Jaycee
10.12.04, 15:50
Interface Overhaul
Overall increased transparency into the game mechanics
Focused and easy-use fullscreen interfaces to manage your warfare, research, politics and economy
Increased overview and accessability
[-] Complete listings of all your provinces, units, navies, ongoing battles and more
[-] Cross-linked navigation
[-] Tooltips to explain the workings of almost every detail visible in the game.
Decreased micromanagement
[-] Automated missions
[-] Serial and parallel production orders
[-] Shortcuts for province improvements
[-] Provinces can be handled in groups as areas and regions when assigning missions
[-] Easy to use research interface
6 part tutorial for a smooth entry into the game
10 mapmodes
What does the betas say?
Grosshaus - "Having mission for aeroplanes and ships in itself is a major improvement, but the smaller details altogether are just as important. I can also deploy troops directly to armies from the deploy menu, change gamespeeds without keyboard or options screen, choose mission targets for troops from a menu or directly on the map, enter countries' diplomacy screen directly from the map, where-ever I see their flag or from the general diplomacy screen, build paraller and/or serial runs of units... It makes one wonder how it was possible to play HoI1 in the first place
Oh, and the option to set full automation in features that one doesn't want to focus on is a great thing: if I choose not to care about leaders, neither placing nor promoting them, or convoys I can let the AI handle them. And the fancy part is that it's better than me at them."
Orthank - "My favourite improvement is "auto assign leaders" option - extremely usefull feature. No more mj. general with skill 0 in some long forgotten province , there will be alwayes a leader with highest available skill level, and for special divisions like tanks or marines with proper skill i.e. panzer leader/commando."
Icer - "In the production screen you can easily prioritize units in the build queue. For example I start building a new BB and it needs to be near top of the list. Maybe just below the CV I have there. That takes just two clicks. Click double up arrows button to move the BB from the bottom to the top and then single down arrow button to move one slot down.
Then you can see which units are building at full speed by just looking at the color of the unit backpanel. If it's green it's ok. Yellow means a lack of IC's to build at full speed and red means the production is halted."
Copper Nicus - "HoI 2 is much more complex then HoI 1 - and at the same time, much easier to manage. It really got no sense to talk about all the interface improvements... My favourite one is combat overview screen, where I can see the list of all battles (or I can filter only land, air or naval ones). One glance is enough to notice, which battles are going pretty well (very good gfx representation) and which ones need my direct attention. This is huge help for any player that fights on two (or three) fronts.
And it's only one, simple example how good new interface is."
Steel - "The HoI 2 interface has gone through an incredible number of changes that eliminate repetitive tasks and lets the player focus on gameplay while still giving easy access to a huge amount of information and options. While there's some basic similarities with HoI 1 it really is a whole new interface."
TheDarkside - "Compared to HoI there are major improvements in the aspect of micromanagement. You don't have to constantly check all your armies to make sure they have a leader that can command their stack size. You can completely ignore convoys and have faith in the Convoy AI making sure all your troops abroad get the supplies they need, and any resources being generated abroad get shipped home. For air warfare, missions are give to groups of provinces so there is much less re-assigning air units when you are engaged in a massive frontal assault."
Johnny Canuck - "In terms of the interface itself, I have to say that as someone who likes playing the UK, the convoy automation is very much appreciated! Beyond that, there are numerous interface improvements that make things easier on the player, from the tech tree graphics to the right-click menu to order province improvements.
I would also like to say that I find that not only does the interface operate better, but it looks better, IMHO. The skins give a unique appearance to each country, and in general the interface does an excellent job of displaying information graphically, such as whether certain tech paths have been disabled in the tech tree and the different color of units under construction depending on whether they are being fully funded or not."
Xiechengnuo - "In a sentence: I have not seen a game better learn the lessons of HoI1 and Victoria than HoI2."
Carolus Rex - "Very easy to get into the game and assume control of all the different aspects of the game, even for a complete HoI newbie like me it didn't take more than an hour to understand and use the interface in a succesful way. "
Aetius - "The main improvement is that interface has been properly thought through from the start. The design was based on all of Paradox's experiences from earlier games and benchmarking with equivalent games. Consideration of the interface also influenced the game design (as has been mentioned earlier) making things less tedious or removing elements of the game that made MP play a click-fest. "
Overall increased transparency into the game mechanics
Focused and easy-use fullscreen interfaces to manage your warfare, research, politics and economy
Increased overview and accessability
[-] Complete listings of all your provinces, units, navies, ongoing battles and more
[-] Cross-linked navigation
[-] Tooltips to explain the workings of almost every detail visible in the game.
