EDIT: I have apparently misjudged how eager some of you are to post as much as I have! This is both encouraging, and a minorly-embarrassing faux pas on my part. As such, I'm including links here to most of the posts on this first page, and may continue to update this if people fill pages with huge posts further on in the thread.
Opening Post (Isolated) - Naval and Air Command-Chains (Graphic illustrations included!)
Explorations of a Battalion System (Image-Heavy Post!)
angj57's Politics & Intelligence Suggestions
wangdus's Megalist of HoI3-Expansion-HoI4 Suggestions
wangdus' suggestions for a new combat engine
jmshaub's Diplomacy Problems & Solutions
Hicham's Translated Feature & Request List
PanzerWilly's Suggestion for Neutrality Uses
In addition, here are some interesting external links to other pertinent discussions slightly outside the scope of a general-purpose topic. You can be added to this by requesting such in a PM or in the topic, I'll try to respond in a timely manner. I will, however, note when a given topic does not address Semper Fi.
Modder Wishes for Semper Fi
Suggestions Regarding Medium Powers (Delra's thread, but others have contributed their ideas as well)
Cpack's Feature Suggestions & Discussion (Because I didn't feel right just trying to jack those questions out of an ongoing debate thread)
Hicham's Dreams for Future Expansions & HoI4 (Not Semper-Fi Related)
The purpose of this thread is to serve as a clearing-house for the suggestion of features for Semper Fi, and discussion of the pros and cons of those features. I noticed that we had a couple other SF megathreads, but none for what you really want to see in the game. There's only about a month, most likely, before Semper Fi is declared 'feature-complete', so chances are they aren't going to be doing anything gigantic - try to keep your suggestions somewhat reasonable.
This is not, however, just a 'list what you want and leave' thread. Please include at least one (1) reason, or more, that you think this feature would be a good addition to Hearts of Iron 3, and, for bonus points, include at least one reason you think it might not be such a great idea (impractical, complicated, hard to understand, etcetera). Feel free to include pictures, as I have.
Feel free to get as in-depth or stay as shallow as you want. Feel free to repeat ideas, or reasons, or expand on someone else's reason, and above all, if you come in, be prepared to be agreed and disagreed with - if you see something someone else has suggested you don't think is such a great idea, feel free to say so, and why you think so. Keep civil, but let the ideas flow. Without further ado, let's go.
I'll get the ball rolling with something I was going to post in DD #2, but decided would be better off having its own thread. I'll probably go on to support this throughout future development diaries, because I think it's a very important and worthwhile feature. The below is organized using colors and bold font, to make it easier to navigate. You don't have to get anywhere near as involved as I have, obviously. =P Feel free to if you want, though.
I. Separate Land/Naval/Air Chains of Command
Yeah, this again! The basis of this suggestion is: Create separate chains-of-command for land forces, naval forces, and air forces. Pretty straightforward in concept. Johan has gone on record (during the live interview) to state that Paradox has no current plans to include this feature in the expansion.
Why Not?
New Command Bonuses Needed
In execution, this is actually trickier than it sounds. I can understand why Paradox isn't entirely gung-ho for this - there are a lot of things working against it. To start off with, entirely new systems of bonuses and benefits, and levels, would have to be designed for these new chains of command (similar to the cooperation, supply, reinforcement, etcetera bonuses given for land-command levels). Most of the bonuses granted by land commands are useless for air and naval forces, so this'd have to change.
Force Makeup Problems
Second, because of the way wings of air-groups, and task forces of naval fleets are designed in-game and out, they're a lot harder to deal with. A division is made up of a certain number of brigades, which is set in game. You thus have a division to build all of the higher-tier command-structures around, a nice, pretty, concrete assembly.
But there's no (hardcoded) limit to how many air wings can be in a group, nor how many ships can be in a fleet. (There's just a limit to how many can be commanded, and how many you add before the stacking penalty completely destroys your effectiveness.) And imposing this sort of limit includes headaches of its own. Even just at the corps level and above - if you have four fleets of 8 ships each, just using the land system, they'd be exactly as logistically-taxing to your HQ (that is, easily commanded) as four fleets of 30 ships each. That's hardly realistic (or fun).
What if you try to built a fleet like a division, limited with a certain number of ships, do you then have to co-ordinate two, say, four-ship fleets together, un-merged, for naval operations? That sounds sort of like a headache, like moving aircraft carriers and battleships separately, or moving destroyers and battleships separately. It'd be micromanagement hell, and nobody wants that.
Not Enough Commanders, Landbound HQs
There's also the problem of commanders. Already, a lot of players have problems with the availability (or lack thereof) of air and naval commanders, without any HQ structure. That problem gets a lot worse if, for optimum use, you have to use up some of your precious admirals and air generals for land-bound HQ duties. Which brings up another problem. These HQ units, they are going to be land-bound, right? They won't sail, or fly. So what happens when you rebase your airforce or fleet halfway across a continent? Or halfway around the globe? Well, you'd better have a landroute to strategically redeploy over, or transports ready to move it. Otherwise, that HQ with its valuable general is going to be of absolutely zero use to your forces.
