboy]

cool

 

[Kastomoño]

Finally i can please my OCD quicker by dragging the tanks next to each other in the que instead of mashing the up arrow.

 

[GPounda]

Finally able to get rid of all that crap captured aircraft!!!!

Another excellent Dev Diary @podcat , thank you!!!

 

[FOARP]

It did, the Germans used a bunch of captured British, French, and Russian equipment. They also sent a lot of captured equipment to their Balkan allies. The Russians used German equipment until it broke. The Chinese used any captured Japanese equipment they could scrounge. Western allies, not so much, mainly due to the massive US factory output.

The important distinction is thatthe French equipment you mention here was not captured in combat. Instead the French arsenals used were those the Germans captured after the fall of France. The British equipment used was mostly logistical equipment captured at Dunkirk after its fall and did not represent that much of an injection of material - I think the only major exception was the use of British land-mines in the desert war, but land-mines aren't part of this game.

The British never fielded German equipment in any significant quantities. The same is true of the Russians. The Chinese made little use of Japanese equipment until after the Japanese surrender when large amounts of equipment fell into their hands. The US obviously never used that much in the way of enemy material.

The reason for this is because equipment captured in combat is often damaged and includes little or nothing in the way of ammunition or spare parts. You have to capture a large amount (as the Germans did in the Russian encirclement and in over-running Russian supply-bases) with ammunition and spare parts to make using enemy equipment worthwhile.

 

[Praetori]

I'm not mad at you, but it feels like waiting for Christmas gifts and getting an Easter egg, instead

Easter Eggs are full of Candy. Christmas gifts are just socks and whatnot.

 

[paranoidsteve]

Thank god for the destroy crap option as I can see myself getting even more of it donated from my allies.

 

[uishax]

Beautiful changes, late game managing factories as a major was a chore due to having 150 factories on tanks and upgrading them one by one when a new model is researched.
The capturing equipment is also a much needed realism and gameplay boost, makes encirclement that much important and devastating.
Also helps manpower-rich factory poor countries like China, as their daring encirclement will give them critical equipment.

 

[Aldahen]

Nice additions. Especialy I like these two:

Taking other people's stuff
At the end of combats it will now be possible to capture enemy equipment. The divisions involved will grab stuff depending on participation (higher level maintenance companies help a lot here if you want to take full advantage of capturing). If the equipment isn't something the division needs it goes back to your stockpile. This one will be available for people with the DLC.

Nice touch of detail which gives more options. E.g. when you eventually do the Nordic countries, I expect the Finns to have a big bonus to this.

Lend Lease has been changed to allow to send equipment that isn’t originally yours. This means that you can give captured stuff to your allies etc.

Yes....Finally I can dump all that stuff to my allies and concentrate on my own quality army (*).

(*) only high industrial base and tech savvy countries need to apply

 

[Magnificent Genius]

@podcat does the destroyed equipment go to a secret storage server that @Secret Master can access? I know he's been talking about bugging you about it for ages.

 

[paranoidsteve]

What I really really want is the ability to deny use of my airfields to my allies , they always seem to fill them with out of date aircraft with no orders

 

[EltharionDrax]

Hmm... using equipment captured in battle seems like a nice idea, but other than German use of Russian equipment, did it happen that much? But then again the only reason this might be annoying is that you'd end up with stockpiles full of random weapons, but this already happens, and this DLC will give you a way of getting rid of the stockpile.

All-in-all seems like a good change.

This is literally how Finland got their one armored divison and a lot of other important materials during the war, and like already mentioned other countries put captured equipment to use. On a sidenote, I wonder if Finland was the country most dependent on captured equipment for their war-effort?

 

[Of_T_Turambar]

Looks like good stuff. Scrapping and leasing foreign equipment was sorely needed, on that note though, any chance we could we get some kind of "Native equipment only" button for division equipment lists? Deselecting 15 versions of inf equip 3 is a bit tedious.

 

[podcat]

I'm not mad at you, but it feels like waiting for Christmas gifts and getting an Easter egg, instead Sometimes it's hard to wait ... and because there are no pre-announcements, it's a lot of speculation what we can expect ... and with that comes a lot of exaggerated hope.

No worries As someone who has been waiting for games I know your pain Paradox at least shares progress unlike a lot of places where you only get to know stuff at the end.

The important distinction is thatthe French equipment you mention here was not captured in combat. Instead the French arsenals used were those the Germans captured after the fall of France. The British equipment used was mostly logistical equipment captured at Dunkirk after its fall and did not represent that much of an injection of material - I think the only major exception was the use of British land-mines in the desert war, but land-mines aren't part of this game.

The British never fielded German equipment in any significant quantities. The same is true of the Russians. The Chinese made little use of Japanese equipment until after the Japanese surrender when large amounts of equipment fell into their hands. The US obviously never used that much in the way of enemy material.

The reason for this is because equipment captured in combat is often damaged and includes little or nothing in the way of ammunition or spare parts. You have to capture a large amount (as the Germans did in the Russian encirclement and in over-running Russian supply-bases) with ammunition and spare parts to make using enemy equipment worthwhile.

Yeah you sort of are talking about capturing arms depos and such. In HOI4 its kinda abstracted between stuff captured after combat, and stuff captured on capitulation, and stuff captured on annexation.

The british and russians didnt really need to use captured equipment as much, although I have read about russians using german equipment.

 

[Russian Bias lmao]

What I really really want is the ability to deny use of my airfields to my allies , they always seem to fill them with out of date aircraft with no orders

Please, this is crucial!!!

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

Another interesting set of QoL improvements. Dealing with equipment leftovers is one of the most requested changes on the forum, so this it's really great to see PDX responding to consumer demand again. Good work.

Could be even better, if we could sell it to random nations, which are ready to pay.

Love it!

I'd love it more if scrapping stuff would result in gaining resources, though...

The problem with these suggestions, as you probably know, is stocks vs flows.

The equipment is a stock.

The game's currency is CIC output, which is a flow. If you sell equipment in nations, they would have to give you CIC output for a certain period of time in exchange for a punctilinear change in equipment stocks, which is going to require a large amount of programming to manage.

Resources are also a flow. Your equipment stocks are destroyed at a moment in time, but your resources would have to flow for a period of time.

It could be done, but I suspect it would be a pain to manage without exploits. The decision not to use money has many advantages, but makes these suggestions rather, erm, expensive ones.

 

[Lord Hoosier]

There is something fascinating about knowing your British African front runs on captured Italian tanks or your German Eastern Front has French built artillery supporting infantry carrying stolen Polish guns and Russian tanks. I don't know why - but it just seems kind of ironic and almost romantic about using the weapons of your conquered enemy against his former allies.