👋 Hey!
I've been working on a template designer app (https://hoidesigner.com) as a side project and wanted to share it with the community, as this can be useful to some of you who are looking to compare and store the different templates you stumble on while watching videos or reading through Reddit.
I built this for my own use case, as I noticed through playing HOI4 that I always ended up spending some time going through posts and videos to come up with the perfect templates for my new runs based on the strategies that I wanted to try.
This app will allow you to save any interesting templates you stumble on or design yourself for future reference and lets you compare them to understand the trade-offs and differences, so you can pick the best ones to complement your strategies.
I'm planning on continuing to work on it throughout the holiday break and I would love to get some feedback and see if there are some additional features that could be of interest to the community 🙏
Considering extending this to also cover tanks,planes and navy designs as well 🤞 let me know what you think!
HOI4 Designer App - https://hoidesigner.com
Thanks!
Oh nice! Are you the guy who made this too: https://taw.github.io/hoi4/
No he's not me lol.
I'm not! But I did stumble on this one before and I believe it might have been created a long time ago. I thought the community could use an updated one with all the updated stats and modifiers to go with the latest updates
yooo this is fireeeeee! thanks for that, looking fwd to using it. it uses cookies and/or local cache to save the data i assume?
Thanks! I'm using local storage/cache for now as a simple solution. Creating accounts would've been a higher barrier to entry and just opted for the simplest option to start with. For cross platform usage, I just end up sharing the template and saving it on my other devices to access them
perfect, i'm asking about data storage just to make sure not to use it in private mode browsing, yes having account there would not be of much use and only complicate it all. thank you!
Wow, love it and i will add it to my favorite to refer !
Good job. I did one https://taw.github.io/hoi4/ ages ago.
Then the tank designer happened, and it doubled the complexity of division designs, so I'd have to either do a total rewrite to make it work with tank designer, and by that time I move on to different games anyway, so that never happened.
I guess I could update my designer to latest patch, but limit it to some default tanks. Looks like that's what you did?
The code is all on github if you're interested, but it's all really ancient, and I don't even know if the formulas are still true.
Thanks! I actually did stumble on your tool while researching similar apps for the use case I was going after- really appreciate the work you put into it and it was really helpful to see how you approached it.
And yes, for now it's only based on the default tanks which simplifies drastically the app. I haven't started thinking/designing the implementation of the tank designer but based on your reply seems like it's going to be a headache 😅
Awesome work please continue working on it there hasn't been anything like that for theory crafting, eventually expanded by equipment designers mayhaps?
Thanks, Will do! I'll see where I can take it with the additional features that I want to add and the feedback I get along the way
I appreciate the effort but this is unusable without doctrines,tech,MIOs and tank designs.
Very good concept though, I wish you the best.
Thanks for the feedback! Tech is already embedded whenever you select the year, it'll consider the tech available up to that point in time and adjust the stats accordingly .
Already started working on adding doctrines, aiming to have this added later this week 🤞and tanks will follow up once I start tackling their designs specifically
I did something similar ages ago.
Dealing with all the modifiers would make the UI completely unusable.
You can approximate techs with tech years (we both did that), and doctrine by just assuming it's fully unlocked (my designer did it, OP's doesn't do that yet). There are some weird cases like rushing specific tech ahead of time but it's probably not worth UI cost to support it (the calculation engine actually supports that, I just never exposed that).
Tank designer is the big one, as it adds crazy complexity. I stopped updating my designer when tank designer happened as it would be basically a full rewrite.
Stuff like MIOs, national bonuses etc., I don't know how much it matters really.
I really do not wish to be rude to either of you, but you can't just approximate tech. That is not how any of it works.
If both of your mindsets like this you will fail because casuals won't care about this thing after one usage and anyone with an ounce of knowledge will just be forced to test it in game.
Of course you can.
Just assume every tech for specific year relevant to the division is researched (infantry, support, artillery, and tank techs).
That's how vast majority of players play this game. Players are not normally going to leave old techs unresearched for long if they use them in their divisions. Players can leave naval, air, or resource techs of course, but none of that affects division designer.
There are some special cases like researching new weapon tech but still using old weapons, rushing techs ahead of time, or playing minor with 2 research slots and actually leaving techs unresearched years late, but this is not a normal player experience, and it would really complicate the UI (and again, calculation engine supports it, it would just really complicate the UI).
Unless someone made mods to make it easier, this is such a massive pain, I don't think many people are really doing it.
Awesome
Love it. Have you out any other standard templates in?
Added a couple more preset templates to compare against or start building from 👀