On puppets

[airpirate]

As the game is now, puppets are almost useless. They can't defend themselves, and therefore instead of contributing to your war effort they detract from it by forcing you to position troops in your puppet country. After loading up a game as an English German puppet (which had existed for about a year and a half), I found the main problem being that puppets don't have any resources. Because they can't trade with the outside world, and must give away most of the resources they have to their parent country, puppets are unable to use most of their industry. Because of this, they are unable to produce any troops or enough supplies to mobilize.

To fix this, I'd suggest a function that allows a parent country to give resources to puppets for free after the country has a certain amount of a particular resource in its stockpile (maybe consisting of a checkbox determining whether the function is on, and a slider for each resource determining how much of a resource can be exported to the puppets). Another possible fix is to have puppets only give resources to their master if they have a surplus.

The game is in great shape as is considering it's only had one patch, but having to garrison three infantry divisons on every English and Scottish costal province to keep the USA from annexing them bothers me, especially considering the puppets have had a year and a half to repair their industry and build a few divisions.

 

[namuseta]

if you have all auto trade options on it shud give puttets the resourses they need.

 

[xtfoster]

if you have all auto trade options on it shud give puttets the resourses they need.

It does, assuming you have the resources to give them.

 

[MartinBG]

To fix this, I'd suggest a function that allows a parent country to give resources to puppets for free after the country has a certain amount of a particular resource in its stockpile (maybe consisting of a checkbox determining whether the function is on, and a slider for each resource determining how much of a resource can be exported to the puppets). Another possible fix is to have puppets only give resources to their master if they have a surplus.

It already works more or less like that.

Puppets send to master all exceeding resources above a floating threshold (based on the real need of that resource in the puppet) until the master reaches the stockpile limit.

From the other hand masters send ALL required to run the industry resources to the puppet for free as long as the master has enough resources of course.

For the above to work you must have the auto-trader enabled.

 

[Zramble]

As the game is now, puppets are almost useless. They can't defend themselves, and therefore instead of contributing to your war effort they detract from it by forcing you to position troops in your puppet country. After loading up a game as an English German puppet (which had existed for about a year and a half), I found the main problem being that puppets don't have any resources. Because they can't trade with the outside world, and must give away most of the resources they have to their parent country, puppets are unable to use most of their industry. Because of this, they are unable to produce any troops or enough supplies to mobilize.

To fix this, I'd suggest a function that allows a parent country to give resources to puppets for free after the country has a certain amount of a particular resource in its stockpile (maybe consisting of a checkbox determining whether the function is on, and a slider for each resource determining how much of a resource can be exported to the puppets). Another possible fix is to have puppets only give resources to their master if they have a surplus.

The game is in great shape as is considering it's only had one patch, but having to garrison three infantry divisons on every English and Scottish costal province to keep the USA from annexing them bothers me, especially considering the puppets have had a year and a half to repair their industry and build a few divisions.

Airpirate, I pointed out this exact thing a few days in the forums. I also agree that the way puppets work currently makes them completely useless. Looking at the AI -files (aimobi.txt or whatever it was) it looks like this is completely intentional. Puppets never mobilize and never will. They will never produce more than 1-2 units or however much manpower they have when you release/create them. Maybe bigger puppets have more at creation but seems like they never mobilize either.

Also, they never reach the 700 supplies required to Enact General mobilization, but even if they do, they do _not_ mobilize. The only way that I know of to get your puppets to mobilize are these 2:

1. Pause the game, send your puppet at least 700 supplies, and save the game. Then reload as that puppet, mobilize and save again. Then reload again as who you want (Germany in this case). Continue game.
2. When you attack a new country that you want to make as your puppet, do not annex them if you can avoid it. Instead, conquer everything but few non-essential provinces where you let their divisions to retreat to. Aim is to get your warscore high so you can make a peace treaty where they will become your puppet. If you can pull it off like this, your puppet will end up with all the divisions and units you didn't destroy along with more sensible sliders, at least for me they seem to be already mobilized when you make your puppets this way. This way works the best for me at least (at least most European nations that dont have provinces in other continents you can easily puppet this way - they might refuse the puppet peace -treaty a few times but when your warscore gets above +70 they should eventually accept, just try a few times when your warscore is over 70%).

It seems like in the game files you can edit the way the puppets behave about resources and maybe make them send you less and stockpile more.

The file I refer to is in Mods/Darkest Hour Full/db/misc.txt, look for the word puppet and you will find the lines that affect them.

I (and I think many others too) would love to know how to make puppets mobilize and create units and also how to stockpile more resources (this is optional). Martin, any chance you would guide us in what lines to change and how and in what txt-files?

I know you don't want puppets to mobilize but what about ppl who wan't to play the game like that? I'm not smart enough to figure out the required chances on my own (at least not yet :/ )

 

[Zramble]

It already works more or less like that.

Puppets send to master all exceeding resources above a floating threshold (based on the real need of that resource in the puppet) until the master reaches the stockpile limit.

From the other hand masters send ALL required to run the industry resources to the puppet for free as long as the master has enough resources of course.

For the above to work you must have the auto-trader enabled.

Already in my last post but anyway:

I (and I think many others too) would love to know how to make puppets mobilize and create units and also how to stockpile more resources (this is optional). Martin, any chance you would guide us in what lines to change and how and in what txt-files?