Wow! Considering all of the problems and headaches to overcome with the separate-commands issue, I can personally see why Paradox currently goes with the policy of attaching your air forces and fleets to the appropriate-level land HQ and just using and organizing them that way. Because Paradox's official policy is that the command apparatus and logistical crew of wings and fleets is an organic part of the unit in-game, already, to their eyes the system works and works well.
After all, some of the majors in-game (Japan, USA) didn't even have separate airforces, though others (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Soviet Union) did. In implementing this for all countries, it could technically reduce historicity in some cases.
Then How To Work It?
So, obviously, there's got to be a bevy of solutions to the above headaches and issues in order to go forward. Let's solve the proposed issues above one-by-one, to start.
Command Bonuses
There's no easy way to say this, but: This is just going to be a problem. New command bonuses will need to be programmed, and new levels assigned. As to levels, though, well, they exist, so it's just a matter of implementing them, as this page (Wikipedia Article) shows. I personally think an "Admiralty -> Theatre Fleet -> Battlefleet / Numbered Fleet -> Task Force -> Task Group (Divisional Unit)" (Four HQs above divisional-level units) arrangement would work for fleets, and a "Regional Command -> Numbered Air Force -> Air Corps -> Wing / Airgroup (Divisional Unit)" (Three HQs above divisional-level units) arrangement would work for the air force. However, the highest-tier elements of the naval grouping (Admiralty) may be superfluous, and thus unnecessary, feel free to comment if you feel likewise.
As for command bonuses, unless Paradox just wants to go with the perfectly-workable trait-spreading-and-sharing function for the only benefit of air and naval commands, yeah, they'd need new bonuses, because most of the land-HQ command bonuses are useless to naval and air forces. However, considering the usefulness of shared traits, I do think Paradox could get away with this.
A. Thoughts On The Navy
Force Building Issues - Navy
But that still leaves the issue of how to set up the actual components of a chain of command - how many fleets, or wings, and how to deal with the problem of there being no limit to how many ships or wings you can put in a given fleet or airgroup (while ignoring command limits).
I'm going to address the Navy and the Air Force separately, but an image is worth a thousand words. This is part of my answer to this problem.
To take this bit by bit, let's start with the naval side of things. Whereas land corps, armies, and army groups are relatively-permanent formations that involve the same men (sans casualties), equipment, and the like for long periods of time, naval formations tend to be more ad-hoc and spur-of-the-moment. Merely mirroring the land-based system would, in my eyes, be unnecessarily (and potentially annoyingly) restrictive. Something new is needed.
Depicted above is one possibility for that 'something new'. How it works is this: As suggested above, we take the Task Group as our 'division' for fleets, because task groups tend to be the smallest independent and balanced groupings - there are smaller ones, flotillas and the like, but flotillas are already abstracted in destroyer-and-submarine groupings, and thus I don't consider them right for the scale of this. It'd be like trying to make a corps out of brigades alone.
To deal with the problem of variably-sized fleets, set numeric limits on the absolute number of ships (flotillas of submarines and destroyers, for purposes of this, count as 1 ship apiece) in a task force. The precise number is up for debate and discussion - I personally think it should be around 30, both because I think any larger and you're spilling over into larger formations, and because 'around 30' means that the current highest-admiral rank has something to do. (Commandlimits for the navy may have to be reworked, but that's easy enough.)
Notice from the Wikipedia article that most naval formations work on the 'two-or-more' mold. What you could do is select at least two fleets whose total number of ships does not exceed whatever number the Task Force limit is set at (It's basically like not going over the weight limit for land units when loading.) There'd be a button on the multi-unit select panel, then, called 'Form Task Force' - either beside or (when only naval units are selected) replacing the aforementioned load-units button, probably. (I could've made this too, and still could, if anyone's curious how it'd look, I just didn't want to spend a lot of time modding nonfunctional buttons and creating useless graphics and the like.)
Click this, and the selected fleets are amalgamated into a Task Force! Pictured. You will notice that the Task Force has a personnel component of 300 (0.3 manpower), a separate Admiral, an aggregate forcecount, AI stance options, and a button you haven't seen before, which splits it back up into two separate fleets. (This disbands the task force and returns the 0.3 manpower to your pool.) If you had more than two fleets, either a vertical or horizontal scrollbar could be employed to see them from the Task Force tab.
When utilized as as Task Force, the involved fleets might move and fight together or somesuch, without needing to be ordered separately. (I'd imagine you still could order them separately, just by selecting one of the individual fleets.) To make this worthwhile, I imagine there'd have to be some reduction in the stacking penalty (In fact, reduction of the stacking penalty might be one of the 'command level bonuses'!) so it's better than just clumping together 30 ships in one fleet.
Two or more Task Forces could be commanded by a Battlefleet or numbered Fleet HQ, two or more numbered Fleets / Battlefleets under a naval theatre, and any available naval theatres would be directly subordinate to the central naval command. All levels would also, of course, receive traits from any commands above them, all the way up the command chain, and any command bonuses they're entitled to. This way, a limited-ship force becomes a help rather than a hindrance.
