HOI4 Dev Diary - Equipment Conversion & War Update

[CommanderHolt]

I am interested if, say I am converting Medium Tank 1 to Medium Tank 1 MK2, will that conversion cost any resources? Since both base and variant cost the same resources to build from scratch, Does that means it will use no materials at all to convert? Or will there always be some sort of resource consumed?

 

[Axe99]

You'll need to elaborate for me to understand this.
I can't see how the current production system is better than the old "brigade" system -speaking for ship modules.
Are you alluding to the variant system? And are you suggesting that modules would be mass produced? It makes sense for AA and torpedo stuff, but not really for radar, fire control, ASDIC etc.

I feel I'm misunderstanding your point.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the old brigade system auto-upgraded through the 'upgrade' cost of IC didn't it, and the old equipment disappeared and wasn't transferable to older units? Plus there was no way to lend-lease radar or ASDIC using the old system (beyond production licenses, but that's not the same thing, particularly for countries without the industry to build the entire ship). As far as I can see, the old system's upgrade system, and rigidly linking the upgrade to the ship, and preventing lend-lease, would make it more limited than a system like this potentially set up in HoI4. From a modding perspective, something like this could potentially make it possible to take old guns from a battleship when it's scrapped and have that as input into a coastal artillery unit. Importantly, though - this is all hypothetical ramblings - I have no idea beyond what the devs have posted publicly, but I live in hope . I would much prefer an equipment-based set-up than the old system, although I would much prefer the old system to the current set-up we have in HoI4 now.

In terms of production numbers, the British alone produced hundreds (and hundreds) of radar and ASDIC sets during the war, and a lot of fire control units as well (although fire control usually wasn't refitted* - so for something like vanilla, I'd probably leave fire control out of it). There were far more radar and ASDIC sets built than ships (as the radar on most ships was upgraded at least once during the war, and often more than once), and ships are detailed enough to build. Plus the older sets can either be used as inputs into the upgraded sets, or hand-me-downs to other nations (for example, the USSR built about four naval radar sets during the war, but received at least 200 sets (I think it was 280-odd, but going from memory) from Britain. Same story with ASW weaponry (depth charge throwers, Hedgehog, Mousetrap and Squid) and AA guns (which I know you mentioned - but to give some context, of Bofors AA guns alone, the US built 2,300 quad mounts, nearly 10,000 twin mounts and over 10,000 single mounts for naval use alone).

* There were cases of refits and improvements, but as far as I know the vast majority of ships went to war with the fire control sets they were built/rebuilt with - although there were a lot of add-ons for those fire control sets which could perhaps be represented as upgrades to equipment. I'd need to do more reading to get a feel for how important those upgrades were though.

 

[Ancalimé]

I know I'm going to get hammered for this but...

I didn't choose the StuG life, the StuG life chose me.

It's pronounced Shtug -U as in "Uber", not as in "gut".

 

[Ancalimé]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the old brigade system auto-upgraded through the 'upgrade' cost of IC didn't it, and the old equipment disappeared and wasn't transferable to older units? Plus there was no way to lend-lease radar or ASDIC using the old system (beyond production licenses, but that's not the same thing, particularly for countries without the industry to build the entire ship). As far as I can see, the old system's upgrade system, and rigidly linking the upgrade to the ship, and preventing lend-lease, would make it more limited than a system like this potentially set up in HoI4. From a modding perspective, something like this could potentially make it possible to take old guns from a battleship when it's scrapped and have that as input into a coastal artillery unit. Importantly, though - this is all hypothetical ramblings - I have no idea beyond what the devs have posted publicly, but I live in hope . I would much prefer an equipment-based set-up than the old system, although I would much prefer the old system to the current set-up we have in HoI4 now.

In terms of production numbers, the British alone produced hundreds (and hundreds) of radar and ASDIC sets during the war, and a lot of fire control units as well (although fire control usually wasn't refitted* - so for something like vanilla, I'd probably leave fire control out of it). There were far more radar and ASDIC sets built than ships (as the radar on most ships was upgraded at least once during the war, and often more than once), and ships are detailed enough to build. Plus the older sets can either be used as inputs into the upgraded sets, or hand-me-downs to other nations (for example, the USSR built about four naval radar sets during the war, but received at least 200 sets (I think it was 280-odd, but going from memory) from Britain. Same story with ASW weaponry (depth charge throwers, Hedgehog, Mousetrap and Squid) and AA guns (which I know you mentioned - but to give some context, of Bofors AA guns alone, the US built 2,300 quad mounts, nearly 10,000 twin mounts and over 10,000 single mounts for naval use alone).

