Interrelationship between trade and production

[panzerzombie]

The developers have said they are making a game not a simulator. Resource consumption tied to factories have some very nice advantages:

• Reduce or remove the need of micromanagement
• Make efficiency more valuable as it can not be compensated by throwing in more factories.

I see the reasoning behind it ofc.....fixed amounts of input resources and variable output number = less or easier micro ( you calculate the consumption once in a while and you´re largely done). If the amount of needed resources is variable from day to day you may constantly need to adjust e.g. trade. And yes ofc it makes efficiency so much more valuable for resource poor countries.

I wouldn´t mind a bit of more micro in this case but I also respect the preference of many players toward less micro.

It however - regardless of a simple game or simulator - sacrifices (pseudo)realism unnecessarily which could be achieved with a relatively simple switch of variables.

A similar thing in IV is done as well with the notorious Oil-thing/fairy dust/whatever affair and I don´t like it ( for whatever thats worth^^ ) .... ofc in this case its NOT done with a few variables.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

The decision to ban stockpiles of everything except equipment has a lot of consequences throughout the game. Without a stockpile, you need fairly stable resource demand, so resources demand is proportional to the number of factories in use, rather than the units produced (which would be changing all the time as efficiency developed).

The exact same dynamic is at work on the supply side. In the real world, demands for fuel, ammunition and replacement parts/equipment are not constant, but depend on circumstances. Real countries need stockpiles to buffer the difference between stable supply and fluctuating demand. However, the only thing stockpiled in HoI4 is equipment, so they use equipment to stand in for all three. The alternative is either constantly adjusting fuel and ammo production to meet demand (a micro nightmare) or stockpiling of fuel and ammunition (a hindsight nightmare?).