HOI4 - Development Diary - September 9th 2016

[Prinz Wilhelm]

I'm liking the high rate of responses from the devs in general, one of the main reasons I came back to these forums (along with the awesome game).

 

[Cymsdale]

Yeah, that would have done over well with the community.

Some people tend to get pissy if they just implement a similar feature to a mod, I shudder at the thought of the backlash taking a whole mod and just integrating it without asking would trigger. Even if it were within their rights, it would be a pretty stupid move not to seek permission first, even if it was not technically needed.

Asking permission is definitely the polite thing to do, even if it's not something the mod authors can really say 'no' to.

 

[ashbery76]

How it that 12% multiplayer factored in.I call it very dubious it's that high.

 

[pablaunz]

It surprises me that only a few people use NATO counters. It feel more inmersive to me and I'm used to them because I played HOI3.

 

[Dragula]

I'm assuming historical flags is one of the most common mods, as it is always on the top in Steam.

 

[Traks]

Any ideas on better tech overhauling, are there such stats?
With current system most of countries never researching a single naval tech before 1942, and of course nobody cares about Synthetic plant tech upgrades.

Would be great to make all techs somewhat usable.

And naval AA improvement, when 100 ships shoot down 3 planes, you get a feeling something is amiss.

 

[Bobby53]

Will the Sunflower patch address the lag that some of us are experiencing?

 

[billcorr]

How it that 12% multiplayer factored in.I call it very dubious it's that high.

Just wondering, why is it doubtful that 12% of the HoI4 games that are played are played in multiplayer mode?

Curious.

 

[208]

In
In my Japan game the Germans have been stuck in front of Athens for two years.

I've noticed in my own games that the front line just seems to vanish when it gets to Athens. Similarly at the Crimean peninsula, there's no front line for the isthmus, I have to order my troops manually in both cases to continue the offensive.

EDIT: Also Sicily (coming from the north).

 

[Jorlem]

You can write a suggestion on how you would like it to work on the mod forum and ping me.

Would you have any objection if I were to ping you as well, in my suggestion thread for improving how battle plans/front lines function?

 

[Procyanide]

@podcat : Is it easy for Paradox to integrate mods into the base game? What are some of the disadvantages of this? (other than permission from the creator) It seems like a really easy way to expand and improve the game, since most of the work was (presumably) done by the modder, and the community decides if they like it by downloading it.

Im just curious, im not a modder myself

 

[loup99]

Nice statistics! I do love those too. Very interesting to know that you are integrating mods into the game, it shows how the community around the game is engaged and that you share ideas with modders.

 

[ltccone]

I've noticed in my own games that the front line just seems to vanish when it gets to Athens. Similarly at the Crimean peninsula, there's no front line for the isthmus, I have to order my troops manually in both cases to continue the offensive.

EDIT: Also Sicily (coming from the north).

The last time I checked there were over 100 divisions in one province. That can't be helping any.

 

[Gort11]

The last time I checked there were over 100 divisions in one province. That can't be helping any.

Yeah, there really does need to be some kind of upper-limit on how many divisions the AI will send into a single province. I can't think of a reason to have more than say, ten divisions in a single province, an upper limit of something like twenty or thirty would cut down on the attrition a little bit.

 

[billcorr]

Yeah, there really does need to be some kind of upper-limit on how many divisions the AI will send into a single province. I can't think of a reason to have more than say, ten divisions in a single province, an upper limit of something like twenty or thirty would cut down on the attrition a little bit.

Good idea.

Perhaps the limit should be governed by the supply situation? The number of units in a single state could be limited by the total number of supply that all the units in the state require. (This might already be done by the AI).

Alternatively, the number of units in a state might be limited by the total of all the sizes of the units.

We might need to be careful with calling each land unit a "division." For ease of discussion, yes, each land unit is called a division. But some of the units produced by the AI are just a few battalions. A land unit might range from a single "battalion" (yep! I've done that in multiplayer games), "reinforced battalion," "Brigade" or "Regiment," "Reinforced brigade" or "brigade task force," or a full blown division.

But such a variety of nuance violates the KISS principle...keep it simple.

Going back to the idea of an upper limit of how many divisions the AI will send into a single hex: as much as the area can support via supply . Kind of like rabbits on an island...the upper limit of rabbits is as many rabbits that the ecology can support. Beyond that, the rabbit population suffers attrition. Just like a huge pile of land units in a low supply area.

 

[Hawk_za]

PLEASE tell me you've fixed the manpower requirement for anchluss being incorrectly displayed it says 550k but its more like 616k

 

[podcat]

What the modder did is actual programming that probably took him hours of work (if not more). And this work deserves salary if PDX is going to earn money thanks to it.

you have to remember we do these patches for free. if I charged money for it it could for sure be argued.

Will the Sunflower patch address the lag that some of us are experiencing?

depends.
- the late game is slower and it will ALWAYS be slower. Since more happens later it must take more time. We can improve it of course over time.
- we have improved some major performance issues related to air interface
- there are some small general improvements also

But no, nothing drastic beyond those.

@podcat : Is it easy for Paradox to integrate mods into the base game? What are some of the disadvantages of this? (other than permission from the creator) It seems like a really easy way to expand and improve the game, since most of the work was (presumably) done by the modder, and the community decides if they like it by downloading it.

Im just curious, im not a modder myself

Good question! There are a few things that may mean mods are best off being mods.
- you might not agree with what the mod does, or it has different prioritization. As an example the AI improvement mod that gave AI templates directly at certain points to keep it competitive. While it improved things, its not a direction we want to go either short term (ai cheat stuff) or long term (not developing a robust system where ai becomes adaptable. unless ai builds actual counters to player it will always be taken advantage of... although we arent quite there yet).
- mods have bugs we need to fix. that would mean understanding everything done in them

 

[podcat]

PLEASE tell me you've fixed the manpower requirement for anchluss being incorrectly displayed it says 550k but its more like 616k

what? pretty sure I did this last week and numbers matched up

 

[Sleight of Hand]

what? pretty sure I did this last week and numbers matched up

In the current live build (1.10) the numbers still don't match up, no.

 

[podcat]

In the current live build (1.10) the numbers still don't match up, no.

might be fixed then and I never noticed. I'll double check