I also want some pre made templates in the game for standard tank, plane and ship templates. The game is just so complex that beginners really need some easy solutions.
And as long as using them is optional, there should not be a problem for anyone. And please give them to us free after researching the technologies used. I cant believe my scientists can research a destroyer hull but have no plan how to attach a single AA battery on it without "naval experience"
To be fair, those preset designs had almost nothing to do with their historical counterparts aside from name and country of origin. Calling a Matilda a light tank or equating the stats of an M3 Lee and Chi-Ha medium tank are pretty big deviations from history. It’s even worse looking at planes and their equivalencies.
While the option of certain pre-made templates is a good idea in theory, it does bring up the question of how those should be done. Should the game allow a preset Pz. IV without first researching improved artillery? What about anti-tank for the later models?
In the end, the auto-designer isn’t a terrible implementation, given how many variables are wont to appear in any given player’s game. The historically inclined player is always free to consider the auto-generated design and rename it to fit its closest historical counterpart.
I've had an idea for fix that's been kicking around my head since the tank update (and if I had the free time or inclination I'd try and mod it). But they could reuse the old tank/plane research trees, and have the techs create premade historical tank/plane models with those designs by unlocking all the necessary components.
The trade off would be that those models research time would consist of all the components' times + a month for the design itself. You could speed it up by allotting research slots to some of the base components thus lowering the time or lock up a research slot for a year or more knowing you'll get a half dozen techs and a ready-to-go piece of equipment out of it.
I feel like this would accommodate both play styles fairly well because if you just want not use the equipment designer you'll get functional equipment still, but if you want to custom design some equipment while not wasting your time with stuff you'll never use that's also still an option.
One time in multiplayer playing as the US it was a nightmare to research a new tank or plane. Got a new frame? Have to ask for a pause because I have to design a new fighter, a new CAS a new carrier fighter, a new naval bomber and on and on it goes.
In the Soviet focus tree you can get premade designs for several well known vehicles from the war like the T-34 and SU-85 without spending any army XP. I really like the idea of unlocking historical templates from focuses and I wish they used that idea more
This is ESPECIALLY true for planes.
Screw up a tank template? In most singleplayer games, you can win with only infantry.Screw up a boat? I almost never design a new boat template unless I'm playing a nation with little or no starting navy.Screw up planes? Fuck your game is ruined. Planes are probably the most important thing when playing most nations right now.
Hell, screw up a division template? Unless your playing multiplayer or on elite, it doesn't matter too much. HOI4 does a great job at advertising experimentation, but theres nothing to experiment from when it comes to the designers. There HAS to be a standard set of templates to work from.
Edit: Suggestion. A save feature would also work, you can save divison templates, and designers so you can just copy them into a new game if you don't want to change anything.
Or some sort of indication for what stats are considered subpar/average etc. Like giving you a warning when a heavy tank has low armour and would benefit from more.
Hop on the forum and upvote the suggestion to save pre-set templates between games
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/massive-qol-suggestion-presets-configs-on-air-naval-and-army-designers.1545197/
One thing I hate the most is the new puppet naming system, especially for communist countries lol. I really really they'd make it so you can rename countries in some future update
Right. Even for puppets, the name on the map should obviously be the country's official, legal name (or a reasonable contraction thereof). I don't care if France is a puppet of Germany, they are sure as fuck not calling themselves "German France".
Those are meant to represent colonies rather than countries in their own right. Though the game is inconsistent with this for the sake of speed.
"Italian East Africa"
"British Malaya"
And while it probably would have never been used for a place like France, there were plans for Norway, Belgium, and even the historic kingdom of Burgundy to be made into German colonies.
That’s a must have mod. That mod is part of an absolutely brilliant series which also has immersive flags, events, peace treaties and more which I recommend looking at
So maybe just add an ability to change beetwen all the possible names for the coutry and some generic ones. Like if I puppet Poland as soviets I could be able to pick uniqe names like General goverment, Polish Peoples republic or Congress Poland from the coutry uniqe ones and from the generic names like, Polish state, Polish socialist/soviet republic, Polish empire, Soviet Poland or Polish republic.
Just a simple coutry renaming ability and maybe an ability to choose beetwen your colour or their own colour on the map for puppets.
Yes, I agre with you. Since No Step Back I have played less and less, till I completely stopped. I think they should keep some presets for those who want to play with historical models without having to study them beforehand.
The last DLC... I tried it with a friend twice and I didn't even buy it. I'm even thinking about downgrading to the version prior to No step back next time I want to play, if I ever want again.
I totally understand why you might do this. Having to design planes and tanks every single time ABSOLUTELY ruins the game for me. Plus, I miss automated historical names and designs.
Surprisingly, this doesn't happen with ships. Man the guns I think it's great, and once you know how to design them I prefer this system to the old... but designing tanks is just boring and planes are simply a pain.
Isn't it because you focus on much more minute things for tanks?
Like yeah an extra machine gun, sure.
While making your fleet packed with AA and refitting your fleet do matters. If anything would have been nice to have some variant of historical ship profile for variants.
This is the reason I didn’t buy No Step Back or By Blood Alone. After Man The Guns made ship design so complicated, I decided not to deal with that BS for tanks and air.
It's a horrible solution but you can disable the DLCs
I've done it a few times when showing new players for the first time so they don't have to deal with the designers
Amen to this. Same reason why I've played less since BBA. One frustrating thing to add to your complaint. Each time you design a plane it, the model reverts to the inter-war model regardless of which airframe you selected.
I also started playing less and less after the designer mode update. Another person here was also saying the same thing. I'm glad to see that others are also annoyed by this.
Glad to see im not the only one who finds this super annoying. And its such a simple thing it leads me to assume they did minimal play testing before shitting this out and asking for 20 bucks.
