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yeah but you still have to scroll through two dozen fighter and cas models to get to naval bombers
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Jun 4, 2021 22:28
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Raskolnikov38 posted:because making airwings when you have to sort through mountains of crap planes sucks Sending it to your allies or subjects…removes them…
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Jun 4, 2021 22:42
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dialhforhero posted:Sending it to your allies or subjects i play the soviet union
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Jun 5, 2021 00:41
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Sending stuff to your subjects puts more convoys at risk of getting raided which lowers your war support so gently caress that.
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Jun 5, 2021 00:53
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Raskolnikov38 posted:i play the soviet union what, tunna tuva and mongolia aren't good enough for you?
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Jun 5, 2021 01:18
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Davincie posted:what, tunna tuva and mongolia aren't good enough for you? considering you get to annex one via focus, no
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Jun 5, 2021 01:19
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Raskolnikov38 posted:considering you get to annex one via focus, no That still leaves Mongolia and the sons of Temujin demand aircraft to finally conquer the Great Blue Sky.
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Jun 5, 2021 01:29
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TheMcD posted:They're ordered by "the time their stockpile appeared in the list", I believe.
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Jun 5, 2021 01:55
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"We're doing a Mongolia focus tree before Italy." - HOI devs, probably
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Jun 5, 2021 07:05
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wukkar posted:"We're doing a Mongolia focus tree before Italy." Mongolia could have beaten greece if it tried at least.
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Jun 5, 2021 07:59
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I loved Hearts of Iron 2, but never played 3. Would I like this?
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Jun 5, 2021 09:10
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Charlz Guybon posted:I loved Hearts of Iron 2, but never played 3. Would I like this? I mean, you're really not giving us a lot to go on. It's got its quirks and imbalances, but it's still a good game, so maybe?
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Jun 5, 2021 10:59
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Charlz Guybon posted:I loved Hearts of Iron 2, but never played 3. Would I like this? It's got a lot of similarities. Yeah you'd probably like it.
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Jun 5, 2021 11:05
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Charlz Guybon posted:I loved Hearts of Iron 2, but never played 3. Would I like this? 4 is better than 3 for sure. Also, it should be possible to donate my archaic vehicles and gear to museums so future generations can see what lovely planes we used to build.
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Jun 5, 2021 11:15
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:4 is better than 3 for sure. Selling off motorized, support eq, or aircraft to civvies could be a way to belay demobilization.
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Jun 5, 2021 11:44
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:I mean, you're really not giving us a lot to go on. It's got its quirks and imbalances, but it's still a good game, so maybe? What's the technology development system like? How much can you control your units?
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Jun 5, 2021 12:13
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Tech development is fairly granular for the navy and the newest expansion to be released will extend that to armor. Otherwise, tech is a tiered system you must research roughly based on year of introduction (not development) in the war. It receives massive penalties if researched earlier than the historical time it existed (unless you unlock a modifier). The tech at each tier is equal in stats for all nations. Individual nations can make “variants” to customize their tier in stats and the currency to do this is through XP. Each country starts with certain techs (some more than others depending on historical data—ie the UK has a decent amount of starting Naval tech while Germany has decent air force). Most countries have a few additional choices to research or upgrade tech quickly in the form of a “focus”, usually based on historical information (such as taking a ‘rearmament posture’, etc.). Finally, and this is particularly useful and needed for minors, there is lend-lease and licensing where you can get another country’s equipment straight up (lend-lease) or you can manufacture your own variants (licensing).
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Jun 5, 2021 14:07
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hey did you know you could just direct enter numbers when lead leasing equipment instead of playing with the plus/minus buttons? because i sure as gently caress didn't until watching a comedy hoi4 campaign video a minute ago
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Jun 5, 2021 22:26
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Raskolnikov38 posted:hey did you know you could just direct enter numbers when lead leasing equipment instead of playing with the plus/minus buttons? because i sure as gently caress didn't until watching a comedy hoi4 campaign video a minute ago yeah, there's a fair few places in the UI you can do that
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Jun 6, 2021 01:54
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Charlz Guybon posted:How much can you control your units? Pretty freely in a positioning and micro sense. Around 10k land provinces (ranging from a high density around 17 for Belgium to a low around 5 for Greenland, based on urbanization and likely relevance); each division (basic controllable unit, 1-25 battalions plus 0-5 support companies--so anywhere between 1,000 riflemen alone and 375 Mäuse backed up by 20 Katyushas, 25 2-ton trucks, 24 light tanks, 300 combat engineers, 500 mechanics, and 500 drivers and clerks, to give the absurd low and high ends) can freely move to any neighboring province if it is not being attacked, attacking instead if the destination is occupied by a hostile division. This is smoothed over by a planning system where, for armies (1-24 divs, 30 with specific generals, 72 or 90 instead on garrison duty) or army groups (5 armies or 7 with specific field marshals), static defensive deployments can be auto-assigned either to a front line along a border that will automatically follow changes, a reserve/fallback line anywhere that will fight to hold that line if necessary, or to garrison at points of interest within prebaked collections of 10-15 provinces; from here a front line can be assigned an offensive line of territory to fill out before it keeps advancing or a spearhead that will be followed directly. These two are split into a planning and execution phase, with execution being pausable at any point and selectable between refusing to lengthen frontage at all, coordinated operations to end up with the same final frontage, and taking any plausible fights immediately. At any time, with a 1-hour resolution, individual divisions can be microed at will, though they will return to their planned positions once the manual orders are executed, and the game gives significant bonuses for planned assaults to discourage armchair major generals in conflicts with several hundred divisions on either side.
