HOI4 Dev Diary - Equipment Conversion & War Update

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podcat

Game Director <unannounced>
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Jul 23, 2007
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Hi everyone and welcome to today's dev diary. I’m home with a nasty cold, but lets power through and check out some more stuff coming in Death or Dishonor and the Oak update. Today’s main topic is Equipment Conversion, or how to choose the StuG Life.

Using older chassis to mount more powerful guns etc was very common in WW2 era Germany, in fact its most produced armored fighting vehicle the StuG III was essentially a PzIII with its turret removed to make room for a more powerful gun. We've always let you build these self-propelled variants in HOI4, but its not been possible to convert existing vehicles before. Now if you get Death or Dishonor it will be! This is a great way of getting rid of older stuff you might not want to deploy and keeping it relevant for longer.

dd_3.jpg

If you look at the top production line there you can see that the conversion tickbox is enabled, and that the line is using suspiciously little resources and running at high speed. This is what it looks like with the box unticked:
dd_2.jpg

You can only enable this if you have spare equipment that is possible to convert from sitting around in your stockpile. When converting you pay the difference in resources only rather than the full amount and production speed is much higher.
dd_1.jpg


Note that it lists in what order and what will be converted (although here all I had for the diary was PzIIIs).

So what exactly can you convert?
  • Any base model (PzIV) or upgraded variant marked obsolete (say PzIV B) to a newer one (PzIV C). This goes for planes too.
  • Any base model or variant (up to one tech level back) to a self propelled. So you can convert a Medium Tank 1 to a Medium Tank Destroyer 1 or Medium Tank Destroyer 2 (the second one would then cost more resources).
  • The above also works for licensed or captured equipment (although you can't convert a captured T-34 to a PzIV C, they need to actually be upgraded versions of the same thing).

There are also some new techs that help improve conversions to be even more efficient. 2 of them in the machine tools tree and Dispersed Industry also gives a base bump.
dd_4.jpg


For modders its fairly easy to mess around with this, check out the spoiler for scripting examples:
Code:
medium_tank_equipment = {
        is_convertable = yes
}

Code:
medium_tank_artillery_equipment_3 = {
        can_convert_from = {
            medium_tank_equipment_2
            medium_tank_equipment_3
        }
}

We have also been updating the war overview interface to make it nicer and more informative.
its now possible to see total losses, fielded manpower, industry and also to be able to sort by each column.
dd_5.jpg

Another thing is that we now showcase capitulation a bit clearer (see Free France) and its now also possible to get out of capitulation. Previously this only happened at the end of the war which led to some weird cases where a France who had reclaimed all their territory still wouldn't be able to stop their side from giving up if the other majors had fallen. Now the capitulated state is reset if you reclaim your original capital and get back 90% of their surrender level.

This weekend is PdxCon and next Wednesday we will be taking a look at new air stuff! Also do tune in to the World War Wednesday stream at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive with maybe only Daniel at 16:00CET (unless he manages to snag another sidekick than me). It will be full "hot code!" mode and start a new campaign as Hungary to show off stuff from last week's diary.
 
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OR I have to setup two production lines, one to convert all to MArm I and another to Convert it to Marm IA?

you can convert directly to upgraded versions, no need for a middle step

When can we convert outdated battleships to carriers or something?
Since ships are huge and dont live in the stockpile the same stuff wouldnt really work for them (realistically they would need to sit in port etc). Its something that makes sense to add long term though. Perhaps in an expansion with more naval focus.
 
quick question: will production of the converted tanks stop completly so you get the "free factories" alert or will production just continue with normal speed/costs when the stockpile is empty?
if you run out of stuff to convert it will continue producing with regular costs. We felt its what makes sense most of the time (you produce to meet a lack in your armies etc)
 
Can we convert Light armor 36 to Medium td 39?
no, we felt this would make stuff a bit too unbalanced so there is no conversion between light-medium-heavy. You could mod it though I guess.

Can we get a button we can tick so our industry will automatically use spare equipment to convert? that way we won't have to micromanage the whole thing if we don't want to.
not sure it makes sense on global level. I think it wont be something you always want to use as you wont want stockpiles to sink too low and be able to maintain reinforcements etc. We'll keep it in mind tho.

Does this mean that for a country to "uncapitulate," in addition to reclaiming the capital, that country's capitulation bar would have to move from 100% "red" (100% capitulated) all the way to 90% "green" (only 10% towards capitulation) or will it be enough to get the bar to 10% "green" (i.e., still 90% of the way to capitulation)?

need to get 90% green
 
Looking forward to playing with conversion.

The main thing I'm taking away from this though is that dispersed is being buffed again. I already pretty much considered it the go to tech of choice and unless you've nerfed part off it or buffed concentrated its going to be even more lopsided. Also dispersed industry isn't as good at this efficiency stuff as concentrated industry in real life, maybe it's time to consider renaming then at the very least.

its only a small buff compared to techs. As for dispersed vs concentrated I cant say I'm that happy about that part of the tree. I think they should be remade to multiple choices in the future.

They look awesomely moddable as well. Can conversions be modded cross-archetype? Ie, if we were nuts, could we convert a CAS1 into a Medium Tank 3? This is a silly example, but trying to think of an extreme case. More serious conversion might be truck-mounted AT guns or rocket launchers.
Yup, although it makes no sense at all :D
upload_2017-5-10_13-52-8.png

I'd also feel forced to rename the resulting variant to "Flappy bird"

- I'm fairly sure tanks were up-gunned as well, but now we're getting very hazy.
I'd argue the firefly would sort of fit
 
Best DD so far (except for the DD with the AI improvement). Looking forward to play with conversions.
Any chance we can get a speed bump for the equipment that belonged in the panzer divisions? I'm thinking about halftracks and other stuff. With their slow speed, they don't get used as they should IMO.

its a good point. It does feel wierd to not be able to match speeds properly. Its something we are looking into good solutions for (I kinda feel liek truck/halftrack variants with upgrades would be a bit much)

Podcat, can we have the proper pic for the different tank variant in the future please? (at least for Germany) It is not fun to see a Panzer III picture when I am actually producing StuG III. This new equipment convention feature encourage us to play around more with tank variant, I really thought there would be new pic for that.

Well you see a pzIII with an icon next to it, but yes i agree very much. We sadly didnt have time to make all that extra art, but I really want to plan it for the future.