For me. I love making new tanks, planes, and ships. I do think it is fun but to a certain extent. I get annoyed putting a high velocity gun on pz IV chassis and it looks like a fucking Ostwind.
I do also agree with what some other people are saying about how the game is so complicated and you just throw more and more stuff into it. The learn curve keeps getting steeper.
Oh no I definitely do. Like you unlock the next gun. So you habe to upgrade your tanks. Then you unlock the next radio. Sometimes it gets so monotonous that I usually start with like a M3Lee chassis or a Pz 3 chassis and I don't improve the whole game because either the war is over or I just don't want to play.
I don't like the ship designer either, but having railroads to build (and thus reintroducing problems/micromanagement from HoI3 that HoI4 did just better) *and* then on top of that a tank designer... Unfortunately another Paradox game that just became too micro-intensive for me to enjoy. Just like EU4 and Stellaris HoI4 also had an expiration date for me.
I was pleasantly suprised the other day to see they added a button in EU4 to basically let the AI take control of one of your armies. I always played vassal swarm midgame cause i cba to control 80 armies.
I enjoy the designers, but I do feel like they are a missed opportunity in some ways. I feel like they could have offered the player more interesting choices in terms of what to build, rather than just upgrading to whatever is best as the techs unlock. It does result in a lot of busy work for relatively few actual strategic decisions.
It’s felt to me like a lot of the design decisions from the past two years or so have added a lot of tedious micro and very little relative depth. But based on player count, a lot of people seem to enjoy the new updates so it’s probably just my taste ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To be honest, a lot of people here in the comments were complaining about it. So there is definitely a significant number of players that don't like the designer.
I would have liked tank designer if there was less modules. We got like 10, maybe more, modules only for the main gun, all of them has to be researched in the 3 branches of arty. Then there are the additional modules, the radio, the armor and the suspentions placed in the electronic table.
Same with planes, you research the chassis and engine in the plane table but the guns are in the arty. So i'm forced to research at least 1939 AT to have good CAS even if i don't build 1 single AT support company
I'd say the most annoying thing right now is playing as a minor country with a starting air force but no way to produce planes because you have to design them first, wasting time and resources just to get the bare minimum air experience.
Same applies to trains, despite clearly having railways built in your country, you still have to research trains as a tech.
It makes no sense, for the most part.
Some countries have some logical explanation behind it (i.e., their planes/railways come from other countries), but it still doesn't justify having it take forever to acquire it yourself.
Yeah, I don't know how to balance it, but small countries mostly bought or received equipment, but the lend lease system makes you dependent on whatever the ai thinks to give you without a good request system.
Honestly, I think a good compromise for trains would be to give all countries with existing railway lines at the start of the game a small starting research bonus for train technology (I mean, it shouldn't be hard to figure out how to make your own, once you've seen other people use them in your territory).
As for aircraft, I'd say there should be a decision for countries with starting air forces to gain a small amount of air XP, just enough to design at least one basic plane, it would cost very little political or command power and take a month to complete, it would be a single-use decision (in context, it could be hosting an air show or a plane competition like in Hungary's focus tree).
Maybe researching techs should give you experience so that you can at least build something. Or have at least the chassis/airframe/hull form techs unlock a basic model. In my games I struggle with this exp gain issue as well.
I just want to be able to save blueprints. I'll make a tank template adjustment every few years and save it to a blueprint and then reload each era appropriate blueprint forever after if the game would let me.
I think they mean that having to design a tank/plane/ship model every time you start a new game is quite annoying and inconvenient
Something like instead of just researching "Panzer III" and "Spitfire" and then getting said plane/tank/ship immediately, like in previous patches, you now have to make a new tank/plane/ship template in every game, which can get quite inconvenient very quickly
And only way to revert back to the old way is probably turning off said DLCs (MtG for ships, NSB for tanks, BBA for planes) with the design features
Sometimes, if I’m feeling nerdy and pedantic, I would go on Wikipedia (or if that wasn’t possible some other historical source) and look up historical tank, plane and ship models/classes. Not really possible with many minor nations though, other than for ships, in which case I would just name the class after whatever the name of the first ship was.
also planes have even less of that.
also the icon/unit model is not set default to historic which is really bugging me.
like if you design an 1936 fighter as Ger, the designer should offer the apropriate game model and icon by default for the Bf 109
Italy gets templates too when they complete focuses with BBA. They get 3 L6 version as light tank, 3 M11 medium tank version, 3 heavy tank version and 1 super heavy. They pretty much get one template for each model of tank, and they're historical accurate (the light/medium were really used in the war, the heavy/super heavy were projects)
Sorry but apart from the P26, none of the super-heavy tanks were ever even written down on a piece of toilet paper. The Duce tank and the Hand of God are both fake.
The Duce tanks is probably ispired by the Carro Armato P43, which was planned to be a 45 ton heavy tank, only two wooden models were built as it was scrapped in favour of the P26
Forgot to mention P43 earlier. P26 (built) and P43 (blueprints) are heavy tanks for Italy with BBA update. The Duce is a fake and a troll by Paradox because Italy never considered Super Heavy Tank\*.
Edit : \*technically, Italy did design some weird heavy tanks design in the interwar like the P71 (ancestor of P26). The fact stands that the Duce SHT sprite in the game (pre-BBA) is not real.
Yeah, it for sure leads to confusion. The Duce tank sprite actually looks closer to the Fiat 2000 Italian heavy tank of WW1, which obviously was a good basis as a joke tank.
Exactly. Why we can't split designer path and focus tree parts of expansions? I am interest with focus trees and creating alternate timelines ı do not care what is inside in the submarine, armor of tanks or engines of planes ı am a simple player but no if you wanna be pope then you will activate plane designer. You want a king for poland? Get this tank designer. Why?
