In its strictest sense you can’t call the tech sharing interface bugged since it works but let me argue for my case and give you a little example before we discuss this further.
Lets say I play UK in the 1936 scenario in a multiplayer setting. To survive the onslaught of three cunning and aggressive axis players I consider it essesntial to tech share using my ideological crusader minister as much as I can to the 4 CW nations, which the house rules allow me. Now some maths…
To share a tech to one nation I follow the following procedure…
1. Access the diplomatic menu
2. Select country to interact with
3. Slide down to the “Share Tech” alternative
4. Select “Share Tech”
5. Slide down to selected tech to share
6. Share selected tech
7. Push Back/Esc to exit
8. Select Location on the Minimap to select next country
Step 1 and 8 is actually interchangeable once you are in the loop of transferring multiple techs at once. Ok, so now we figured that it takes seven interface clicks to share one tech. Let’s continue our example.
UK wants to share with Australia, Canada, New Zeeland and South Africa every week. That multiplies those 7 clicks with 4 nations equalling 28 clicks per week.
Lets say I share tech every week 50 weeks a year. That’s 28 clicks times 50 weeks equalling 1400 clicks.
I want to be ready for war so I do this during 1936-1940. I have now clicked 4 times 1400 = 5600 times to share all my tech. Lets say it takes 1 second to perform one click/slide manoeuvre for a very agile and fast user. Then you spend an extra +1.5 hours sharing tech before reaching the outbreak of the war if you pause to share. Why do I need to pause? If I’m running the game in SP at high speed and slides down to “Share Tech” and prepare to select this option we all know that at 00.00 the menu resets and immediately jumps to above “leave alliance”. Considering normal human reflexes you pick this alternative 1 out 3 on high speed. I therefore prefer pausing in SP mode.
To these +5000 clicks we can add misclicks for the small buttons and the number of clicks, some map zooms and maybe a few techs to other potential allies house rules permitting.
Now this number of clicks discourages many player from sharing tech almost all together. Is this the intention of the interface? With a normal foreign minister you cant share this much tech so that takes care of the problem in a way but many major nations have one available.
One suggestion to decrease the number of wished for tech shares would be to increase the cost for a tech to a higher number and letting even the ideological Crusader minister inflict a DP drain when sharing. But then we are sliding into the discussion how upsetting tech sharing is for the game balance, which isn’t the subject in this thread since most MP rules have house rules for tech sharing.
I consider the tech sharing procedure interface so user hostile that it would almost be correct to call it flawed or bugged.
Here are some suggestions what easily could be done to improve the situation:
The Share Tech button, now at the bottom of the Diplo menu could moved to the top quite easily thereby decreasing the number of clicks necessary. The other diplo options aren’t used a fraction of the time the share tech button can be used so it should be at the top not at the button. This would lower the clicking a some but isn’t really a satisfying solution.
A more complex solution would be to allow to share the same tech to more than one unit each time. This is probably more complex to implement and not a good suggestion.
What possibly could be a both simple and satisfying solution could be the following:
Introduce a box to check for each nation in their respective “share tech” section so that its possible to send a tech automatically each week to that country as long as there are DP’s available for this or indefinitely when a Minister lowers the cost to zero. A random tech or the first in the list could be sent. Even better would be if you could choose between sharing only silver techs or both gold and silver techs. In this case UK could just cross these boxes for her CW allies at the start of the campaign and the game itself would take care of the sharing. After all a computer is much better at repeating operations than what the ordinary player is.
If you consider this discussion lengthy considering the issue discussed you should know that I only spent a fraction of the time writing this article compared to the time and effort I spent sharing tech with allies in different HOI campaigns, SP as well as MP.
Lets say I play UK in the 1936 scenario in a multiplayer setting. To survive the onslaught of three cunning and aggressive axis players I consider it essesntial to tech share using my ideological crusader minister as much as I can to the 4 CW nations, which the house rules allow me. Now some maths…
To share a tech to one nation I follow the following procedure…
1. Access the diplomatic menu
2. Select country to interact with
3. Slide down to the “Share Tech” alternative
4. Select “Share Tech”
5. Slide down to selected tech to share
6. Share selected tech
7. Push Back/Esc to exit
8. Select Location on the Minimap to select next country
Step 1 and 8 is actually interchangeable once you are in the loop of transferring multiple techs at once. Ok, so now we figured that it takes seven interface clicks to share one tech. Let’s continue our example.
UK wants to share with Australia, Canada, New Zeeland and South Africa every week. That multiplies those 7 clicks with 4 nations equalling 28 clicks per week.
Lets say I share tech every week 50 weeks a year. That’s 28 clicks times 50 weeks equalling 1400 clicks.
I want to be ready for war so I do this during 1936-1940. I have now clicked 4 times 1400 = 5600 times to share all my tech. Lets say it takes 1 second to perform one click/slide manoeuvre for a very agile and fast user. Then you spend an extra +1.5 hours sharing tech before reaching the outbreak of the war if you pause to share. Why do I need to pause? If I’m running the game in SP at high speed and slides down to “Share Tech” and prepare to select this option we all know that at 00.00 the menu resets and immediately jumps to above “leave alliance”. Considering normal human reflexes you pick this alternative 1 out 3 on high speed. I therefore prefer pausing in SP mode.
To these +5000 clicks we can add misclicks for the small buttons and the number of clicks, some map zooms and maybe a few techs to other potential allies house rules permitting.
Now this number of clicks discourages many player from sharing tech almost all together. Is this the intention of the interface? With a normal foreign minister you cant share this much tech so that takes care of the problem in a way but many major nations have one available.
One suggestion to decrease the number of wished for tech shares would be to increase the cost for a tech to a higher number and letting even the ideological Crusader minister inflict a DP drain when sharing. But then we are sliding into the discussion how upsetting tech sharing is for the game balance, which isn’t the subject in this thread since most MP rules have house rules for tech sharing.
I consider the tech sharing procedure interface so user hostile that it would almost be correct to call it flawed or bugged.
Here are some suggestions what easily could be done to improve the situation:
The Share Tech button, now at the bottom of the Diplo menu could moved to the top quite easily thereby decreasing the number of clicks necessary. The other diplo options aren’t used a fraction of the time the share tech button can be used so it should be at the top not at the button. This would lower the clicking a some but isn’t really a satisfying solution.
A more complex solution would be to allow to share the same tech to more than one unit each time. This is probably more complex to implement and not a good suggestion.
What possibly could be a both simple and satisfying solution could be the following:
Introduce a box to check for each nation in their respective “share tech” section so that its possible to send a tech automatically each week to that country as long as there are DP’s available for this or indefinitely when a Minister lowers the cost to zero. A random tech or the first in the list could be sent. Even better would be if you could choose between sharing only silver techs or both gold and silver techs. In this case UK could just cross these boxes for her CW allies at the start of the campaign and the game itself would take care of the sharing. After all a computer is much better at repeating operations than what the ordinary player is.
If you consider this discussion lengthy considering the issue discussed you should know that I only spent a fraction of the time writing this article compared to the time and effort I spent sharing tech with allies in different HOI campaigns, SP as well as MP.
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