May 16, 2023

Hearts of Iron IV - PDX Chakerathe

Hello there, it's me C0rax back for another dev corner, and some of you may have noticed in our last dev corner I mentioned in the MIO goals we wanted to have MIO’s “Provide a framework for national specialisms that can be used on the world stage” well i'm here to show you that stage and introduce international markets.

This is all super WIP, you are going to see WIP mock ups, and some details are still being finalized!
Feature Intent & goals

Feature Intent and Goals

Introducing a place for nations to buy and sell equipment benefiting both nations with a reward. Creating a new way for countries to contribute specialist equipment to other nations
Be able to source equipment from other nations as needed
For majors to set the global standard for common place equipment leveraging their superior economic might.

The international market acts as a one stop shop for all your equipment needs from other countries. It's intended to be an international store front, with multiple sellers being able to sell the same thing from the same store front. This means that provided you have the appropriate market access, you can go into the international market and buy tanks from the USA and planes from Germany in one interface (but not 1 buy order).

The Flow

So to start us on how to get to the market. Well we will be replacing the diplomacy menu with the market UI, the diplomacy window was one of the least used parts of the UI and so we want to replace it with something that will get more use. The diplomacy menu is now accessed from within the market menu at the bottom of the market window, you can also still right click on a country on the map to open diplomacy with them directly.

From here we can start buying equipment or selling equipment by clicking on the respective button. Beyond that any currently active contract with other countries will be displayed here so you can easily see their current status.

The buy and sell modes look like this;

As you can see we don't currently have access to anyone's market, so let's look at how we can fix that.

Market Access

For market access we need to go to the diplomacy menu for a country where we will find the negotiate market access diplo action, this is what we want in order to send a request. For nations with factions or puppets this market access is given implicitly. This is important since in many cases you don't want those pesky enemies seeing or trying to buy all the amazing equipment you are selling. This is especially important to stop them seeing your latest equipment stats and MIO modifiers. With this only the people you want to see and buy your wares are able to.

So now we’ve got market access and we can start buying and selling equipment. Since we have access to a market the buy screen will now show the equipment they have put up for sale.

Buying

Let's buy some rifles. To do this we click on the rifles equipment from here we choose how many rifles we want and how fast we want to pay for them and thus receive them. The price per rifle is decided by an IC to CiC conversion rate. This gives you all the information you need like total cost, convoys needed and how long it will take to pay/deliver all equipment

We send of our request and the seller has agreed to the contract

The contract will now appear in our market window as an ongoing contract, it will show all the information you need to know about each contract you have ongoing.

Selling

Now let's look at how we sell our equipment on the market. To start off we need to add equipment to the market. We do this by first clicking sell equipment and then clicking the add to market buttons. From here we can add our equipment from the stockpile to the market. We can choose here how many of every variant we have we wish to put up for sale.

So now we have put up some equipment on the market and it appears in the list. The list shows all of our equipment on the market but not currently sold on the market.

Right on time we got a request to buy some of our equipment, this menu will show you what they are buying, how fast they are paying and how many the resultant deliveries there will be. We will accept this request.

We have accepted the purchase request and now we can see the selling entry in our master list of contracts along with all the information around that contract.

So that brings us to the end of our quick journey through the international market and we brushed over a lot of details so that what the next part will focus on.

Technical Details

Market Access

Market access is a Diplo action to request access to a market and to offer access to your market thus it is a Bilateral relationship. Faction members share market access, as do puppets and overlords.

Market access blockers

- Market access and Contracts are canceled between enemies in war.
- Embargoing someone will cancel market access, and all selling/buying contracts with that country.
- Capitulation cancels all contracts and if the country is NOT going into exile, it will lose all market access too.
- Civil war will change nothing. The original country will have original market accesses and contracts after the start of the civil war.
- Making a country puppet will cancel all market access and contracts of that country.
- Losing market access to a country will not cancel an ongoing contract with that country.
- Puppets can have market access to other countries (and not just to the overlord's market) and trade with them. (this might be based on puppet level)
- There will be a scriptable limit on equipment trade for things like US neutrality act etc

Contracts

Purchasing equipment costs CiC. We use a conversion ratio to convert IC value to CiC value. A contract has 2 main variables, CiC cost from equipment and Civ factory allocation for payment.

So with this information we can talk about how a contract is structured.

A contract is broken down into payments every 30 days. So every 30 days you will make a payment and receive equipment. The amount of equipment to be delivered is based on the payment rate of the buyer. So the more Civ’s you assign to a contract the more equipment you can receive per delivery.

Selling

We have a new stockpile called the market stockpile, equipment can be moved from the normal stockpile to the market stockpile. Equipment in the market stockpile can be requested for purchase by any nation we share market access with.

Payment

So payment is handled via a new construction entry for contracts. When you start a contract a new entry will be created in the construction menu for the number of factories you agreed to pay with and for the total CiC of the contract. This construction task has priority over normal construction.

