Idea for infantry balancing: Militaries today have a ratio for how many people they have working the logistics of the army compared to how many people are in the actual army. Why not just make it so as you equip more modules onto your infantry, that ratio increases and thus more supply per division is needed. You'd have to slap on the logistics company ASAP.
Yeah, definitely supply would be the counterweight. It's not like all that extra ammo, panzerschrecks, and molotov cocktails magically respawn after firing/throwing...
Supply stuff, "fatigue", also with flames and granades accidents aka friendly fire might be a thing, especially with overstacked divisions and frontlines..
THIS. This would also make players organically choose templates in wars in regions with less infrastructure (China) more akin to light infantry. Japan would need to balance their ability to outproduce china and have better inf equipment with the supply situation, also that would make cavalry or motorized divs even more nuanced
@@SukiVu What I wanted to say is to be able to modify the main weapon only for special divisions, for example: Weapon type A has a modification and becoming type B, weapon type B will only be for the special division, not being used by normal divisions. currently in the game you cannot modify weapons without using mods
You should see the squad designer in the ultra realistic mod; It's similar to this mod but instead of selecting what equipment your infantry is using on a per infantryman basis, you do on a squad basis, you basicaly design the squad that will make up your divisions, you can have between 6 and 12 men in the squad with each their weapon, you can choose which weapon, then you can assign different squad level equipment like radio and grenades. It also has one for support equipment where you select what exactly is in your support equipment. This means you can make cheap ones for your garisons that maximise suppression, while you can also make some that focus on defense for your infantry and some on breakthrough for your offensive or special units and some more.
The way I always looked at is: the individual soldier might be irrelevant, but considering you add battalions of them, you could do the designer based on companies. With "Rifle" Companies, Infantry Gun Companies, Mortar, Flamethrowers, Machine Guns and then specialist companies like Paramedics, Signals etc. It would eat up some of the roles that the Support Companies do though
I think it would be neat if the solution was to just remove support companies, and make their equipment part of the infantry designer. So you have to balance support vs combat effectiveness and manpower
A battlion designer where you can add companies,allowing you to decide between organic add-ons to the battlion level with more logistical support needed or keeping them simple for reduced support needs and keeping the support companies(or even support battlions)on the division level,which will be a bit slow reacting in comparison.
Agreed, overhaul to the designer for divisions would be great. I don't care what rifle or mortar they have, it's super unimportant, as long as it works. I want to know how the division get's to the fight, fights, and sustains the fight.
I thought about it, but then I would have to cut out all the additional support companies and the division designer would then lose weight, because there would be nothing left besides aa support, at support and artillery support.
6:27 I think a good way to balance this would actually be the "organization" stat. As more equipment gets added to a soldier, the maximum organization and the recovery rate drop (similar to how tanks and armor have like no organization but vanilla infantry has plenty), forcing the player to choose whether he wants to use his infantry more in a support role (low stats, high organization) or more in a direct combat role (high stats, low organization)
An interesting idea, since weight cannot be screwed and added as a stat, I agree that you can add some additional debuffs of the "organization" type, for example, flamethrowers and snipers, since more people are added to them, it becomes more difficult to organize them. I'll take note.
@@Nikminerfeed don't forget having multiple specialized roles in the same unit would mean longer training times due to cross-training EVERYONE in the unit with each other's equipment
That could be really fun if done properly. I would argue that instead of an "Infantry Equipment Designer" and hear me out on this... a "Infantry Battalion Designer" instead of making equipment that is applied to a division as a whole approach it so that you are making specific types of Infantry Battalions. Kind of like how the tank designer lets you make light tanks, and light tank SPG, TD'S, and AA. let you set specific roles for infantry battalions made for specific jobs. like having 8 standard infantry battalions with mg's supported by 4 or 5 infantry battalions designed around anti tank for a defensive division or a division of like 10 battalions with mortars and assault rifles, with loads of armor as an assault infantry division. oh, and I would also say there would need to be LOADS more stuff to unlock for said mechanic. like the engineer research for example. instead of just a flat bonus to entrenchment and attack ,if I remember right, make it so that as you progress down the Engineer research you can add the ability's to switch from lines of trenches as you entrench to being able to add pill boxes to you entrenchment line, and block houses in another, each one raising max entrenchment buy a large amount. There is a lot of potential to make a really in-depth Infantry Battalion designer instead of just designing the equipment you send the battalions.
I think it's Ultra Historical? One of the big realism mods added an Infantry Squad designer. It makes even more sense than the Equipment designer here.
That sounds awesome. I doubt there is ever an official paradox made DLC to add something like that in. The amount of equipment and techs that would need to be added in to make it historical, not to mention research on the equipment of the era, would not really be worth the time and effort for them to make. this is sadly likely to remain a community mod type deal.
What I want, the ability to save these templates for different playthroughs, so when I have enough XP and the right techs researched I can just select it from the drop-down, so I don't have to re do the same templates every game...
With a system like this, if implemented properly, it actually could be theoretically possible to implement guerilla warfare. You could make your infantry lighter with lower overall stats when compared to expensive units but they would be faster (since theyre lighter), consume less supply (since they require less eq), receive bonuses for attack and defense in rougher terrain (mountains, marshes, snow, deserts, etc), they could also receive less CAS damage (perhaps if there is a camouflage feature), and if you play to their strengths they could defeat (stat wise) more powerful units I believe this could discourage everyone from just building the same units and perhaps encourage creating different builds for different theaters of war This feature could be implemented by paradox in a DLC or expansion that includes Finland with an emphasis on the winter war since in game it would make it much more feasible for little Finland to hold its own against the Soviets
- Imagine having ski equipment for the finns that add movement speed or hill/mountain bonus. - Camo/winter equipment for cold acclimatization bonus - Simplfied weapon design, for cost vs reliability trade off
Armor should boost everything. Regardless of attacking or defending, more durable troops are more effective. It seems like RPG inspired logic of armor = defense, and that works in an RPG because defense directly represents your durability. But in hoi4 only giving defense means that troops in full body armor are more effective, but on the attack they gain no benefit for some reason.
My issue with things like designers are in the early game its hard to get enough xp for doctrines, spirits, tanks, divisions, and now infantry equipment. In the late game this isn't really a problem but if I can't give my soldiers new guns because I don't have enough xp, thats where I cross the line of this isn't fun anymore. If they add a reworK I think that something to give xp another way would be necessary. (Another thing I would love to see is division exercises giving environment training to their general depending on where you train them.)
I could see an effect from conscription law effecting a maximum soldier load "average strength" or something. volunteer army can carry more, but scraping the barrel can not carry as much. A lot more to take into consideration, but someone might like this idea
Hear me out, a division designer like the above, but with a revamp of support companies so that you create the support division and it alters your stats based on that, so for example your support engineers could just have shovels flamethrowers. That way you would be able to completely customise every element of your infantry divisions.
Hmmm... this is nice concept, but balancing is completely out of window, so better than Paradox is not what I would think. But if this would be remade properly... This could be good!
I still think this should stay a mod though. The game has enough stuff that just adds (kind of) unnecessary complexity, and it might soon start to get rather bloated. I feel like the mods should focus on improving what they already have instead of adding more clutter to hoi4.
@@42carlos why though its a mod at the end of the day and the people who make them are not getting paid so let them design it how they want plus mods that are complex are the most fun for some people too like the blackice mod
Something like this is getting used by the Ultra Historical Mod. The variety of infantry you could make. As said in the video, you could make different infantry corps with different templates, like one infantry template that could be effective against tanks, a different infantry template that is good for paratroopers. Maybe you could do defensive infantry templates that are accompanied by stormtroopers, like these that Germany used in ww1.
Thanks for the review, any critical criticism is greatly appreciated. Unfortunately, I noticed that flamethrowers without restrictions are too late and I can’t quickly fix it because there is creating a major update to the designer that changes artillery, so I leave the use of OP to your conscience. I also heard about too much armor for soldiers, in the future I will reduce the update. Bandage packs have such a low recovery rate, because when used by a company of medics, they resurrect the dead. Unfortunately, i can’t add weight, it just doesn’t allow to implement this, but I looked at the comments and collected a couple of interesting ideas to counterbalance certain equipment modules. To be honest, gun lubrication and additional ammo were added at the last moment before release, as I ran out of ideas on what to add for the infantry, but needed to add something for the latest weapons technology. If anyone here has any idea what it could be replaced with, please let me know.