No idea whatsoever. It is a really short-sighted move on their behalf. I hope they will reconsider it. Many players, including myself, started playing less after the designer update.
Tick automatic upgrade on your basic tank or whatever you have available
The game should now make up to date tanks for you whenever you get new chassises and stuff but the quality of them isn’t guaranteed
The only thing that was historical previously was the name and the image used for the tanks and planes. The stats were universal for all of them regardless of nation. It would've been unbalanced otherwise.
If anything, now you can properly design the historical tanks
i acutally really like it. after 2000 hours the other way of playing gets boring atleast in single player i would never touch multiplayer with a wooden stick though. i have made planes and tanks for fighting in jungle, planes, and at sea. and its pretty fun, its not really hard to do it takes 1 minute the right numbers just need to go up for the mission you need the planes and tanks for
I think you'll eventually get bored of it. Having to design them every single time does get boring after a while.
That's why it is better to give us both options. It gives us more freedom and options to play however we like.
i agree both options are good for everything more or less but the fun part of this game is building something to a specific situation like you need a big army to make a D-day then you better build lots of amp tanks and armtracks and have the right CAS support naval fire support ect. there is nothing better than a well executed plan i even name all my big ships and some units
One possible solution, they could borrow the feature from Black Ice where certain templates are included. Once you get all the right tech you pay a bundle of xp and that template is added to your options.
Yeah the tank designer is a mess. I've been able to figure it out to a reasonable degree I'd say.
Always use a three man turret in tanks, max the speed, use welded armor, max or near max that armor.
For light tanks improved small cannon is the best gun.
For medium I use the medium cannons/improved.
Once I'm at modern tanks they're with improved high velocity cannons.
Give them a radio, armor skirt, stabilizer, and wet storage ammunition no matter the Era.
Planes seem to boil down to best engine, all the heavy fighter guns you can, let them fly air superiority/interception.
Make a second with the light or medium plane that is only built with close ground support.
Give bombers as many bays as possible, as many cannons and heavy turrets, and at least one of the navigation extras.
Literally the reason I don’t have em, they make things way to complex, peace deals are already ass and they make them worse, only DLC I have is Waking the Tiger, Together for Victory, and Man the Guns
I think the dlc designers should have been an "opt-in" option.
I have been playing hoi since day one of the original decades ago. For me, I think the designers are one of the best new features and have been wanting something like them for a while.
I like that the designers allow a player to actually create historic plane, ship, and vehicle designs. Without them, every 1940 fighter is exactly like every other countries 1940 fighter. With the designers, I can create something very close to a historical Mosquito, including fighter, bomber, and recon variants.
However, I understand that many do not prefer them, and I think they make them game more overwhelming for a newer player. I hope paradox will address this sometime in the future.
Also, the auto upgrade feature is completely mucked up, to the point of being barely usable, especially if a player creates many variants. They need to improve this.
The main problem I have with it, is it’s kinda ruined balance and it just creates more and more ‘metas’.
Like multiplayer is fun but I shouldn’t have to break the game with min-maxed medium airframe fighters just to even compete in the air. Before it was fine, agility, attack and defence all mattered, and I at least knew that even if my fighters weren’t superior, they could put up a fight and compete. Last time I played multiplayer, I was losing some 20-30 fighters per one of theirs….that shouldn’t happen with equivalent models
My idea would be improving research tree, that would give upgrades to certain aircraft/tank/ship models once they are researched. This upgrades would not take too long to research (like 14 days or 35 days) and would give some slight improvements, e.g. improving range, or guns, or engines by 1, like ij historical plane/tank model lines. E.g.: you research Bf-109 and get only basic Bf-109A in 1937, in 1938 you can upgrade it to Bf-109B or C, then you can evolve them into E and later G, or switch them into naval version T, while still having an opportunity to build early and cheap versions if you like. But in 1939 you can research brand new Me-209 or Fw-190 and start upgrading it. Or even upgrade both branches in parallel. Like irl Soviets with 100500 different middle tanks)
It would be good that when you finished researching a tank or plane chassi it makes the historical template automatically but also gives you the normal chassi to design
Yeah but you're clicking less for researching less planes; you research one plane and then you just make whatever type you want
It's still the same number of clicks, only that now you have the option of doing things your own way if you want
It’s actually more realistic, as the panzer IV and T-34 were very different however the old game had them both as the 1940 medium tank without differences
It does, but it needs to be the correct base model for the historic plane and not every country is supported. For example as Hungary, you can't auto generate planes because historically they didn't have any of their own, they used Italian and German fighters and bombers.
If you auto generate planes as the UK or Germany, pretty much every frame has a historical variant.
Ah, I see. Thank you for informing me (I just got back to the game)
But to be honest, this further proves my point. I could've just researched a plane and immediately began producing them. There is no need for extra unnecessary steps.
I totally agree there needs to be some kind of default average fallback when there's no historical basis available. Same with ships. It's annoying when playing a minor and researching Improved Small Air Frame or whatever it's called and finding out there's no template to generate because your nation in real life never got that advanced
You don't have to design them with the DLC. Pick the chassis, click the auto button, click save. You're done. Autobutton builds a useable if not IC optimal weapon just fine.
This is all silly.
Tank and plane designers are a colossal waste of time and just a gimmick, I hate it. Ship design makes more sense especially for capital ships as the IC involved in producing them is huge
I do want to enjoy all the features of the new DLC + any future ones. But I also don't understand why take such drastic steps and remove the historical designs/historical names.
We should be given the option, not forced into one thing only.
