Is the non-MtG version being maintained at all?

[SchwarzKatze]

Here's a quick example: capital ship technologies by year

There are just so many things wrong:
1) BC 2 has more armor but less speed than BB 3, which is opposite of what they're supposed to do.
2) SHBB 2 has about only half the armor of SHBB 1 and barely more than BC 2.
3) BB 4 has more armor than SHBB 2 and twice of that of BB 3 while also ridiculously fast.

There are so many things wrong that I don't think it's a simple copy paste error.

In addition, both start dates have a bunch of naval oob errors that can be trivially discovered by running the game in debug mode. However, it has been over a year and no effort has been made to fix them.

I *do* have MtG, and I was made aware of this issue because of an unrelated mod bug report which turned out to be an vanilla issue.

These are trivial data entry issues that can be fixed by junior content designers in less an hour, but if the policy is to deprecate non-MtG versions, then it's probably the best to merge them and make non-MtG use the same techs and OOB internally but different ship designer interface than leaving the non-DLC version a buggy compatibility nightmare.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

I dug through the bug report forum and found my old bug report threads from the second week after MtG launched.

HoI 4 - Duplicate ships in history/units/USA_1936_naval_legacy.txt [1.6.1 beta][cff6]

Description of issue Duplicate ships in history/units/USA_1936_naval_legacy.txt [1.6.1 beta][cff6] Game Version 1.6.1 beta (cff6) Enabled DLC All of the above Do you have mods enabled? No Description USS S-11 thru S-17 and S-48 are pasted...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

HoI 4 - HMS Gustaf V broken without MtG [1.6.1 beta][cff6]

Description of issue HMS Gustaf V broken without MtG [1.6.1 beta][cff6] Game Version 1.6.1 beta [cff6] Enabled DLC All of the above Do you have mods enabled? No Description history/units/SWE_1939_naval_legacy.txt contains a copy paste error...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[bitmode]

The largest fleet in the world is still called "Home Command Legacy Test".

The wiki lists all stat deviations: https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/List_of_default_ship_variants. Hardly a single ship works correctly.

 

[Eisscrat]

omg

 

[--Yigito123--]

They really dropped the ball by making a significant portion of the naval revamp into DLC features. Now, they need to spend resources on the upkeep of the Naval System in both MtG and non-MtG versions, and it is obvious that they have no intention of continuing equal upkeep on the version of the system without DLC (Or, well, any upkeep apart from the most 'necessary'). This kind of "Non-DLC owners miss out on free update bug-fixes" is the exact sort of thing the DLC system should be preventing in contrast to their old 'Expansion Pack' system from HoI3.

 

[Jays298]

It's one of those fundamental design rules, that the more features you add, the more problems there are going to be. And the AI is the biggest limitation. They can add as many bells and whistles as they want but good luck teaching the AI to do anything right.

At this point the game is 4 years old. Maybe they could make HOI 5. Since the graphics are dated...

I consider buying the "expansions" but I don't really see what value they add over the base game. In fact I've never bought an expansion ever. I buy complete editions only or vanilla.

At this point they should wrap it up. Unify it.

 

[Mousetick]

They really dropped the ball by making a significant portion of the naval revamp into DLC features. Now, they need to spend resources on the upkeep of the Naval System in both MtG and non-MtG versions, and it is obvious that they have no intention of continuing equal upkeep on the version of the system without DLC (Or, well, any upkeep apart from the most 'necessary').

Your point is all conjecture and no facts.

Aside from anti-ship mines, and some others I'm probably overlooking, the core naval mechanics in MtG and the base game are exactly the same. A ship is abstracted as a hull type and a set of attributes (aka stats). This ship abstraction, the naval OOB, the naval missions and combat are identical in the game with or without MtG. The ship designer in MtG is just a tool to customize the attributes of ships in a more granular way than simply choosing between tier 1, 2, or 3. This is a different user interface than the base game for specifying a ship, but the underlying mechanics are the same.

The issues presented above do exist and are real, there is no denying, but they amount to configuration and balance errors in the game without MtG. So how do you go from these findings to your conclusion that "They really dropped the ball by making a significant portion of the naval revamp into DLC features."?