maybe also add training time increases when having so many high-tech and high specialization units? like a regular rifleman battalion is easier to train than a full sapper battalion because you have to teach them basic engineering and more advanced demolition, and have a multiplier for integrating multiple specializations to a unit, for example a regular infantry battalion with Tier1-2 rifles some earlier grenades and bandages would train 1x but Tier 3 would increase it by 5 or so % and adding snipers, sappers and flamethrower units make training much more complicated by adding a flat 15% training time increase for each
Honestly it does look good, but looking at the mod, I found out about a more intricate designer which isn't its own mod, but integrated into the Overhaul Mod named Ultra Historical, in which you instead of modify a soldier's loadout, modifies an entire squad of the Squad Leader, the Vice Leader and the team members. Of course, the entire infantry equipment tree was overhauled to support Bolt Action Rifles, Improved versions, Semi-Auto Rifles. You can theoretically have an entire squad of just MG42s, I don't recall them having flamethrowers though. The balance of the designer is also there, when you have to juggle the amount of riflemen, submachine gunners, etc, since more people in the squad decreases overall effectiveness of the chain of command and such. Not to mention that there is a Heavy Equipment designer in which you can strap Mortars, AT guns, AA guns to the Infantry Battalions, so you can give them extra stats in addition to the Light Equipment you designed. It would be interesting if the mod gets reviewed, ain't a member of the mod dev, but I just found it interesting and would like to hear a review from a gamer who looks into things like these. :P
I think the balancing for this equipment should be percentage increases in supply use and production cost so if you stack modifiers like you did it would get crazy expensive and suck all the supply out of an area so you lose all those stats unless you can keep supply in a really good state which will make attacking harder
@@Nikminerfeed As best as I can tell that's massively understating what a battalion should cost, considering a Sherman cost at most like $65k while outfitting a battalion of infantry cost I estimate from what I could find online about $1.5 million, though I could not determine what percentage of that cost was equipment vs. training, recruitment, wages, and things like rations. Even assuming 90% of costs were in those, that still makes it nearly 3x more expensive.
infantry company load out could make small nations more playable but the problem becomes balancing it with majors and not making them more OP Paradox needs to focus on fixing unplayable nations like Australia
one idea to balance it out is to have terrain penalties depending on what you assign to your divisions. it would also help you divide your troops into special winter or desert troops far better than any winter clothing mod i've seen. if you make troops that specialize in crossing rivers try to cross mountains, you're gonna have trouble
You would also have to balance supply. Slower infantry eat up more supply. So you want slow, unmoving infantry for the defense lines, and fast moving infantry on attack.
I wonder if it would be worth adding modules like "cold weather gear" or "desert survival kit" or even just a generic "basic/improved/advanced uniforms" to the designer. It would cost more but allow units to operate better in extreme environments and push players to add a little variety to designs based on when and where they're expecting their units to fight.
I think the key "balancing" factors that should be considered are speed, supply usage, reliability, and production cost. The more equipment your infantry has to carry, the slower they'll go and the more supply they'll consume, and since you've got more equipment on the frontline, that means there's more stuff overall that can break, get lost, captured, expended, etc. so reducing reliability makes sense in that regard as well. Putting caps on the number of flamethrower and other modules would also make sense.
You could do: 1. Light Infantry (Good for forests, plains and hills and mountains) 2. Armored Inf (Good for Urban) 3. HE Inf (High piercing with 15%+ attack on forts)
@@hypercynic what do you like to use for your "breakthrough infantry squads"? I've had luck with just 10-width motorized with support arty. But I tried 9-3 infantry to arty and i can't make it work.
I'd suggested this on the Paradox forums quite a while back. Designing the INF BNs as well as the FA BNs would help a lot, same with the CAV though they need create a 'horse' to produce for CAV as military trained horses are something special. Changing the BN supply companies from pack animals and wagons to trucks for example should be possible. They also need to modify the rate of march for armies, no infantry march at 4km/hour 24hours a day, sleep periods and so are needed. That's why trucks and rail transport were so important.
personally i would have horse power pool (like a cross between manpower and fuel supply) rather than have a horse to produce. then have a way to increase it via building military horse ranches [or you could trade for them with other countries], also a political decision to 'conscript' civilian horses (which gives a debuff to cavalry units since the horse are not properly raised for the job, but it massively increases the horsepower pool), and of course a decision to go back to purely military raised horses.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 That would make a lot of sense as horses are raised not produced. Also, in the same line as the IN BNs and FA, would be nice overall to just design the BNs including the armored ones. I'd personally like the ability to select how many companies of how many tanks in each BN, do they have a support or transport company, do they have heavy mortars. Right now with the tank editor we're just editing a platform and not all the things around it. Adding things like tank transports to an armor bn could increase reliability, adding fuel trucks add range. Same with the infantry, FA, and so on. I guess it'd really be a MTOE editor then in addition to a platform editor but this would certainly be interesting.
This would let you make specialized infantry equipment where you could make offensive, defensive, fast, cheap ectr infantry to fill different roles by just restricting what equipment goes where. I love this
This made perfect sense to me when I found the mod, as the tech is labeled as "Infantry Equipment" with is be simplified as the gun they use, but it concept it can be abstract. What the mod accomplishes is letting you decide what the Inf. Equipment is comprised of.
In reality this is critical for an army, The standard issue to infantry is studied intensely in real life. It would be even better if we had a squad editor. So the squad that makes up the company can have various specialties as they do in real life.
More equipment could reduce ORG and add/or supply consumption? More equipment means more logistics more stuff soldiers need to keep track of and haul around etc. Also I think they need to add something like this cause a lot of smaller nations don't have the industry to support a lot of plane/tank/navy production. So this gives them more opportunity to diversify their armies capabilities. Now as a minor nation I may not be able to make a lot of tanks but I can make heavy infantry or storm troopers or something.
I think this would also be good for adding more use to being able to choose what kind of equipment each division template uses, as you could have 1 variant of infantry equipment with lots of machine guns and at weapons for defensive line-fillers and another variant with lots of offensive weapons which you only use in tank divisions.
i think the best way to counteract the inception and usage of a "max soft attack" template would be the higher your soft attack then the more supply usage goes up or make it so that on top of equipment you also have to produce ammo for the equipment.
You can have structure inside the division like footman to machine gun to sniper to grenadiers ratios for example, and general headcount, to make divisions internally different. you could for example make your division be made of 20 grenadiers per team, and nothing else and they would set your supply lines on fire (assuming explosives are big, costly, and go faster compared to standard ammo), but be superstrong manpower to firepower ratio. Soldiers should have a) weapon choice, as marksman/default/cqb, we have "long range engagement/cqb" lets double down on that, with bonuses to each b) ammo carried tradeoff, (more mags less grenades for example, trading defense for soft attack or lighter for faster movement), entrenchment tools and mines traded for big slowdown penalty (would take a while to pack their stuff) and for example mine deployment giving you instant entrenchment, but cost like 10 supply or that they are always moving only in "rail" mode, losing all org or something. Camo nets would be another big one, it could cause enemy tactic to be changed to something negative, like "ambushed while regrouping/advancing" giving very bad effects. We can have something that make unit "fast reaction force" not sure what. I guess internal policies like "fire at will or conserve ammo or hunt down officers" that would affect enemy supply usage or special stuff like killing their officers, taking experience from the unit, or even MAYBE a special force that specializes in killing generals. One last thing that comes to mind is blowing out bridges. we should get a mechanic to make or destroy one, both temporary and permanent and units could get explosives as their equipment, and they would blow up forts/bridges if they are forced out of that province by the enemy. (kinda like polish that get "sabotaged industry" focus, making all civs/mils taken by enemy needing long repairs. let's say we would have an option to give infantry x3 explosives, and they can blow up 3 things, and you as Russians could do literal scorched ground tactics. There are a lot of flavors possible here. Btw, superior firepower doctrine should increase supply usage, and by doing so, should focus as well on getting more supply to front line. Maybe adding something like dedicated supply trucks, in division composition.
maybe the balancing stat would be training time, organization and supply use? the more complex your units are the longer it takes to train them, and due to the multitudes of equipment if your units have specialized roles like snipers, sappers and flame troopers would eat up a whole lot more supplies, and the logistical headache of keeping track of these multiple roles just for a single infantry battalion would make organizing them a whole lot harder?
Specialized infantry types like Pioneers, Shock Troops, Light Infantry and Heavies would be so fucking awesome to see in the base game. So would extra land doctrine ideas like the ones seen in Black Ice.
What I like about this is that you could potentially have one set of cheap infantry equipment for your reserve divisions or garrisons, and make a separate super strong set of equipment for your elite troops. Probably gonna download the mod and give it a go in the near future.
I think there should be a system of experienced manpower pools, and maybe even a reserves manpower pool. When you delete a unit of veterans, their experience disappears into thin air. But they should instead be put into a separate pool of experienced men out of service, that you can choose to put into a new div. Also, there should be a reserve manpower pool. It will be the pool of manpower used to reinforce damaged units, bc irl you don’t just throw new guys into divisions w/o any training. So to get men from the potential conscript pool to the reserve pool you’d need to spend time training them (it could cost equipment, pp, command power, or army xp, or a mix of some of those idk) in pools of certain amounts, and then moved to the reserves pool
Modifying the types of infantry you put into formations would be super interesting. Line infantry with extra machine guns for more defense, mechanized units loaded up with extra mortars and flamers because they don't actually have to walk places with the heavy equipment so it won't slow them down. I think the balancing factor has to be production capacity VS losses. Plus move speed, fuel consumption, logistics weight. You can't have better infantry equipment be a no-brainer for every type of unit, and equipment choices that just make more or less sense for the challenges you face. Maybe you have machine guns divided up by type, and even the oldest junk is really good for defending a fort. So your interwar heavy MGs go to your garrisons. But the new MGs are not just flat better, they have different capabilities. They slow you down less, they have Breakthrough added on, they up your Soft Attack. And then you choose between light and heavy configurations for your new MG depending on whether you want to attack or defend with the unit. Maybe Heavy configurations even get a little bit of AA capability, so your insane number of .50cals does something for you.