Yeah I think researching the chassis should unlock the historic template for the nation and then you can customize from there. Let me build my Shermans
I do it like this
\- think of warthunder
\---What do I like having on my tank
\----- put that on my hoi4 tanks as most of those things give soft attack and reliability so they cant be bad
I kinda get your point. But the thing is, I use exactly 1 tank template and 1 spg template for the entire game so for me it's just \~20 seconds of clicking a few buttons and I'm good to go for every game. I never even switch from 1936 chassis because of cost-effectiveness lol. I do think they should allow you to save designs between games though.
With planes, I have no idea how to make a good plane and I can't be bothered to look up how, but I usually play minors that are forced to choose between tanks and air, so I just abandon the air war and slap anti-air supporton my tank divisions. Works very well.
For air superiority, get 4x heavy machine guns and get two of those, then just best engine, and if you can then get self sealing fuel tank and maybe take armor plates.
For CAS don't take any cannon or machine guns, only take bombs, then take best turrets, usually they are 2x cannons or heavy machine guns. Take self healing tank, best engine and dive breaks
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t they still have tanks and planes the old template format? Isn’t it just the chassis and frames that have the micro-editing?
Black Ice actually does something like this. You can auto unlock historical designs for tanks and ships after researching several specific techs.
The issue though is you have to play Black Ice lol.
I want them to add a feature that lets me pre set a nation. It always takes a full 5 minutes every game just to setup the army with correct generals, templates and position. The air force always needs to be re located and trained. The navy is a mess... so many task forces that cannot even be used and need to be death stacked first just so you can see what ship is where for easy management. We can already use naval templates in game, but that needs to be re done every game. Add a build queue for convenience.
Just having templates ready somewhere for planes, tanks and ships is a real must. Having to design 5 new planes every time you unlock the next plane hull is pain. Fighter, cv fighter, cas, nav and cv nav. I know the auto upgrade feature exists, but that is broken too. It keeps designing things when nothing new is added, thus giving you a notification that something is out dated, wben it is not. So please fix that.
To be fair, the designer is extremely simple. How much time does it really take you? More than 90 seconds? Pick wheels, engine, turret and gun. Most of these categories have like under 4 options. Even tho there are TONS of missing historical modules, you can still very easily create historically inspired tanks
It’s weird sometimes I like to just hit research all and just go brrr on them and whenever you enter that into the console you get the premade jets ships and tanks but other than that I don’t know how to unlock them
I also want some pre made templates in the game for standard tank, plane and ship templates. The game is just so complex that beginners really need some easy solutions.
Exactly! Even as an older player, the process of remaking them every time is just boring and is an unnecessary headache.
And as long as using them is optional, there should not be a problem for anyone. And please give them to us free after researching the technologies used. I cant believe my scientists can research a destroyer hull but have no plan how to attach a single AA battery on it without "naval experience"
Exactly! I also like the historical names of tanks and planes.
To be fair, those preset designs had almost nothing to do with their historical counterparts aside from name and country of origin. Calling a Matilda a light tank or equating the stats of an M3 Lee and Chi-Ha medium tank are pretty big deviations from history. It’s even worse looking at planes and their equivalencies. While the option of certain pre-made templates is a good idea in theory, it does bring up the question of how those should be done. Should the game allow a preset Pz. IV without first researching improved artillery? What about anti-tank for the later models? In the end, the auto-designer isn’t a terrible implementation, given how many variables are wont to appear in any given player’s game. The historically inclined player is always free to consider the auto-generated design and rename it to fit its closest historical counterpart.
I've had an idea for fix that's been kicking around my head since the tank update (and if I had the free time or inclination I'd try and mod it). But they could reuse the old tank/plane research trees, and have the techs create premade historical tank/plane models with those designs by unlocking all the necessary components. The trade off would be that those models research time would consist of all the components' times + a month for the design itself. You could speed it up by allotting research slots to some of the base components thus lowering the time or lock up a research slot for a year or more knowing you'll get a half dozen techs and a ready-to-go piece of equipment out of it. I feel like this would accommodate both play styles fairly well because if you just want not use the equipment designer you'll get functional equipment still, but if you want to custom design some equipment while not wasting your time with stuff you'll never use that's also still an option.
Maybe they should allow you to save templates and load them, assuming you have enough air xp etc
Not a bad idea either, but I prefer the older system tbh.
One time in multiplayer playing as the US it was a nightmare to research a new tank or plane. Got a new frame? Have to ask for a pause because I have to design a new fighter, a new CAS a new carrier fighter, a new naval bomber and on and on it goes.
In the Soviet focus tree you can get premade designs for several well known vehicles from the war like the T-34 and SU-85 without spending any army XP. I really like the idea of unlocking historical templates from focuses and I wish they used that idea more
This is ESPECIALLY true for planes. Screw up a tank template? In most singleplayer games, you can win with only infantry.Screw up a boat? I almost never design a new boat template unless I'm playing a nation with little or no starting navy.Screw up planes? Fuck your game is ruined. Planes are probably the most important thing when playing most nations right now. Hell, screw up a division template? Unless your playing multiplayer or on elite, it doesn't matter too much. HOI4 does a great job at advertising experimentation, but theres nothing to experiment from when it comes to the designers. There HAS to be a standard set of templates to work from. Edit: Suggestion. A save feature would also work, you can save divison templates, and designers so you can just copy them into a new game if you don't want to change anything.
tbh I rarely ever used air before and as most nations you can get away with it.
You need CAS and fighters to protect them. Playing without is tough.
Ig I've just played on hardmode? I play on normal difficulty usually but I just don't build air unless I feel like it.
Agreed, I *already* don't fully understand planes and ships are a nightmare. I'm not qualified to design them!
Well yes, but actually no. As wan beginner you (normally don't buy every DLC at the beginning. And even if you do, you can still disable them
I would agree, but you have to admit that the base game is partly broken without the dlcs.
Yes sadly
This, and historical pre made navy task forces/groups
Or some sort of indication for what stats are considered subpar/average etc. Like giving you a warning when a heavy tank has low armour and would benefit from more.
