14 DAY TRIAL // Hearts of Iron IV is one of the most interesting releases already planned for 2015, and the team at Paradox Development Studios working on it is delivering a new diary that offers a lot of information on the production lines that will be used to create the machines that will then power the war effort.
An official forum post explains that there are three types of industry in the upcoming World War II grand strategy title: civilian, which creates consumer goods for the population, infrastructure, and more buildings, dock yards, only used for naval units, and military factories, that create individual weapons, vehicles and planes.
The developers state that “This kind of separation allows us to balance different countries' industrial strengths (the capacity to make ships is not the same as the capacity to make luxuries), and gives the player a more interesting selection of targets for strategic bombing.”
The resources that were used previously in the series are now lumped into one Raw materials pool, but Paradox is adding strategic resources that can place building limits on some of the potential weapons systems that can be used in Hearts of Iron IV.
The company adds, “A Production Line is a standing order for a factory or group of factories to make a certain piece of equipment. Each piece of equipment has an IC (Industrial Capacity) cost and a Resource cost. The IC cost determines how much equipment each factory can produce per week, while the Resource cost determines how many resources are needed for the line to operate at full speed.”
The team is also delivering some examples for long-term fans of the Hearts of Iron series, while warning them that actual costs and mechanics are not yet final.
An efficiency value is also linked to each production line, designed to encourage players to only change from one version of a piece of equipment to another rather than rethink their entire strategy.
The team at Paradox says that it wants the new production line concept to offer interesting choices while cutting down on the amount of micro-management they need to perform as Hearts of Iron IV evolves.
Constant upgrades for the entire army are no longer feasible and that should bring the grand strategy title closer to the realities of actual World War II.
Hearts of Iron IV should be delivered early in 2015 on the PC.