What needs to be done is for the stats to have more negatives to carve out the niches the infantry will fill. Also for the ability to designate what infantry gets what package. It would help create new viable templates like a large 40 width armed with decent gear that would be equivalent to a 10 width Special forces with the top notch gear. Different fronts will call for different setups for your overall armies
Remember HOI3, where there were different tech trees for generic infantry, cavalry, mechanized, all different special forces etc? This is going in the same direction :D
Currently use this mod as Soviet. I'm making cheaper gun with high defence for infantry and more expensive gun for the breakthrough division. Work so well the German couldn't go pass Poland
It could be used for infantry specialization. For example, A bulky infantry equipment couldn't be used for paratroopers. Or you could use, as in HoI3, garrison divisions with good defensive stats but slow movement. Or Shock infantry that have bonuses against fortified positions and/or cities, at the cost of a greater cost in equipment (brown bar).
I think supply use could be a vital one with this mod, you also could add camopatterns, or even uniforms in general (e.g. adding civilian/no uniforms would lead to a coordination debuff) for extra breakthrough for example but increasing the production cost for the infantry equipment significantly aswell. It would be even more realistic to have a weak but low supply use unit by only giving your infantry some rifles, its easy to just carry some ammo boxes with rifle cartridges around but its a whole new deal when you think about extra ammo for machineguns, mortars, grenades n stuff, maybe even extra pioneer stuff like anti tank or personell mines, barbed wire etc. it would be insane if you could modify your engineer corps aswell :D Maybe even some kind of mechanized pioneer/engineer(im german guys) corps with an extra desigend engineer tank :D (Just google Bergepanzer if you have no idea what Im talking about), therefore reducing losses in mechanized equipment and tanks :D So many oppurtunities.....
Adding a lot of different modules for terrain types would be good or how equipment affects your terrain capabilities. Flamers are great at bunker busting or jungle, but in hills or plains, maybe they should give a debuff or lower the divisions' speed in mountains and hills because of the extra weight Just some thoughts, great video showcase
Was thinking that too, terrain modifiers definitely should be used more. Just one idea I can think of is the ability to make light infantry equipment in a more complex way than just choosing the protection level but actually designing them with less support and possibly some special equipment, this would then give them stat buffs in forest and hills. You could also have certain requirements/addons for each type of special forces like para has to have parachutes in the design and cant go above a certain weight or some other stat which reflects how they are light infantry
I wanted to, but the weapon designer does not allow this, in fact, I can make changes to the basic characteristics described on the side, but it is impossible to make them for a certain area, only for the entire army, which is logical.
way i see it a specific infantry equipment should create a specific type of battalion in the division designer, as with planes and tanks adding a certain weapon in slot 1 makes it a certain type (fighter, cas, etc) putting a certain weapon in infantry makes it a specific unit which can be added in the division designer, so anti tanks, light infantry etc all become new units and you have to build a specific weapon variant to equip that specialized unit
Special Forces and infantry revamp would fit well with Scandinavia trees. The Finns were using lots of snipers and ski infantry and much of the war in Norway was amphibious, with Britain launching the infamous amphibious heavy water plant raid.
It looked like they did a bit of the balancing you were talking about. Molotovs are grenades, the cap may be 2 slots of grenades, not 2 molotovs. Also, the flamers aren't giving the guys in the battalion flamers, they are adding flamer companies to each battalion, hence the +50 manpower. The manpower and fuel uses I'm sure add up, especially for non-majors and countries that don't have the resources to produce more than infantry and support equipment.
In the real world changing your rifle calibre mid war is a big issue. Its why the British stuck with .303 for so long. They were going to change it prior to WWI, even had a rifle designed and ready to go, the Pattern 14, then the Great War happened. Issue with rifle ammunition is during a war you kind of need an absolute mountain of the stuff. So the Army went whelp, no way can we change now we can barely manage to make enough .303... So we kept it... In between the wars the Army essentially got whatever the Government could find behind the back of the sofa for funding. So by the time WWII came around we were still using .303, and it was too late to change... So yeah, changing your rifle ammo is actually a pretty big deal....
In real life most Chinese divisions in WW2 doesn't have battalion-strength MG and mortar support so that's pretty realistic. If implemented, we could see line divisions armed with M&M (muskets and machettes) to minimize cost, while breakthrough divisions have full body armor like those seen in John Wick series in PvP games lol.
I like this because you can make different equipment types for different infantries: carbines/swords for Cavalry, Parachutes and carbines for paratroopers, bayonets, rockets for AT infantry, amphibious equipment for marine divs, mountaineer equipment, etc. I feel like it's better than the way current special forces work, cuz they just use extra inf/supp equipment. This is so cool
What if there were shotguns that would improve your infantry in forts and urban? If this was actually added, I want Paradox to make the minmax setup not much stronger then unoptimized ones. Tanks and the navy are optional and you don't really need to worry too much about AA, but everyone uses infantry. If you're able to minmax your infantry, small differences can lead to huge results. Poor AI, with their unoptimized deisgner loadouts. Actually, what if there was a training "designer". Kind of like a special forces rework I suppose.
I would change the armor with a uniform thing. Have different uniform types like desert and winter uniforms would reduce attrition in weather, camo reduces spotting or something. Better than straight up armor imo
This would make that ability to select equipment for divions more important. You could have some dedicated equipment thats way stronger for special forces.
honestly, should make petition for this to be added to the game, probably changed, but deadass i think people would .. probably want this in the game.. id vote for it
Yeah I was thinking of how I would do this kinda thing and my idea was to have more of a focus on the various weapons on the battalion where you have the basic rifle or assault rifle at high tech but can then add SMGs, LMGs, HMGs, mortars, infantry guns, and then like 3 slots dedicated to the uniform and headgear, so for example one slot where you add hot and cold clothing, one where you can add a camo pattern and the headgear one where you choose if they use say a soft hat or a helmet, using a cap might give you -1 steel required but reduce the stats a little and act as a sort of reverse hospital where you take more casualties. The current system is good I think but I would like more of a broader scale than bandages and shovels
I think instead of designing the equipment, you should be able to design the infantry batallion. Similarly you would need to add a couple more tecs to add more equipment options and also convert some flat bonuses tecs to actual modules/equipment. Feel like it would be better and mor alligned to what Paradox has been doing. Also you can make the special forces fit in as a special equipment like tanks do. To balance this, the HP, base org and training time can be modified as you add more stuff. So you could have a really well equiped, highly skilled Infantry but what is the use if it takes forever to get deployed and your production cant pupm them fast enough to fill the Ost front or they are very good at attacking but god help you if someone clicks on them as they have god soft attack but low org and hp This way tou can have you expensive assault troops with heavy attack and breakthrough for offensive ops. The engineers with high soft attack or a kind of garrisom force with high entrenchment and HP.
In the ULTRA Historical mod, they've also implemented an infantry designer, but one that designs the entire structure of infantry battalions. How many soldiers per squad exactly, what weapon is *each man* carrying (with a whole tech tree of various small arms and machineguns to research for them), how many grenades, radios, etc. There is additionally a Heavy Weapons equipment type used by infantry where you can add battalion-level and regimental-level heavy weapons too, like field guns and mortars, sapper companies, sniper teams, etc. This designer is also better balanced, so you can't make ridiculous OP troops.
they could make something like the number of lightly equipped soldiers (normal riflemen) decreases equipment loss faster but less reliable the number of heavily equipped soldiers (mortar men,heavy machine gunners,special forces ect) increases equipment loss slower but more reliable
Make this for only special forces and it instantly becomes a lot more balanced. The special forces limit as it stands is ridiculously small. This makes the obscenely small special forces cap actually balanced
I think the equipment and special forces revamp could fit in perfectly with the finnisch focus tree. Just imagine doing finnish special forces units that use skis and Molotows to counter soviet tanks in the winter and continuation war. Also this could maybe be balanced with an ammo system like some mods have them where you would need to assign some military factories to ammo production and because of that you shouldn´t be able to put to much stuff in your infantry equipment or else you would get ammo and logistic problems.
They could make it that the more modules, the more logistics they consume Or something like flamer actually reduce organization, due to how specialized a flamer decision has to be, and how volatile they are if shot The designer also works for making EXTREMELY cheap weapons for garrisons or compliance units They could add military police armament for more compliance
You could put the really good inf equipment under the same research as the marines and paratroopers, and connect the amount to the sp forces modifier research.
8:32 Skiies, climbing equipment, helmets etc. Heavier troops should get terrain penalties and perhaps increased hardness, possibly increased supply consumption etc. You can do a lot to balance this all out. Bikes, motorbikes, cammels, skiies, rope and ice climbing pick... Perhaps some way of influencing staying power? So troops equiped with lower calibre weapons have ammunition that weights less/lasts longer pr weight unit but may be possible to shoot faster, larger calibre does more damage, has more range, etc...
So now we can make an infantry template with only a handheld shovel and recreate the current equipment of the Russian groundtroops. Got to love that shovel!
I played this with a china run, it was pretty good I had a dirt cheap shity inf equip which i would just use to make sure my militar inf had something Then my def equip which was quite minimalist but could get the job done And finally my breakthrough equip which was for my shock troops motorised and tank and i went all out for it It felt like i had an inventive to minmax my production que. good fun
I wonder if they added different infantry kits like some mods do, if that would balance it some more. For instance, infantry kit 36 could get 1 or 2 slots for added equipment, infantry kit 40 gets more slots etc. ?
foot infantry should have very limited weight and motorized and mechanized should give greater weight capacity as those carry the MGs, mortars, and spare ammo. Vehicles help the troops have the right options to defeat more enemies.
I suppose it would make most sense if you had to equip them differently for different scenarios: Defense against infantry? Machine guns, snipers etc. Defense against armor? Hand-held rocket launchers etc? Also, if you have anti-tank artillery, then it would make sense to give infantry rangefinders, radios etc. so that they can spot targets for the artillery, increasing its effectiveness. Might make them more useful than firing a rifle at a tank, while still allowing them to stay entrenched/camouflaged etc. Offensive infantry? Hand grenades (including smoke grenades, flashbangs), flame throwers, shotguns, SMGs? Offensive anti-tank infantry? Armor-piercing grenades, molotovs? Short-range weapons like hand grenades and flame throwers should be less effective in defense, since if you know the enemy is entrenched and armed with mostly short-range weapons, you just stay out of their range and shoot them with long range weapons. They'll have to either shoot back at long range (meaning their short-range weapons are useless), or move out of cover to close the distance. Theoretically, you'd want each army to have both, since a defensive army may have to defend at close range too, and an offensive one may want to siege an entrenched position from afar, but I'm just saying all-flamethrowers and hand grenades should not be a good defensive army, unless they have some way to force the enemy to engage at close range. Also, some weapons should have terrain-specific modifiers. Some weapons excel in urban combat and fort-assaults, others in forests, while yet others in open field battle.
Each build could be impacted by the total supply required balance it. And maybe could be good for a lighter infantry build for low supply areas to encourage other designs
I'd like to see some designers for actual primary weapons, and then something like this. So you designate the caliber of the primary infantry weapon, the magazine type, the rate of fire, etc. with various balance choices between logistical simplicity, ease of manufacturing, statistical quality, etc. You could also design specific infantry sections, so you could have a typical rifle platoon, then a different design for a rifle/mortar platoon, a scouting platoon, an infantry anti-tank platoon, and so forth. As your technological capabilities become greater, you might create 'advanced' units which are given better weapons, or you might prioritize an easy-to-produce weapon for your army and a really high-quality weapon for your special forces. You might try to give your troops all assault rifles by 1945, but remember that those might be difficult to produce. Of course, there are in real life some design ideas that really are just better. Stamped receivers are easier to make than milled receivers, and I don't know if milled weaponry actually would have advantages over stamped ones. But, then, the AK-47 used a stamped receiver and I assume this is because of ease of manufacture. So at least in theory, it would change the balance totally. I mean, each nation might have its own unique set of weaponry, with its own design choices and everything. A Germany player could eschew bolt action rifles for a magazine-fed semi-automatic battle rifle, the USA might choose to outfit everyone with an M1 Carbine, or whatever. It's really granular, when you think about it. But, then, it's a really fucking cool idea from my opinion.
You can select the guns but they are all rifles? One thing that kind of bothers me is submachine guns and rifles are treated the same in standard infantry equipment when they play very different roles historically. I'd like to see things like SMGs, shotguns and flamethrowers give better bonuses in cities, forests and jungles then rifles do better in open plains and desert, then maybe hills and mountains to even out. Maybe different grenade types you can swap molotovs out with, with molotovs being cheaper but a high soft attack and have the rocket launchers fill a similar spot as mortars and heavy machine guns? I dunno, just spit balling here. I really like this idea.
Realistically, as you add shit to a soldier's kit that generally has a few downsides. The first is weight. A certain amount of weight, say thirty pounds, has no significant impact on your mobility (speed, agility, etc). Up to about sixty pounds, the impact on mobility is minimal but there. Generally, it can be overcome simply by training/regularly marching in full kit. You'll build up the endurance and familiarity to where it's a non issue- though you will still need a higher caloric intake to offset the increased muscle mass and expended effort. Once you push past sixty, you very quickly start running into mobility and endurance issues. Generally a hundred and forty pounds the max that a soldier can reasonably be expected to deal with, and even then you're relying heavily on having access to motorized transport to help alleviate the issues, some serious physical training, and intense caloric requirements. But you're still going to see performance issues. For someone who is going to be expected to regularly go on long-marches without the aid of motorized transport (such as an infantryman in ww2), you'd want to consider eighty pounds as your maximum. Any more than that and your ability to make consistent progress is going to be severely hampered. The second downside is complexity. More shit means more shit to deal with and more shit to break and need replacement. Some things, which are either used regularly or are otherwise fairly intuitive- like say a shovel, isn't going to contribute much to that factor. WW2 nightvision goggles, being an unfamiliar technology at the time, as well as fairly delicate and expensive, is going to take a decent chunk of extra training, impact your logistics trail quite heavily, and just generally be difficult to use and deal with without a high degree of familiarity and a few quality-of-life improvements (most of which a soldier would have to do themselves in-situ, honestly). All this stuff is going to be either stuffed in your pack where it gets in the way of finding something you need, strapped to you which needs some getting used to and may be difficult to get at in a pinch (because no velcro at this time), or worst-case scenario, dangling off of you and either tangling together or getting caught on every goddamn thing that gets within a foot of your person. So overall, I would think you'd want two stats, complexity and weight. Weight is divided into two soft break points. Below the first are a handful of benefits like breakthrough, speed, and terrain movement bonuses, but not much. Pass the first and you begin to see increases in training time and slight increases in supply use. Pass the second and those penalties are magnified harshly, plus you start to lose breakthrough (because it's harder to sustain an offensive when you're loaded down with crap), org, speed, and face movement penalties in various terrain types. Complexity also has two breakpoints. Up the the first there are no penalties. After it, there are penalties, but they are dependent on division experience level, with a max level division suffering none from complexity level just under the second breakpoint. Penalties after the second cannot be mitigated and get worse at a non-linear scale. The penalties on both breakpoints are to org, breakthrough, defense, training time, supply usage, and speed. I would also suggest some flat penalties to some equipment. For example, a flat supply usage increase for night-vision goggles and increase in training time. I would also suggest some equipment that would reduce complexity/weight level (It isn't necessarily about the total amount of weight you are carrying, it's about how much and how long. Similarly, it's not always about how much shit you have to manage, as long as your kit comes with ways of easily managing it, and the thing isn't too intrusive or delicate) with high army exp costs.
Now my man can fight with the shovel alone like real man should
*Happy gasmask noises*
*Happy soviet noises*
Modern Russian soldiers cry
*Krieg Maniatic Laugh*
laughs in krieg
Idea for infantry balancing:
Militaries today have a ratio for how many people they have working the logistics of the army compared to how many people are in the actual army.
Why not just make it so as you equip more modules onto your infantry, that ratio increases and thus more supply per division is needed. You'd have to slap on the logistics company ASAP.
Yeah, definitely supply would be the counterweight. It's not like all that extra ammo, panzerschrecks, and molotov cocktails magically respawn after firing/throwing...
@@KennethSlavaAdamson no, they are delivered by train from your national stock pile.
The NSB update released 1 year ago bruv
Supply stuff, "fatigue", also with flames and granades accidents aka friendly fire might be a thing, especially with overstacked divisions and frontlines..
THIS. This would also make players organically choose templates in wars in regions with less infrastructure (China) more akin to light infantry. Japan would need to balance their ability to outproduce china and have better inf equipment with the supply situation, also that would make cavalry or motorized divs even more nuanced
tooth to tail ratio would be great as it could bog down the entire front if handled incorrectly
Having an entire army of nothing but flamethrower troops would be fire
That would be lit
wanna turn up the heat?
LITerally
It would be quite hot
You can give a man fire and keep him warm for a day. But you can light a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
It would be cool if you could make weapons only for elite units separate from the weapons that go to normal divisions
You can select what equip to use in template screen
As someone has suggested below, you can actually do this already.
You can do that with this mod.
Just change the weapon tag, make it so your elite division gets the equiqment with that tag and boom.
@@SukiVu What I wanted to say is to be able to modify the main weapon only for special divisions, for example: Weapon type A has a modification and becoming type B, weapon type B will only be for the special division, not being used by normal divisions. currently in the game you cannot modify weapons without using mods
@@jogado2713 by special divisions you mean like paratroopers and marines?
You should see the squad designer in the ultra realistic mod; It's similar to this mod but instead of selecting what equipment your infantry is using on a per infantryman basis, you do on a squad basis, you basicaly design the squad that will make up your divisions, you can have between 6 and 12 men in the squad with each their weapon, you can choose which weapon, then you can assign different squad level equipment like radio and grenades. It also has one for support equipment where you select what exactly is in your support equipment. This means you can make cheap ones for your garisons that maximise suppression, while you can also make some that focus on defense for your infantry and some on breakthrough for your offensive or special units and some more.
Sounds a lot better tbh. Is this a hoi4 mod?
@@correctionguy7632 Yes it is!
What is the name of this mod? Is it just “Ultra realistic mod”?
@@jakefrasrr7130 Yep!
@@jakefrasrr7130Ultra Historical actually!
This mod is good but I think the offensive armament should give an increase of attack, because defence also gives breakthrough
You know this mod name ?
