production licence
- Thread starter warhammer54
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In terms of minor power research, HOI2 was the best of the previous games. The ability to gift or trade blueprints meant that minors received meaningful assistance from their major power allies without instantly being kept up to date, as happened in HOI1. HOI3 was possibly the worst with regards to minor research, but at least you could buy production licences. In HOI4, Paradox has opted to go with giving minor powers massively boosted and unrealistic independent research capabilities to make up for the fact that there is no tech trading or blueprints or licencing.
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maybe, but they still lack the industrial capacity to effectively use it. Finland for example had what, 3 military factories? Sure, the number of factory slots is no longer determined by population, but rather by state type as stated in the according dev diary, but still. You wont see finland fielding an big army with modern tanks, planes and weapons. Thats where lend-lease comes in. My point is that production licenses, while being somewhat historical, simply dont fit in the game. Lets say they were in the game and germany gave a licence to finland for FW190 for example, with what exactly should they build them in your oppinion? Lend-Lease makes much more sense for gameplay sake.
Gameplay always comes before history and realism. I dont want to play a game in multiplayer where one player is focusing on infantry weapon and tanks exclusively, one player on planes and another player on ships exclusively and they all exchange production licenses. That would atleast to some degree remove the purpose on convoy raiding.
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Can't that happen anyways where three players focus on three separate areas and trade the most up to date equipment with each other through lend lease? It would be a lot harder but a well coordinated team could do it.
I think the main difference is with the new system the AI would be wasting your IC if they don't do a good job using the equipment that you gave them but with a production licence they would still be wasting their own IC.
What would be the harm in using both systems?
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Of course if you really wanted you could still do that, yes. But that will mean that you give up your industry to produce their Equipment. Other than that you cant lend-lease ships. Besides that and probably the most important thing is, that the lend-lease needs to be shipped to the target country, which means it can be intercepted and destroyed. With production liceneses germany could simply mail germany the blueprints for the Tiger Tank for example, while with lend lease they would need to ship them to japan and could be intercepted by the allies.
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The problems I foresee with production licenses is thus: The factory will have to retool completely, machines to make the machines that make the tank. Even getting one tank off the production line in the first month of production would be by itself a miracle. Between time needed to get the machines up and running properly and getting the workforce to produce "error free" with the new equipment, well, it takes some time. Another issue would be the quality of the materials needed (not all 50mm steel plate armor is created equal). These things don't produce themselves. It requires a long logistical tail starting from coal and iron mines ending in the tank factory. Each individual step in the process needs to be able to support the tech license being imported.
I remember reading somewhere that one of Japans biggest weakness's was their inability to produce enough engines that were big enough/fast enough/good enough for what they wanted. No amount of production licensing will solve that problem. The production capacity just wasn't there. You can't turn a baby milk factory into a factory producing engines for aircraft carriers with just a contract from Bayerische Flugzeugwerke.
I remember reading somewhere that one of Japans biggest weakness's was their inability to produce enough engines that were big enough/fast enough/good enough for what they wanted. No amount of production licensing will solve that problem. The production capacity just wasn't there. You can't turn a baby milk factory into a factory producing engines for aircraft carriers with just a contract from Bayerische Flugzeugwerke.
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Not to mention the quality of their fuel went down over time. the US tested some captured Ki-84s after the war and resulted in better performance than the japanese were getting during the war under their... difficult circumstances. There's definitely a lot more factors than just "here, now you can build this highly advanced tank or plane"
Can I give a different nation in my faction my factories to build things? For instance if I'm playing as say Italy, and I want Pz IV's sinc eI cna't buy production license I can instead receive them via lend-lease from Germany, but what can I give the German player in return? Can I trade him resources or trade him my factories in return for the lend lease?
No official trades like "i give you x resources or military factories in exchange for 10 Panzer IVs a week". but nothing is stopping you or the other player (note player) from setting up new production lines, giving them however many factories you want, and then sending that stuff they make to the other person. like if you're lacking good tank research, but germany has it, and germany just wants small arms in exchange to replace the small arms they are losing out on by giving you tanks. they assign 5 factories to panzer IV production and set it to send them to you, and you do the same for small arms.
at least thats how i think it works
Hmm.... I hope they do have an option to trade things like that. I think it would go a long way to be able to say Hey Germany, I know you want that oil.... I have that oil, I'll trade you 5 oil for 4 tank production factories, you still end up with 1 extra oil to spare for tank production for yourself
Or alternatively. Hey Germany, I know you have Rebels and allied bombing blowing up all your factories and you don't have enough to repair, I will give you some of my civilian factories for a few tanks or planes or whatever.Would make for some fun negotiations with real players or AI.
