The tiny suggestions thread!

[safe-keeper]

So I'm sitting here playing TFH, and I had a tiny idea, and thought hey, why not start a thread where people can share those little ideas and thoughts they might have about HOI4, but which are perhaps too small to warrant their own threads? Don't know if this will take off, but I think it'd be funny to see what it develops into .

My idea:

When a unit reaches its destination and the game shows a pop-up, tell us not only which province it has reached, but also the province and the region or nation.
For example, "67th Strelkovaya Diviziya har reached Sanhe, Manchuria." When playing as someone who has forces all over the world, it's nice to be able to tell at a glance which region each alert corresponds to.​

 

[Vlad_Constantin]

My ideea:
When I send my army to help an allied neighbouring country, I want my divisions to be supplied by me, and not by the allied country. In HOI III many times I lost my army helping allies because they didn't have supplies, and I had no possible way of sending them supplies via trading (they wouldn't accept)...

 

[Pegasi2]

being able to infiltrate a harbor with a submarine. in hoi3, you could right click on a province with planes and choose what you wanted to do, being able to do that
but with a submarine, and depending on the harbor level, coastal fort level or what have ye, amount of destroyers, etc, and a random chance to critical hit ships in the harbor.

 

[Bullfrog]

Training laws that are division template based. When I create a template, let me decide how much training each division created using that template should receive. Make training laws a less obvious choice...specialty training should produce nearly crack units, whereas minimal training should produce essentially militia units with uniforms and heavy weapons. But there should be a severe cost in time at least for the specialist units, like a year. Inversely, minimal training should take a few weeks.

Port the training laws to air units too, except if you reduce their training from specialist, or advanced at the lowest, the pilots suck. Reinforcement time should be heavily affected by the training law you use.

 

[Adonnus]

Being able to draw army group theatres into allied countries. Pleaaaaase please make this possible.

 

[Introvertiert]

add the Wikipediabutton from CKII to the ingame Battleplans

 

[krche]

Improvised airfields. I would like to base aircraft in any province, by building improvised airfields fast (i.e. 1 week or so), to simulate the fact that WWII aircraft (at least the single and twin engined ones) could work from improvised flat areas for a short time. It should of course cause a massive org hit (maybe 50-70%) and it should not allow the air unit to recover org when based there.

I often face the problem when fighting in the East that the aircraft cannot follow the fighting because there is no place to base them.

 

[Jazumir]

Tiny suggestion? Okay, here is one: Make units of other nations selectable via key+dragbox, so that you can examine them. Allies in all detail, neutrals and enemies with data given according to intel. Possibly a different key for allies, neutrals and enemies. Make the box remember its frame, when the mouse-button is released, so that you can simply press the according key if you want to see the troops of another group within the same box.

Think d-day: Ten days after, you (UK) drag a box across the provinces of normandy. Your UK-units get selected. You want to see what the US has landed already? Press the ´allied troops´ key et volià. What do the germans have on that front? Press the ´enemy troops´ key, to find out (as much as intel can come up with).

EDIT: The same key could be used for all, if it cycles through the groups of nations.

 

[safe-keeper]

Another one: an option to let the game name deployed divisions after division type. For example, if I design a "Recon Division", then when deployed, they're automatically named "1st Recon Division", "2nd Recon division", etc. rather than just "1st Infantry division". Would actually be nice if you could choose to have the game include the province where the division was built, too ("1st London Recon Division", for example"). Make it a couple checkboxes you can click when deploying units or something.

Would also be nice if I could give divisions custom map icons, too, so that if I create two or more types of armoured divisions, for example (such as, one that I just use for reconnaissance and one that I actually use for fighting) I can tell them apart at a glance on the map .

 

[Dalwin]

Another one: an option to let the game name deployed divisions after division type. For example, if I design a "Recon Division", then when deployed, they're automatically named "1st Recon Division", "2nd Recon division", etc. rather than just "1st Infantry division". Would actually be nice if you could choose to have the game include the province where the division was built, too ("1st London Recon Division", for example").

Would also be nice if I could give divisions custom map icons, too, so that if I create two or more types of armoured divisions, for example (such as, one that I just use for reconnaissance and one that I actually use for fighting) I can tell them apart at a glance on the map .

That is an interesting point on the icons (would apply somewhat to the 3d models as well). Once I start customizing my divisions how does the system decide which icon to use?

Let's say for some misguided reason I build a division with one regiment of foot infantry and one of medium tanks. Which icon does this get? Would the tanks automatically give it the armor symbol even though this badly designed division only moved at foot speed? What if it is two regiments of infantry and one of tanks?

Before you say that these example divisions are silly, I am heading to something.

If I had a realtively normal infantry division that happened to have a bn of heavy tanks attached that would still be infantry right? What If I make the heavy tank component a full regiment?

If it is the game system deciding what icon goes with our custom divisions we may not like the result in some cases. The idea to be able to choose which is to be used from the list of those available has some merit. I see potential problems in MP games though. I should not be able to make a bunch of units that are 3 regiments of infantry and one bn of heavy tanks and use the icon for an armored division. This would be great disinformation in MP, but hardly sportsmanlike.

 

[Bullfrog]

That is an interesting point on the icons (would apply somewhat to the 3d models as well). Once I start customizing my divisions how does the system decide which icon to use?

Let's say for some misguided reason I build a division with one regiment of foot infantry and one of medium tanks. Which icon does this get? Would the tanks automatically give it the armor symbol even though this badly designed division only moved at foot speed? What if it is two regiments of infantry and one of tanks?

Before you say that these example divisions are silly, I am heading to something.

If I had a realtively normal infantry division that happened to have a bn of heavy tanks attached that would still be infantry right? What If I make the heavy tank component a full regiment?

If it is the game system deciding what icon goes with our custom divisions we may not like the result in some cases. The idea to be able to choose which is to be used from the list of those available has some merit. I see potential problems in MP games though. I should not be able to make a bunch of units that are 3 regiments of infantry and one bn of heavy tanks and use the icon for an armored division. This would be great disinformation in MP, but hardly sportsmanlike.

Majority rules? Actually, it's probably determined by the template you choose before adding anything. Though if you can rename templates....?

 

[Dalwin]

Majority rules? Actually, it's probably determined by the template you choose before adding anything. Though if you can rename templates....?

But you can design new templates right? Or will it be that I have to choose a template for say a new armor division as the first step and this will restrict the design such that I am only allowed to add certain types of Bns to it?

Even in that restrictive scenario, I see great protential to provide abusive amounts of disinformation in MP games. I design an armored template that I name "paper tigers". It consists of only 2xbn of hvy tank and 1xSPAA. It would be a relatively weak unit used mainly for support, but on the map it would look like any other panzer division.

You stack a bunch of paper tigers at the border at the point you wish him to believe will be your main thrust. Your main mobile force is positioned a province behind the border somewhere else.

 

[safe-keeper]

It's actually a problem in HOI3. Let's say I design one division that's Armour x3 and one Motorized. It shows up as Armour on the map.
Then I form a division that is just one Armour and three infantry, in other words, foot soldiers with 'Infantry Tank' support. It too, shows up as Armour on the map, and I have to hover my mouse cursor over them to see which is which.

 

[Jazumir]

Well, yeah, with the template, we want to choose the icon... easy enough right? The game can make a default suggestion, but we´d be able to change it, anytime... wonderful!

Edit: Provided the MP-scene can live with the houserule not to toy with it... (or have simply have it disabled in MP-games)

 

[Mendeth]

being able to infiltrate a harbor with a submarine. in hoi3, you could right click on a province with planes and choose what you wanted to do, being able to do that
but with a submarine, and depending on the harbor level, coastal fort level or what have ye, amount of destroyers, etc, and a random chance to critical hit ships in the harbor.

I agree it would be a nice mission to have but I'm just curious as to the history of such raids. Was this a (relatively) common occurance during the Second World War? I know midget submarines undertook such raids but did larger/standard submarines do so too?

 

[Dalwin]

I agree it would be a nice mission to have but I'm just curious as to the history of such raids. Was this a (relatively) common occurance during the Second World War? I know midget submarines undertook such raids but did larger/standard submarines do so too?

We had an entire thread dedicated to the concept a few months back. There were almost zero incidents of this happening that did not involve mini-subs.

 

[Sai Gon]

please include the Annex TAG into the console cheats/commands as this is very useful sometimes when the AI messes something up.

(like something goes wrong and GER doesn't annex AUS, so you do tag GER and then annex AUS and the situation is fixed)

It's in Eu4 (Integrate TAG and annex TAG both there) And highly useful, especially for pretty borders! Thanks!

 

[Big Nev]

being able to infiltrate a harbor with a submarine. in hoi3, you could right click on a province with planes and choose what you wanted to do, being able to do that
but with a submarine, and depending on the harbor level, coastal fort level or what have ye, amount of destroyers, etc, and a random chance to critical hit ships in the harbor.

I agree it would be a nice mission to have but I'm just curious as to the history of such raids. Was this a (relatively) common occurance during the Second World War? I know midget submarines undertook such raids but did larger/standard submarines do so too?

We had an entire thread dedicated to the concept a few months back. There were almost zero incidents of this happening that did not involve mini-subs.

I'll stand corrected but, as I recall, there was one successful mission by a (German) submarine, one successful mission by (British) minisubs and one successful mission by (Italian) human torpedoes.

There were many attempts, mostly aborted due to equipment failure or the sub getting spotted & driven-off/sunk.

Whilst, on a strategic level, the Italian attack on Alexandria was so damaging to the British Mediterranean Fleet that they hushed it up, on the grander scale, none of these attacks made any significant difference.


So I'm not in favour of PDS wasting their time on what is liable to be a complex feature that had little or no impact on the war.

If it's included as part of an overall commando mechanic as, perhaps, an expansion to the Covert Op's, then yes, all for it, but to use actual built units for this would only result in micro-hell as players (not to mention the AI) would have to keep-up on harbour protection, torpedo/sub nets etc. etc. Yeah, needing to do that, would slow down the instant & totally unrealistic re-basing of fleets to "new" bases but I think that would only cripple the AI and give the player another stick to beat it with.

 

[doktordave]

My tiny suggestion/request: since HoI1, I always play with counters for clarity and information, but really only need it for ground troops.
For planes and ships, I'd much prefer using the models. Any chance for being able to choose models or counters for each arm (army/airforce/navy) or a workaround ?

 

[ringhloth]

Two: flags/country names based on government type, or at least based on controlling faction; and to be able to tie resources to research.