@@mrwill5241 Infantry Equipment Designer
I think it's armor that gives breakthrough, not defense.
@@pedrofelipefreitas2666 no
@@terraxy9496thanks.
The way I always looked at is: the individual soldier might be irrelevant, but considering you add battalions of them, you could do the designer based on companies. With "Rifle" Companies, Infantry Gun Companies, Mortar, Flamethrowers, Machine Guns and then specialist companies like Paramedics, Signals etc. It would eat up some of the roles that the Support Companies do though
Honestly, the support companies have too few slots and gameplay resembles Warhammer 40K than WW2. :P
I think it would be neat if the solution was to just remove support companies, and make their equipment part of the infantry designer. So you have to balance support vs combat effectiveness and manpower
A battlion designer where you can add companies,allowing you to decide between organic add-ons to the battlion level with more logistical support needed or keeping them simple for reduced support needs and keeping the support companies(or even support battlions)on the division level,which will be a bit slow reacting in comparison.
Agreed, overhaul to the designer for divisions would be great. I don't care what rifle or mortar they have, it's super unimportant, as long as it works. I want to know how the division get's to the fight, fights, and sustains the fight.
I thought about it, but then I would have to cut out all the additional support companies and the division designer would then lose weight, because there would be nothing left besides aa support, at support and artillery support.
6:27 I think a good way to balance this would actually be the "organization" stat. As more equipment gets added to a soldier, the maximum organization and the recovery rate drop (similar to how tanks and armor have like no organization but vanilla infantry has plenty), forcing the player to choose whether he wants to use his infantry more in a support role (low stats, high organization) or more in a direct combat role (high stats, low organization)
You also should lose organization faster because walking with 50kg gear make you tired faster than walking with 10kg gear...
An interesting idea, since weight cannot be screwed and added as a stat, I agree that you can add some additional debuffs of the "organization" type, for example, flamethrowers and snipers, since more people are added to them, it becomes more difficult to organize them. I'll take note.
Makes sense as light infantry is pretty good at holding lines like for example in bakhmut.
this or just making the production cost much higher
@@Nikminerfeed don't forget having multiple specialized roles in the same unit would mean longer training times due to cross-training EVERYONE in the unit with each other's equipment
That could be really fun if done properly. I would argue that instead of an "Infantry Equipment Designer" and hear me out on this... a "Infantry Battalion Designer" instead of making equipment that is applied to a division as a whole approach it so that you are making specific types of Infantry Battalions. Kind of like how the tank designer lets you make light tanks, and light tank SPG, TD'S, and AA. let you set specific roles for infantry battalions made for specific jobs. like having 8 standard infantry battalions with mg's supported by 4 or 5 infantry battalions designed around anti tank for a defensive division or a division of like 10 battalions with mortars and assault rifles, with loads of armor as an assault infantry division. oh, and I would also say there would need to be LOADS more stuff to unlock for said mechanic. like the engineer research for example. instead of just a flat bonus to entrenchment and attack ,if I remember right, make it so that as you progress down the Engineer research you can add the ability's to switch from lines of trenches as you entrench to being able to add pill boxes to you entrenchment line, and block houses in another, each one raising max entrenchment buy a large amount. There is a lot of potential to make a really in-depth Infantry Battalion designer instead of just designing the equipment you send the battalions.
I think it's Ultra Historical? One of the big realism mods added an Infantry Squad designer. It makes even more sense than the Equipment designer here.
That sounds awesome. I doubt there is ever an official paradox made DLC to add something like that in. The amount of equipment and techs that would need to be added in to make it historical, not to mention research on the equipment of the era, would not really be worth the time and effort for them to make. this is sadly likely to remain a community mod type deal.
@@atomicLord97 Yeah, definitely. That's why you always tell the modders thank you for their awesome work.
Modders dont get enough credit in my opinion. a fair bit of mods are of higher quality than they original vanilla game.
What I want, the ability to save these templates for different playthroughs, so when I have enough XP and the right techs researched I can just select it from the drop-down, so I don't have to re do the same templates every game...
If it were possible, I would add to the mod
This looks awesome. Heavy defence inf, fast high breakthrough inf to support tank, mele inf in armour for lols. Very into this
With a system like this, if implemented properly, it actually could be theoretically possible to implement guerilla warfare. You could make your infantry lighter with lower overall stats when compared to expensive units but they would be faster (since theyre lighter), consume less supply (since they require less eq), receive bonuses for attack and defense in rougher terrain (mountains, marshes, snow, deserts, etc), they could also receive less CAS damage (perhaps if there is a camouflage feature), and if you play to their strengths they could defeat (stat wise) more powerful units
I believe this could discourage everyone from just building the same units and perhaps encourage creating different builds for different theaters of war
This feature could be implemented by paradox in a DLC or expansion that includes Finland with an emphasis on the winter war since in game it would make it much more feasible for little Finland to hold its own against the Soviets
- Imagine having ski equipment for the finns that add movement speed or hill/mountain bonus.
- Camo/winter equipment for cold acclimatization bonus
- Simplfied weapon design, for cost vs reliability trade off
Armor should boost everything. Regardless of attacking or defending, more durable troops are more effective. It seems like RPG inspired logic of armor = defense, and that works in an RPG because defense directly represents your durability. But in hoi4 only giving defense means that troops in full body armor are more effective, but on the attack they gain no benefit for some reason.
My issue with things like designers are in the early game its hard to get enough xp for doctrines, spirits, tanks, divisions, and now infantry equipment. In the late game this isn't really a problem but if I can't give my soldiers new guns because I don't have enough xp, thats where I cross the line of this isn't fun anymore. If they add a reworK I think that something to give xp another way would be necessary. (Another thing I would love to see is division exercises giving environment training to their general depending on where you train them.)
sure you can get one early, but with all the stuff combined thats easily gonna be close to 500xp for what youd want pre war depending on your strategy
The Sapper stuff should give Hardness, not armor. It says in the description of it that it's meant to block shrapnel. That's what hardness reresents
I could see an effect from conscription law effecting a maximum soldier load "average strength" or something. volunteer army can carry more, but scraping the barrel can not carry as much. A lot more to take into consideration, but someone might like this idea
Hear me out, a division designer like the above, but with a revamp of support companies so that you create the support division and it alters your stats based on that, so for example your support engineers could just have shovels flamethrowers. That way you would be able to completely customise every element of your infantry divisions.
The mod developer actually has done a fantastic job with implementing this, better than paradox could ever have
Hmmm... this is nice concept, but balancing is completely out of window, so better than Paradox is not what I would think. But if this would be remade properly... This could be good!
Is this comment a joke or something? 🤣
@@Coecoo waiting for that modder made engine and game...
I still think this should stay a mod though. The game has enough stuff that just adds (kind of) unnecessary complexity, and it might soon start to get rather bloated.
I feel like the mods should focus on improving what they already have instead of adding more clutter to hoi4.
@@42carlos why though its a mod at the end of the day and the people who make them are not getting paid so let them design it how they want plus mods that are complex are the most fun for some people too like the blackice mod
Something like this is getting used by the Ultra Historical Mod.
The variety of infantry you could make. As said in the video, you could make different infantry corps with different templates, like one infantry template that could be effective against tanks, a different infantry template that is good for paratroopers. Maybe you could do defensive infantry templates that are accompanied by stormtroopers, like these that Germany used in ww1.
Thanks for the review, any critical criticism is greatly appreciated. Unfortunately, I noticed that flamethrowers without restrictions are too late and I can’t quickly fix it because there is creating a major update to the designer that changes artillery, so I leave the use of OP to your conscience. I also heard about too much armor for soldiers, in the future I will reduce the update. Bandage packs have such a low recovery rate, because when used by a company of medics, they resurrect the dead. Unfortunately, i can’t add weight, it just doesn’t allow to implement this, but I looked at the comments and collected a couple of interesting ideas to counterbalance certain equipment modules. To be honest, gun lubrication and additional ammo were added at the last moment before release, as I ran out of ideas on what to add for the infantry, but needed to add something for the latest weapons technology. If anyone here has any idea what it could be replaced with, please let me know.
Congratulation, my friend. It’s your time!
maybe also add training time increases when having so many high-tech and high specialization units? like a regular rifleman battalion is easier to train than a full sapper battalion because you have to teach them basic engineering and more advanced demolition, and have a multiplier for integrating multiple specializations to a unit,
for example a regular infantry battalion with Tier1-2 rifles some earlier grenades and bandages would train 1x but Tier 3 would increase it by 5 or so % and adding snipers, sappers and flamethrower units make training much more complicated by adding a flat 15% training time increase for each
Ccan I Dual Scimtars or Dual Katana? Can I have motorcycles and sidecars??
What is the title of your mod?
What is the actual name of your MOD the description doesn't have it and it doesn't appear on search
Honestly it does look good, but looking at the mod, I found out about a more intricate designer which isn't its own mod, but integrated into the Overhaul Mod named Ultra Historical, in which you instead of modify a soldier's loadout, modifies an entire squad of the Squad Leader, the Vice Leader and the team members.