Hmm.... I hope they do have an option to trade things like that. I think it would go a long way to be able to say Hey Germany, I know you want that oil.... I have that oil, I'll trade you 5 oil for 4 tank production factories, you still end up with 1 extra oil to spare for tank production for yourself
Would make for some fun negotiations with real players or AI.
i'm very sure you can't do it with resources like oil. only "trading" military factories by lend leasing each other certain materials (in my example, italy sending 5 factories worth of small arms in exchange for 5 factories worth of panzer IVs). the trading in quotes because its not any kind of official trade.
the only way to trade resources to my knowledge is for civilian factories.
but using that unofficial "trading" method i think nations could find a way to trade oil for military factories in a way. Imagine Japan with poor oil production making an unofficial agreement with USA pre-war. they say, "USA, my good friend, i'll send you 10 factories worth of small arms" (doesn't need oil!!) "and you send me 10 factories worth of modern interceptors". USA who was already going to devote 10 factories to small arms production in the first place sees very little reason not to as long as they feel like co-operating with japan. In a historical route of course, a US player with foresight might see a problem giving japan more planes, but hey, what could go wrong
that unofficial "trading" method requires two players though. as its not an official trade offer you send and that happens
i'm very sure you can't do it with resources like oil. only "trading" military factories by lend leasing each other certain materials (in my example, italy sending 5 factories worth of small arms in exchange for 5 factories worth of panzer IVs). the trading in quotes because its not any kind of official trade.
the only way to trade resources to my knowledge is for civilian factories.
but using that unofficial "trading" method i think nations could find a way to trade oil for military factories in a way. Imagine Japan with poor oil production making an unofficial agreement with USA pre-war. they say, "USA, my good friend, i'll send you 10 factories worth of small arms" (doesn't need oil!!) "and you send me 10 factories worth of modern interceptors". USA who was already going to devote 10 factories to small arms production in the first place sees very little reason not to as long as they feel like co-operating with japan. In a historical route of course, a US player with foresight might see a problem giving japan more planes, but hey, what could go wrong
that unofficial "trading" method requires two players though. as its not an official trade offer you send and that happens
Yea what you said makes sense, but there should be a way to work it in with the AI. Even just trading civilian factories for production of military equipment would be sufficient. Maybe even applying a Malus would work, like for Instance, You want to order advanced small arms, but your nation using a different caliber of ammo then the nation building your "lend lease" so it should take them longer to tool up production due to that.
I'm going off on a bit of a bit of a tangent.
Hell maybe even in a real player game Japan and the US could make an agreement, like Japan won't join the axis, and won't attack allied territory, In return the US could provide Japan with some equipment
Unless Japan decides to pull out of the "deal" haha.Ok so I just read what I wrote and I wanted to add, I hope we end up with an "official" way to trade things like Civilian factories, or maybe resources or even our own military production for someone elses.
The ideal situation would be to have tech sharing for single player but not for multiplayer. But I guess that would be difficult because you would need more research slots for multi player games to compensate.
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Running a production license costing the seller research points might fit better.
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Nah, make the buyer have to spend a small amount of tech points in order to buy the license. That gives smaller countries the choice, invest in your own technology, or invest in other's technology and produce their stuff, and after a certain amount of time producing another aircraft you should get a blueprint for it. But this means if you're buying production licenses you'll always be a half step behind, which is alright if the grand scheme of things means you're a little guy and you're struggling to be competitive. You should'nt have to sacrifice research points for giving people plans to build shit you've already researched. That isn't logical at all.
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Maybe not logical, but the blueprints alone are just part of the package unless the recipient is fully prepared and up to standard on all aspects of the project - but there are always glitches. The licensor needs to package the deliverables - the parts of the tech and know-how and tooling that licensor is willing to share - and send personnel to provide expert support with on-site line and facilities design, product engineering, tooling, materials, manufacturing process, training, (for the industrial and the field and service side), maintenance and repair systems, tactical usage, etc. for some time, some maybe permanently.
On second thought, this sounds more like a production license commitment eating up some of the licensor xp over time otherwise used for your own variants. Although in practice licensors can skimp on such support with adverse effects, for game purposes I think the only option should be full support. This is simple, clean, predictable and represents well what is going on.
On the licensee side it takes time to move along the learning curve, which probably is best represented by a reduction of available research points and/or xp costs.
Cost and time would of course vary by the nature and complexity of the item, and the burdens would reduce over time and production efficiency would top off. But it should not be a matter of getting blueprints in the mail and starting production later that day as in HOI 3.
The idea of production licences or lend leading equipment doesn't change exploits in the least.
If Germany and Italy both have human players there is no way Italy is producing it's own overlapping equipment with Germany. The land bridge makes interception moot. The research and exploit remains unchanged.
This is made worse by the fact that Italy need not go to war right away and trade for the rubber and oil necessary to keep the German airforce at tip top condition.
Italian expeditionary forces will allow for the garrisoning of Europe freeing up German boots to do the right kicking around the globe.
Good thing there's no production licences...
If Germany and Italy both have human players there is no way Italy is producing it's own overlapping equipment with Germany. The land bridge makes interception moot. The research and exploit remains unchanged.
This is made worse by the fact that Italy need not go to war right away and trade for the rubber and oil necessary to keep the German airforce at tip top condition.
Italian expeditionary forces will allow for the garrisoning of Europe freeing up German boots to do the right kicking around the globe.
Good thing there's no production licences...
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