"Non-DLC owners miss out on free update bug-fixes"

Perhaps that's what the Paradox marketing dept. would like you to believe, but that's untrue. Could you provide some concrete examples of important bug fixes that are present in DLCs but missing from the base game?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not excusing the existence of defects in the game (base or DLC), or defending the devs' apparent lack of care in fixing them. But I think you're making a storm in a teacup, without any real argument to base it on.

 

[ecpgieicg]

Your point is all conjecture and no facts.

Aside from anti-ship mines, and some others I'm probably overlooking, the core naval mechanics in MtG and the base game are exactly the same. A ship is abstracted as a hull type and a set of attributes (aka stats). This ship abstraction, the naval OOB, the naval missions and combat are identical in the game with or without MtG. The ship designer in MtG is just a tool to customize the attributes of ships in a more granular way than simply choosing between tier 1, 2, or 3. This is a different user interface than the base game for specifying a ship, but the underlying mechanics are the same.

The issues presented above do exist and are real, there is no denying, but they amount to configuration and balance errors in the game without MtG. So how do you go from these findings to your conclusion that "They really dropped the ball by making a significant portion of the naval revamp into DLC features."?


Perhaps that's what the Paradox marketing dept. would like you to believe, but that's untrue. Could you provide some concrete examples of important bug fixes that are missing from the base game?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not excusing the existence of defects in the game (base or DLC), or defending the devs' apparent lack of care in fixing them. But I think you're making a storm in a teacup, without any real argument to base it on.

I actually have the (opposite) complaint that MtG ship modules system is too cosmetic and lack gameplay consequence in vanilla HOI4. Makes good potential modding support though.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

A ship is abstracted as a hull type and a set of attributes (aka stats). This ship abstraction, the naval OOB, the naval missions and combat are identical in the game with or without MtG. The ship designer in MtG is just a tool to customize the attributes of ships in a more granular way than simply choosing between tier 1, 2, or 3. This is a different user interface than the base game for specifying a ship, but the underlying mechanics are the same.

The issue is that it's not implemented that way. Instead of having the same code in the back but a different UI, the MtG and legacy ships are structured completely differently. They have separate technologies, ship class definitions, unit types, and OOB. Just go into any naval country's history file and naval OOB files and you will see.

Ideally they should have mostly the same mechanics in the backend, using the same techs, classes, units, and OOB, and the only difference being that the player is presented with a full fledged designer or pre-defined designs with only the old + and - buttons available, but instead we have this system which requires a lot of maintenance but barely gets any. IMO Paradox should either unify them to minimize the effort required to maintain it, or actually spend effort maintaining this dual-track system.

Could you provide some concrete examples of important bug fixes that are present in DLCs but missing from the base game?

Uh, the ridiculous ship stats in the original post? Even though it's only important to some countries, mainly Japan. I don't know how long the stats bug has been around in particular, but the OOB issues were present and reported within 2 weeks of MtG's launch and are still unfixed.

 

[bitmode]

The issues presented above do exist and are real, there is no denying, but they amount to configuration and balance errors in the game without MtG. So how do you go from these findings to your conclusion that "They really dropped the ball by making a significant portion of the naval revamp into DLC features."?

Because previously this sort of configuration and balance error did not exist to this level and in this regard they dropped the ball. Keep in mind the OP only presented examples - virtually all ships have wrong stats. Previous DLC features were more carefully designed to be additive (as DLC should be), so any bugs in them were contained to the DLC. Bugs in the free patch were caused by a feature in the free patch.

Man the Guns was the first DLC to declare part of the base game obsolete and introduce a parallel system next to it, with predictable consequences. Much of this could have been avoided by using the same naval OOB and creating the non-MtG ship classes with the exact same MtG module system behind the scenes.

 

[Mousetick]

Man the Guns was the first DLC to declare part of the base game obsolete and introduce a parallel system next to it, with predictable consequences. Much of this could have been avoided by using the same naval OOB and creating the non-MtG ship classes with the exact same MtG module system behind the scenes.