Commander & Headquarters Issues - Navy
Of course, that still leaves the problem of headquarters, and commanders. I'll address the latter first. As you can see from the screenshot above, the HQ of a Task Force would actually be one of the ships of the fleet. This is not only historical, but, with the new stated SF feature to designate one ship as 'Pride of the Fleet', it should be entirely possible - they've already created a mechanic that picks out and assigns special qualities to a ship, so designating one as an HQ as well shouldn't be too difficult.
This neatly sidesteps the problem of having lower-tier HQs that lack the mobility to keep up with their units. I personally believe that Fleet HQs, Theatre Fleet HQs and the highest-tier Naval Command HQs should remain landbound units - the Pacific Fleet HQ was historically based at Pearl Harbor, and individual Fleets had their own specific headquarters, as well (to say nothing of the supreme command.) However, because Fleets tend to be deployed as Theatre forces, I believe it's fair and worthwhile to leave them as land-bound HQs - they're a little more permanent and rigid than Task Groups and Task Forces are. The logistical and support forces of a Fleet didn't tend to sail with it as organic units.
As for commanders - that's a tricky subject. There are two relatively-simple solutions that I can see: The first is, suck up the fact that you're going to lose a leader to achieve better logistics, cooperation and lethality with your fleets. (Pictured above, as with Halsey Jr.) The second is: Make some use of naval ranks! Out of the admirals involved in the Task Force, whoever has the highest rank (and if there are several admirals of the same rank, the lowest ID) commands the Task Force. These two could be combined: It could be that either an external commander is assigned or the highest-ranking Task Group admiral commands the Task Force, which gives the best of both worlds.
Final Thoughts - Navy - So Why Bother?
Now, all the good ideas and pretty pictures in the world don't make the game go. There's got to be both good reasons to do it, and a reasonable framework to actually build it on. However, I believe both of the above exist when it comes to the Navy, and specifically the ideas I've outlined above. As aforementioned, the new 'Pride of the Fleet' mechanic is set up to specially-designate individual ships in a task group, to track whether they're sunk and to take certain actions when that occurs. It'd fit perfectly into a flagship-HQ designation.
Pretty much everything else just comes down to adapting existing mechanics to a naval focus - counting number-of-ships instead of number of men, adjusting the GUI and graphics to display, re-purposing something like the Weight mechanic to instead track number-of-ships for task force creation purposes, adapting the command tree and creating new command bonuses, so on and so forth. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it's significantly less work than it otherwise would be, because it makes use of pre-existing systems and architecture within the game. In other words: You're already halfway there, Paradox, and the last half of the race tends to be comparitively-easier than building something from scratch.
And doing this isn't just for historical flavor. The current system of managing air forces and fleets under JTF (Joint Task Force) land-theatre HQs is clunky - especially if you have a lot of air units or fleets assigned under it, there's a phenomenal amount of scrolling and clicking around that could be short-cutted if both forces had their own dedicated command hierarchies. In addition, having defined naval theatres would help deal with the problem many players have noticed, with the AI still sending its fleets all over the map, ignoring range-limits, and basically breaking immersion and (when you as Britain are suddenly dealing with 13 Japanese carriers sporting way more planes than they should) playability.
Not to mention that setting up Task Groups and Task Forces as fleet-groupings will help give a framework for teaching the AI how to build and assemble balanced fleets, so we don't have things like Germany building a thousand destroyers and sending them out to die, one-by-one. Well-balanced fleet structures will help to support naval landings, shore operations, D-Day type scenarios, and could also help the computer to more effectively guard its transports, so it doesn't lose tens of thousands of troops just because it decided to send that 15-stack of transports with two destroyer flotillas as escort. All in all, I think it has the potential to entirely revitalize and revamp the naval game, and would be an incredibly worthwhile inclusion into Hearts of Iron 3, and perfectly in-line with SF's stated goal of focusing on Pacific warfare.
B. Thoughts On The Air Force
Force Building Issues - Airforce
Let me start off by saying that while I believe the problems confronting the Air Force are less severe, there's less of a pressing need for a separate system for air forces, as well. Currently, it's perfectly possible to attach air groups to land HQs and use them that way - and it's somewhat close to the system utilized by several major powers. The air force operated in tandem with the ground or naval forces, so assigning them to corps or armies or army-groups or even theaters isn't terribly unlike how the real world worked.
To be quite honest, to make a stellar air command system would involve a lot of work, in my opinion - the reduction of the 'air unit' sizes (and stats, and costs) to reflect groups of 8, 16 or 24-or-so planes, then building composite air 'groups' out of these in much the same way divisions are built now. I don't think that's in the pipes for Semper Fi. I don't think it should be. It's a huge, huge undertaking with a monumental amount of rebalancing to be done, and the earliest I'd expect to see it is (if it's made) the next expansion. I might personally fool around with this sort of work in a mod, but I just don't think it's in the cards for official Paradox support in Semper Fi.
And if it came down to including an air or a naval command structure, I would back the naval command, for all of the above reasons. That said, there are still low-cost, low-effort things that can be done to change up the air war. Let's have a point, first: As things currently stand, in the vanilla game, using more than three to four groups in an air unit is a waste. At -10% a pop for every group including the initial airgroup, the stacking penalty quickly builds up beyond four airgroups or so to the point where your additional planes mean you're taking more damage than you need to.