* There were cases of refits and improvements, but as far as I know the vast majority of ships went to war with the fire control sets they were built/rebuilt with - although there were a lot of add-ons for those fire control sets which could perhaps be represented as upgrades to equipment. I'd need to do more reading to get a feel for how important those upgrades were though.

Ah I see what you mean now.

Boy, those better be some highly efficient factories, I don't know how anyone's gonna spare the IC to build anything otherwise.

 

[him_15]

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.

Glad to hear you have considered this and might add this in the future, really looking forward to that!

 

[SentosKarum]

Ah I see what you mean now.

Boy, those better be some highly efficient factories, I don't know how anyone's gonna spare the IC to build anything otherwise.

Dimly recalled figures put the amount of industry the Germans had to use to supply heavy AA (iow. 8.8 and up) for city defense at requiring about 20-30% of the same industrial resources required to build tanks and stuff.
Put another way, without having to supply AA for city defense the German might have 20-30% more tanks / AT units.

 

[Balesir]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the old brigade system auto-upgraded through the 'upgrade' cost of IC didn't it, and the old equipment disappeared and wasn't transferable to older units? Plus there was no way to lend-lease radar or ASDIC using the old system (beyond production licenses, but that's not the same thing, particularly for countries without the industry to build the entire ship). As far as I can see, the old system's upgrade system, and rigidly linking the upgrade to the ship, and preventing lend-lease, would make it more limited than a system like this potentially set up in HoI4.

Actually, you could (at least in Arsenal of Democracy - don't remember vanilla HoI2 well enough, sorry!) take "brigade" attachments off ships and reassign them. They would still upgrade on the new base, though, unless you turned "upgrade" off.

* There were cases of refits and improvements, but as far as I know the vast majority of ships went to war with the fire control sets they were built/rebuilt with - although there were a lot of add-ons for those fire control sets which could perhaps be represented as upgrades to equipment. I'd need to do more reading to get a feel for how important those upgrades were though.

I would need to read up some more, too - I haven't really worked at depth with naval stuff since I did the naval setups for AoD - but I recall that things like rangefinders and ballistics computers were swapped out fairly frequently, normally as part of a major refit. The comms stuff and the basic way the FC fitted into the ship's systems didn't change, but the stuff that did change seemed like something that would significantly change performance.

Another factor is that, with any sort of "brigade" system, you necessarily have to abstract stuff a little. We talk about the "ship's radar" as if it were a unitary element, but most ships by the late war carried several sets for differing purposes. Is a gunnery bearing and rangefinder radar part of the "radar" rig or part of the fire control? And what about the sophisticated radar that was mounted in destroyers late on, to allow them to act as command and control centres for the aircraft from multiple carriers? The system we get in the game will be a nice, simple, clear set of attachments, I'm sure - but the reality was really quite messy and complex.

 

[Pallidum]

Does this also include the ability to convert old tanks over to an AA tank? I assume it does, but assuming doesn't mean it will

Yes, you can convert old tanks to SP AA variants.

 

[Cpack]

Can pictures be modded onto a variant, or a sub-type (SPG, TD, etc)? I couldn't get it to work when I tried to separate Navs and CV-Navs.

Yes

 

[joreri508]

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.

Maybe license "German tank equipment + planes" mod to Paradox? Given the revenue I would expect you get from the strong sales, it may be smart to license quality mods to extend games. It would encourage more quality modding as well.

 

[Emren]

Yes

Wow!! What mod is that??

 

[Bane5]

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)

A long time ago, I suggested this for handling different movement speeds: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...t-speeds-and-semi-motorized-divisions.953775/

A division's total movement speed could simply be the geometric mean of all its sub-units with some exceptions. The geometric mean still has the advantage of encouraging similar movement speeds to be grouped for maximum benefit. Don't know how computationally intensive it would be though.

 

[Chema1994]

The only thing Is miss are ship refits. To represent it, you should be able to to upgrade a ship to a variant of the same model, especially with AA weapons.

Also dispersed industry now looks a great option for Germany if you wanna play historically

 

[him_15]

The only thing Is miss are ship refits. To represent it, you should be able to to upgrade a ship to a variant of the same model, especially with AA weapons.

Also dispersed industry now looks a great option for Germany if you wanna play historically

I think the Dev would leave the option to upgrade ship for future DLC that focus on naval warfare.