I don't understand where you're drawing this (wrong) idea from. The base game does create the non-MtG ship classes with the exact same MtG module system behind the scenes. Because behind the scenes, whether you have MtG or not, the 'naval simulation engine' is the same. There is no parallel system next to it. Imagine the maintenance nightmare that it would be if the devs had 'forked' the naval simulation engine between MtG and non-MtG.

As a quick experiment to demonstrate this fact, you can edit history/countries/USA - USA.txt such that the non-MtG game uses the same OOB and ship classes as MtG, like so:

#if = {
#    limit = { has_dlc = "Man the Guns" }
#        set_naval_oob = "USA_1936_naval_mtg"
#    else = {
#        set_naval_oob = "USA_1936_naval_legacy"
#    }
#}
set_naval_oob = "USA_1936_naval_mtg"

...

### VARIANTS ###
# 1936 Start #
if = {
#    limit = { not = { has_dlc = "Man the Guns" } }
    limit = { has_dlc = "Man the Guns" }

...

if = {
#    limit = { has_dlc = "Man the Guns" }
    limit = { not = { has_dlc = "Man the Guns" } }

Then start a 1936 non-MtG game as USA. You'll see the starting OOB and ship class specifications are the same as if you were using MtG.

Moreover if you look at common/units/equipment/ship_hull_heavy.txt for example, you'll see the non-MtG ship classes are defined in terms of MtG hull types and modules.

Am I missing something here? I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

Now one may wonder why Paradox decided to configure the starting OOB and ship classes differently between MtG and non-MtG. Only the devs can answer that, but could it be that with MtG in 1936 the ships are incomplete and the player is meant to upgrade and retrofit them, whereas the non-MtG ships are complete and non-upgradable? There may be other issues with balance among different countries and technologies that only exist in MtG, who knows.

Finally, it's not like MtG doesn't have its own set of issues with starting OOB and ship classes:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/wrong-and-missing-ships-guide-to-improve-them.1363273/

So again, I think you're blowing what is essentially a configuration issue that can be fixed with Notepad and doesn't really affect gameplay, out of proportion.

 

[sekelsenmat]

1) BC 2 has more armor but less speed than BB 3, which is opposite of what they're supposed to do.
2) SHBB 2 has about only half the armor of SHBB 1 and barely more than BC 2.
3) BB 4 has more armor than SHBB 2 and twice of that of BB 3 while also ridiculously fast.

About BC2 vs BB3 on speed, this is a general game issue that they always do: newer = faster, which while partially true ignores some really fast early designs.

Arguably the tier 4 shouldn't exist since there was no BB in the war anywhere near 40knots, was there any faster then the 32.7knots of the americans? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Missouri_(BB-63)

 

[AFilthyCasual]

I'd like to note something that almost no one seem to pay attention to. That the ships are bugged has been known for a long time, but the AI is also horrifically bugged without MtG.

I'm not a code expert so I'm not going to delve the AI to figure out what's going wrong but my hunch is that there is only one version of the AI and they do the same things regardless of what DLC is installed. Normally this doesn't matter because, as pointed out, the DLCs before MtG were in large part additive - if the AI tried to do something that was part of a DLC, it just didn't do it - because it literally couldn't. Even with the focus trees this worked out fine because sans a specific focus tree the AI still has the ability to just take whatever is available (ie the generic tree).

MtG, however, adds the ability to edit ship components, and the AI is thus programmed to do this. However, it can't - in fact, it can't handle the old naval techs at all because it obviously isn't programmed to, and the fact it can't create different ship templates completely fucks with its production as well. The specifics of why exactly it builds what it builds I again am not privy to, but I DO know what happens.

Firstly, it only builds ship types that correspond to the MtG hulls. This means it can only build Destroyers, Light Cruisers, Carriers, Submarines and Battlecruisers. Yes, Battlecruisers. For whatever reason it identifies the pre-MtG battlecruiser as the Heavy Hull equivalent and totally ignores battleships, super heavy or otherwise. It also can't build heavy cruisers though that's not a big deal since, due to the nonsensical way heavy cruisers work (being classed as capital ships for no historically or logically justifiable reason), they're not a good idea to build anyway.