The steep stacking penalty is pretty realistic. While over one hundred thousand combat aircraft were involved in World War II, very rarely did you find even 800 aircraft on both sides duking it out in a single engagement. Thus, the game is already constructed such that creating large airgroups is impractical. So why not make it official? Institute a three-or-four-airgroup/Wing limit for Air Corps, similar to the discussed-above ship-limit for Task Forces.
Incidentally, I could see adding a new support brigade to the air corps HQ and above, that increases the air group support limit, as well.
The benefit of this is that it doesn't require the UI updates that making real 'Air Divisions' would - and doesn't stop players from, if they want to ignore the chain of command, filling their wings with as many airgroups as they want to. However, like the current system in-place limiting the number of divisions assigned to a corps, the number of corps assigned to an army, and so forth, players will be given benefits for organizing smaller, more tactically-focused groupings. This will work a little differently, though - I have more pictures to demonstrate.
Our 3rd Intercept Group is looking mighty lonely...
There, that's better.
After a few days, I've got the rest of the chain of command set up. Uh, Overlord's not going so well, ignore that.
Command & Headquarters Issues - Airforce
So as you see above, unit composition is relatively intuitive, similar to the method of making normal, land-style Corps and Armies and so forth. (Air HQs have a personnel complement of 1,000, or 1 manpower, as pictured.)
The exact number of airgroups in an Air Corps is, as with everything else here, completely open to debate. But there are a few issues to resolve with the command centers themselves - namely, how do we make sure our lower-echelon headquarters doesn't get left behind if our 3rd Intercept Wing has to rebase to Rome to counter a sudden German offensive in Italy?
Simple, really: Give them wings.
To be precise: From what I'm envisioning, Air Corps HQs would be -when you click on that 'Create Air Corps' button - created at the nearest airfield, and always be bound to an airfield somewhere. No standard movement, just strategic redeploy - and airlift. Aye, that's the kicker - and likely the most complicated part of this whole assembly.
Either programming the HQ to double as an air transport that can load itself and whatever support brigades it has up, and rebase to another airfield, or simply treating it as an air unit that happens to have an attack-able presence on the ground, would do it. (Or the cheap solution: Just make it and its support brigades loadable into transport planes, and add an 'air transport' mission.)
I personally feel that all air HQs should be bound to an airfield somewhere, and that in order to stay relevant and useful, all should have that air-redeploy ability. However, I also feel that it shouldn't be usable anywhere near as often as a regular plane's ability to rebase - and thus, I'd suggest utilizing the already-extant mechanic that paratroopers and transport planes employ: Make it so that air HQs can only aerially-redeploy at full organization.
As for the issue of commanders...well, like with the naval commanders, that's just going to be an issue. In the move from HoI2 to HoI3, as well, we sacrificed having armies full of field marshals fielding as many divisions as we wanted, to using smaller, more directed and less cumbersome forces, at the expense of using up some of our leaders for headquarters duty. That's just the way war goes.
Final Thoughts - Air Force - So Why Bother?
As with the navy, you need more than ideas and good intentions to make a system like the one I've outlined, worth implementing. However, I believe that - even moreso than the naval command structure - implementing an aerial chain-of-command is both feasible and possible with very few new mechanics, and a moderate amount of tweaking.
The most difficult and currently-nonfunctional part of the above design is the aerially-redeploying headquarters. Everything else - limited number of air groups in a corps, visual display of component parts of said corps, the creation of headquarters in a certain location, HQs only being able to base out of airfields, and so forth, is just a matter of interface tweaks, GUI additions and changes, and adjustment of existing mechanics and systems to fit the new paradigm. Doing this should be even easier than adding the naval command system, all said.
Like the idea of naval task forces helping the AI to control its fleet, having defined air corps and higher should help the AI in organizing a competent, dangerous airforce. Too often, still, we see the AI using its planes in giant clumps that cripple their effectiveness. Giving the AI pathways through which to spread out its forces and use them in a more controlled manner can only help the flow and enjoyability of the game.
With the newly-announced feature of Allied Cooperation, and being able to call in requests from your allies, a separate Air hierarchy could help to simulate a player's ability to request massive bombardments from their allies, both temporary air-support and long-term efforts like the strategic bombing of Germany.
Considering the heavy (and some would say decisive) role airpower played in the Pacific, I do believe that, if it's judged workable, a full-fledged aerial command system would be well worthwhile as an addition to Semper Fi, and would be both an efficient and relatively-non-intensive series of changes and additions that would add worlds to the game.
It wasn't an infantry division that decisively ended the war with Japan, after all.
C. Last Notes
None of this is set in stone yet, obviously. I'm open to criticism and discussion of any part of the above, and invite people to bring and discuss their own ideas for reasonable suggestions and features that can be added with a minimum of fuss, that would sharply improve the eventual quality of Semper Fi. Feel free to tear apart anything above that you don't like - the interface, the colors, the concepts, Halsey - or voice your support or the like.
Also, as a final note: All of the above graphics were created via intensive modding and some image retouching. Nothing pictured works anywhere near the way it's explained to, in-game, and however pretty or ugly you may think them, the new features pictured are completely nonfunctional. If I could do this myself, I wouldn't be bothering Paradox, believe me. =P
So! Thoughts? Additions? Let's crack open this forum and let some centralized ideas flow in.
