"Weapons of War" DLC idea

[Axe99]

I've recently been playing a bit of a game called "Rule the Waves", where you build warships and pit them against each other, and some of the enjoyment comes from seeing how successful your designs are, and it got me thinking about the potential In Hoi 4's variant/version system.

Imagine, say, if instead of putting extra points into one of four categories for a tank, you instead got to choose things like turret size, engine, armour thickness and the like, picking from a range of options based on the company you had in that tech field, your tech more broadly, and choices for other components (so if you choose a smaller turret you'll be more restricted in your choice of gun).

These choices then needn't just flow through into the units stats, but also could impact production costs. A Germany running low on chromium could make armour choices that are less effective, but allow for more tanks to be built more quickly, say.

Then, there's feedback on the performance of units, with respect to how they're going in the game. How this would work would depend a bit on the combat model, but could be as simple as performance vs particular divisions or as deep as some kind of imputed performance against particular enemy equipment (based on actually being in conflict with that equipment).

This can then give players feedback as to how they might want to further develop their equipment without necessarily needing to decipher the relative contribution of a particular piece of equipment within a division /air wing/fleet.

It could even be expanded down the track with espionage making it possible to see some or all of the characteristics of an enemy unit (eg, it's rumoured the Soviets are developing a tank with a 76.2mm gun).

Would need a sensible "auto design" feature in place as I doubt everyone would want to design everything, but I'm sure this would be possible (amd hopefully by not being an overly frequent process, wouldn't hurt performance too much).

I can't recall this being posted as a discrete idea but I know others have at least suggested parts of this kind of thing. Apologies if I've missed/forgotten a similar thread and am doubling up.

Edit: Would still need to use XP as well - it'd be like "variants in detail with character" more than the current RPG-like "stat-me-up" approach, with some extra feedback for players. Not a huge change in detail (although some important things like variable costs for variants and player feedback).

 

[safe-keeper]

I always loved Stars!' ship designer, and how it gave you hulls with component slots like "General purpose", "Mechanical" and "Scanners" and then allowed you to tinker with them pretty much as you pleased.

I can see a DLC, or at least a mod like BlackICE 2, greatly expanding upon the variant system by letting us define everything relevant about a vehicle, each with various penalties and advantages. I don't expect it to look or work like the ship designer in Stars!' below , but the same concept would be nice. As you say, I could go "hmm, do I give my tanks the best armour there is, or this armour that's technically obsolete, but which doesn't require as many valuable resources?".

 

[Axe99]

I don't expect it to look or work like the ship designer in Stars!' below , but the same concept would be nice. As you say, I could go "hmm, do I give my tanks the best armour there is, or this armour that's technically obsolete, but which doesn't require as many valuable resources?".

That's it - it's expanding on the cost/benefit thing beyond the simple XP cost/reliability tradeoff thing, and factoring in a few other elements (tech/companies) and giving things more character (specific models of gun/thickness of armour/etc; to choose between, instead of "+1 firepower", although the models would show the statistical impact on the unit as well). Would also be great if it could make custom 2D pictures of your creation by mashing together the different elements, but I wouldn't want contribute to making Sideburnout have a breakdown .

 

[panzerzombie]

Combine Stellaris Ship-designer with HOI4 !

 

[Killerrabbit]

Variable costs for variants is to my knowledge already possible.

IC cost is just a variable like hard attack and reliability. Therefore it should be possible to add higher costs for better variants. (Which to my mind sounds like a better tradeoff than reliability dropping when improving something)

What is still missing to allow a mod to emulate your idea is to name the individual upgrade stages. You can have a upgrade called "Gun caliber", but you can't specify that the first upgrade is named 80mm, the second 100mm and the next one 120mm.

 

[Axe99]

Already possible for cost is good . While IC is a variable, I wasn't sure we'd be able to work it in as part of the variant system, but will be great if we can.

That said, an important part of the idea revolves around player feedback as well though - if you make a particular unit, how is it going and how did it go? It's the attachment between the player and the variants they've built. If they spend effort making an interceptor, or destroyer, or TD, how does it actually perform.

Also, had another thought overnight:

You could leverage something like this to allow for conversions. Have an option for equipment where you can tag it as "obsolete" or "for conversion", then when you go into the weapon designer, the Pz1s/whatever could be available to be turned into TDs, witz the cost of production taking into account that the Pz1 bit has already been made (but the system only allowing you to produce units as long as you have surplus Pz1s). Something like this could also allow fairly easy (from a UI/gameplay perspective) ship conversions (tag your 6" armed Mogamis as "for conversion", then turn them into 8"-gunned ships, for example).

 

[dasVerruckteJoe]

it was already done in the eastvswest beta for ships

 

[Axe99]

it was already done in the eastvswest beta for ships

Aye, and it was done well there, and I thought it was a great idea there, but we're not allowed to mentioned that, which is why I didn't mention it . Nothing against that which we're not supposed to mention (anything but), just following the rules. I was also outlining the idea specifically in the context of HoI4, and the way their variant and unit system works now. Vonboe (I think - sorry if I've got my names confused) also mentioned something similar-ish for tanks as well (came back to me overnight). Note, though, that the feedback to players on the design is just as important as the design itself (again, feedback to players has been mentioned in the past as well - as per my OP, it's bringing stuff together, rather than trying to say something new and shiny, as the combination of customisation (and player ownership over design) and feedback working together as a loop (build stuff, see how it goes, build more stuff) is the key to it all, imo (and would reflect the cycle of revisions and the like to various models that actually took place during the war).

 

[panzerzombie]

Aye, ..... during the war).

I once made the suggestion to do conversions with events....in HOI3 were events like "Spanish Civil War cost you x supplies if you intervene or something"

So perhaps you could have event "Conversion of Pz-II to Marders ? Yes / No" ... deducts 100 Pz-II Chassis and 100 ATG´s and adds 100 Marder. Prerequisite perhaps: Pz-II must be obsolete and 100 of each in pool.