Secondly, the proportion in which it builds ships is ridiculous. I'm not sure if it's because it can't build multiple kinds of screens as it normally would, but regardless it ends up only dedicating a few dockyards to cruisers and destroyers, especially destroyers. By "a few", I mean I don't think I've seen it dedicate more than 7 dockyards to either type, even the US; for most countries it's way less than that, perhaps only 3 or 4 each. It will dedicate between 1 and 4 dockyards to submarines. The anemic number of screens means that, though it produces relatively few subs, it can't properly deal late game subs due to the double whammy of both not being able to build dedicated ASW ships and having almost none available for the task due to how few destroyers it builds. This means any AI that builds subs will usually end up with a small group of less than a dozen 1940/44 subs (the 1922/36 subs are easy to sink and are usually eliminated quickly) that the other AI navies will be virtually helpless against because they will lack the ASW ships needed to sink them.

ALL the other dockyards will be dedicated to spamming carriers (usually only countries that start with carriers) and battlecruisers. They will have a disgusting glut of battlecruisers with no screens. The lack of screens means they have no ships to spare for patrolling so all their fleets end up put on convoy escort and invasion support. That means that if you don't set your ships to convoy raiding, you will never fight an AI fleet unless you happen to catch them while they're relocating to a different port.

TLDR: The AI is not programmed to operate without MtG. It cannot choose appropriate naval techs nor can it rationally allocate dockyard production, leading to its surface fleets being a complete pushover and its submarine forces being small but totally unstoppable unless the player interferes.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

About BC2 vs BB3 on speed, this is a general game issue that they always do: newer = faster, which while partially true ignores some really fast early designs.

BC2 and BB3 are both 1940 techs. Also I just noticed that BC2 has so much armor, not even Yamato (SHBB1) can penetrate it.

 

[ecpgieicg]

TLDR: The AI is not programmed to operate without MtG. It cannot choose appropriate naval techs nor can it rationally allocate dockyard production, leading to its surface fleets being a complete pushover and its submarine forces being small but totally unstoppable unless the player interferes.

I don't think you get an improvement on AI build strategy with MtG either.

 

[ecpgieicg]

For whatever reason it identifies the pre-MtG battlecruiser as the Heavy Hull equivalent and totally ignores battleships, super heavy or otherwise. It also can't build heavy cruisers though that's not a big deal since, due to the nonsensical way heavy cruisers work (being classed as capital ships for no historically or logically justifiable reason), they're not a good idea to build anyway.

By the way, the distinction between capital and screen derives from the interwar naval treaties.

Yes it is true that not being able to screen BB limits the use of CA and I agree the limit feels contrived. (Yes, not only CA cant screen, but it makes screening harder.)

But it is incorrect to say CA are useless. CA in history was meant to beat CL. CA is not meant to be substantially more expensive than the most equipped CL counterpart. (Though many nations managed to screw that up.)

In HOI4, all that are reflected. You can easily armor CLs to beat the piercing of 127mm or 152mm guns without much expense. Only CA's 203mm can beat the armor. The 203mm is not much more expensive but is quite a bit more potent. You lose out on the screening issue. Thus CA is niched but not useless.

Is the niche useful? Actually, yes. With Germany in particular, a few good CA can do wonders in inflicting damage on the RN. Germany can't build a fleet with BBs and CVs without extensive conquest. The use of CA makes some surface maneuver possible on the sea for Germany well before a large fleet is ready -- just like in history. (Not sure about vanilla, the mod I play further inhibits Germany with an inefficient design modifier on capital ships on top of dockyard restriction, which would be more historical. And that further elevates CA and pocket battleship.)

 

[Riekopo]

When they released Man the Guns we completely lost the SHBB 2 in the DLC I think. Only have SHBB 1. So no Super Yamato Class for Japan for example.

 

[KubiG37]

Honestly, it's half-broken for BOTH. I understand a broken non-MTG, PDX just don't want to spend resources fixing these issues. But I don't understand the MTG part.

The MTG AI is just incapable of handling the system to this day. Most of the time they're stuck with basic designs they start with. They can't properly assign dockyards and proper priority for large ships, they don't understand the concept of training the ships to get the required XP for newer designs, and the only thing they can 'react' to is being actively raided by submarines. It also does not avoid minefields (I sunk 80% of Japanese navy as Australia by mining a single seazone), nor regions filled with naval bombers.......