~Kaoru
Opening Post (Isolated) - Naval and Air Command-Chains (Graphic illustrations included!)
Explorations of a Battalion System (Image-Heavy Post!)
angj57's Politics & Intelligence Suggestions
wangdus's Megalist of HoI3-Expansion-HoI4 Suggestions
wangdus' suggestions for a new combat engine
jmshaub's Diplomacy Problems & Solutions
Hicham's Translated Feature & Request List
PanzerWilly's Suggestion for Neutrality Uses
In addition, here are some interesting external links to other pertinent discussions slightly outside the scope of a general-purpose topic. You can be added to this by requesting such in a PM or in the topic, I'll try to respond in a timely manner. I will, however, note when a given topic does not address Semper Fi.
Modder Wishes for Semper Fi
Suggestions Regarding Medium Powers (Delra's thread, but others have contributed their ideas as well)
Cpack's Feature Suggestions & Discussion (Because I didn't feel right just trying to jack those questions out of an ongoing debate thread)
Hicham's Dreams for Future Expansions & HoI4 (Not Semper-Fi Related)
The purpose of this thread is to serve as a clearing-house for the suggestion of features for Semper Fi, and discussion of the pros and cons of those features. I noticed that we had a couple other SF megathreads, but none for what you really want to see in the game. There's only about a month, most likely, before Semper Fi is declared 'feature-complete', so chances are they aren't going to be doing anything gigantic - try to keep your suggestions somewhat reasonable.
This is not, however, just a 'list what you want and leave' thread. Please include at least one (1) reason, or more, that you think this feature would be a good addition to Hearts of Iron 3, and, for bonus points, include at least one reason you think it might not be such a great idea (impractical, complicated, hard to understand, etcetera). Feel free to include pictures, as I have.
Feel free to get as in-depth or stay as shallow as you want. Feel free to repeat ideas, or reasons, or expand on someone else's reason, and above all, if you come in, be prepared to be agreed and disagreed with - if you see something someone else has suggested you don't think is such a great idea, feel free to say so, and why you think so. Keep civil, but let the ideas flow. Without further ado, let's go.
I'll get the ball rolling with something I was going to post in DD #2, but decided would be better off having its own thread. I'll probably go on to support this throughout future development diaries, because I think it's a very important and worthwhile feature. The below is organized using colors and bold font, to make it easier to navigate. You don't have to get anywhere near as involved as I have, obviously. =P Feel free to if you want, though.
I. Separate Land/Naval/Air Chains of Command
Yeah, this again! The basis of this suggestion is: Create separate chains-of-command for land forces, naval forces, and air forces. Pretty straightforward in concept. Johan has gone on record (during the live interview) to state that Paradox has no current plans to include this feature in the expansion.
Why Not?
New Command Bonuses Needed
In execution, this is actually trickier than it sounds. I can understand why Paradox isn't entirely gung-ho for this - there are a lot of things working against it. To start off with, entirely new systems of bonuses and benefits, and levels, would have to be designed for these new chains of command (similar to the cooperation, supply, reinforcement, etcetera bonuses given for land-command levels). Most of the bonuses granted by land commands are useless for air and naval forces, so this'd have to change.
Force Makeup Problems
Second, because of the way wings of air-groups, and task forces of naval fleets are designed in-game and out, they're a lot harder to deal with. A division is made up of a certain number of brigades, which is set in game. You thus have a division to build all of the higher-tier command-structures around, a nice, pretty, concrete assembly.
But there's no (hardcoded) limit to how many air wings can be in a group, nor how many ships can be in a fleet. (There's just a limit to how many can be commanded, and how many you add before the stacking penalty completely destroys your effectiveness.) And imposing this sort of limit includes headaches of its own. Even just at the corps level and above - if you have four fleets of 8 ships each, just using the land system, they'd be exactly as logistically-taxing to your HQ (that is, easily commanded) as four fleets of 30 ships each. That's hardly realistic (or fun).
What if you try to built a fleet like a division, limited with a certain number of ships, do you then have to co-ordinate two, say, four-ship fleets together, un-merged, for naval operations? That sounds sort of like a headache, like moving aircraft carriers and battleships separately, or moving destroyers and battleships separately. It'd be micromanagement hell, and nobody wants that.
Not Enough Commanders, Landbound HQs
There's also the problem of commanders. Already, a lot of players have problems with the availability (or lack thereof) of air and naval commanders, without any HQ structure. That problem gets a lot worse if, for optimum use, you have to use up some of your precious admirals and air generals for land-bound HQ duties. Which brings up another problem. These HQ units, they are going to be land-bound, right? They won't sail, or fly. So what happens when you rebase your airforce or fleet halfway across a continent? Or halfway around the globe? Well, you'd better have a landroute to strategically redeploy over, or transports ready to move it. Otherwise, that HQ with its valuable general is going to be of absolutely zero use to your forces.
Wow! Considering all of the problems and headaches to overcome with the separate-commands issue, I can personally see why Paradox currently goes with the policy of attaching your air forces and fleets to the appropriate-level land HQ and just using and organizing them that way. Because Paradox's official policy is that the command apparatus and logistical crew of wings and fleets is an organic part of the unit in-game, already, to their eyes the system works and works well.
