HEARTS OF IRON 2 ANNOUNCED

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2004-05-04 05:58pm

Raptor 597 · Post by **Raptor 597** » 2004-05-04 06:13pm

WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Haha, the server is rather loaded. After the more than hundred petition threads the great dream has come true. HOI 2 is inbound.

Edit:

The Site News

PrinceofLowLight · Post by **PrinceofLowLight** » 2004-05-04 08:50pm

Yippie-kai-yai-yay!

Super-Gagme · Post by **Super-Gagme** » 2004-05-05 06:42pm

Blah? There's HoI fans here? I try to start an SDNet HoI game and nobody bites, you all suck

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-05-05 11:41pm

YES!

But can I say the HOI 1.06 patch sucks balls? I can't own Germany as easily as I could in 1.03 with an early 1940 attack by the USSR (while they were busy stomping on France).

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2004-05-06 12:05am

Where's Sheppard?

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-05-06 12:08am

Hopefully HOI2 won't be as buggy as the original first was. Paradox has developed bad habits- Victoria is buggy as hell apparently.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2004-05-06 08:27pm

Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:Where's Sheppard?

Already posting on PAradox' HOI2 forum.

Like others said, I'd like to see naval and air combat reduced in time
to a few hours for air, or a day or two for naval, that was really a historical
in HOI 1.

I'd love to see the different types of tanks produced be tracked in a storage
pool, along with motor vehicles and different types of aircraft, so that we can
put an end to this absurd "rebuild destroyed division in no time" from HOI.

You need to get the vehicles to rebuild the division, and if you don't have
enough 80mm+ Heavy Tanks to rebuild your Tiger Division, too bad. You can
however re-equip it with all those surplus Panzer IIIs you have lying around.

Germany was always constrained by equipment problems, and the
biggest problem with HoI was it completely ignored that, allowing Germany
to become much more powerful than it was historically, by simply
allowing hordes of Tigers to be produced in no time at all...

Hence the need for dedicated factories producing specific tanks and aircraft.

Sure, you've got the R&D work done for that nice 90mm+ Heavy Tank
done,but that would neccisate taking a factory producing 50~ 75mm
Medium Tanks each month off line for six months or so to retool before
you can even produce said 90+mm Heavies...In essence, you lose 300
potential tanks that you sorely need to rebuild destroyed decimated divisions
so you can produce a new model of tank....

This was why the StuG III was in production for so long,
the factories were tooled up for Panzer III Chassises, and couldn't
be rapidly converted to new chassis types.

You could make it so that upgunning existing Chassises like light tank,
medium tank, heavy tank is much faster (only a week or two downtime),
as opposed to changing it to a new chassis like adv light, adv medium, adv Heavy, (previous six month downtime)

It would allow you to see what would have happened if the
Soviet Union had done the "Change Tank Models every year" scheme
like Germany did, instead of producing T-34s year after year....Or if
Germany could have won the war if she had just stuck to producing
Panzer IVs ala T-34s.

I know this would be a lot of variables to track, but I'm sure modern day computers can do it.

And scrap the retarded diplomatic system and adopt the one from Victoria
instead.

I also think the entire pre-defined Division with attached brigades concept
from HoI needs to be scrapped totally for HOI2.

Instead, allow players to make their own user definable "divisions"
by mix and matching unit types. The Division stats would be generated
on the amounts of men in a division, #s of tanks and their types, and
calibres of guns....

You could make "Fortress Divisions" by simply dialing in 14,000 infantrymen,
lots of 208mm and above artillery and virtually zero transport vehicles.

Light Armor divisions could be created by using lots of light tanks,
an infantry component on halftracks... etc etc...

I know it would require a lot of programming work, but just compare
HoI's simplistic Diplomacy model with that of Victorias.....like Day and
Night.

This would allow us to model the Soviet Tank only brigades of the 1941
period, and the late war German Schwere Panzer Abeitlungs consisting only
of heavies like Tigers and King Tigers as well....

You've got it down pretty much as I imagined it with this "build yer own division" stuff...

Now all we need is to be able to have factories producing specific types of
tanks, and to change the tank type being produced needs several months of
downtime to retool the factory......giving the player an actual reason to keep
producing obsolete model tanks, because you simply can't afford the downtime
needed to shift production to the Panther, you need as many Panzer IVs
as you can get now, since your armored divisions are being destroyed in
the East.....

Another good touch would be to add stuff like Self propelled artillery and
SP assault guns, Flak tanks, etc that you could produce as a purpose
built unit, or convert old tanks into as was the case with the Germans....
for example, you could convert a Basic Medium Tank (30mm) into a
Basic Assault Gun (70mm) for about half the cost of building said AG
from scratch..

It's essentially what the germans did with all their obsolete tank chassises,
turned them into SP artillery chassises, for all kinds of stuff.

The same system with some modifications could work.....like "Armaments
Factories" producing guns like "AT Gun (70mm)" and the like.....representing
the traditional backlog from R&D to production.....for example, did you
know that the 75mm Pak 40 was designed and ready in 1940, but
they couldn't start producing it till '41 due to other committments,
and it didnt' reach the units until '42?

ooooooh, I jsut got a great idea........make it so that you can't just
increase Flak Willy nilly......You need to have x amount of 88mm-128mm
FLAK in your equipment pool to increase the FLAK level in a province
by 1.....and producing them in factories takes away factory space from
stuff that could be of use on other fronts, like AT Guns......the germans
kept soemthing like 20,000~ 88mm guns on the West front to protect
from allied bomber raids.....imagine those guns released for the east front...