 

[WarDog]

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)

Thanks for answering. I understand the point from a gameplay situation. From a historical point of view, there are few units so heavily modified as the halftrack. Germany (and to some degree the US) used them heavily as support units. They put infantry guns (the short 75mm from the Pz IV), grenade launchers, AT-guns, AA-guns, flamethrowers and used them as command vehicles.
Might be something to take a look at in an future expansion?

 

[Axe99]

Actually, you could (at least in Arsenal of Democracy - don't remember vanilla HoI2 well enough, sorry!) take "brigade" attachments off ships and reassign them. They would still upgrade on the new base, though, unless you turned "upgrade" off.

Sorry for the dodgy recollection and thanks for the correction/info . On the by, don't get me wrong, I do like the old system - I just think there's a little more potential for some cool (but optional) detail in the new system.

I would need to read up some more, too - I haven't really worked at depth with naval stuff since I did the naval setups for AoD - but I recall that things like rangefinders and ballistics computers were swapped out fairly frequently, normally as part of a major refit. The comms stuff and the basic way the FC fitted into the ship's systems didn't change, but the stuff that did change seemed like something that would significantly change performance.

I didn't realise you did the naval set-up for AoD (I didn't play it when it launched, RL was distracting me from more important pursuits at the time, so wasn't following it closely, although I was confident you were involved somewhere . Great work - from what I recall, I was a big fan . If you have any suggestions for sources on fire control systems in the war, I'd definitely be interested - the only two books I've looked at that covered them were Naval Weapons of WW2 and Naval anti-aircraft guns and gunnery (Friedman also has a surface 'guns and gunnery' book that's on my list), so I'm pretty green when it comes to this kind of thing.

In terms of fire control refits, my notes are generally at the 'whole of system' level (and organised around the fire control computer as the core of the system - which may or may not be a good way of doing it), and I'd need to look into it properly to have any real idea - I've just read bits and pieces while looking specifically at other things. There definitely were refits - I was about to write that I couldn't recall any in destroyers (the earlier US interwar destroyers weren't able to be fitted with the Mk37, iirc) but had a quick look at my notes which mention that the J/K/N class had their fire control system changed out - but also that the New Orleans class didn't have the Mk 34 US FCT set retrofitted in because of weight considerations. So hard and fast rules would be tricky unless we had some kind of weight limit on the attachments we could add on (which is something I dream about at night ). At least with radar, AA and ASW, all ships having their systems upgraded as equipment becomes available is much more straightforward (although it wouldn't be fair if there weren't exceptions ).

Another factor is that, with any sort of "brigade" system, you necessarily have to abstract stuff a little. We talk about the "ship's radar" as if it were a unitary element, but most ships by the late war carried several sets for differing purposes. Is a gunnery bearing and rangefinder radar part of the "radar" rig or part of the fire control? And what about the sophisticated radar that was mounted in destroyers late on, to allow them to act as command and control centres for the aircraft from multiple carriers? The system we get in the game will be a nice, simple, clear set of attachments, I'm sure - but the reality was really quite messy and complex.

Aye, totally - and then there's the radar sets that were used for both surface search and gunnery (and there were other combos as well, although my memory's not playing ball and giving me any concrete examples). I definitely think in at least vanilla it'd be one radar set that upgraded over time. The beauty of equipment rather than technology bonuses would be in enabling things (probably in mods) like a Mk 22/Mk 28 set, with appropriate bonuses for those sets - so early radar kits might have a narrower range of benefits, that improve as the radar 'fitout' becomes more comprehensive.

In terms of the radar picket destroyers (and other ships - from memory the British had a number of cruisers with fighter direction set-ups, and most (all?) allied fleet carriers had them once they became a thing) that could also act as fighter control ships, including that would depend on the capacity of a ship to 'project' a bonus on local aircraft fighting in their battle. Without that, I'm not sure there's a mechanic in the game to reflect the benefit that would bring to a naval action (but am definitely interested if you have one in mind ).

 

[Cpack]

Wow!! What mod is that??

This is not a real mod, but I made hundreds of profiles for the game. Some I uploaded as Steam workshop (search Cpack).

 

[Sanny]

So is this just only for outdated tanks and aircraft? Or am I missing something?

 

[Stug_Life]

I know I'm going to get hammered for this but...

I didn't choose the StuG life, the StuG life chose me.

Join the club

 

[Ancalimé]

Has anyone from the dev team, at any point, made it clear that planes are convertible to other planes?

I heard planes being converted to tanks, but not plane-to-plane.