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Jun 6, 2021 01:55
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Charlz Guybon posted:I loved Hearts of Iron 2, but never played 3. Would I like this? As someone else who loved HOI2 and played minimal of 3, I love HOI4. The biggest changes to me: 1) The biggest change, the one that is the most different, is that there are many more provinces, probably 10x the amount of HOI2, allowing for more granularity in your front line management and encirclements. Honestly as someone who used to micro units in HOI2, it's too much to micro. That's why they've developed front line management tools that let you control how much you have to micro. You assign divisions to armies, and armies to army groups, and then assign those to fronts. Generals command armies, and field marshals command army groups. You give orders indirectly to the army or army group--form a front here, plan for an invasion along this line of attack, execute your planned orders at this time. Armies get bonuses for having enough time to plan invasions and penalties if they don't have enough divisions to execute the plan or enough time to develop the plan. If you absolutely wanted you could do it all yourself still, but most people will let the AI set up the front line and push and issue small amounts of manual orders to breakthrough units and the like. 2) The differences in unit strength now come from differences in division makeup, rather than different division types (eg infantry vs militia) with attached support brigades. Divisions are designed and comprised up of up to 25 brigades and 5 support companies, with most divisions running ~10 brigades and 1-2 support units. This allows for much more granularity in how they're made up. Most players will run a ~10 brigade infantry division (10/0) or 7 infantry brigade and 2 artillery brigade (7/2) + support companies (usually engineers plus whatever else they're focusing on), and then will run either a 10 or 20 brigade tank division of half tanks and half motorized or mechanized infantry. 3) IC is now broken up into civilian factories, which do the building; military factories, which make equipment and can't be used to build more factories directly; and naval yards, which can only build ships. So you have a little less flexibility day to day about what you can build--you're somewhat committed to what you're building just because of the types. There is no supply production required, and no money system, so IC is not used for that. 4) Units are not made directly. Rather, military factories make equipment, which is combined with manpower to form units, which then need to complete a certain training time to finish. When units are damaged, instead of requiring IC for repair, they pull equipment from the supply pool along with manpower to reinforce. 5) Trade is done by exchanging civilian factories for resources, there is no money resource to abstract that. I personally think that's a loss, one of the few things HOI2 did better. 6) There are fewer events, and instead a broad country focus tree system, similar to EU4 missions, where each country is always working on completing a focus, usually taking 70 days per focus, and upon completion gets bonuses and advances its national "story." Eg Danzig or War, The Great Purge, and Destroyers for Bases are all focuses on the German, Soviet, and US focus trees. I really like this, and it gives you a sense of the routes your country can take more clearly than a long list of possible events that can happen and their triggers. Works great for mods like Kaiserreich as well. 7) Research is about the same except you don't have research teams. You have a certain number of research slots, and you research down several trees (infantry, armor, artillery, naval, air, doctrines, etc) again with bonuses/penalties for time behind/ahead. 8) Naval combat is somewhat similar except one of the expansions (Man the Guns) added a naval designer. Opinions are mixed about how effective this is. 9) Air combat is somewhat similar although a little easier to manage. Instead of assigning air units individual missions to an individual area for specific times, you instead tell air units which missions they should run, and then assign them either to a region or an army, and they'll complete missions to the best of their ability without further supervision from you. And again instead of building air units, you just build individual planes with your military factories, and then units pull planes from the supply pool as needed to form up and for reinforcements.