After all, some of the majors in-game (Japan, USA) didn't even have separate airforces, though others (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Soviet Union) did. In implementing this for all countries, it could technically reduce historicity in some cases.
Then How To Work It?
So, obviously, there's got to be a bevy of solutions to the above headaches and issues in order to go forward. Let's solve the proposed issues above one-by-one, to start.
Command Bonuses
There's no easy way to say this, but: This is just going to be a problem. New command bonuses will need to be programmed, and new levels assigned. As to levels, though, well, they exist, so it's just a matter of implementing them, as this page (Wikipedia Article) shows. I personally think an "Admiralty -> Theatre Fleet -> Battlefleet / Numbered Fleet -> Task Force -> Task Group (Divisional Unit)" (Four HQs above divisional-level units) arrangement would work for fleets, and a "Regional Command -> Numbered Air Force -> Air Corps -> Wing / Airgroup (Divisional Unit)" (Three HQs above divisional-level units) arrangement would work for the air force. However, the highest-tier elements of the naval grouping (Admiralty) may be superfluous, and thus unnecessary, feel free to comment if you feel likewise.
As for command bonuses, unless Paradox just wants to go with the perfectly-workable trait-spreading-and-sharing function for the only benefit of air and naval commands, yeah, they'd need new bonuses, because most of the land-HQ command bonuses are useless to naval and air forces. However, considering the usefulness of shared traits, I do think Paradox could get away with this.
A. Thoughts On The Navy
Force Building Issues - Navy
But that still leaves the issue of how to set up the actual components of a chain of command - how many fleets, or wings, and how to deal with the problem of there being no limit to how many ships or wings you can put in a given fleet or airgroup (while ignoring command limits).
I'm going to address the Navy and the Air Force separately, but an image is worth a thousand words. This is part of my answer to this problem.
To take this bit by bit, let's start with the naval side of things. Whereas land corps, armies, and army groups are relatively-permanent formations that involve the same men (sans casualties), equipment, and the like for long periods of time, naval formations tend to be more ad-hoc and spur-of-the-moment. Merely mirroring the land-based system would, in my eyes, be unnecessarily (and potentially annoyingly) restrictive. Something new is needed.
Depicted above is one possibility for that 'something new'. How it works is this: As suggested above, we take the Task Group as our 'division' for fleets, because task groups tend to be the smallest independent and balanced groupings - there are smaller ones, flotillas and the like, but flotillas are already abstracted in destroyer-and-submarine groupings, and thus I don't consider them right for the scale of this. It'd be like trying to make a corps out of brigades alone.
To deal with the problem of variably-sized fleets, set numeric limits on the absolute number of ships (flotillas of submarines and destroyers, for purposes of this, count as 1 ship apiece) in a task force. The precise number is up for debate and discussion - I personally think it should be around 30, both because I think any larger and you're spilling over into larger formations, and because 'around 30' means that the current highest-admiral rank has something to do. (Commandlimits for the navy may have to be reworked, but that's easy enough.)
Notice from the Wikipedia article that most naval formations work on the 'two-or-more' mold. What you could do is select at least two fleets whose total number of ships does not exceed whatever number the Task Force limit is set at (It's basically like not going over the weight limit for land units when loading.) There'd be a button on the multi-unit select panel, then, called 'Form Task Force' - either beside or (when only naval units are selected) replacing the aforementioned load-units button, probably. (I could've made this too, and still could, if anyone's curious how it'd look, I just didn't want to spend a lot of time modding nonfunctional buttons and creating useless graphics and the like.)
Click this, and the selected fleets are amalgamated into a Task Force! Pictured. You will notice that the Task Force has a personnel component of 300 (0.3 manpower), a separate Admiral, an aggregate forcecount, AI stance options, and a button you haven't seen before, which splits it back up into two separate fleets. (This disbands the task force and returns the 0.3 manpower to your pool.) If you had more than two fleets, either a vertical or horizontal scrollbar could be employed to see them from the Task Force tab.
When utilized as as Task Force, the involved fleets might move and fight together or somesuch, without needing to be ordered separately. (I'd imagine you still could order them separately, just by selecting one of the individual fleets.) To make this worthwhile, I imagine there'd have to be some reduction in the stacking penalty (In fact, reduction of the stacking penalty might be one of the 'command level bonuses'!) so it's better than just clumping together 30 ships in one fleet.
Two or more Task Forces could be commanded by a Battlefleet or numbered Fleet HQ, two or more numbered Fleets / Battlefleets under a naval theatre, and any available naval theatres would be directly subordinate to the central naval command. All levels would also, of course, receive traits from any commands above them, all the way up the command chain, and any command bonuses they're entitled to. This way, a limited-ship force becomes a help rather than a hindrance.
Commander & Headquarters Issues - Navy
Of course, that still leaves the problem of headquarters, and commanders. I'll address the latter first. As you can see from the screenshot above, the HQ of a Task Force would actually be one of the ships of the fleet. This is not only historical, but, with the new stated SF feature to designate one ship as 'Pride of the Fleet', it should be entirely possible - they've already created a mechanic that picks out and assigns special qualities to a ship, so designating one as an HQ as well shouldn't be too difficult.