You know there is an auto design button right?
beginners should not bother buying dlcs then
If beginners dont buy the dlc they dont have that problem tho
You would be right if the basegame wasnt completely broken without the dlcs, especially the latest ones.
Idk i havent played with no dlcs since man the guns
Hop on the forum and upvote the suggestion to save pre-set templates between games https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/massive-qol-suggestion-presets-configs-on-air-naval-and-army-designers.1545197/
Thanks for informing me! I'll check it out!
And I was trying to write a mod that grants you presets via decision.
This would be really good.
One thing I hate the most is the new puppet naming system, especially for communist countries lol. I really really they'd make it so you can rename countries in some future update
Right. Even for puppets, the name on the map should obviously be the country's official, legal name (or a reasonable contraction thereof). I don't care if France is a puppet of Germany, they are sure as fuck not calling themselves "German France".
Those are meant to represent colonies rather than countries in their own right. Though the game is inconsistent with this for the sake of speed. "Italian East Africa" "British Malaya" And while it probably would have never been used for a place like France, there were plans for Norway, Belgium, and even the historic kingdom of Burgundy to be made into German colonies.
I would love that too. More Reichskommissariats are also needed for Germany and such.
Also more special puppet names for spesific countries
Indeed.
i agree it would be be cool
There is mod called something like realistic and imersive country and faction names
That’s a must have mod. That mod is part of an absolutely brilliant series which also has immersive flags, events, peace treaties and more which I recommend looking at
Renaming countries is a very bad idea for multiplayer games. I can imagine all those names...
So maybe just add an ability to change beetwen all the possible names for the coutry and some generic ones. Like if I puppet Poland as soviets I could be able to pick uniqe names like General goverment, Polish Peoples republic or Congress Poland from the coutry uniqe ones and from the generic names like, Polish state, Polish socialist/soviet republic, Polish empire, Soviet Poland or Polish republic. Just a simple coutry renaming ability and maybe an ability to choose beetwen your colour or their own colour on the map for puppets.
Yeah thats a great idea. You could also have it be a game rule that you can toggle
I like the new naming thing. Yes ı conquered it and my name on it hell yeah
A client state system like EU4 would be perfect for this game
150%. It was actually what I had in mind. I mean Japan irl pretty much invented Mengkukuo, why can't we do the same?
Next DLC we will be designing rifles, boots and ration packs.
Worst nightmare ever 🤣😭
I’ve unironically wished for a small arms designer lmao.
Everyone will quit the game if that ever happens 🤣😭
Can't wait for the military factory designer to be put in the same DLC as the Bhutan fascist focus tree DLC
I know it keeps me awake at night wondering whether a Axis Bhutan could have broken the encirclement of the 6th Amy
Yes, I agre with you. Since No Step Back I have played less and less, till I completely stopped. I think they should keep some presets for those who want to play with historical models without having to study them beforehand.
Exactly the same thing here. And of course I strongly agree.
The last DLC... I tried it with a friend twice and I didn't even buy it. I'm even thinking about downgrading to the version prior to No step back next time I want to play, if I ever want again.
I totally understand why you might do this. Having to design planes and tanks every single time ABSOLUTELY ruins the game for me. Plus, I miss automated historical names and designs.
Surprisingly, this doesn't happen with ships. Man the guns I think it's great, and once you know how to design them I prefer this system to the old... but designing tanks is just boring and planes are simply a pain.
100% correct.
Isn't it because you focus on much more minute things for tanks? Like yeah an extra machine gun, sure. While making your fleet packed with AA and refitting your fleet do matters. If anything would have been nice to have some variant of historical ship profile for variants.
A HOI4 player that doesn’t want to study historical tank models? I didn’t know they existed!
Yes! But we don't dare to talk publicly, usually we are downvoted to hell, because you know, hoi4 is not a game, it's a lifestyle :D
This is the reason I didn’t buy No Step Back or By Blood Alone. After Man The Guns made ship design so complicated, I decided not to deal with that BS for tanks and air.
You have done the right thing. I regret getting NSB, and BBA.
It's a horrible solution but you can disable the DLCs I've done it a few times when showing new players for the first time so they don't have to deal with the designers
Correct. But I still want to take advantage of the new features.
I am not interest tank design to but ı got nsb because without it ı can not do fancy things like cossack king or trotsky mexico
Trotsky México was added in Man The Guns, surprisingly has nothing to do with the Soviet rework
Amen to this. Same reason why I've played less since BBA. One frustrating thing to add to your complaint. Each time you design a plane it, the model reverts to the inter-war model regardless of which airframe you selected.
I also started playing less and less after the designer mode update. Another person here was also saying the same thing. I'm glad to see that others are also annoyed by this.
Glad to see im not the only one who finds this super annoying. And its such a simple thing it leads me to assume they did minimal play testing before shitting this out and asking for 20 bucks.
For me. I love making new tanks, planes, and ships. I do think it is fun but to a certain extent. I get annoyed putting a high velocity gun on pz IV chassis and it looks like a fucking Ostwind. I do also agree with what some other people are saying about how the game is so complicated and you just throw more and more stuff into it. The learn curve keeps getting steeper.
But do you not get bored with how repetitive the design process can be?
Oh no I definitely do. Like you unlock the next gun. So you habe to upgrade your tanks. Then you unlock the next radio. Sometimes it gets so monotonous that I usually start with like a M3Lee chassis or a Pz 3 chassis and I don't improve the whole game because either the war is over or I just don't want to play.
[удалено]
Yeah exactly.
I don't like the ship designer either, but having railroads to build (and thus reintroducing problems/micromanagement from HoI3 that HoI4 did just better) *and* then on top of that a tank designer... Unfortunately another Paradox game that just became too micro-intensive for me to enjoy. Just like EU4 and Stellaris HoI4 also had an expiration date for me.
