HQs, Command Structure and OOBs

[plasticpanzers]

Gee..nobody ever made corps assets from the building block units in HOI3? not in the mods? did not add an artillery unit
or one extra to a 5 unit division? Nobody built an artillery division? They are all there in the game but not put in proper
perspective or operation. PI had a chance to change that and make the game actually easier to play and more historical.
So I suspect you will never see these million men in the game. Damn sad.

"The little men who are not there, there they are again today, gee I wished they went away"

 

[AequitasVenator]

I know that they have not said there will be HQs but HQs now are just boxes to carry generals and a wee little staff. All those
missing assets (3000 guns for just the USA) should be somewhere as should other Aliied and Axis support units. I don't mean
independent but somehow tied into the corps system to support the combat units that make up the main portion of a corps or
higher formation.

Perhaps corps and other higher headquarters can have artillery, logistics, security and intel-gathering asset ratings purchase-able with XP. This would be self-limiting and provide the player a chance to effect the game with purpose-built organizations. Match the right HQ element with the right Commander and you get one hell on wheels formation - but only that one for that expenditure.

As posted elsewhere, XP could be spent to "reveal/recognize/decorate" anonymous Division Commanders which would then show their stats/proclivities and enable the player to promote them to higher echelons of leadership, enabling the matches made in heaven scenario mentioned above.

 

[plasticpanzers]

The vibes say they don't want to change the system they conceived already. I expect any 'higher assets' will show up as
tech or doctrine increases which is a shame as it cannot be done that way realistically gamewise. You cannot have it and
not have it.

 

[podcat]

The vibes say they don't want to change the system they conceived already. I expect any 'higher assets' will show up as
tech or doctrine increases which is a shame as it cannot be done that way realistically gamewise. You cannot have it and
not have it.

Just as a side note, please don't line break in the middle of text. It makes it really hard to read your posts.

 

[Darkrenown]

It is true that we did not have it. Is that a reason not to have it?

No. My point was it's misleading and dishonest to complain something has been taken away from you when you never had it in the first place. Want to make a case that something should be added? Fair enough. Want to complain something that was never there has been taken from you? No, that's weird.

 

[Darkrenown]

Gee..nobody ever made corps assets from the building block units in HOI3? not in the mods? did not add an artillery unit
or one extra to a 5 unit division? Nobody built an artillery division? They are all there in the game but not put in proper
perspective or operation. PI had a chance to change that and make the game actually easier to play and more historical.
So I suspect you will never see these million men in the game. Damn sad.

"The little men who are not there, there they are again today, gee I wished they went away"

What's given you the idea you can't add artillery to units in HoI4? And yes, you could build an artillery division on HoI3, but it was useless. You'll most likely be able to build useless divisions in 4 too, if you really want to.

 

[mrsmith00]

Might be slightly off topic, but will you be able to build single brigades like HOI3 or is everything built as a division with the templates? I might be getting ahead, but for example, can I build 2x separate infantry brigades and later merge them into a division?

 

[plasticpanzers]

Podcast, my posts read fine to me on my 17in monitor and I don't know why they don't to you. My first line you quote ends at 'as'
and the 2nd line at 'and'. I cannot fix what I cannot see what is wrong. It appears perfectly readable to me and longer even longer
than a book page would be.

Again. in HOI3 you have a 3 brigade division that includes artillery. you add a brigade of artillery which would make it artillery heavy
(6 battalions total?). then when you tech the 5th brigade you add another (9 battalions total?). This was not Corps assets? Of course
folks built Artillery divisions, how many posts are there in AARs and mods about building 3-4 ART units plus an Inf to try and build a
soft attack heavy unit. Of course they did not work, the then HOI3 system prevented you from having working 'corps assets'. Mods
added heavy artillery and RR artillery, they did not work because the system to use them did not work.

How many posts about trying to add troops to HQ to have working Corps HQs? That did not work either. The new divisional template
will not work. Its a 'divisional' template. Of course you can make smaller units if the template works as you say but its still not the
same. All units will fight as front line units. There are no true 'support' units. Can you see adding a US 240mm Howitzer battalion
to a US infantry division?

Without Corps assets all that firepower and units and actual tactical abilities of the Corps commanders is gutted.

The Units are there and always have been. Folks have been tinkering with the HOI system for years to get them to work. They don't
and that is the darn shame of it.