This neatly sidesteps the problem of having lower-tier HQs that lack the mobility to keep up with their units. I personally believe that Fleet HQs, Theatre Fleet HQs and the highest-tier Naval Command HQs should remain landbound units - the Pacific Fleet HQ was historically based at Pearl Harbor, and individual Fleets had their own specific headquarters, as well (to say nothing of the supreme command.) However, because Fleets tend to be deployed as Theatre forces, I believe it's fair and worthwhile to leave them as land-bound HQs - they're a little more permanent and rigid than Task Groups and Task Forces are. The logistical and support forces of a Fleet didn't tend to sail with it as organic units.
As for commanders - that's a tricky subject. There are two relatively-simple solutions that I can see: The first is, suck up the fact that you're going to lose a leader to achieve better logistics, cooperation and lethality with your fleets. (Pictured above, as with Halsey Jr.) The second is: Make some use of naval ranks! Out of the admirals involved in the Task Force, whoever has the highest rank (and if there are several admirals of the same rank, the lowest ID) commands the Task Force. These two could be combined: It could be that either an external commander is assigned or the highest-ranking Task Group admiral commands the Task Force, which gives the best of both worlds.
Final Thoughts - Navy - So Why Bother?
Now, all the good ideas and pretty pictures in the world don't make the game go. There's got to be both good reasons to do it, and a reasonable framework to actually build it on. However, I believe both of the above exist when it comes to the Navy, and specifically the ideas I've outlined above. As aforementioned, the new 'Pride of the Fleet' mechanic is set up to specially-designate individual ships in a task group, to track whether they're sunk and to take certain actions when that occurs. It'd fit perfectly into a flagship-HQ designation.
Pretty much everything else just comes down to adapting existing mechanics to a naval focus - counting number-of-ships instead of number of men, adjusting the GUI and graphics to display, re-purposing something like the Weight mechanic to instead track number-of-ships for task force creation purposes, adapting the command tree and creating new command bonuses, so on and so forth. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it's significantly less work than it otherwise would be, because it makes use of pre-existing systems and architecture within the game. In other words: You're already halfway there, Paradox, and the last half of the race tends to be comparitively-easier than building something from scratch.
And doing this isn't just for historical flavor. The current system of managing air forces and fleets under JTF (Joint Task Force) land-theatre HQs is clunky - especially if you have a lot of air units or fleets assigned under it, there's a phenomenal amount of scrolling and clicking around that could be short-cutted if both forces had their own dedicated command hierarchies. In addition, having defined naval theatres would help deal with the problem many players have noticed, with the AI still sending its fleets all over the map, ignoring range-limits, and basically breaking immersion and (when you as Britain are suddenly dealing with 13 Japanese carriers sporting way more planes than they should) playability.
Not to mention that setting up Task Groups and Task Forces as fleet-groupings will help give a framework for teaching the AI how to build and assemble balanced fleets, so we don't have things like Germany building a thousand destroyers and sending them out to die, one-by-one. Well-balanced fleet structures will help to support naval landings, shore operations, D-Day type scenarios, and could also help the computer to more effectively guard its transports, so it doesn't lose tens of thousands of troops just because it decided to send that 15-stack of transports with two destroyer flotillas as escort. All in all, I think it has the potential to entirely revitalize and revamp the naval game, and would be an incredibly worthwhile inclusion into Hearts of Iron 3, and perfectly in-line with SF's stated goal of focusing on Pacific warfare.
B. Thoughts On The Air Force
Force Building Issues - Airforce
Let me start off by saying that while I believe the problems confronting the Air Force are less severe, there's less of a pressing need for a separate system for air forces, as well. Currently, it's perfectly possible to attach air groups to land HQs and use them that way - and it's somewhat close to the system utilized by several major powers. The air force operated in tandem with the ground or naval forces, so assigning them to corps or armies or army-groups or even theaters isn't terribly unlike how the real world worked.
To be quite honest, to make a stellar air command system would involve a lot of work, in my opinion - the reduction of the 'air unit' sizes (and stats, and costs) to reflect groups of 8, 16 or 24-or-so planes, then building composite air 'groups' out of these in much the same way divisions are built now. I don't think that's in the pipes for Semper Fi. I don't think it should be. It's a huge, huge undertaking with a monumental amount of rebalancing to be done, and the earliest I'd expect to see it is (if it's made) the next expansion. I might personally fool around with this sort of work in a mod, but I just don't think it's in the cards for official Paradox support in Semper Fi.
And if it came down to including an air or a naval command structure, I would back the naval command, for all of the above reasons. That said, there are still low-cost, low-effort things that can be done to change up the air war. Let's have a point, first: As things currently stand, in the vanilla game, using more than three to four groups in an air unit is a waste. At -10% a pop for every group including the initial airgroup, the stacking penalty quickly builds up beyond four airgroups or so to the point where your additional planes mean you're taking more damage than you need to.