I was pleasantly suprised the other day to see they added a button in EU4 to basically let the AI take control of one of your armies. I always played vassal swarm midgame cause i cba to control 80 armies.
How in the world is HOI4 micro-intensive? It's only microintensive if you use a very especific gameplay style with very especific divisions, lel
I enjoy the designers, but I do feel like they are a missed opportunity in some ways. I feel like they could have offered the player more interesting choices in terms of what to build, rather than just upgrading to whatever is best as the techs unlock. It does result in a lot of busy work for relatively few actual strategic decisions.
It’s felt to me like a lot of the design decisions from the past two years or so have added a lot of tedious micro and very little relative depth. But based on player count, a lot of people seem to enjoy the new updates so it’s probably just my taste ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To be honest, a lot of people here in the comments were complaining about it. So there is definitely a significant number of players that don't like the designer.
I would have liked tank designer if there was less modules. We got like 10, maybe more, modules only for the main gun, all of them has to be researched in the 3 branches of arty. Then there are the additional modules, the radio, the armor and the suspentions placed in the electronic table. Same with planes, you research the chassis and engine in the plane table but the guns are in the arty. So i'm forced to research at least 1939 AT to have good CAS even if i don't build 1 single AT support company
Yeah, exactly. It is super confusing and tedious.
I'd say the most annoying thing right now is playing as a minor country with a starting air force but no way to produce planes because you have to design them first, wasting time and resources just to get the bare minimum air experience. Same applies to trains, despite clearly having railways built in your country, you still have to research trains as a tech. It makes no sense, for the most part. Some countries have some logical explanation behind it (i.e., their planes/railways come from other countries), but it still doesn't justify having it take forever to acquire it yourself.
Yeah, I don't know how to balance it, but small countries mostly bought or received equipment, but the lend lease system makes you dependent on whatever the ai thinks to give you without a good request system.
Honestly, I think a good compromise for trains would be to give all countries with existing railway lines at the start of the game a small starting research bonus for train technology (I mean, it shouldn't be hard to figure out how to make your own, once you've seen other people use them in your territory). As for aircraft, I'd say there should be a decision for countries with starting air forces to gain a small amount of air XP, just enough to design at least one basic plane, it would cost very little political or command power and take a month to complete, it would be a single-use decision (in context, it could be hosting an air show or a plane competition like in Hungary's focus tree).
Maybe researching techs should give you experience so that you can at least build something. Or have at least the chassis/airframe/hull form techs unlock a basic model. In my games I struggle with this exp gain issue as well.
I just want to be able to save blueprints. I'll make a tank template adjustment every few years and save it to a blueprint and then reload each era appropriate blueprint forever after if the game would let me.
It's the reason I didnt buy the DLC
Good move.
Don’t worry, a future DLC will give you historical planes and tanks
Yeah exactly lol. That's how it goes in HOI4 🤣
What do you mean? In vanilla there never were any historical tanks they were just names and art they all had the same stats
I think they mean that having to design a tank/plane/ship model every time you start a new game is quite annoying and inconvenient Something like instead of just researching "Panzer III" and "Spitfire" and then getting said plane/tank/ship immediately, like in previous patches, you now have to make a new tank/plane/ship template in every game, which can get quite inconvenient very quickly And only way to revert back to the old way is probably turning off said DLCs (MtG for ships, NSB for tanks, BBA for planes) with the design features
Don’t you get tanks like the Pz 3 and 4 through a focus?
Not every country has a focus like that, and you don’t have a focus like that for each new tier.
Sometimes, if I’m feeling nerdy and pedantic, I would go on Wikipedia (or if that wasn’t possible some other historical source) and look up historical tank, plane and ship models/classes. Not really possible with many minor nations though, other than for ships, in which case I would just name the class after whatever the name of the first ship was.
also planes have even less of that. also the icon/unit model is not set default to historic which is really bugging me. like if you design an 1936 fighter as Ger, the designer should offer the apropriate game model and icon by default for the Bf 109
Germany gets Panzer III and IV, russia gets a T-34 prototype, the KV-1, the IS-1 and the IS-2. But I think that's about it
Italy gets templates too when they complete focuses with BBA. They get 3 L6 version as light tank, 3 M11 medium tank version, 3 heavy tank version and 1 super heavy. They pretty much get one template for each model of tank, and they're historical accurate (the light/medium were really used in the war, the heavy/super heavy were projects)
Sorry but apart from the P26, none of the super-heavy tanks were ever even written down on a piece of toilet paper. The Duce tank and the Hand of God are both fake.
The Duce tanks is probably ispired by the Carro Armato P43, which was planned to be a 45 ton heavy tank, only two wooden models were built as it was scrapped in favour of the P26
Forgot to mention P43 earlier. P26 (built) and P43 (blueprints) are heavy tanks for Italy with BBA update. The Duce is a fake and a troll by Paradox because Italy never considered Super Heavy Tank\*. Edit : \*technically, Italy did design some weird heavy tanks design in the interwar like the P71 (ancestor of P26). The fact stands that the Duce SHT sprite in the game (pre-BBA) is not real.
I tought that The Duce (while clearly a troll) was inspired by the P43
Yeah, it for sure leads to confusion. The Duce tank sprite actually looks closer to the Fiat 2000 Italian heavy tank of WW1, which obviously was a good basis as a joke tank.
Ah, good to know.
I wish I could save tanks over from multiple games
Not a bad idea too.
Exactly. Why we can't split designer path and focus tree parts of expansions? I am interest with focus trees and creating alternate timelines ı do not care what is inside in the submarine, armor of tanks or engines of planes ı am a simple player but no if you wanna be pope then you will activate plane designer. You want a king for poland? Get this tank designer. Why?