Contract Storage

CiC payment and equipment before being delivered is stored in a “Contract storage”. At the end of the month the minimum payment/delivery is transferred to each country from the Contract storage. CiC is delivered to the bank while equipment is delivered to the equipment stockpile

The Bank

The bank is a special container for CiC you receive from other countries as payment for a contract it is used in construction by providing bonus CiC to your construction entries.

Here is a flow chart to show you how a contract payment works and then how the bank CiC is used in construction.

Cancelation

Either side can request to cancel the contract at any time no more deliveries are made and all payment to the Contract storage is returned to their originator.

Things that are not part of this feature:
-Trading Ships
- Money
- Supply/demand pricing

Things that we are looking into:
- Limited cost of equipment changes (some active choices, some passive)

MIO Addendum

Last dev corner I spoke about MIO’s, I did my best to explain and answer questions but I want to add an addendum to the previous dev corner to show some things that should hopefully make some things much clearer.

It seems there was some confusion that MIO’s were a totally free form “design your own company” system, this isn’t what was intended to be conveyed. MIO’s have pre predetermined choices which are designed to offer compromise and strategic choice. So Let's talk about what an MIO looks like in terms of a real MIO I get access to for a country.

I’m going to show some numbers here but these are just starting values for initial implementation and so don't read into the modifiers or values too much yet.

So here we have a Generic Infantry MIO

So the definition for this MIO is

Design teams (red arrows show mutually exclusive)

INFANTRY OFFENSE DEPARTMENT

INFANTRY QUALITY DEPARTMENT

SUPPORT EQUIPMENT DEPARTMENT

Industrial Manufacturers

As you can see this focuses almost exclusively on improving infantry equipment with small bonuses for support equipment. Generic MIO’s are generally focused on one specific equipment providing departments that are generally focused around offensive, defensive and quality/reliability.

Here's some more example of generics

Generics can sometimes also have specializations for specific stats that are not normally in the equipment specific ones also such as the aircraft range focuses MIO.

Or pacific fleet MIO

Of course these are generics and that is why they are very simple. They are there to replace the current generic designer set already present so every nation can enjoy some level of customisation for their mio’s. More major countries might have specific MIO’s that are unique to your country and thus offer very different choices to make. These are just some simple ones but they can be much more branched choices with lots of content tie-ins, but we will show those in a later dev diary.

I hope this makes what an MIO looks like as a structure you play with clearer and again I hope to see you in future dev corners.

That's all I have for this week, as always please ask questions and comment. I hope to see you in 2 weeks for the next Dev corner where Arheo will introduce you to another feature coming to you in the future

May 16, 2023

War Effort - Operation Alpha [1.12.13 Checksum b721]

Hearts of Iron IV - PDX Chakerathe

Generals!

Its time for the final patch of this War Effort Initiative cycle! This patch contains a host of balance changes and fixes as well as language localization for Simplified Chinese! We're going to be winding down the Initiative for the time being as we move onto other lines of development!

Furthermore, stay tuned for another message from us later, pertaining to some feature content that we are working on.

Now, onto the patch notes!

Localization

-Added Simplified Chinese language support.

Balance

-Lord Halifax now has two leader traits and reduces the requirements with the British Raj when forming the Imperial Federation/Commonwealth of Nations.
-If Lord Halifax is used to annex the British Raj as part of the Imperial Federation, India will suffer increased resistance.
-Fixed non-MTG ships having incorrect base speeds.
-Increased biggest speed and agility factor diff by 1.0, increasing the maximum effect of these stats on air combat.

-Available medals are now present on army screens for Divisional Commanders.
-Added a new Hearts of Iron IV YouTube channel link to menus.

Modding

-Added effect remove_civil_war_target.

Bugfix

-Fixed an issue in the Pressure Government event chain for Italy and the Soviets in which the feedback event communicating the target's choice was sent to the target instead of the sender.
-Playing as a released country is now persistent over saves in ironman.
-Observers now retain the observed country on hotjoin and resynch.
-Fixed License Production Access not being restored when reloading a save file.
-Democratic Italy can now send volunteers to Spain after completing the Aid for Spanish Republic focus.
-Fix for Belgium Congo sometimes flipping to Germany after Belgium capitulates.

Introducing the latest edition of the War Effort Map, where a thrilling challenge awaits! Take a look and observe: only one stop remains. Are you up for the task of unraveling its mystery? Keep in mind, appearances can be deceiving.

That's it from us today, as always we appreciate all your feedback! If you encounter any bugs, make sure to create a bug report over on the Forum, and don't forget to join our Discord!

May 5, 2023

War Effort - Operation Alpha [1.12.13 Open Beta]

Hearts of Iron IV - PDX Chakerathe

Hello there, generals! May has arrived, and with it comes a new open beta, this time for Operation Alpha!

This patch, as usual, contains balance changes, bug fixes, and something for you awesome modders out there. However, something we have also been working on for a while is language support for Simplified Chinese. This means that all our new Developer Diaries will be translated for Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. And this is just the beginning of what we have planned for our non-English speaking generals!

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Localization

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Added Simplified Chinese language support.

