Queueing Techs and Focus? Last Selection & Cycle hotkeys?

[Sir Garnet]

These and some very useful UI elements that would be particularly so with so much going on. Having an UNDO button as well as a "back up" option is very handy to streamline play when dealing with a lot of space on the map which means some of the elements of the game you are working with at one time are off screen. Watching the gameplay video I was thinking how much wrist and hand movement could be avoided with some player conveniences.

 

[LordOfWar16]

Queueing National Focuses could be tricky tho, since they have to be done in an specific order and some of them have requirements. Lets say you queue focus A, B and C and focus B has the requirement for 5% world tension and germany guarantees poland for example. Focus B would be blocked and you would have to switch the queue around again.

2 clicks dont seem to be that much work for me that it would require automatisation.

 

[KiwiNoob]

I agree with you on the research.

LordOfWar16 is right on the NF

 

[Axe99]

It's a reasonable suggestion, particularly for a neglected line of tech or NF that a player might want to 'power through' in seqence, or if they want to use one of their tech slots to cycle through a lot of tech of the same year. There are potential issues as Lord of War mentions, but you could have a pop-up if issues arose, or just not let someone queue a NF unless the criteria were met (and if an NF in the queue no longer had the criterion met, it would automatically drop out of the queue), so I couldn't see why it wouldn't work for both.

That said, if resources are tight, I'd prefer the dev team focus on 'core' issues (gameplay, AI, balance) at the moment - the UI can be polished later.

 

[LordOfWar16]

if an NF in the queue no longer had the criterion met, it would automatically drop out of the queue), so I couldn't see why it wouldn't work for both.

The problem with NF is that you need to make them sequentially. If you drop out 1 NF out of the queue then the whole queue would be undone. It would actually require more time to refill the queue than simply picking one NF after another. Research is an different story of course.

Lets say you are at 15% World tension and as the UK queued down to Jet Aircraft. If the World tension now drops below 10% because some people guaranteed some countries or released puppets or whatever, the whole queue wont be doable because "General Rearmament" requires more than 10% world tension or you must be at war and is required for basicly any NF that is military focused. It would draw away much more of your time and attention than it would to simply select one after another NF. Thats just an extreme example of course, but that could happen.

With research however you wont see any problem, even tho i personaly dont think that queueing is something that HoI IV needs. Overall, they wanted to get away from automation from HoI III in HoI IV. Simply queueing alot of tech at the start of the match and pretty much forgetting about it unless you want to make slight adjustments doesnt really sounds right to me. That would place it pretty much right where HoI III was, where you could basicly queue up your entire research. With that said, nothing really speaks against it, of course, but it certainly shoulnd be an particulary high priority on Paradoxes checklist.

 

[Axe99]

The problem with NF is that you need to make them sequentially. If you drop out 1 NF out of the queue then the whole queue would be undone. It would actually require more time to refill the queue than simply picking one NF after another. Research is an different story of course.

Lets say you are at 15% World tension and as the UK queued down to Jet Aircraft, for example. If the World tension now drops below 10% because some people guaranteed some countries or released puppets or whatever, the whole queue wont be doable. It would draw away much more of your time and attention than it would to simply select one after another NF.

2 clicks wont kill you and the game always reminds you if you dont have any NF selected.

Agreed . As per my original comment, it's feasible that a queued NF's could be undone and need an alert or something to clear the list and tell the player to select something else. That said, for those who want to queue a bunch of NFs that were unlikely to be 'locked' after selection, it could be useful. I'm not saying it's necessary (again, as per my original comment, I prioritised something like this below pretty much everything except artwork, and the art guys probably wouldn't be doing a lot of work on it anyway) but it's not a crazy suggestion for someone to make. I won't be complaining if it's never possible to queue things up, but if the devs did it, I wouldn't think they were crazy either.

 

[Sir Garnet]

My comment was prompted by the Wednesday videos, with the gameplay being interrupted with focus and research alerts when they switched immediately over to make a decision and then went back to what they were doing. Presumably this is because work on research or focus stops rather than accumulating in a buffer for a short time until the next choice is selected - so with the clock ticking (as it always is in multiplayer) this is an urgent decision to avoid falling behind. Not so bad in peacetime when nothing is that pressing, but distracting in wartime where alerts can be buried in other pop-ups and reports until the player catches up.

It helps in any case if the player has made his plans in advance - they seemed to have theirs in mind already. That the research priority order can be set up in the game in quiet days is a nice aspect of HOI3. Having to go back to pencil and paper to plan and memorialize it and alerts to jump on the decision seems a unfriendly step back by the bureaucracy - represented by the UI..

The devs did get back to what they were doing extremely quickly - was there a "return to what I was doing before" hotkey or action in the game or it is just quick and accurate mousework based on comprehensive knowledge of the game?

If selecting a bunch of troops to do something, then jumping over to deal with an alert somewhere else in the world, or even in another part of the GUI, it is a big convenience to be able to back up as if in a browser to the selections you previously made to pick up what you were doing. Setting a numbered hotkey to tag a unit is the makeshift approach to doing this, a limited tool but a valuable one in being able to play Paradox games.

These concerns are all about accessibility and usability in single-player for the general market audience to find this a comfortable game.

But the same concerns are even more pointed in multi-player, with the same interruptions but no ability to stop the clock at any time and an environment where deep knowledge of the structure, mechanics and navigation of the UI and game options as well as quick and accurate mousework offer important tactical advantages in themselves.

The UI should serve and guide the player by presenting him with what he needs to know and ways to get where he needs to be given the current location/decision point. A learning curve rather than a learning cliff. I'm glad to say that it appears from the Dev diaries and video that HOI4 players may have to do a lot less stumbling around in this respect than in HOI3, especially with a good tutorial and documentation to get into the game.