The steep stacking penalty is pretty realistic. While over one hundred thousand combat aircraft were involved in World War II, very rarely did you find even 800 aircraft on both sides duking it out in a single engagement. Thus, the game is already constructed such that creating large airgroups is impractical. So why not make it official? Institute a three-or-four-airgroup/Wing limit for Air Corps, similar to the discussed-above ship-limit for Task Forces.
Incidentally, I could see adding a new support brigade to the air corps HQ and above, that increases the air group support limit, as well.
The benefit of this is that it doesn't require the UI updates that making real 'Air Divisions' would - and doesn't stop players from, if they want to ignore the chain of command, filling their wings with as many airgroups as they want to. However, like the current system in-place limiting the number of divisions assigned to a corps, the number of corps assigned to an army, and so forth, players will be given benefits for organizing smaller, more tactically-focused groupings. This will work a little differently, though - I have more pictures to demonstrate.
Our 3rd Intercept Group is looking mighty lonely...
There, that's better.
After a few days, I've got the rest of the chain of command set up. Uh, Overlord's not going so well, ignore that.
Command & Headquarters Issues - Airforce
So as you see above, unit composition is relatively intuitive, similar to the method of making normal, land-style Corps and Armies and so forth. (Air HQs have a personnel complement of 1,000, or 1 manpower, as pictured.)
The exact number of airgroups in an Air Corps is, as with everything else here, completely open to debate. But there are a few issues to resolve with the command centers themselves - namely, how do we make sure our lower-echelon headquarters doesn't get left behind if our 3rd Intercept Wing has to rebase to Rome to counter a sudden German offensive in Italy?
Simple, really: Give them wings.
To be precise: From what I'm envisioning, Air Corps HQs would be -when you click on that 'Create Air Corps' button - created at the nearest airfield, and always be bound to an airfield somewhere. No standard movement, just strategic redeploy - and airlift. Aye, that's the kicker - and likely the most complicated part of this whole assembly.
Either programming the HQ to double as an air transport that can load itself and whatever support brigades it has up, and rebase to another airfield, or simply treating it as an air unit that happens to have an attack-able presence on the ground, would do it. (Or the cheap solution: Just make it and its support brigades loadable into transport planes, and add an 'air transport' mission.)
I personally feel that all air HQs should be bound to an airfield somewhere, and that in order to stay relevant and useful, all should have that air-redeploy ability. However, I also feel that it shouldn't be usable anywhere near as often as a regular plane's ability to rebase - and thus, I'd suggest utilizing the already-extant mechanic that paratroopers and transport planes employ: Make it so that air HQs can only aerially-redeploy at full organization.
As for the issue of commanders...well, like with the naval commanders, that's just going to be an issue. In the move from HoI2 to HoI3, as well, we sacrificed having armies full of field marshals fielding as many divisions as we wanted, to using smaller, more directed and less cumbersome forces, at the expense of using up some of our leaders for headquarters duty. That's just the way war goes.
Final Thoughts - Air Force - So Why Bother?
As with the navy, you need more than ideas and good intentions to make a system like the one I've outlined, worth implementing. However, I believe that - even moreso than the naval command structure - implementing an aerial chain-of-command is both feasible and possible with very few new mechanics, and a moderate amount of tweaking.
The most difficult and currently-nonfunctional part of the above design is the aerially-redeploying headquarters. Everything else - limited number of air groups in a corps, visual display of component parts of said corps, the creation of headquarters in a certain location, HQs only being able to base out of airfields, and so forth, is just a matter of interface tweaks, GUI additions and changes, and adjustment of existing mechanics and systems to fit the new paradigm. Doing this should be even easier than adding the naval command system, all said.
Like the idea of naval task forces helping the AI to control its fleet, having defined air corps and higher should help the AI in organizing a competent, dangerous airforce. Too often, still, we see the AI using its planes in giant clumps that cripple their effectiveness. Giving the AI pathways through which to spread out its forces and use them in a more controlled manner can only help the flow and enjoyability of the game.
With the newly-announced feature of Allied Cooperation, and being able to call in requests from your allies, a separate Air hierarchy could help to simulate a player's ability to request massive bombardments from their allies, both temporary air-support and long-term efforts like the strategic bombing of Germany.
Considering the heavy (and some would say decisive) role airpower played in the Pacific, I do believe that, if it's judged workable, a full-fledged aerial command system would be well worthwhile as an addition to Semper Fi, and would be both an efficient and relatively-non-intensive series of changes and additions that would add worlds to the game.
It wasn't an infantry division that decisively ended the war with Japan, after all.
C. Last Notes
None of this is set in stone yet, obviously. I'm open to criticism and discussion of any part of the above, and invite people to bring and discuss their own ideas for reasonable suggestions and features that can be added with a minimum of fuss, that would sharply improve the eventual quality of Semper Fi. Feel free to tear apart anything above that you don't like - the interface, the colors, the concepts, Halsey - or voice your support or the like.
Also, as a final note: All of the above graphics were created via intensive modding and some image retouching. Nothing pictured works anywhere near the way it's explained to, in-game, and however pretty or ugly you may think them, the new features pictured are completely nonfunctional. If I could do this myself, I wouldn't be bothering Paradox, believe me. =P
So! Thoughts? Additions? Let's crack open this forum and let some centralized ideas flow in.
~Kaoru
Last edited:
