Unable to bid on military contracts during WWI

[Mimir]

As the title say, I can't bid on military contracts - neither engines of any sort nor vehicles. In the "new contract requests" they are listed, but not as ones I can bid on and when I call the contractors those contracts are absent.

I play on the testing branch and the classic map. I have factories in England, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada and USA, and branches in all those contries (and some more).

[Eric.B]

If your HQ city is at war, you can only bid on war contracts for your HQ country. So all those war contracts outside of your country can not be filled by you.

If you read the memo more carefully, it'll say "Here is a list of contracts you can not bid on" or something to that effect.

The contracting system has been rewritten for the next testing build and the memo has been reworded, however the country at war limitations still remain.

[Mimir]

Ah, that makes perfect sense. Perhaps that information could be included somewhere in-game (that your HQ needs to be in the country you wish to sell to)? My HQ city (Sweden) was neutral during the war.

A suggestion would be to allow marques to sell to the coutry they are in, and allow/force self-made marques to be assigned HQs. I mean, selling to both sides of a war has been a marketing strategy for lots of manufacturers.

Example: Ford-Werke building cars in Germany during WWII, including (base for) half-tracks.

[Eric.B]

I would argue that by the time the war started, certainly by the time US got involved in WW2, Ford-Werke was not under control of Ford, nor were the war profits being sent to Ford.

Ford-Werke if I recalled made passenger vehicles in Germany until the US got involved in the war. Then it switched to military production. (Henry Ford himself was pro-German trade, and anti US involvement. Which is probably why he was allowed to continue operating until 42') (But I could be wrong about this, not to well read on Ford's WW2 history.)

In the game, you can not use factories outside of your home country if that factory is in a city at war. This is for two reasons. 1) The game does not track political relations between two nations. It would be silly for UK to make German goods during the world wars. 2) In most serious wars, factories owned by foreigners are confiscated or an independently ran. So it wouldn't make sense to give you profits from that.

Both 1 and 2 make domestic war goods more feasible than allowing war goods to be traded from neutral countries. Sweden supplied the Germans ore in WW2, I don't think they supplied them with trucks or engines.



v1.22.2 will include munitions production and sub-contracting for other companies. We'll also be implementing a factory confiscation system to supplement the factory destroyed system. But the rule change regarding military production at war will not be changed.

[Mimir]

Fair enough. While I could argue that some things could be better, from a game standpoint it would be overly complicated and it wouldn't be any important part of the game.

But perhaps a possibility to move HQ in some other way than buying a marque? With the requirement that your current city is at peace? Like for instance ability to set HQ's to self-made marques.

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by Mimer:

But perhaps a possibility to move HQ in some other way than buying a marque? With the requirement that your current city is at peace? Like for instance ability to set HQ's to self-made marques.

The system is implemented the way it is to prevent people from starting in high percapita cities early in the game then jumping over to a tax free city once their company is large and profitable. Since taxes are only taxed at the HQ city level.

I might be able to allow you to move the HQ to any city after I implement a pseudo-tariff system in v1.25. But I think from a game balancing perspective it is still better to limit you to marque locations. Realistically even, the HQ's of companies rarely move long distances and across national borders without merger of some sort.

[Mimir]

Hm, yeah... It just feels unpolished that you can move your HQ only by buying a marque and restructure to that marques location. I get what you are after though. I could be wrong, but I believe that there are regulations about moving a company HQ IRL, mergers being a legal way to move the HQ. So perhaps moving the HQ should require that you merge with another marque, just having a marque there wouldn't be enough (actually making it harder to move HQ, opposite of my previous suggestion...but I still think that you should be able to set HQ for self-made marques).