EDIT: why do you think the US only had about 90 combat divisions? Its because Corps assets, and the Germans, Russians,
and UK had em too, act as 'Force Multipliers'. You feed in new riflemen and pound the crap out of the enemy with non-organic
artillery, rocket-launchers, heavy tanks, assault guns, superheavy artillery at points of tactical importance. You either blunt
an enemy attack with these 'force multipliers' or you add to the knife your forces are to punch thru.

 

[Letar]

Podcast, my posts read fine to me on my 17in monitor and I don't know why they don't to you. My first line you quote ends at 'as'
and the 2nd line at 'and'. I cannot fix what I cannot see what is wrong. It appears perfectly readable to me and longer even longer
than a book page would be.

You shouldn't use line breaks as the forum automatically scales the width of the text to your browser window. If you don't use full screen browser on a larger monitor by decreasing the width of the window, then the added line breaks makes every other line to end abruptly. I think this is what pocdat meant.

 

[plasticpanzers]

that is strange because when I allow the browser and page to break by typing till the line breaks automatically what I read is all over the page.
Weird!

 

[unmerged(13597)]

I, too, would sorely miss the OOB if it goes away. The idea was very good, and would have been brilliant if the AI would know how to keep units under the same corps/army together.

 

[Bullfrog]

I'm sure we can discuss further when we learn about how corps actually work, given that they'll exist at all.

 

[Kikaider]

What's given you the idea you can't add artillery to units in HoI4? And yes, you could build an artillery division on HoI3, but it was useless. You'll most likely be able to build useless divisions in 4 too, if you really want to.

Actually, I had a lot of fun building artillery divisions as Russia (about 30 or 35 of 1inf + 2 art, grouped in 5s to make artillery corps), and I always found them useful since they were a) small so you could build more of them, b) not that bad on the offensive (due to concentration in space with a frontage of one and a lot of SA) and c) AI control seemed to work better with more small units than few big ones and this build facilitated that

I plan to do the same thing in HOI IV when I play Russia again

 

[plasticpanzers]

I have not a clue how HOI4 will work out. None of us does. We all want the maximum 'bang for our buck' obviously. My suggestions and ideas were always to help try and get PI to pack as much 'into the box' as possible. I have gamed for over 50 years and studied history just as long. Of course I want the maximum historical accuracy in the game but I too want it playable as much as the next player. Its not ego but enthusiasm and the want for historical accuracy.

Of course much of the game mechanics and path is already written and planned. We have little hope in altering that I know. Many ideas are not programmable on this scale, some are not practical, some are just plain not wanted. We can just hope for the best. PI is a practical company, they will do the best they can. I will try and restrain my enthusiasm and just wait and see what they come up with.

 

[krche]

What's given you the idea you can't add artillery to units in HoI4? And yes, you could build an artillery division on HoI3, but it was useless. You'll most likely be able to build useless divisions in 4 too, if you really want to.

If the idea is to keep the corps / army assets directly in the divisions (as it is right now in HOI3) then we probably need some kind of template work around. Imagine you want to have 5 or so heavy tank battalions deployed throughout your army, then adding an extra heavy tank battalion to the infantry division template will not really work as it would be replicated throughout the army resulting in far too many battalions. In HOI3 you could build the 5 battalions and then attach them as needed.

Regarding the impressive battle planning system (which looks very good!) would it not be an option to use the same mechanics and base the combat movement around corps (i.e. groups of up to 5 divs or so) and then have the army/army groups and maybe even theaters as logistic functions (i.e. supply depots, replacement depots and equipment holder) with the different commanders providing different bonus depending on their rating and characteristics.

The independent artillery / armour / pioneer battalions attached directly to the corps, army, army groups and be introduced into combat by the corps, army , army groups (through the combat reinforcement mechanic, the logic being that the higher up the command the support is attached the less reinf chance, but the wider the reach). Full divisions could even be attached to this army, army group level and placed on the map manually, behind the front, in order to simulate the reserves. Any introduction into combat by these divisions would then benefit from better combat reinf chance if the player moves them into combat within the army / army group level.

 

[donkeysaint]

If the idea is to keep the corps / army assets directly in the divisions (as it is right now in HOI3) then we probably need some kind of template work around. Imagine you want to have 5 or so heavy tank battalions deployed throughout your army, then adding an extra heavy tank battalion to the infantry division template will not really work as it would be replicated throughout the army resulting in far too many battalions. In HOI3 you could build the 5 battalions and then attach them as needed.