Of course, the entire infantry equipment tree was overhauled to support Bolt Action Rifles, Improved versions, Semi-Auto Rifles. You can theoretically have an entire squad of just MG42s, I don't recall them having flamethrowers though. The balance of the designer is also there, when you have to juggle the amount of riflemen, submachine gunners, etc, since more people in the squad decreases overall effectiveness of the chain of command and such.
Not to mention that there is a Heavy Equipment designer in which you can strap Mortars, AT guns, AA guns to the Infantry Battalions, so you can give them extra stats in addition to the Light Equipment you designed.
It would be interesting if the mod gets reviewed, ain't a member of the mod dev, but I just found it interesting and would like to hear a review from a gamer who looks into things like these. :P
I think the balancing for this equipment should be percentage increases in supply use and production cost so if you stack modifiers like you did it would get crazy expensive and suck all the supply out of an area so you lose all those stats unless you can keep supply in a really good state which will make attacking harder
So it was, now I underestimated the cost of equipment, since equipment for one battalion cost as much as a whole tank.
@@Nikminerfeed As best as I can tell that's massively understating what a battalion should cost, considering a Sherman cost at most like $65k while outfitting a battalion of infantry cost I estimate from what I could find online about $1.5 million, though I could not determine what percentage of that cost was equipment vs. training, recruitment, wages, and things like rations. Even assuming 90% of costs were in those, that still makes it nearly 3x more expensive.
infantry company load out
could make small nations more playable but the problem becomes balancing it with majors and not making them more OP
Paradox needs to focus on fixing unplayable nations
like Australia
Armored train car design, train design, fortress/ bunker design, convoy design and infantry design all would be so cool to see
one idea to balance it out is to have terrain penalties depending on what you assign to your divisions. it would also help you divide your troops into special winter or desert troops far better than any winter clothing mod i've seen.
if you make troops that specialize in crossing rivers try to cross mountains, you're gonna have trouble
You would also have to balance supply. Slower infantry eat up more supply. So you want slow, unmoving infantry for the defense lines, and fast moving infantry on attack.
I wonder if it would be worth adding modules like "cold weather gear" or "desert survival kit" or even just a generic "basic/improved/advanced uniforms" to the designer. It would cost more but allow units to operate better in extreme environments and push players to add a little variety to designs based on when and where they're expecting their units to fight.
I think the key "balancing" factors that should be considered are speed, supply usage, reliability, and production cost. The more equipment your infantry has to carry, the slower they'll go and the more supply they'll consume, and since you've got more equipment on the frontline, that means there's more stuff overall that can break, get lost, captured, expended, etc. so reducing reliability makes sense in that regard as well.
Putting caps on the number of flamethrower and other modules would also make sense.
You could do:
1. Light Infantry (Good for forests, plains and hills and mountains)
2. Armored Inf (Good for Urban)
3. HE Inf (High piercing with 15%+ attack on forts)
For under developed nations you could use primitive weapons too. Make the gap of Inf tech even larger.
I think hoi4 really needs more types of infantry, arty and mobile units kinda like in total war or black ice.
@@hypercynic what do you like to use for your "breakthrough infantry squads"? I've had luck with just 10-width motorized with support arty. But I tried 9-3 infantry to arty and i can't make it work.
I'd suggested this on the Paradox forums quite a while back. Designing the INF BNs as well as the FA BNs would help a lot, same with the CAV though they need create a 'horse' to produce for CAV as military trained horses are something special. Changing the BN supply companies from pack animals and wagons to trucks for example should be possible. They also need to modify the rate of march for armies, no infantry march at 4km/hour 24hours a day, sleep periods and so are needed. That's why trucks and rail transport were so important.
personally i would have horse power pool (like a cross between manpower and fuel supply) rather than have a horse to produce. then have a way to increase it via building military horse ranches [or you could trade for them with other countries], also a political decision to 'conscript' civilian horses (which gives a debuff to cavalry units since the horse are not properly raised for the job, but it massively increases the horsepower pool), and of course a decision to go back to purely military raised horses.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 That would make a lot of sense as horses are raised not produced. Also, in the same line as the IN BNs and FA, would be nice overall to just design the BNs including the armored ones. I'd personally like the ability to select how many companies of how many tanks in each BN, do they have a support or transport company, do they have heavy mortars. Right now with the tank editor we're just editing a platform and not all the things around it. Adding things like tank transports to an armor bn could increase reliability, adding fuel trucks add range. Same with the infantry, FA, and so on. I guess it'd really be a MTOE editor then in addition to a platform editor but this would certainly be interesting.
This would let you make specialized infantry equipment where you could make offensive, defensive, fast, cheap ectr infantry to fill different roles by just restricting what equipment goes where. I love this
This made perfect sense to me when I found the mod, as the tech is labeled as "Infantry Equipment" with is be simplified as the gun they use, but it concept it can be abstract.
What the mod accomplishes is letting you decide what the Inf. Equipment is comprised of.
What is the mod called?
In reality this is critical for an army, The standard issue to infantry is studied intensely in real life. It would be even better if we had a squad editor. So the squad that makes up the company can have various specialties as they do in real life.
More equipment could reduce ORG and add/or supply consumption? More equipment means more logistics more stuff soldiers need to keep track of and haul around etc. Also I think they need to add something like this cause a lot of smaller nations don't have the industry to support a lot of plane/tank/navy production. So this gives them more opportunity to diversify their armies capabilities. Now as a minor nation I may not be able to make a lot of tanks but I can make heavy infantry or storm troopers or something.
Make a mod that you can modify weapons. Kinda attachment, extended mag, scope, suppressor, etc
another mod thats insane adds the ability to make you platoon make up, so you could have 30 MG 42s if you wanted
Oh, os that a thing? I wished for something like that from the start
“Grease” or clp is pretty useful and helps lubricate our weapons we use and can hell reduce the risk of a malfunction.
I think this would also be good for adding more use to being able to choose what kind of equipment each division template uses, as you could have 1 variant of infantry equipment with lots of machine guns and at weapons for defensive line-fillers and another variant with lots of offensive weapons which you only use in tank divisions.
i think the best way to counteract the inception and usage of a "max soft attack" template would be the higher your soft attack then the more supply usage goes up or make it so that on top of equipment you also have to produce ammo for the equipment.
You can have structure inside the division like footman to machine gun to sniper to grenadiers ratios for example, and general headcount, to make divisions internally different.
you could for example make your division be made of 20 grenadiers per team, and nothing else and they would set your supply lines on fire (assuming explosives are big, costly, and go faster compared to standard ammo), but be superstrong manpower to firepower ratio.
Soldiers should have a) weapon choice, as marksman/default/cqb, we have "long range engagement/cqb" lets double down on that, with bonuses to each b) ammo carried tradeoff, (more mags less grenades for example, trading defense for soft attack or lighter for faster movement),
entrenchment tools and mines traded for big slowdown penalty (would take a while to pack their stuff) and for example mine deployment giving you instant entrenchment, but cost like 10 supply or that they are always moving only in "rail" mode, losing all org or something. Camo nets would be another big one, it could cause enemy tactic to be changed to something negative, like "ambushed while regrouping/advancing" giving very bad effects.
We can have something that make unit "fast reaction force" not sure what.
I guess internal policies like "fire at will or conserve ammo or hunt down officers" that would affect enemy supply usage or special stuff like killing their officers, taking experience from the unit, or even MAYBE a special force that specializes in killing generals.
One last thing that comes to mind is blowing out bridges.
we should get a mechanic to make or destroy one, both temporary and permanent and units could get explosives as their equipment, and they would blow up forts/bridges if they are forced out of that province by the enemy. (kinda like polish that get "sabotaged industry" focus, making all civs/mils taken by enemy needing long repairs.
let's say we would have an option to give infantry x3 explosives, and they can blow up 3 things, and you as Russians could do literal scorched ground tactics.
There are a lot of flavors possible here.
Btw, superior firepower doctrine should increase supply usage, and by doing so, should focus as well on getting more supply to front line. Maybe adding something like dedicated supply trucks, in division composition.
maybe the balancing stat would be training time, organization and supply use? the more complex your units are the longer it takes to train them, and due to the multitudes of equipment if your units have specialized roles like snipers, sappers and flame troopers would eat up a whole lot more supplies, and the logistical headache of keeping track of these multiple roles just for a single infantry battalion would make organizing them a whole lot harder?
Specialized infantry types like Pioneers, Shock Troops, Light Infantry and Heavies would be so fucking awesome to see in the base game. So would extra land doctrine ideas like the ones seen in Black Ice.
What I like about this is that you could potentially have one set of cheap infantry equipment for your reserve divisions or garrisons, and make a separate super strong set of equipment for your elite troops. Probably gonna download the mod and give it a go in the near future.
I think there should be a system of experienced manpower pools, and maybe even a reserves manpower pool. When you delete a unit of veterans, their experience disappears into thin air. But they should instead be put into a separate pool of experienced men out of service, that you can choose to put into a new div. Also, there should be a reserve manpower pool. It will be the pool of manpower used to reinforce damaged units, bc irl you don’t just throw new guys into divisions w/o any training. So to get men from the potential conscript pool to the reserve pool you’d need to spend time training them (it could cost equipment, pp, command power, or army xp, or a mix of some of those idk) in pools of certain amounts, and then moved to the reserves pool
Modifying the types of infantry you put into formations would be super interesting.
Line infantry with extra machine guns for more defense, mechanized units loaded up with extra mortars and flamers because they don't actually have to walk places with the heavy equipment so it won't slow them down.
I think the balancing factor has to be production capacity VS losses. Plus move speed, fuel consumption, logistics weight.
You can't have better infantry equipment be a no-brainer for every type of unit, and equipment choices that just make more or less sense for the challenges you face.
Maybe you have machine guns divided up by type, and even the oldest junk is really good for defending a fort. So your interwar heavy MGs go to your garrisons. But the new MGs are not just flat better, they have different capabilities. They slow you down less, they have Breakthrough added on, they up your Soft Attack. And then you choose between light and heavy configurations for your new MG depending on whether you want to attack or defend with the unit. Maybe Heavy configurations even get a little bit of AA capability, so your insane number of .50cals does something for you.
It would be funny as fuck if there's a stick you could set to be the main weapon that's just there by default as an option.
I honestly would love a more selective division designer - like I want in armoured brigade - 33% of 7TPjw, 33% 7TPdw, 34% TKS....
What needs to be done is for the stats to have more negatives to carve out the niches the infantry will fill. Also for the ability to designate what infantry gets what package. It would help create new viable templates like a large 40 width armed with decent gear that would be equivalent to a 10 width Special forces with the top notch gear. Different fronts will call for different setups for your overall armies
mod link pls
I hope there was a way to equip soldiers with only a knife/shovel and create melee units.
I'm dumbfounded that I never thought of this... I'm also dumbfounded that the devs didn't think of this.
Ooh imagine if they also add you can give units a sword! It would not (or barely) add attack, but help suppression or something.
Remember HOI3, where there were different tech trees for generic infantry, cavalry, mechanized, all different special forces etc? This is going in the same direction :D
Currently use this mod as Soviet. I'm making cheaper gun with high defence for infantry and more expensive gun for the breakthrough division. Work so well the German couldn't go pass Poland
Please no. I don’t want to have to deal with this
Yes you will you lazy mind, this is fun.
It could be used for infantry specialization. For example, A bulky infantry equipment couldn't be used for paratroopers. Or you could use, as in HoI3, garrison divisions with good defensive stats but slow movement. Or Shock infantry that have bonuses against fortified positions and/or cities, at the cost of a greater cost in equipment (brown bar).
Very cool system! Something I never thought I needed but now I'd love to see Paradox integrate this into the game!
I think supply use could be a vital one with this mod, you also could add camopatterns, or even uniforms in general (e.g. adding civilian/no uniforms would lead to a coordination debuff) for extra breakthrough for example but increasing the production cost for the infantry equipment significantly aswell.
It would be even more realistic to have a weak but low supply use unit by only giving your infantry some rifles, its easy to just carry some ammo boxes with rifle cartridges around but its a whole new deal when you think about extra ammo for machineguns, mortars, grenades n stuff, maybe even extra pioneer stuff like anti tank or personell mines, barbed wire etc. it would be insane if you could modify your engineer corps aswell :D Maybe even some kind of mechanized pioneer/engineer(im german guys) corps with an extra desigend engineer tank :D (Just google Bergepanzer if you have no idea what Im talking about), therefore reducing losses in mechanized equipment and tanks :D
So many oppurtunities.....
Adding a lot of different modules for terrain types would be good or how equipment affects your terrain capabilities.
Flamers are great at bunker busting or jungle, but in hills or plains, maybe they should give a debuff or lower the divisions' speed in mountains and hills because of the extra weight Just some thoughts, great video showcase
Was thinking that too, terrain modifiers definitely should be used more. Just one idea I can think of is the ability to make light infantry equipment in a more complex way than just choosing the protection level but actually designing them with less support and possibly some special equipment, this would then give them stat buffs in forest and hills. You could also have certain requirements/addons for each type of special forces like para has to have parachutes in the design and cant go above a certain weight or some other stat which reflects how they are light infantry
I wanted to, but the weapon designer does not allow this, in fact, I can make changes to the basic characteristics described on the side, but it is impossible to make them for a certain area, only for the entire army, which is logical.
way i see it a specific infantry equipment should create a specific type of battalion in the division designer, as with planes and tanks adding a certain weapon in slot 1 makes it a certain type (fighter, cas, etc) putting a certain weapon in infantry makes it a specific unit which can be added in the division designer, so anti tanks, light infantry etc all become new units and you have to build a specific weapon variant to equip that specialized unit
Special Forces and infantry revamp would fit well with Scandinavia trees. The Finns were using lots of snipers and ski infantry and much of the war in Norway was amphibious, with Britain launching the infamous amphibious heavy water plant raid.
It looked like they did a bit of the balancing you were talking about. Molotovs are grenades, the cap may be 2 slots of grenades, not 2 molotovs. Also, the flamers aren't giving the guys in the battalion flamers, they are adding flamer companies to each battalion, hence the +50 manpower. The manpower and fuel uses I'm sure add up, especially for non-majors and countries that don't have the resources to produce more than infantry and support equipment.
In the real world changing your rifle calibre mid war is a big issue. Its why the British stuck with .303 for so long. They were going to change it prior to WWI, even had a rifle designed and ready to go, the Pattern 14, then the Great War happened.
Issue with rifle ammunition is during a war you kind of need an absolute mountain of the stuff. So the Army went whelp, no way can we change now we can barely manage to make enough .303... So we kept it...
In between the wars the Army essentially got whatever the Government could find behind the back of the sofa for funding. So by the time WWII came around we were still using .303, and it was too late to change...
So yeah, changing your rifle ammo is actually a pretty big deal....
In real life most Chinese divisions in WW2 doesn't have battalion-strength MG and mortar support so that's pretty realistic.
If implemented, we could see line divisions armed with M&M (muskets and machettes) to minimize cost, while breakthrough divisions have full body armor like those seen in John Wick series in PvP games lol.
Hoi4 devs: write that down wirte that down
I like this because you can make different equipment types for different infantries: carbines/swords for Cavalry, Parachutes and carbines for paratroopers, bayonets, rockets for AT infantry, amphibious equipment for marine divs, mountaineer equipment, etc. I feel like it's better than the way current special forces work, cuz they just use extra inf/supp equipment. This is so cool
in my opinion the MG's should give both defence and breakthrough while the mortars should give soft attack because breakthrough is a defensive stat.
What if there were shotguns that would improve your infantry in forts and urban?
If this was actually added, I want Paradox to make the minmax setup not much stronger then unoptimized ones. Tanks and the navy are optional and you don't really need to worry too much about AA, but everyone uses infantry. If you're able to minmax your infantry, small differences can lead to huge results. Poor AI, with their unoptimized deisgner loadouts.
Actually, what if there was a training "designer". Kind of like a special forces rework I suppose.
I would change the armor with a uniform thing. Have different uniform types like desert and winter uniforms would reduce attrition in weather, camo reduces spotting or something. Better than straight up armor imo
This would make that ability to select equipment for divions more important. You could have some dedicated equipment thats way stronger for special forces.
honestly, should make petition for this to be added to the game, probably changed, but deadass i think people would .. probably want this in the game.. id vote for it
They could also include the uniforms in there. In RT56 you have to research hot and cold uniforms, it’d be cool to have a winter specialist equipment.
Yeah I was thinking of how I would do this kinda thing and my idea was to have more of a focus on the various weapons on the battalion where you have the basic rifle or assault rifle at high tech but can then add SMGs, LMGs, HMGs, mortars, infantry guns, and then like 3 slots dedicated to the uniform and headgear, so for example one slot where you add hot and cold clothing, one where you can add a camo pattern and the headgear one where you choose if they use say a soft hat or a helmet, using a cap might give you -1 steel required but reduce the stats a little and act as a sort of reverse hospital where you take more casualties. The current system is good I think but I would like more of a broader scale than bandages and shovels
I think instead of designing the equipment, you should be able to design the infantry batallion.
Similarly you would need to add a couple more tecs to add more equipment options and also convert some flat bonuses tecs to actual modules/equipment. Feel like it would be better and mor alligned to what Paradox has been doing.
Also you can make the special forces fit in as a special equipment like tanks do.
To balance this, the HP, base org and training time can be modified as you add more stuff. So you could have a really well equiped, highly skilled Infantry but what is the use if it takes forever to get deployed and your production cant pupm them fast enough to fill the Ost front or they are very good at attacking but god help you if someone clicks on them as they have god soft attack but low org and hp
This way tou can have you expensive assault troops with heavy attack and breakthrough for offensive ops. The engineers with high soft attack or a kind of garrisom force with high entrenchment and HP.
this is real great stuff I also think it would be cool if mg smg and rifels would be different and basically how many smg lmgs are per squad
Where are my customized bikes and horses? What is a man without his ride?
idea for balancing infantry add a supply use penalty for each special features slot that you use
In the ULTRA Historical mod, they've also implemented an infantry designer, but one that designs the entire structure of infantry battalions. How many soldiers per squad exactly, what weapon is *each man* carrying (with a whole tech tree of various small arms and machineguns to research for them), how many grenades, radios, etc. There is additionally a Heavy Weapons equipment type used by infantry where you can add battalion-level and regimental-level heavy weapons too, like field guns and mortars, sapper companies, sniper teams, etc.
This designer is also better balanced, so you can't make ridiculous OP troops.
they could make something like
the number of lightly equipped soldiers (normal riflemen) decreases equipment loss faster but less reliable
the number of heavily equipped soldiers (mortar men,heavy machine gunners,special forces ect) increases equipment loss slower but more reliable
It would fit perfectly to a scandinavian rework. With the finnish infantry destoying the soviet forces in the winter war for example.
Aka adding winter gears, skis, etc... Why not.
Finally, shovel only challenge.
Make this for only special forces and it instantly becomes a lot more balanced. The special forces limit as it stands is ridiculously small. This makes the obscenely small special forces cap actually balanced
I think the equipment and special forces revamp could fit in perfectly with the finnisch focus tree. Just imagine doing finnish special forces units that use skis and Molotows to counter soviet tanks in the winter and continuation war. Also this could maybe be balanced with an ammo system like some mods have them where you would need to assign some military factories to ammo production and because of that you shouldn´t be able to put to much stuff in your infantry equipment or else you would get ammo and logistic problems.
They could make it that the more modules, the more logistics they consume
Or something like flamer actually reduce organization, due to how specialized a flamer decision has to be, and how volatile they are if shot
The designer also works for making EXTREMELY cheap weapons for garrisons or compliance units
They could add military police armament for more compliance
You could put the really good inf equipment under the same research as the marines and paratroopers, and connect the amount to the sp forces modifier research.
8:32
Skiies, climbing equipment, helmets etc.
Heavier troops should get terrain penalties and perhaps increased hardness, possibly increased supply consumption etc.
You can do a lot to balance this all out.
Bikes, motorbikes, cammels, skiies, rope and ice climbing pick...
Perhaps some way of influencing staying power?
So troops equiped with lower calibre weapons have ammunition that weights less/lasts longer pr weight unit but may be possible to shoot faster, larger calibre does more damage, has more range, etc...
So now we can make an infantry template with only a handheld shovel and recreate the current equipment of the Russian groundtroops. Got to love that shovel!
I played this with a china run, it was pretty good
I had a dirt cheap shity inf equip which i would just use to make sure my militar inf had something
Then my def equip which was quite minimalist but could get the job done
And finally my breakthrough equip which was for my shock troops motorised and tank and i went all out for it
It felt like i had an inventive to minmax my production que. good fun
I wonder if they added different infantry kits like some mods do, if that would balance it some more. For instance, infantry kit 36 could get 1 or 2 slots for added equipment, infantry kit 40 gets more slots etc. ?
Capacity should be limited by conscription laws maybe special forces have more capacity too
i truly do not understand hard core hoi4 players obsession with making everything a designer
Makes a whole vid on a mod....doesnt give name or link -_-
its infantry equipment on Steam Hoi4 workshop
@@RazalgulLocomy savior
This guy is a f*cking tool. Most irritating HOI4 content creator.
foot infantry should have very limited weight and motorized and mechanized should give greater weight capacity as those carry the MGs, mortars, and spare ammo. Vehicles help the troops have the right options to defeat more enemies.
I suppose it would make most sense if you had to equip them differently for different scenarios:
Defense against infantry? Machine guns, snipers etc.
Defense against armor? Hand-held rocket launchers etc? Also, if you have anti-tank artillery, then it would make sense to give infantry rangefinders, radios etc. so that they can spot targets for the artillery, increasing its effectiveness. Might make them more useful than firing a rifle at a tank, while still allowing them to stay entrenched/camouflaged etc.
Offensive infantry? Hand grenades (including smoke grenades, flashbangs), flame throwers, shotguns, SMGs?
Offensive anti-tank infantry? Armor-piercing grenades, molotovs?
Short-range weapons like hand grenades and flame throwers should be less effective in defense, since if you know the enemy is entrenched and armed with mostly short-range weapons, you just stay out of their range and shoot them with long range weapons. They'll have to either shoot back at long range (meaning their short-range weapons are useless), or move out of cover to close the distance.
Theoretically, you'd want each army to have both, since a defensive army may have to defend at close range too, and an offensive one may want to siege an entrenched position from afar, but I'm just saying all-flamethrowers and hand grenades should not be a good defensive army, unless they have some way to force the enemy to engage at close range.
Also, some weapons should have terrain-specific modifiers. Some weapons excel in urban combat and fort-assaults, others in forests, while yet others in open field battle.
Each build could be impacted by the total supply required balance it. And maybe could be good for a lighter infantry build for low supply areas to encourage other designs
I'd like to see some designers for actual primary weapons, and then something like this. So you designate the caliber of the primary infantry weapon, the magazine type, the rate of fire, etc. with various balance choices between logistical simplicity, ease of manufacturing, statistical quality, etc. You could also design specific infantry sections, so you could have a typical rifle platoon, then a different design for a rifle/mortar platoon, a scouting platoon, an infantry anti-tank platoon, and so forth.
As your technological capabilities become greater, you might create 'advanced' units which are given better weapons, or you might prioritize an easy-to-produce weapon for your army and a really high-quality weapon for your special forces. You might try to give your troops all assault rifles by 1945, but remember that those might be difficult to produce.
Of course, there are in real life some design ideas that really are just better. Stamped receivers are easier to make than milled receivers, and I don't know if milled weaponry actually would have advantages over stamped ones. But, then, the AK-47 used a stamped receiver and I assume this is because of ease of manufacture.
So at least in theory, it would change the balance totally. I mean, each nation might have its own unique set of weaponry, with its own design choices and everything. A Germany player could eschew bolt action rifles for a magazine-fed semi-automatic battle rifle, the USA might choose to outfit everyone with an M1 Carbine, or whatever. It's really granular, when you think about it. But, then, it's a really fucking cool idea from my opinion.
You can select the guns but they are all rifles? One thing that kind of bothers me is submachine guns and rifles are treated the same in standard infantry equipment when they play very different roles historically. I'd like to see things like SMGs, shotguns and flamethrowers give better bonuses in cities, forests and jungles then rifles do better in open plains and desert, then maybe hills and mountains to even out. Maybe different grenade types you can swap molotovs out with, with molotovs being cheaper but a high soft attack and have the rocket launchers fill a similar spot as mortars and heavy machine guns? I dunno, just spit balling here. I really like this idea.
Realistically, as you add shit to a soldier's kit that generally has a few downsides. The first is weight. A certain amount of weight, say thirty pounds, has no significant impact on your mobility (speed, agility, etc). Up to about sixty pounds, the impact on mobility is minimal but there. Generally, it can be overcome simply by training/regularly marching in full kit. You'll build up the endurance and familiarity to where it's a non issue- though you will still need a higher caloric intake to offset the increased muscle mass and expended effort. Once you push past sixty, you very quickly start running into mobility and endurance issues. Generally a hundred and forty pounds the max that a soldier can reasonably be expected to deal with, and even then you're relying heavily on having access to motorized transport to help alleviate the issues, some serious physical training, and intense caloric requirements. But you're still going to see performance issues.
For someone who is going to be expected to regularly go on long-marches without the aid of motorized transport (such as an infantryman in ww2), you'd want to consider eighty pounds as your maximum. Any more than that and your ability to make consistent progress is going to be severely hampered.
The second downside is complexity. More shit means more shit to deal with and more shit to break and need replacement. Some things, which are either used regularly or are otherwise fairly intuitive- like say a shovel, isn't going to contribute much to that factor. WW2 nightvision goggles, being an unfamiliar technology at the time, as well as fairly delicate and expensive, is going to take a decent chunk of extra training, impact your logistics trail quite heavily, and just generally be difficult to use and deal with without a high degree of familiarity and a few quality-of-life improvements (most of which a soldier would have to do themselves in-situ, honestly). All this stuff is going to be either stuffed in your pack where it gets in the way of finding something you need, strapped to you which needs some getting used to and may be difficult to get at in a pinch (because no velcro at this time), or worst-case scenario, dangling off of you and either tangling together or getting caught on every goddamn thing that gets within a foot of your person.
So overall, I would think you'd want two stats, complexity and weight. Weight is divided into two soft break points. Below the first are a handful of benefits like breakthrough, speed, and terrain movement bonuses, but not much. Pass the first and you begin to see increases in training time and slight increases in supply use. Pass the second and those penalties are magnified harshly, plus you start to lose breakthrough (because it's harder to sustain an offensive when you're loaded down with crap), org, speed, and face movement penalties in various terrain types.
Complexity also has two breakpoints. Up the the first there are no penalties. After it, there are penalties, but they are dependent on division experience level, with a max level division suffering none from complexity level just under the second breakpoint. Penalties after the second cannot be mitigated and get worse at a non-linear scale. The penalties on both breakpoints are to org, breakthrough, defense, training time, supply usage, and speed.
I would also suggest some flat penalties to some equipment. For example, a flat supply usage increase for night-vision goggles and increase in training time. I would also suggest some equipment that would reduce complexity/weight level (It isn't necessarily about the total amount of weight you are carrying, it's about how much and how long. Similarly, it's not always about how much shit you have to manage, as long as your kit comes with ways of easily managing it, and the thing isn't too intrusive or delicate) with high army exp costs.
I’d say Organisation effects would be a good counter like the tanks Reliability
I think what they do for infantry not a equipment variant but a squad/division manager, with mg squad, rifle, anti tank attachment etc.