My anti wish list

[PanH]

Build a unit to 70% completion using specialist training. Switch to minimal training. Unit comes out with 20% experience and you built it on minimalist time. So much for your "rebuttal".

This is what separates the MP players from the SP players. You read the descriptions of the laws and take them at face value. A good MP player knows this can be abused because he tests it, which is ironically something the beta testers never do.

Good thing that specialists gives 25exp, doesn't it ? Plus, you generally can have around 30 exp. And building it at 70% completion already takes more time than minimalist would. Thing is, if you had checked the numbers by yourself and looked at the numbers, you'd realize that what you're saying is not true.
You read the laws and took them at face value, when they adapt during production. You just have to look at your production screen to understand that your training experience is dynamic, and you just have to know maths to realize production time is appropriate.

The bonus/cost of training laws works (though you'll want specialist most of the time), and anyone can check this with basic maths.
In your case, you'll get 70% of the exp bonus, and then the 30% last will be at -10% instead of the +20% the first part was built with.

 

[Axe99]

Top OP, +1 for removing those and other oddities/exploits others have mentioned in the thread (although some, like oil and resources, sound like they're getting changes that'll hopefully fix them), if not at launch then whenever possible. My favourite 'to remove' would be the Ninja landings and the 'instant embarkation' that go hand-in-hand.

 

[KevinG]

Good thing that specialists gives 25exp, doesn't it ? And building it at 70% completion already takes more time than minimalist would. Thing is, if you had checked the numbers by yourself and looked at the numbers, you'd realize that what you're saying is not true.
You read the laws and took them at face value, when they adapt during production. You just have to look at your production screen to understand that your training experience is dynamic, and you just have to know maths to realize production time is appropriate.

The bonus/cost of training laws works (though you'll want specialist most of the time), and anyone can check this with basic maths.
In your case, you'll get 70% of the exp bonus, and then the 30% last will be at -10% instead of the +20% the first part was built with.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Minimal gives -10% recruitment time, it does not give a -10% exp malus. Specialist units take 20% longer to build. 0.9/1.2 = 0.75, so I was initially wrong, you can switch to minimalist at 75% completion under specialist to receive 0.75x25 = 18.75% experience for the time it takes to build a unit under minimal. A division that has a base time of 100 days will take 90 days to build with minimal and 120 days with specialist. If you start production under specialist, then switch to minimal when the progress bar is 75% which is after 90 days, then the unit will be built after 90 days with ~18.75% experience (techs, practicals, and reserve laws also affect this calculation). That is the real math, and more importantly I've done this hundreds of times in the game and you can easily test it out yourself. I hope you aren't a beta tester for HOI4.

 

[Kovax]

To expand on the Specialist Training issue, if you build a bunch of units as Reserves, it costs a fraction of what it normally does. Building as a Reserve and then reinforcing to full capacity is slightly cheaper than building the unit as Active, and then you get a 50% cost reduction for your initial Mobilization. If you have a reserve unit at 50% strength, then mobilize, it costs just under 75% of what it would cost to build as an Active unit. Realistically, you would need to build the same amount of equipment for that unit, regardless of whether it's mobilized or not; the only effective differences being immediate manpower needs and supply costs.

If factories eat into one's manpower, and mobilizing reserves takes away that manpower which could otherwise be used for industry and agriculture, then it's far more realistic than having the civilian economy relatively unaffected by one's army size.

 

[AmpsterMan]

In HOI3, reserve units can be horribly abused for very cheap IC costs.

In the real world, reserve units still have to have the equipment they need. The manpower is just not on active duty. In HOI3, I can cut the cost of a panzer division down by half just by building it as reserve and paying the very cheap reinforcement cost.

I see. I have been under the impression this whole time that one payed the IC cost during the mobilization phase; Didn't realize it was such an exploit. No wonder CGM let me make so many Divisions!

Perhaps because Divisions get their equipment out of a pool now, reserve units will cost less in terms of supplies used and equipment active, but will cost the same in equipment since it is being produced anyway.

 

[sunsterson]

As a mp player I could probably list 234234343 more abuses like Stukov did earlier, however I'm simply going to say the best way to avoid this is to get mp testers for hoi4 beta.

 

[-Stukov-MK VII]

So basically I will update this list to include the listed items discussed. To continue the point I will give you my all time favorite hearts if iron exploit.

In Hoi 1 a good tactic for Poland for example was to stack the capital Warsaw and the surrounding proviences with your whole army to mount a defense. Still pretty valid to mount a ring defense like that as Poland in hoi 3. However back in the day the attacking units met in the defenders actual Province to battle.

If you pause the game when your in combat over Warsaw the last polish VP. You can click on your army split the units down if you want. However if you create a new unit out of the existing army that's attacking in combat, don't assign any divisions to that army in combat over Warsaw it creates a ghost division. That ghost division will capture the territory, Warsaw the last vp in this case, and the german player can go into the diplomacy screen, annex Poland without defeating the polish defense in the capital because his ghost unit captured the capital. Simply unpause the game and no more Poland.

I'd venture to say very few people knew about this exploit. I also want to state that the reason for my thread is because I want Hearts of Iron IV to be wildly successful. I was there when the only person who played multiplayer on the entire North American continent consistently was me lol. I was around when if you wanted to player hearts of iron 2 with people you had to go to a thread outside of paradox to play a mod which everyone wanted to start in 1938. I remember VNet being empty for hoi bar that random guy who didn't speak English and didn't have the right patch.

So living through let's call them the "times of hoi troubles" where occasionally we would get a Paradox developer to play for a bit on VNet as Sweden and somehow unlock unlimited nukes by 1938 ( I still want to know how this was done btw) I want nothing more than HOI IV to sell and have a massive following. My whole request is just let those who love these games help to fix the problems that would hinder it from being as successful as it can be

 

[Porkman]

My only worry for MP testing is that they'd ask for faction balance type stuff.

When I was selling people on HOI2, part of what I liked and what I used to entice people was that it was unfair. Each faction and each country did not have an equal chance of winning.

 

[Secret Master]

Play nice, even when discussing training laws and empirical evidence with mathematical backing. Whether your numbers are good or not does not have any bearing on politeness.

 

[-Stukov-MK VII]

My only worry for MP testing is that they'd ask for faction balance type stuff.

When I was selling people on HOI2, part of what I liked and what I used to entice people was that it was unfair. Each faction and each country did not have an equal chance of winning.

Eh, faction balance is endlessly debated even by folks in the multiplayer community. I personally think the game should slant allies especially when the USA is in the war, so if all players are of equal skill, allies should win every time. That being said I wouldn't worry about that aspect too much unless something is horribly out of wack, like France steamrolling Germany napoleon style. My thread really just hits the major issues that threaten the mechanics of the game. For example take inland retreating, imagine if you are playing UK and your trying to execute the miracle at Dunkirk because you were unable to stop the German war machine. Well everything is going according to plan, your appear to be able to evacuate your armies and you can live to fight another day. Heck the German player has left a province inland from the coast of Dunkirk so he's not even getting the full envelopment bonus!

What you don't know Mr Porkman in this case is that although everything appears to be going well, your units are even retreating back on to their transports to flee when suddenly Germany attacks you at Dunkirk. No big deal right because you have those transports in which the troops are fleeing to?
Well unfortunately for you your troops automatically decide to stop moving onto the transports and rather decide to retreat inland to that unoccupied province. In fact all of your forces that were trying to evacuate decided that rather than retreat to the safety of the UK, they would simply turn around and run right into the open province directly into an a trap to be completely destroyed.

Now imagine if you have played oh lets say 4 hours so far (takes about 8 in MP game to get to France if all goes well) only to realize that your entire army was just killed by a Stupid bug called inland retreating. You will probably be quite upset I would imagine weather this occurred in SP or MP. Theses are the types of experiences that I and others really want to spare you from, because its one thing to be defeated in this grand strategy game because you made mistakes. Its totally enraging to lose because your entire army died due to a flaw in game mechanics.

 

[frolix42]

I think all the ideas on your list are great. Especially #1, #6 and #9.

Funny how this basically resurrects the 'Worst Ideas for HoI4' thread.

 

[1alexey]

Eh, faction balance is endlessly debated even by folks in the multiplayer community. I personally think the game should slant allies especially when the USA is in the war, so if all players are of equal skill, allies should win every time. That being said I wouldn't worry about that aspect too much unless something is horribly out of wack, like France steamrolling Germany napoleon style. My thread really just hits the major issues that threaten the mechanics of the game. For example take inland retreating, imagine if you are playing UK and your trying to execute the miracle at Dunkirk because you were unable to stop the German war machine. Well everything is going according to plan, your appear to be able to evacuate your armies and you can live to fight another day. Heck the German player has left a province inland from the coast of Dunkirk so he's not even getting the full envelopment bonus!

What you don't know Mr Porkman in this case is that although everything appears to be going well, your units are even retreating back on to their transports to flee when suddenly Germany attacks you at Dunkirk. No big deal right because you have those transports in which the troops are fleeing to?
Well unfortunately for you your troops automatically decide to stop moving onto the transports and rather decide to retreat inland to that unoccupied province. In fact all of your forces that were trying to evacuate decided that rather than retreat to the safety of the UK, they would simply turn around and run right into the open province directly into an a trap to be completely destroyed.

Now imagine if you have played oh lets say 4 hours so far (takes about 8 in MP game to get to France if all goes well) only to realize that your entire army was just killed by a Stupid bug called inland retreating. You will probably be quite upset I would imagine weather this occurred in SP or MP. Theses are the types of experiences that I and others really want to spare you from, because its one thing to be defeated in this grand strategy game because you made mistakes. Its totally enraging to lose because your entire army died due to a flaw in game mechanics.

If anything, retreating by sea is far, far too easy. Divisions should be subjects to loading times at ports, and port capacity, and if there is no port to evacuate from, anything not man-portable should be lost.

Also, can`t you manually retreat divisions to transports, before they get to zero org and retreat? You can also evacuate preemptively. It seems almost non-issue compared to abusability of dropping an several armies near the port, taking it, and then retreating in a few hours after a lot of defenders arrive, makes garrisoning ports almost useless.

 

[-Stukov-MK VII]

1alexy

I brought up overall amph invasions in point #1 so I agree

2 If you try to move units onto transports and you get attacked this will cancel the move order. A player can simply keep launch attacks to stop you from being able to load up on the transports. If your troops are surrounded on all sides they will retreat to the transports when they run out of org. However if the played leaves a province open your forces will retreat to the open province rather than back onto the transports.

 

[Secret Master]

If anything, retreating by sea is far, far too easy. Divisions should be subjects to loading times at ports, and port capacity, and if there is no port to evacuate from, anything not man-portable should be lost.

Now that equipment pools are a thing that exist, perhaps this is something that can happen in the game.

 

[Kagernaut]

If the devs don't want to take advice for faction balance, then they don't have to. But the exploits that MP groups encounter are there regardless of balance: manipulating tech laws, production, OOB, tactics etc.

Things that humans can exploit when they put 3000000000 hours of their no-life into the game, and then once someone else finds out about it, everyone uses it, and the game becomes.....lamer.

 

[msaaim89]

My only worry for MP testing is that they'd ask for faction balance type stuff.

When I was selling people on HOI2, part of what I liked and what I used to entice people was that it was unfair. Each faction and each country did not have an equal chance of winning.

Kind of like cricket, it isn't always fair as the wicket changes throughout the day.

But it is fun, try to win when at a advantage so long as there are a wide range of features so you can try different tactics.

There would be more options if the game moved towards even smaller units but that would be full of problems.

 

[Kovax]

If you try to move units onto transports and you get attacked this will cancel the move order. A player can simply keep launch attacks to stop you from being able to load up on the transports. If your troops are surrounded on all sides they will retreat to the transports when they run out of org. However if the played leaves a province open your forces will retreat to the open province rather than back onto the transports.

This can be avoided by voluntarily "Retreating" to the Transports, rather than "Moving". A retreating unit is immune to attack until it reaches the next province, in this case the sea province with your Transport. Of course, if the enemy manages to sink or chase off your Transport in the mean time, you've got a bigger problem, where the retreating unit is destroyed, where a moving one would simply stop its movement.

 

[Kagernaut]

This can be avoided by voluntarily "Retreating" to the Transports, rather than "Moving". A retreating unit is immune to attack until it reaches the next province, in this case the sea province with your Transport. Of course, if the enemy manages to sink or chase off your Transport in the mean time, you've got a bigger problem, where the retreating unit is destroyed, where a moving one would simply stop its movement.

Ahem, you CAN'T voluntarily retreat to transports Kovax. Walking on to them with a move order is the only way, and once attacked, you're stuck. You can't choose to retreat onto a transport like you can into a neighboring province.

You alo can't load some troops onto the transports while others hold the line and retreat last onto the transports, which is a serious failing in the retreat system IMO.

 

[-Stukov-MK VII]

This can be avoided by voluntarily "Retreating" to the Transports, rather than "Moving". A retreating unit is immune to attack until it reaches the next province, in this case the sea province with your Transport. Of course, if the enemy manages to sink or chase off your Transport in the mean time, you've got a bigger problem, where the retreating unit is destroyed, where a moving one would simply stop its movement.

The whole point of the bug kovax is you can't retreat onto transports if there is an unoccupied inland province, hince inland retreating.

Feel free to test this yourself

 

[Kagernaut]

The whole point of the bug kovax is you can't retreat onto transports if there is an unoccupied inland province, hince inland retreating.

Feel free to test this yourself

Well, we should clarify:

You can't retreat manually onto transports if being attacked, in other words in any nomral retreat situation there is a disengage timer and once that timer is up you can retreat anywhere you want that is friendly, however when you are on the port and in combat and that disengage timer ends, you can still retreat---but not to transports, only inland. Retreating to transports can only occur when the unit is forced to retreat at the end of the battle, and ONLY if the transport is the ONLY option.

That, as mentioned above, is inland retreating. And it sucks. And its broken.