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Jun 6, 2021 05:08
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Interesting. I was pretty good at micro so long as the number of units didn't exceed that of those involved in the Battle of France. Once we got to Eastern Front numbers I grew frustrated, so this system sounds good to me. Tell me more about how industry, technology and supply works. Also, how good is the Great War mod? Anything there that doesn't work well? Or works surprisingly well?
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Jun 6, 2021 05:52
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Fair warning, the front line system is very bad, bordering on broken, and you constantly have to micro it, and can't rely on it for anything except broad defense.
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Jun 6, 2021 06:43
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I'd say the front line system is pretty good, bordering on really good, but could use some work.
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Jun 6, 2021 06:45
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The front line system works great if and only if the 'front line' is, in fact, a line. If it's broken up or one side pushes further than the others and increases the length of the line annoying things happen like everyone moving to cover the entire, longer front line.
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Jun 6, 2021 07:31
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frontlines good until you get to insane frontlines like in america or in russia
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Jun 6, 2021 07:37
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Front lines are okay but the unit moving AI isn't so hot. It can lead to things like the AI moving troops around and leaving holes in the line, which the opponent will exploit.
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Jun 6, 2021 07:45
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I just wish (and there might be that I'm too stupid to realize) there was an option for when I move one of my units to a different position on the front line, that they stay the gently caress there.
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Jun 6, 2021 09:02
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Hellioning posted:The front line system works great if and only if the 'front line' is, in fact, a line. If it's broken up or one side pushes further than the others and increases the length of the line annoying things happen like everyone moving to cover the entire, longer front line. Anyone playing in Spain knows the pain of playing the republicans and going from happy for creating a gap between the nationalists and the Carlists into immediately pausing the game because the frontline just turned into 2 and your army is shuffling units back and forth without being able to decide which side to defend.
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Jun 6, 2021 14:04
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Yeah the best option for keeping the frontline whole is to use Field Marshals and fill the army group with infantry and use Field Marshal orders only. You’ll never have a hole again so long as you don’t create a weird border with a neutral country that is in the middle of the conflict (like Switzerland). But even that is quickly remedied and easy to spot.
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Jun 6, 2021 14:15
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It's ludicrous that it's been so long and you can't have a single front line targeting multiple enemies. Spain is the way to go if you want to learn to hate it though. Last time I played Spain I went Full Stalin and about half of my civil war casualties came from front line insanity after carlists and anarchists spawned. However I must go off: the division designer sucks compared to just having infantry/militia/armoured/mot/etc and researching doctrines. It's solved and it's going to be solved in the DLC too, and in neither case does or will a historical division comp work, so why gently caress around with battalions instead of just having "Armoured Division, 1938, Mobile Warfare Doctrine" and so on Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 14:19
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Yeah, division design is basically a solved problem so it'd be more elegant to have players pick from the few good solutions instead of having a whole design process to go through.
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Jun 6, 2021 14:25
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dialhforhero posted:Yeah the best option for keeping the frontline whole is to use Field Marshals and fill the army group with infantry and use Field Marshal orders only. I still occasionally see gaps forming where terrain features (like lakes) interact. That or 40 divisions feel the need to keep check on a tiny out of supply encirclement. The encirclements are quickly fixable without harm, but whenever random holes open in the auto frontline and I don’t spot it, it can be disastrous
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Jun 6, 2021 14:32
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Auto frontlines work fine as long as nothing really changes with the frontline beyond the whole thing pushing forward or back more or less evenly. It reacts very poorly to things like salients, encirclements, breaks in the frontline, or anything like that. I almost wish it would just pop an alert and ask for player intervention when something interesting happens on a front, because the auto frontline is pretty much guaranteed to make a mess of it without telling you if a major push is left un-micromanaged for too long.
