OK, so we are talking about a possible mod later on down the road then, if we want to see this in some form or another.
Dang - all these good ideas and I can't program...
Well its never too late to learn
I have never released any major mods, but I have done the odd bit of modding on various games, and I plan on releasing some kind of mod for HOI3.
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I would really like to see if some of the more complex ideas like detachable equipment could be modded somehow..
You don't need to be able to program to mod Paradox games.
EUIII has a more refined economic model than HOI, having trade goods, such as tobacco, spices, tea, iron, etc. These are defined in a text file and you can mod these and create additional types of trade goods, so if you really wanted you could add in white_elephants and flying_pigs.
One of the trade goods that are in the vanilla game are slaves. If you wanted to play a really politically correct game you could take these out altogether. As well as changing the file that defines slaves as valid trade goods you would have to change all of the province files for those provinces that currently trade slaves, and give them something else to trade.
For example, Mozambique starts the game in 1399 trading ivory, but from 1780 it swaps to trading slaves ("Rise of plantations in Mascarene Is. changes trade patterns"). You could easily mod this to set Mozambique to trading white_elephants from 1780, in our Slavery-Free Mod.
The trade goods generated in each province are traded in the game at Centres for Trade, where you send Merchants. The price mechanism is defined in a text file, and you need to define the base_price of white_elephants, and how the supply and demand for them is affected by wars, blockades, buildings in the province, etc. The supply and demand determines the price the controller of Mozambique will get for their white_elephants when they trade them at a Centre for Trade.
So the system is flexible. But not totally so - you cannot assign more than one type of trade goods to each province. So Northumberland in England starts the game trading cloth, and continues to do so throughout, despite historically having both coal and iron ore mines (especially from 1750 on), and an active fishing industry (coal, iron and fish are valid trade goods). The abstraction of the game is that each province specialises in only one type of trade goods at a time. When Mozambique starts trading white_elephants it stops trading ivory.
In addition, you can't remove or drastically change the Centre of Trade system. Merchants are in the game whether you like them or not. So there are clear limits on what can be modded in Paradox games.
Until HOI3 goes gold we won't know exactly what those limits will be. But you could make an educated guess from what is moddable in HOI2, EUIII and Rome, and realise that whole sections of the game are going to be off-limits.
Personally, if you had asked me six months ago I would have said that HOI3 provinces should have an IC value to represent small/medium sized industries in the province which are quite flexible over what they produce, for producing consumer goods, supplies, small arms etc. But I would have also wanted to see industry_types defined (and therefore be moddable) to cover large industries, such as shipyard, oil_refinery, steel_mill, aircraft_factory etc. This would have enhanced the strategic choices to be made in the first few years, prevented some of the worst exploits of HOI2 (such as Germany deploying CV's in Yugoslavia where there are no shipyards capable of building large ships), and also given more interest to a strategic bombing campaign. But without going the whole way to a Vicky-type system.
But if HOI3 doesn't include ANY industry types, and all provinces have only a generic IC value covering all industries regardless of size/type, as has appeared to be the case for months, and is now confirmed by King, then I don't think there will be any way to mod this into the game.
If you want to find out more about modding the EU-engine based games (and this will include HOI3) then you can learn alot from these sources:
EUIII Modding Forum
Rome Modding Forum
The stickies in those two forums contain lots of useful information and guides. But you can also get an idea from the threads of what other people have been able to do, and just as importantly, what they have failed to do. The thread for something like the
Rome Improved Map Project also gives a good idea of the massive amount of work the dedicated modders have had to do to get their ideas working. Also:
EUIII Wiki contains a section on Modding
No doubt there will be a HOI3 Modding Forum and HOI3 Wiki later, with plenty of information for people interested in modding the game.