I know you don't want puppets to mobilize but what about ppl who wan't to play the game like that? I'm not smart enough to figure out the required chances on my own (at least not yet :/ )

 

[airpirate]

Huh, that's odd. In the Germany game I mentioned I had tons of supplies and was getting more each day but my puppets were running on empty.

 

[MartinBG]

Is your post based on 1.00 experience?

I'm not the mastermind behind the mobilization system, so I cannot answer in details, but mobilization was simplified in 1.01 and AFAIK AI countries do not need/use supplies on mobilization. For the rest of your questions someone else from the team should answer as I don't know the answers.

 

[Zramble]

Is your post based on 1.00 experience?

I'm not the mastermind behind the mobilization system, so I cannot answer in details, but mobilization was simplified in 1.01 and AFAIK AI countries do not need/use supplies on mobilization. For the rest of your questions someone else from the team should answer as I don't know the answers.

At least for me in the normal patch 1.01 version (not beta patch, got the game through gamersgate) my puppets never ever mobilize. Its frustrating cause when they are mobilized (in either of the 2 ways I described in my earlier post) they feel useful and the game is great, puppets help me but don't really decide anything against the behemoths that are the US and Soviets, but they still help and contribute in a meaningful and fun way. In my opinion that is exactly as it should work, not the way it works now where puppets never produce troops and are completely useless.

 

[D Inqu]

Ideally, there should be a diplomatic option to influence what your puppet builds. For example, I released red france. I want to go to war with the Allies later, so I want France to focus on Static AA, Garrision AA, Motorised AA. For say GDR, I want Static AA, CA, DD. And Romania could produce some regular infantry-eng

I can confirm, that in a fresh 1.01 game puppets are demobilised.

 

[airpirate]

Yeah, it was 1.01. Is there a way I can mod the game so countries I realease have the same mobilization level as I do? Seeing as the problem is that puppets don't mobilize, I think the easiest soulution would be that they start mobilized (though ideally puppets should mobilize on their own).

 

[ewphoenix123]

I'll try to think about a solution here.
It's not so simple as we basicly have two completly different things categorized as puppet, one are the colonies where no local military evolved short of some militias (there were exeptions like india of course) and on the other hand we have something like the soviet satellite states.

I'll probably split the puppet mobilization event into to groups, colony nations remain as they are, and satellite states can go up to 1-2 year conscription.
Might aswell review there ai buildshemes while I'm at it.

 

[clone1337]

How should puppets mobilize? For example FRG and GDR hadnt any army from 1949 to the rearment of 1953 or even later. I mean Germany was taken 1945, they were satelite states from 1949 and offical indepence was given 1953.
Puppets should create a local milita and later on an decision like "foundation of the national army" giving them 2 year conscription, certain amount of manpower.
Maybe Facist and Leftist Masters can have an event, force the satilites to arm, but i should bring the moral of the puppet down, high dissent in the puppet states and only selected conscription.

 

[D Inqu]

but soviet satellites such as Romania, Bulgaria, Poland had real armies that fought against germany in the final stages of the war. So while some puppets did not have a large army for a while, they could be expected to field one. Maybe a set of "cold war" decisions to arm puppets?

 

[clone1337]

romania, bulgaria and hungary keep their armys, when the "change sides" - event occures.

 

[Zramble]

I would love to see puppets mobilize to at least 2 year conscription, even small puppets (they wouldn't make more than few divisions anyway).

I don't really think one should aim for "perfect" historical accuracy but instead more fun gameplay - at the moment puppets don't really benefit you in any way except take away IC in exchance for releaving you from anti-partisan duty. But you still need to protect every coastal puppet for example from enemy amphibious landings so the puppet actually hinders you unless you are very short on manpower.

clone1337, I don't think you can compare the post WWII -era to the WW II -era so directly in terms of puppet armies and the speed which they (re-)arm themselves. Obviously there was no "hot" war going on so priorities were bit different. Also the completely lost autonomy adds in to this.

In general, I don't think having puppet armies fight for your side make the game "broken" or too easy at all. In my opinion it just adds to the grand scale of things, brings in real "world war feeling" and adds fun flavor. The game difficulty already ranges from easy to hard depending on your skill level and whether or not you do gamey moves (yuck!), with or without puppet armies. Just my opinion.

 

[Nicophorus]

Ive been more or less happy with puppet behavior so far (as Japan) in my games. I love that finally allies/puppets will actually do things on their own instead of the bad old days were they would just stack their entire armies in their capital and wait for you to take military control.

If there is an issue with mobilization though... should be looked into.

 

[airpirate]

I'll try to think about a solution here.
It's not so simple as we basicly have two completly different things categorized as puppet, one are the colonies where no local military evolved short of some militias (there were exeptions like india of course) and on the other hand we have something like the soviet satellite states.

I'll probably split the puppet mobilization event into to groups, colony nations remain as they are, and satellite states can go up to 1-2 year conscription.
Might aswell review there ai buildshemes while I'm at it.

If this happens it would make me one happy Paradoxian.

 

[unmerged(155996)]

The devs got major +rep from me when I read this thread. Keep up the good work! The game is totally worth 10 euros, and I've gotten a few of my friends to buy it too!

It's great fun online and it actually has me hooked all over again in single player, now that peacetime has more stuff to do and scheme.

Puppet fixes and expanding puppet politics and giving options to meddle with them would be awesome. (If it's plausible in IRL way of thinking, ofcourse.)