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Jun 6, 2021 20:02
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Yeah, the caveat with frontlines is that multiple orders don't automatically connect (thus the benefit to issuing them for an army group; five armies can and will split to maintain a stable frontage for each if a breakthrough happens near their edge or an advance stretches the line enough, but one army group will continue to redeploy along its whole length.) Since the game assumes defensive supremacy barring an overwhelming firepower or air support advantage, having an entire front or even army attack is limited to cracking an enemy that's on their last manpower or materiel legs, leapfrogging through undefended territory, or preventing enemy redeployment to a breakthrough elsewhere. In general the play loop is to identify a vulnerable point like open terrain or narrow strips along a shore connecting two beefier pieces of territory; micro or semi-micro (short spearhead) your armor for majors/best infantry for minors into it while semi-microing (watching for pockets or gaps, reassigning frontline back to the full front if any split off or a gap develops, assigning reserves to starve out a pocket, ordering an assault on the pocket once supplies are burnt through) the nearby infantry, occasionally glancing over your infantry on other fronts to make sure they're still holding the line. Since you opened the topic of mods, playing one of the (maybe just Eastern?) Russian factions in TNO is a good way to get a feel for HoI4 micro, IMO. Most have a phase, if not the entire game, where they either don't have the industry to support a div for every border province or don't have the industry to withstand a full-front attack from a rival faction. In particular Irkutsk and Buryatia start the game at war, the first with two infantry and two mechanized divs to place across a five-province front with a lake to split it and the second with one infantry and five militia divs to space across six provinces on their side, meaning that neither can reliably hold or push except by achieving encirclements through speed or numbers respectively. The winner then takes on an unconventional faction which raises militia divisions in enemy territory, requiring swift micro of reserves, and the eventual final battle (if not avoided with diplomacy) is against west Russia that has far more men and industry, in a complex dance of using your limited armor to the fullest, both offensively and cutting off spearheads, while never placing it where the more numerous enemy armor can catch it on an even footing.
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Jun 6, 2021 21:31
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Mandoric posted:Since you opened the topic of mods, playing one of the (maybe just Eastern?) Russian factions in TNO is a good way to get a feel for HoI4 micro, IMO. Ehhhh, I haven't played the mod in question, but I'm very sceptical of the idea that the best way to learn a game is to play a mod of it. My advice to someone learning to play HoI4 is to play the USSR on historical. You don't need to worry about naval stuff much and your one job is to prepare to be invaded from the West and not die.
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Jun 6, 2021 22:03
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Vanilla USSR is definitely a very good start in terms of systems you have to interact with. I agree that mods usually aren't the answer, but in that particular case in TNO (and not even most of TNO) there happens to be a very specific set of micro-heavy scenarios that happen early/minor enough to allow for much deviation from the base game's rules.
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Jun 6, 2021 22:24
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Charlz Guybon posted:Interesting. I was pretty good at micro so long as the number of units didn't exceed that of those involved in the Battle of France. Once we got to Eastern Front numbers I grew frustrated, so this system sounds good to me. FYI I agree with the above discussion. Front lines are helpful for arranging your units on your border and for organizing a general push, but for breakthroughs and the like, like I said, it still needs some active management. Usually what I will do is have 1 infantry army group across the whole line set to defend, and then individual tank armies or army groups along with motorized infantry to breakthrough and exploit. Then once the breakthrough happens, the infantry set to defend the front line will advance up to the new front line. It reduces, definitely doesn't eliminate, micro. With regards to industry: Like I said before, total IC is now split into civilian factories, military factories, and dockyards. Civilian factories build buildings, eg other factories, forts, radar, AA, and the like. Civilian factories require no resources to run. They also repair damaged infrastructure. Build speed is minorly affected by infrastructure, like in HOI2. In the La Resistance expansion, they also are used to fund your intelligence operations (usually a minor cost). Unlike in HOI2, civilian factories cannot be devoted to reducing dissent level. Rather, a flat percentage of them are reserved for civilian use depending on your country's laws. (For example the USA, in order to handicap its enormous IC advantage, has an isolation economic law that requires the vast majority of civilian factories, maybe 80 or 90%, are devoted to civilian use and essentially nonexistent.) Finally, civilian factories can be traded for resources, similar to how money and resources could be traded in HOI2. Military factories build equipment. This is things like guns, tanks, planes, trucks, artillery, etc. Instead of building units directly, you build and stockpile the equipment. Then when you want to create a unit, you give an order for it to start training, and it pulls equipment and manpower from the pool to build up to full strength. It takes a certain amount of time (a few months usually) to train a unit to a basic experience level where it doesn't have any combat penalties for being under-experienced. You can deploy units earlier (in fact you can deploy units immediately so long as they have equipment) but they take a stiff combat penalty until they are trained. Units can only train to whatever percent of equipment they have received. For example, an infantry unit will require some amount of guns and support equipment plus manpower to form. If you have all the necessary equipment and manpower, it can train up to 100% and then deploy, no maluses. If you only have a partial amount of equipment, you could train it