Hello, I am Zwirbaum, Game Designer for Hearts of Iron, and welcome to this Dev Corner about Industry. This is a follow-up to the Military Production Dev Corner since you had a lot of feedback around it. We noticed there were a lot of concerns with regards to changing the system and because of that we want to give a bit more additional information to clarify a few things about what we are working on. Everything that you will see and hear today will be subject to change, as there will be plenty of placeholder pink art, (including my wondrous and whimsical art). Content, systems, balance, and pretty much all of it, will undergo further development and will end up looking different in the end.
Instead of the usual modus operandi, I will lift our shroud of secrecy a bit, and give you a glimpse of what we have been doing so far and…what may await you in the future. The following text may not be as funny or as clever as before, but hopefully you will be able to… bear with me.
One thing we wanted to do was bring some extra depth to the industrial aspect of the game. We wanted to make the location of the industry placement matter more, as well as have a bit more of a difference between your military factories, instead of them operating as one unified ‘pool’. The question was of course how to handle that ambitious directive, and how far should it go? It became quite obvious that overhauling the entire system was not something we wanted to do. So instead I came up with, as I like to call a ‘Crazy Idea’ (a term which most of my teammates started to fear) and let me say…
ENTER THE INDUSTRIAL PARKS
(We're using France purely as an example, this means nothing; no tongue in cheek)
Industrial Parks - a new type of building that comes in two variants, Military Industrial Park, and Shipyard Industrial Park. (Non-final names are non-final).
They represent more specialized complexes of industrial production under one umbrella, which focuses on producing specific types of the equipment. Let me explain a little more on how they work.
Industrial Parks are buildings with a totally final icon version with pink stars. We are not going to talk about [REDACTED]. There is no [REDACTED].
In essence, Industrial Park synergizes with whatever you have in the local state. This may range from something that impacts how fast Industrial Park grows in size, how effective its factories are, or for example having locally sourced resources, allow to consume less of those resources in production lines provided by the Industrial Park.
This is an example of what constructing Military Industrial Park in Rhonne (just an example) state may provide you in terms of the Synergies.
In the current UX Flow, after deciding on building Industrial Park, you will be prompted to select a Corporation - as in the screenshot below I am deciding to select Morane-Saulnier - Light Aircraft Industrial Park, in order to get benefits out of the reduced Aluminium costs.
So, what can we do with the Industrial Park? Of course start producing equipment - that aligns with the profile of the Industrial Park - set by the Corporation assignment. In the example of our Morane-Saulnier Industrial Park, we can produce Light Aircraft Planes - Fighters, Carrier Fighters, CAS and Carrier CAS.
By clicking on the absolutely wonderful pink Industrial Park icon you can start production from it. This list shows all the non-obsolete valid equipment variants that you can produce by that specific Industrial Park.
Production lines from Industrial Park form their own ‘subsection’ - where you can assign only factories from said Industrial Park, to get the benefits from it.
Placeholder art for the upgrades done by yours truly.
One of the things that we have set up for the Industrial Parks is that they can select upgrades at certain levels (sizes) of the Industrial Parks. Upgrades as of now are quickly set up as placeholders, so please do not pay too much attention to whatever crazy numbers, or boring effects you may see. We will talk about upgrades, what and how they are intended to affect industrial parks, when they will be more finalized together with other things in the future, when we will be ready to reveal more details.
SO WHAT’S NEXT?
Before I will end this Dev Corner, I will want to add that what we are currently thinking about is about potentially extending the ‘synergies’ to also operate as ‘Inter Industrial Branch’ and could have impact on other parts of the ‘military/industry’ - e.g. what if Artillery Industry could impact for example Naval Industry and/or Capabilities.
In the tradition of the Dev Corners, I will ask the question - whether you would like to see that explored, or would you rather see that all of them stick to just their original intent and purpose without having this ‘Inter-branch’ outreach.
I am curious to listen and hear what you are saying.
Thanks for reading, and until next time, Farewell!
/Zwirbaum