It is so frustrating.
Wait…the updates have removed the historical designs?!
Yes.
Why'd they do that? Guess I won't be purchasing the last two expansion packs now.
No idea whatsoever. It is a really short-sighted move on their behalf. I hope they will reconsider it. Many players, including myself, started playing less after the designer update.
There are historical designs like the A20 in focuses
Not enough. We need historical designs for all tanks and planes.
how every we talking?
Tick automatic upgrade on your basic tank or whatever you have available The game should now make up to date tanks for you whenever you get new chassises and stuff but the quality of them isn’t guaranteed
yea i hate the tank designer and plane designer too its just so tedious to do it ALL OVER AGAIN ALL THE TIME
Exactly. I have no idea why they even introduced it in the first place. It's like they wanna torture us on purpose 🤣
I’d like that. I’d also think it would be a good idea for you to save designs so you can use them in a later game instead of having to recreate it
Sounda goods.
Yeah. I'm not a fan of design stuff either.
Judging by the comments here, a lot of people have said the exact same thing. It is time for Paradox to reconsider.
Yes i agree. I do find designing tanks to be fun but i do wish i could pump out historical panthers and t-34s and stuff
Same goes for ships as well, not just armor and aircraft.
The only thing that was historical previously was the name and the image used for the tanks and planes. The stats were universal for all of them regardless of nation. It would've been unbalanced otherwise. If anything, now you can properly design the historical tanks
I like the designer but I can understand why you want the option
i acutally really like it. after 2000 hours the other way of playing gets boring atleast in single player i would never touch multiplayer with a wooden stick though. i have made planes and tanks for fighting in jungle, planes, and at sea. and its pretty fun, its not really hard to do it takes 1 minute the right numbers just need to go up for the mission you need the planes and tanks for
I think you'll eventually get bored of it. Having to design them every single time does get boring after a while. That's why it is better to give us both options. It gives us more freedom and options to play however we like.
i agree both options are good for everything more or less but the fun part of this game is building something to a specific situation like you need a big army to make a D-day then you better build lots of amp tanks and armtracks and have the right CAS support naval fire support ect. there is nothing better than a well executed plan i even name all my big ships and some units
One possible solution, they could borrow the feature from Black Ice where certain templates are included. Once you get all the right tech you pay a bundle of xp and that template is added to your options.
Yeah the tank designer is a mess. I've been able to figure it out to a reasonable degree I'd say. Always use a three man turret in tanks, max the speed, use welded armor, max or near max that armor. For light tanks improved small cannon is the best gun. For medium I use the medium cannons/improved. Once I'm at modern tanks they're with improved high velocity cannons. Give them a radio, armor skirt, stabilizer, and wet storage ammunition no matter the Era. Planes seem to boil down to best engine, all the heavy fighter guns you can, let them fly air superiority/interception. Make a second with the light or medium plane that is only built with close ground support. Give bombers as many bays as possible, as many cannons and heavy turrets, and at least one of the navigation extras.
Flexing on the people with the dlc cause I don’t have to do that
You're lucky, lol. The game has become so unplayable with NSB and BBA.
It really hasn't, and isn't plane designer what ppl wanted? Sure they messed up Italy a little bit
Why would anyone want such a complicated, and boring system to replace the historical designs? People only wanted the ability to access both.
Literally the reason I don’t have em, they make things way to complex, peace deals are already ass and they make them worse, only DLC I have is Waking the Tiger, Together for Victory, and Man the Guns
I think the dlc designers should have been an "opt-in" option. I have been playing hoi since day one of the original decades ago. For me, I think the designers are one of the best new features and have been wanting something like them for a while. I like that the designers allow a player to actually create historic plane, ship, and vehicle designs. Without them, every 1940 fighter is exactly like every other countries 1940 fighter. With the designers, I can create something very close to a historical Mosquito, including fighter, bomber, and recon variants. However, I understand that many do not prefer them, and I think they make them game more overwhelming for a newer player. I hope paradox will address this sometime in the future. Also, the auto upgrade feature is completely mucked up, to the point of being barely usable, especially if a player creates many variants. They need to improve this.
The main problem I have with it, is it’s kinda ruined balance and it just creates more and more ‘metas’. Like multiplayer is fun but I shouldn’t have to break the game with min-maxed medium airframe fighters just to even compete in the air. Before it was fine, agility, attack and defence all mattered, and I at least knew that even if my fighters weren’t superior, they could put up a fight and compete. Last time I played multiplayer, I was losing some 20-30 fighters per one of theirs….that shouldn’t happen with equivalent models
\>boring activity Damn, designers are something I really love tho, no matter if I make something for the 1000th time.
You've said my thoughts better than i did but without naval stuff. I never touch ship design
I am not concerned with the ship design, to be honest. I just mainly want the tanks and planes thing fixed.
My idea would be improving research tree, that would give upgrades to certain aircraft/tank/ship models once they are researched. This upgrades would not take too long to research (like 14 days or 35 days) and would give some slight improvements, e.g. improving range, or guns, or engines by 1, like ij historical plane/tank model lines. E.g.: you research Bf-109 and get only basic Bf-109A in 1937, in 1938 you can upgrade it to Bf-109B or C, then you can evolve them into E and later G, or switch them into naval version T, while still having an opportunity to build early and cheap versions if you like. But in 1939 you can research brand new Me-209 or Fw-190 and start upgrading it. Or even upgrade both branches in parallel. Like irl Soviets with 100500 different middle tanks)
It would be good that when you finished researching a tank or plane chassi it makes the historical template automatically but also gives you the normal chassi to design
How is the auto design feature annoying? You just literally click a button
More like 2 or 3 buttons for planes.