up partially, say 50%. You can then choose to deploy it understrength, and it will take penalties due to being under-trained, or you can wait until you've built enough equipment for it and its training can resume. When you disband a unit, you gain back all of its equipment and manpower, so you shouldn't be afraid to start training units immediately. If you train too many, you can always disband and recoup your costs. When units take combat losses or attrition, they will lose both manpower and equipment. Therefore to reinforce, they will pull manpower and equipment from the pool. So you don't have to dedicate military factories to unit repairs (except for ships). Rather they indirectly use IC by taking up equipment that could have been spent on training new units. The equipment method of production is fine, but I'm not sure it's any better than the HOI2 method of just spending IC directly on units. Sometimes it's hard for me to gauge whether I have my factory ratios right--should I be diverting more factories to tanks since they cost more than guns? Is my production keeping up with demand? It's nontrivial to answer those questions. Military factories gain a gearing bonus the longer they have been producing the same item, similar to HOI2. This bonus is reduced, but not eliminated, when you upgrade to the next tech level of that item. So where possible you try to avoid fiddling endlessly with your production lines. Naval dockyards produce and repair ships. Ships are very costly in HOI4 and building a competitive navy takes a loooong time, longer than in HOI2 because you're very limited in how much total IC you can devote to it. Really only the major naval powers of the era (UK, USA) can hope to build a large navy. Japan will some, Germany will some. Powers like the USSR won't without years dedicated to building more dockyards and then years spent building ships. Military factories and naval dockyards require resources to run, and take a stiff production penalty if they don't have enough. Resources are the usual things you'd expect, steel, oil, rubber, chromium, etc. Some of these will be produced internally, others will need to be traded. Different countries will have different laws about how "free trade" they are, and what percentage of their resources must go to the global market to be sold instead of domestic usage. As the war progresses, most countries will change these laws to divert more resources to the home front, although they take an IC penalty for doing so. As I said before, resources are traded for civilian factories. But since you're probably also trading your own resources on the market, you may come out ahead or behind depending on what you're buying vs selling. Finally, resources are not stockpiled like they were in HOI2 (except for fuel, which is a special case). Supply works similar to HOI2. Supply is traced from the capital to the units, with infrastructure and naval port size potentially bottlenecking the process. It is essential during peacetime that you have your forces arrayed in such a manner that they aren't undersupplied and taking attrition before war even starts. Supplies are not produced like they were in HOI2, just an abstraction. The upcoming expansion dealing with the USSR is set to incorporate rail lines to transport supply and as specific targets to cut to prevent enemy supply. Fuel used to not be in the game at all, and rather the oil resource was part of the production cost of units requiring fuel (eg tanks, planes, ships). This felt inadequate because you couldn't do classic strategies like blockade Japan and starve it of fuel, etc. So now oil is converted to fuel (at a certain rate and ratio depending on your technology, artificial fuel tech, etc) and stockpiled. You can build refineries and fuel depots to increase its conversion and your maximum stockpile. Units requiring fuel will pull it just like supply, and if they run out take a severe speed penalty. Notably ships and planes do NOT consume fuel if not being used, so if you're trying to conserve fuel you can be judicious in your mission assignments to save fuel. Technology overall is okay. I miss the tech teams of HOI2 and how they gave countries a certain character--the US was uniquely suited for nuclear research because of its available teams, for example. Instead you have a certain base number of tech slots that can be increased by certain national focuses (eg building research cities as the USSR, etc). I think the biggest criticism I would have for the technology system as it is currently is that there just aren't enough slots to keep up with all avenues of research. You have multiple tech trees you're trying to research down (infantry, tank, artillery, ships, planes, industry, and then army, air, and naval doctrine trees). The next expansion is supposed to switch the doctrine tech trees to unlock using experience (another resource gained when units are in battle or when you commit diplomatic support or volunteers to foreign wars) instead, and I think that will help relieve that problem. I've not played the great war mod so I can't help you there. I can say HOI4 Kaiserreich is pretty good, and focus trees work well for it compared to HOI2 Kaiserreich events!
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Jun 6, 2021 23:11
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Gort posted:Yeah, division design is basically a solved problem so it'd be more elegant to have players pick from the few good solutions instead of having a whole design process to go through. Division design is hardly a solved problem. Yes you normally want to keep your divisions at 5/10/20/40 width usually, but people also get good results with 16 widths. And along the same line, support companies and when to use them are hardly an exact science, as are the compositions of 40w armour templates.
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Jun 7, 2021 00:15
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Dance Officer posted:Division design is hardly a solved problem. Yes you normally want to keep your divisions at 5/10/20/40 width usually, but people also get good results with 16 widths. And along the same line, support companies and when to use them are hardly an exact science, as are the compositions of 40w armour templates. no these are explicitly solved problems in SP, and more or less solved (albeit with some random experimentation) in MP based on country. being able to do other designs that are suboptimal doesnt mean it's not solved, it means the AI is bad enough you can get away with it.
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Jun 7, 2021 03:09
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