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Balance

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Lord Halifax now has two leader traits and reduces the requirements with the British Raj when forming the Imperial Federation/Commonwealth of Nations.
If Lord Halifax is used to annex the British Raj as part of the Imperial Federation, India will suffer increased resistance.
Fixed non-MTG ships having incorrect base speeds.
Increased biggest speed and agility factor diff by 1.0, increasing the maximum effect of these stats on air combat.

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Available medals are now present on army screens for Divisional Commanders.
Added a new Hearts of Iron IV YouTube channel link to menus.

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Modding

##########

Added effect remove_civil_war_target.

#########

Bugfix

#########

Fixed an issue in the Pressure Government event chain for Italy and the Soviets in which the feedback event communicating the target's choice was sent to the target instead of the sender.
Playing as a released country is now persistent over saves in ironman.
Observers now retain the observed country on hotjoin and resynch.
Fixed License Production Access not being restored when reloading a save file.
Democratic Italy can now send volunteers to Spain after completing the Aid for Spanish Republic focus.
Fix for Belgium Congo sometimes flipping to Germany after Belgium capitulates.

And yes, there is no War Effort map update because that will come with the release of this patch! Now, have a lovely weekend, everyone, and we will see you again next week with something even more fun to talk about!

May 2, 2023

Developer Corner | Military Industrial Orgs.

Hearts of Iron IV - PDX Chakerathe

Greetings all!

Today marks the first occasion since the release of By Blood Alone where we take a deeper look into what is coming next. As you may recall from the BBA development cycle, we had an early set of 'Development Corner' diaries, which serve as an opportunity for us to reveal a narrow look at a specific mechanic or design without revealing too much about the wider context of future releases. Today's offering, as well as the next couple of diaries, will be in much the same spirit - you'll just have to wait a little bit longer to get the full picture. Scandalous and polarising, I know.

/Arheo

Hello there, it's me, C0rax. Now you can get all excited because it's time for some Dev Corners in which we will show you some WIP looks into the new features we have been working on. So without further ado this week we will be looking at…

Military Industrial Organisations (MIO’s)

This is all very much WIP, you are going to see WIP mock ups, and some details are still being finalised!

Feature Intent & goals

Intent:

Create a sense of a living organisation the player can interact with rather than a static bonus as with current design companies.

Why is this important you ask? Well previously we had to provide static modifiers and sometimes change them via scripted decisions or focus rewards. By creating a more organic system to upgrade your design companies you the player can now decide what these upgrades are and tailor them to fit your playstyle. Additionally we can now reward the player for using a design company as opposed to simply having you save up a resource and click a button, rewarding you for putting effort into them.

Goals:

Allow the player to define their designer direction.
Integrate design companies into production
Provide a framework for national specialisms that can be used on the world stage

Military industrial Organisations (MIO’s)

So first here is a rough structure of an MIO;

Contains

Name
Icon
Size (Level)
funds (XP)
Task Capacity
Departments

Departments

0-1 Design team
3 departments
Max 13 traits each

0-1 Industrial manufacturer
3 departments
Max 13 traits each

Each departments contains

Name
Category’s
Trait tree
Trait icons

Task Capacity

Size determines how many tasks a MIO can handle
-Researching
-Producing
-Designing

Defaults:

2 task Capacity
+ scripted increases
+ trait increases

This structure allows us to represent MIO’s in a way that expresses the specialisms of the various organisations that designed and produced war materials during the period. You can now represent a company like Bofors AB who designed and produced anti tank, anti air and naval guns seamlessly and expand each of those specialisms as you see fit. Investing in the right MIO is critical to upgrading those specialist departments in order to gain the bonuses you need for specific stats.

Task Capacity:

An MIO of course can’t work on a number of infinite simultaneous projects. For this we have task capacity that limits how many things your MIO’s can work on balancing. This is an important thing to balance, since producing too much equipment with an MIO will lock you out from using it for research or designing equipment. For ship production this is actually important for producing ships in parallel so you might want to invest in the manufacturing department for task capacity so you can really ramp up your naval production.

Levelling & upgrades

Research cost and Production cost is used to calculate MIO funds that it gains when it is used.
An amount of MIO Funds is required to increase your size and pick a new trait.

Skill trees

split roughly along the same lines as current design companies.
possibility for country unique trees
possibility for content prerequisites (national focus or decision locking etc…)

Departments and Tasks

Industrial manufacturers (IM's)
Assigned to production lines (Task)

Skill trees provide production specific bonuses

Design teams (DT's)
Applied to research (Task)
Applied to equipment both via equipment designers and normal variants
Skill trees provide Stat bonuses
Can be applied retroactively to equipment at cost
A move away from pay mana get reward

So that's a lot of high-level structural talk so you understand the core concepts of the MIO Feature and so I'll now show some of the WIP flows of actually using these structures and systems.

Researching

Equipment variants

Production

Well that wraps things up for this week, I Hope you enjoyed it and as always please leave questions and comments below and I will do my best to answer them. Join me in two weeks for another dev corner showing another feature coming to you in the near future.