Oh yes, I want to hold my mouse cursor over a Mech unit and see:

"12th Panzergrenadier Division
10,000 men
20 Pz IV (70mm)
50 SPW 251
200 Trucks"

in the pop up window indicating exactly what kind of equipment the division
has.......

rather than having static unit values that don't change, calculate the
movement, firepower, and other statistics of a division based on the equipment
the division currently possesses, rather than a fixed number in a data
file.......

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2004-05-06 08:56pm

But can I say the HOI 1.06 patch sucks balls? I can't own Germany as easily as I could in 1.03 with an early 1940 attack by the USSR (while they were busy stomping on France).

The thing that annoys me most is the uber-defensive AI that pounces on the slightest bit of player aggression. As Iraq, I attempted to launch an invasion of Persia and then of Saudi Arabia, but the damn Brits would always either get there first, or I would have to go through British territory and thus conquered provinces would be awarded to the Brits. I left the Commonwealth alliance and launched my invasions, but then got jumped by the entire fucking British Empire and all their little puppet states. Same thing happened during my Greco-Turkish wars.

Hopefully HOI2 won't be as buggy as the original first was. Paradox has developed bad habits- Victoria is buggy as hell apparently.

Not really, once you patch it up, I think it's a bit better than EU2. My only complaint is that BB is, in my opinion, slighty broken; seizing some provinces from Korea should *not* give as bad a reputation as the goddamn Franco-Prussian War. Also, the AI hates making peace; I encountered this numerous times in my Grand Dutch Empire campaign. During the war with Belgium I annhilated 200,000 British troops on the beaches (with the aid of some brilliant generals and a shitload of Prussian expeditionary troops), but they refused to make peace until I had virtually annexed Belgium. Then, after my annexation of Japan, Prussia declared war on me. I quickly mobilized, threw back the initial Prussian advance, and struck deep into Prussian territory; the rest of the war was fought entirely on their land and at one point I occupied almost everything west of Berlin, but they still didn't accept a white peace.

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2004-05-07 10:47pm

One can only hope it lives up to the high expectations everyone has of it.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2004-05-07 11:29pm

Dealing with know-nothings on the HoI Forum:

Not really. The StuG was built off the Pz III chassis because the Germans had thousands of Pz III chasses around, and wanted to use their production on building new tanks, not SP guns.

Read up on some Panzer history.

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/stug.htm

On June 15 1936, the order was given to Daimler-Benz AG to develop and produce an armored infantry support vehicle mounting 75mm gun. The gun
was to have a limited traverse of minimum 25 degrees in order to provide direct support up to 6 kilometres. The gun was to be mounted in a superstructure that provided full protection for the crew. The height of this vehicle was not to exceed the height of an average man. Daimler-Benz AG being already involved in the development and production of Panzerkampfwagen III tank decided to use its chassis and components for this new vehicle.

...

First production vehicles based on Panzerkampfwagen III Ausf F chassis and components, entered production in 1940

...

Production reached its peak when in 1944, 4013 [StuG] Ausf Gs left factories. Alkett produced over 5000 Ausf, while MIAG began production in March of 1943 and produced some 3000 vehicles. Production numbers include 165 PzKpfw III Ausf M chassis used to produce [StuG] Ausf Gs in 1943 and 173 PzKpfw III Ausf Ms converted to [StuG] Ausf Gs by Alkett and MIAG in 1944.

The majority of StuG production was brand new!

Adding a whole level like this to the game would require low-level factories-if individual units are going to be made, then each and every factory involved in production will need to be represented, and that's hundreds, if not thousands, of factories.

You overestimate it. The StuG III/IV was put together by just Alkett
in Berlin-Borsigwalde, MIAG in Braunschweigburg, M.A.N. in Nurnburg.

Those three factories put together about 4,000 StuGs a year. At most,
you'll only have to manage 20 AFV factories, and if Paradox makes a special
factory management screen, you'd be able to manage all of your factories
from a list of factories using drop down menus and single click buttons
rather than scrolling all over the map and selecting each individual province
in the map mode.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2004-05-09 11:28am

To hell with it, I'm not buying HoI2, nor am I going to eagerly keep
track of the status

Originally Posted by Johan
We debated this [factories in HoI2], but the result would be even more micromanagement.

Fuck this, the reason I stopped modding and playing HOI was because of
the simple lack of a real economic model. WW2 was all about economics
as well.

Crushing the Russians with 30 panzer divisions in 1942 got boring after
a whille, as did rebuilding 10 destroyed panzer divisions with a single click

Exmoor Cat · Post by **Exmoor Cat** » 2004-05-09 04:00pm

I got fed up wth the economics too. Was the fluctuations and crashes in the economics, as well as times when an entire round of economic infrastructure building producing nothing - a bug or inbuilt game mechanics?

Played all patch versions, though I have won as USSR on 1.06 by november 1941. Pure meat grinder. I hope they allow more interestng playing with the minor countries. Brazil can be interesting.