Regarding the impressive battle planning system (which looks very good!) would it not be an option to use the same mechanics and base the combat movement around corps (i.e. groups of up to 5 divs or so) and then have the army/army groups and maybe even theaters as logistic functions (i.e. supply depots, replacement depots and equipment holder) with the different commanders providing different bonus depending on their rating and characteristics.

The independent artillery / armour / pioneer battalions attached directly to the corps, army, army groups and be introduced into combat by the corps, army , army groups (through the combat reinforcement mechanic, the logic being that the higher up the command the support is attached the less reinf chance, but the wider the reach). Full divisions could even be attached to this army, army group level and placed on the map manually, behind the front, in order to simulate the reserves. Any introduction into combat by these divisions would then benefit from better combat reinf chance if the player moves them into combat within the army / army group level.

Excellent concept!!

Paradox, please consider having a system like this. Not having division commanders is something I will miss, but I can understand you taking that approach. But please, keep a command structure going from corps and up.

 

[208]

In order to simulate corps assets, could you not simply make some template variants with an added artillery batallion (or whatever) and switch your divisions on the fly between templates? It might be fairly pricey in terms of experience, depending on how many variants you want, but perhaps not.

I'm not a game developer (sadly), but IMHO to model corps assets more accurately, you'd need a number of things, all of which would take up a chunk of very-limited development time:

First, you would need a persistent OOB so that there are some actual corps to which you could assign assets. So far (yes, yes, pre-alpha) I've seen no indication that there's any OOB structure that exists beyond temporarily assigning units to a battle plan and sticking a general on top, so I'm guessing this would need to be done.

You'd need the ability to assign batallions to a corps, at least in an administrative sense. They wouldn't strictly need to be represented on the map as individual units, they could either be attached to a division or simply reserved in a separate pool (off-map). The main difference between this and just changing division templates on the fly as I suggested above is that the corps asset could keep any gained experience even when not assigned (and you're not going to accidentally use that equipment for a new constructed division or replacements).

You'd need to be able to dynamically assign (and re-assign) assets to a division, without needing a new template all the time. Being able to unlock a "corps asset slot" (or more than one) on a division template, which could be assigned a variety of battalions but is not "populated" when such a division is constructed, would be sufficient. Reassigning a corps asset would probably require some kind of time delay proportional to the travelling time between the two divisions.

You'd need to spend some extra unit design/balance/tuning time considering possible combinations of corps assets so that there aren't any "broken" combinations.

Finally, you would need an AI that was capable of making good use of such a mechanism. If the AI can't use it effectively, it just makes the AI that much worse compared to a human player.

 

[jju_57]

Now to some serious questions.

1) How would these corps assets be represented on the map?
2) How would they act in the battle planner?
3) Are there limits to what you can build? If so what is the limiting factor?
4) Can we get the AI to understand how to build them, how many to build and also how to use them?

If we as humans don't know how to use them we have zero chance in getting the AI to use them.

 

[Dalwin]

Now to some serious questions.

1) How would these corps assets be represented on the map?
2) How would they act in the battle planner?
3) Are there limits to what you can build? If so what is the limiting factor?
4) Can we get the AI to understand how to build them, how many to build and also how to use them?

If we as humans don't know how to use them we have zero chance in getting the AI to use them.

The best representation I have seen of corps assets in a pc game was Grigsby's War in the East. There they were always handled automatically by the corps commander. He committed them where he saw fit.

Without completely tearing down the currently revealed system, we could be attaching various loose arty or heavy tank battalions to the corps commanders. This would not even have them on map. To see them there could be a button in the battle planner (on the existing general screen) to get a detailed list. To control them, let him do it himself.

 

[illathid]

If the idea is to keep the corps / army assets directly in the divisions (as it is right now in HOI3) then we probably need some kind of template work around. Imagine you want to have 5 or so heavy tank battalions deployed throughout your army, then adding an extra heavy tank battalion to the infantry division template will not really work as it would be replicated throughout the army resulting in far too many battalions. In HOI3 you could build the 5 battalions and then attach them as needed.

Well in HoI4 you could do the same thing by branching a new division template from the infantry division that adds a heavy tank battalion, then you'd choose the infantry divisions that you wNt to have the heavy tanks, and switch their template. At least, that's how I recall it working.