Decreased micromanagement
[-] Automated missions
[-] Serial and parallel production orders
[-] Shortcuts for province improvements
[-] Provinces can be handled in groups as areas and regions when assigning missions
[-] Easy to use research interface
6 part tutorial for a smooth entry into the game
10 mapmodes
What does the betas say?
Grosshaus - "Having mission for aeroplanes and ships in itself is a major improvement, but the smaller details altogether are just as important. I can also deploy troops directly to armies from the deploy menu, change gamespeeds without keyboard or options screen, choose mission targets for troops from a menu or directly on the map, enter countries' diplomacy screen directly from the map, where-ever I see their flag or from the general diplomacy screen, build paraller and/or serial runs of units... It makes one wonder how it was possible to play HoI1 in the first place
Oh, and the option to set full automation in features that one doesn't want to focus on is a great thing: if I choose not to care about leaders, neither placing nor promoting them, or convoys I can let the AI handle them. And the fancy part is that it's better than me at them."
Orthank - "My favourite improvement is "auto assign leaders" option - extremely usefull feature. No more mj. general with skill 0 in some long forgotten province , there will be alwayes a leader with highest available skill level, and for special divisions like tanks or marines with proper skill i.e. panzer leader/commando."
Icer - "In the production screen you can easily prioritize units in the build queue. For example I start building a new BB and it needs to be near top of the list. Maybe just below the CV I have there. That takes just two clicks. Click double up arrows button to move the BB from the bottom to the top and then single down arrow button to move one slot down.
Then you can see which units are building at full speed by just looking at the color of the unit backpanel. If it's green it's ok. Yellow means a lack of IC's to build at full speed and red means the production is halted."
Copper Nicus - "HoI 2 is much more complex then HoI 1 - and at the same time, much easier to manage. It really got no sense to talk about all the interface improvements... My favourite one is combat overview screen, where I can see the list of all battles (or I can filter only land, air or naval ones). One glance is enough to notice, which battles are going pretty well (very good gfx representation) and which ones need my direct attention. This is huge help for any player that fights on two (or three) fronts.
And it's only one, simple example how good new interface is."
Steel - "The HoI 2 interface has gone through an incredible number of changes that eliminate repetitive tasks and lets the player focus on gameplay while still giving easy access to a huge amount of information and options. While there's some basic similarities with HoI 1 it really is a whole new interface."
TheDarkside - "Compared to HoI there are major improvements in the aspect of micromanagement. You don't have to constantly check all your armies to make sure they have a leader that can command their stack size. You can completely ignore convoys and have faith in the Convoy AI making sure all your troops abroad get the supplies they need, and any resources being generated abroad get shipped home. For air warfare, missions are give to groups of provinces so there is much less re-assigning air units when you are engaged in a massive frontal assault."
Johnny Canuck - "In terms of the interface itself, I have to say that as someone who likes playing the UK, the convoy automation is very much appreciated! Beyond that, there are numerous interface improvements that make things easier on the player, from the tech tree graphics to the right-click menu to order province improvements.
I would also like to say that I find that not only does the interface operate better, but it looks better, IMHO. The skins give a unique appearance to each country, and in general the interface does an excellent job of displaying information graphically, such as whether certain tech paths have been disabled in the tech tree and the different color of units under construction depending on whether they are being fully funded or not."
Xiechengnuo - "In a sentence: I have not seen a game better learn the lessons of HoI1 and Victoria than HoI2."
Carolus Rex - "Very easy to get into the game and assume control of all the different aspects of the game, even for a complete HoI newbie like me it didn't take more than an hour to understand and use the interface in a succesful way. "
Aetius - "The main improvement is that interface has been properly thought through from the start. The design was based on all of Paradox's experiences from earlier games and benchmarking with equivalent games. Consideration of the interface also influenced the game design (as has been mentioned earlier) making things less tedious or removing elements of the game that made MP play a click-fest. "