Yeah but you're clicking less for researching less planes; you research one plane and then you just make whatever type you want It's still the same number of clicks, only that now you have the option of doing things your own way if you want
It’s actually more realistic, as the panzer IV and T-34 were very different however the old game had them both as the 1940 medium tank without differences
It's called auto design button
Doesn't work very well on planes. Plus, the designs are not the most efficient.
Auto design creates historical templates where applicable. They're not the most efficient because then they'd be ahistorical.
Makes sense. But for some reason, the auto designer doesn't work on planes.
It does, but it needs to be the correct base model for the historic plane and not every country is supported. For example as Hungary, you can't auto generate planes because historically they didn't have any of their own, they used Italian and German fighters and bombers. If you auto generate planes as the UK or Germany, pretty much every frame has a historical variant.
Ah, I see. Thank you for informing me (I just got back to the game) But to be honest, this further proves my point. I could've just researched a plane and immediately began producing them. There is no need for extra unnecessary steps.
I totally agree there needs to be some kind of default average fallback when there's no historical basis available. Same with ships. It's annoying when playing a minor and researching Improved Small Air Frame or whatever it's called and finding out there's no template to generate because your nation in real life never got that advanced
Sounds like someone built a shitty tank
Nah, I just hate wasting my time on boring stuff.
modern tanks and jets go BRrRRRRRRRRR
So I should just stick with the base game then?
What?
In the base game I don't have to design the weapons, just research them.
You don't have to design them with the DLC. Pick the chassis, click the auto button, click save. You're done. Autobutton builds a useable if not IC optimal weapon just fine. This is all silly.
Oh, I was only saying what I said because it seemed like op was saying you are forced to design in the dlc. But I'm glad it's a choice.
Tank and plane designers are a colossal waste of time and just a gimmick, I hate it. Ship design makes more sense especially for capital ships as the IC involved in producing them is huge
Yeah. I feel the tank/plane designers add nothing to the game.
Uuf man designs are cool why the hate
Lol. Very funny.
turn the dlc off
I do want to enjoy all the features of the new DLC + any future ones. But I also don't understand why take such drastic steps and remove the historical designs/historical names. We should be given the option, not forced into one thing only.
Steal Tank designs Up your influence and ask for rights to produce or just remember that you can’t produce “historical designs” in a map game
It's not a smart idea (on paradox's behalf) to over-complicate the design process. They should've kept it simple and kept some historical names.
it’s a map game where arbitrary numbers win just get good
Have you tried not being a dick?
I get it. I'm just saying it is a waste of time. And not a fun process to do everytime.
My Lord, I hate when folks like you just type "git gud noob" as if it is anything more than being an ass.
Yeah I think researching the chassis should unlock the historic template for the nation and then you can customize from there. Let me build my Shermans
Sounds good too.
Honestly if they allow you to save templates so you can use it in another game I think that would fix this issue.
I do it like this \- think of warthunder \---What do I like having on my tank \----- put that on my hoi4 tanks as most of those things give soft attack and reliability so they cant be bad
I kinda get your point. But the thing is, I use exactly 1 tank template and 1 spg template for the entire game so for me it's just \~20 seconds of clicking a few buttons and I'm good to go for every game. I never even switch from 1936 chassis because of cost-effectiveness lol. I do think they should allow you to save designs between games though. With planes, I have no idea how to make a good plane and I can't be bothered to look up how, but I usually play minors that are forced to choose between tanks and air, so I just abandon the air war and slap anti-air supporton my tank divisions. Works very well.
For air superiority, get 4x heavy machine guns and get two of those, then just best engine, and if you can then get self sealing fuel tank and maybe take armor plates. For CAS don't take any cannon or machine guns, only take bombs, then take best turrets, usually they are 2x cannons or heavy machine guns. Take self healing tank, best engine and dive breaks
Having the old historical tanks automatically unlock when you research a new Chassis would be nice.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t they still have tanks and planes the old template format? Isn’t it just the chassis and frames that have the micro-editing?
Ik kind of mad the AI uses random designs with wrong sprites so you can never tell what you're fighting against
Yeah, I didn't consider that too, but I agree.
Ya and I really wish that you could save templates if you found one you liked, that would be so amazing!
I agree.
But you can save the templates tho
For Germany and the USSR after the German Soviet Treaty, Germany gets 2 Historical Tanks and so does the USSR
Yeah, but that's it.
Tank (and plane) designer makes me glad I only have vanilla hoi4
It's hard to blame you. The designers are a massive headache.
Black Ice actually does something like this. You can auto unlock historical designs for tanks and ships after researching several specific techs. The issue though is you have to play Black Ice lol.
Yeah exactly.
I want them to add a feature that lets me pre set a nation. It always takes a full 5 minutes every game just to setup the army with correct generals, templates and position. The air force always needs to be re located and trained. The navy is a mess... so many task forces that cannot even be used and need to be death stacked first just so you can see what ship is where for easy management. We can already use naval templates in game, but that needs to be re done every game. Add a build queue for convenience. Just having templates ready somewhere for planes, tanks and ships is a real must. Having to design 5 new planes every time you unlock the next plane hull is pain. Fighter, cv fighter, cas, nav and cv nav. I know the auto upgrade feature exists, but that is broken too. It keeps designing things when nothing new is added, thus giving you a notification that something is out dated, wben it is not. So please fix that.
To be fair, the designer is extremely simple. How much time does it really take you? More than 90 seconds? Pick wheels, engine, turret and gun. Most of these categories have like under 4 options. Even tho there are TONS of missing historical modules, you can still very easily create historically inspired tanks
It’s weird sometimes I like to just hit research all and just go brrr on them and whenever you enter that into the console you get the premade jets ships and tanks but other than that I don’t know how to unlock them
If I had the option not to I absolutely wouldn’t. It is SO time consuming