If you ever want an AI to try to do a Sea Lion, you might as well just delete all your existing ships at the start to give it a chance.

 

[bitmode]

The MTG AI is just incapable of handling the system to this day.

That's true but unfortunately not new. The AI was never able to properly deal with the DLC-exclusive mechanics (autonomy, spearhead, conversion, production licenses, naval mines, espionage, etc.). It took me two DLCs to figure it out but now I at least know just not to buy any more DLC.

As a quick experiment to demonstrate this fact, you can edit history/countries/USA - USA.txt such that the non-MtG game uses the same OOB and ship classes as MtG, like so:

By doing that, you fix the very mistake the developers made. You eliminate hundreds of lines of almost redundant code which cause all these inconsistencies. Once you do that, yes I concede that the levels below this work the same with and without MtG.

you'll see the non-MtG ship classes are defined in terms of MtG hull types and modules.

Am I missing something here? I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

They share the hull archetypes, but not the actual hull types. I.e. Destroyer 2 is based on the generic ship_hull_light archetype but not on the ship_hull_light_2 type which most closely resembles it. And the latter contains all of the scaling hull stats. These stats now need to be reproduced between the MtG hull and the non MtG-ship. And judging from the balance tweaks that happened since MtG, the non-MtG change is frequently forgotten.
The ships do use modules (most of which fill required slots of the hull archetype) but also add their own stats. This confusing mix is the source of bugs like OP described. In MtG the modules amend the hull; in non-MtG there is much overlap between the ship stats and the modules added on top.

Now one may wonder why Paradox decided to configure the starting OOB and ship classes differently between MtG and non-MtG. Only the devs can answer that, but could it be that with MtG in 1936 the ships are incomplete and the player is meant to upgrade and retrofit them, whereas the non-MtG ships are complete and non-upgradable? There may be other issues with balance among different countries and technologies that only exist in MtG, who knows.

I would like that idea (the MtG ships start off slightly worse because they can be improved more) but the stat deviations as linked in the table above do not support that theory.

So again, I think you're blowing what is essentially a configuration issue that can be fixed with Notepad and doesn't really affect gameplay, out of proportion.

Just because parts of the game are implemented in text files does not make it the players' job to keep it in working shape. The majority of the developers (i.e. content designers) also only work on the "Notepad"-parts of the game.
And while I can't speak for OP I wouldn't say this is the worst class of bug ever or more important than the corresponding MtG bugs. But it is a new class of bugs that calls the DLC model of the game into question. New optional content is great, but the base game should not become worse as a result.

Edit: actually it is not completely new. The unnecessary duplication of the CUF event chain in WtT caused a regression in the base game, still unfixed after two years

 

[Mousetick]

By doing that, you fix the very mistake the developers made. You eliminate hundreds of lines of almost redundant code which cause all these inconsistencies. Once you do that, yes I concede that the levels below this work the same with and without MtG.

So we have demonstrated that under the hood, the MtG and non-MtG naval simulation engines are identical. Since they're one and the same, one is not more 'obsolete', or less maintained, than the other. Glad we're on the same page.

But I don't understand why you, as a player, would care so much about all the configuration (OOB and ship classes) inconsistencies between MtG and non-MtG. How does this affect you as a player? I can see how this might be an issue for modders who wish to modify the OOB and ship classes while supporting both MtG and non-MtG, but as a player, why would you care or be concerned?

The redundant lines of 'code' in the .txt files are primarily a concern for the devs. Since I'm not one of them, it would be presumptous of me to second-guess their configuration decisions. Even though I may be critical of the quality of their output overall, I trust they know what they are doing and have good reasons for doing what they did. Among the good reasons are likely "we ran out of time and had to ship", and "we don't have the time/budget to fix it in version x.y", but since it doesn't significantly affect gameplay, it's ok.

Edit: actually it is not completely new. The unnecessary duplication of the CUF event chain in WtT caused a regression in the base game, still unfixed after two years

That CUF bug is much worse IMHO than the MtG vs. non-MtG configuration inconsistencies, because if it affects gameplay. I run into it every time I play China