I've been reading all of your threads and comments, and once again I'd like to thank everyone for their contributions to helping test our content. Several items have re-occured, and I'd like to address them all at once for everyone now.
1941 starting core is prestige heavy:
The way I see it, it's unavoidable that someone who brings a core along from campaign to campaign is going to have an advantage. They've designed their core just the way they like it, they've accumulated kills and heroes, and they may have even played an earlier DLC over and over again to really finish with an outstanding force.
To help offset this, and I've mentioned it a few times, the DLC are organized into a Tier System. Specifically to this issue of the starting core being very strong though, this is to help assist anyone who does want to jump right into the DLC campaigns instead of having played from the beginning.
If you could imagine your core. the sum total of all units, experience, prestige, heroes, everything could be quantified. Give it a Core Rating. At the end of DLC 1939, a person's Core Rating might be... let's say 50. At the end of DLC 1940, it'll be... 85. The starting Core of a new DLC, therefore, must be at least comparable to this Core Rating.
This is why DLC 1941 feels a little prestige heavy to start. Partly because of the Tier System(Each DLC starts relatively easy and gets harder, and then the difficulty resets for the next DLC) and partly because of Core Ratings.
Simply put, initial starting cores of all DLCs, current and future, will continue to be 'overstrengthed'.
As we have started to see from the late 1941 scenario reports though, people are starting to fight some thought battles, and prestige isn't quite so abundant. Actually it is abundant, just all those Soviets really take their toll.
Belgrade Cavalry Bug:
That situation with the Romanian Officers was an unfortunate bug, I apologize for it. I guess didn't catch it because how I think. I must have tested Belgrade several times, but it never occurred to me to ever bring two Officers to the city. "Why would I ever leave two units idle when the objective only asks for one?" This will definitely be fixed, no worries. It's the simplest fix too. lol
Difficult of the starting scenarios
Again, this is part of the Tier System. Initial scenarios typically are somewhat 'under-tuned' so to speak. While most if not all of us here are veteran players. we must consider that our average player is NOT as good as most of us.
Threads like:
viewtopic.php?t=29290
and
viewtopic.php?t=29282
are reminders of this.
So most likely, you guys should feel like 'well this content is kinda too easy and I have too much prestige', especially those of you playing on Colonel mode. So while you shouldn't stop saying the content is too easy, just keep in mind we have to cater to everyone and their respective abilities, not just the elite gamers. Besides, I hear comments about DLCs being easy, but I don't see many reports that mention they are played on Rommel or Manstein settings.
Crete
The issue with this map... it's been done to death. I know there are at least 4 different user made 'Crete' maps floating around Panzer Corps already, not to mention the places it's already existed in other games! Thrusting the player directly into the action is something not really experimented with though (not to mention the choice of air or naval attack too) so accordingly we had to design it on the easy side. Imagine if you weren't able to handle being dropped directly on top of your enemy's positions? Your core would be decimated! That said, I might up the difficulty just a little bit for Crete, but also keep in mind its only the third scenario. You want hard, go for the bonus scenario Streets of Moscow and let me know how it goes.
StuG III
I'm very pleased to hear this unit, even though it's a mere 1 range artillery piece, is getting much affection. Might have to think about some adjustments to the StuG IV and StuH42 to further explore the potential of 1 range arty units!
Recon Cars
Recon is very important in the DLCs, we all know this by now. With so many enemy counter attacks, knowing where they come from and how strong they are as quickly as possible is vital. The problem is, these counter attacks tend to crush the first unit they see... the poor scout car that is serving as vanguard to your forces. I tried experimenting with improving the Ground Defense of recon cars, but that obviously didn't fix the issue. Some people complain that recon cars with high GD seems strange, and regardless of that, recons cars are still dying even with improved defenses.
This might be something that needs improving in the future, but for the moment, we may have to accept the reality that the life of a scout car is a dangerous one. But hey, at least we managed to convince people to add recon to their cores now. That's a plus!
Once we get to 1943 and the Soviet Air Force really becomes a threat, maybe we'll even have people use core slots for AD units! lol
Closing thoughts
We appreciate your feedback and input, and hope to see more of it in the coming days. I especially need more feedback on the late scenarios of DLC 1941. Dont feel rushed to get there, after all these DLC packs arent trivial campaigns like we see in other games. There is a LOT of content that takes a good amount of time to complete, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
) and I'll have to start back at Belgrade. I found Field Marshall was deadly when the counter-attacks happened around Belgrade!
I in first scenario i lost a Ju88. It wasn't shot down, i did not disband it but at the end of the scenario i only have one Ju88 the other is gone while the casualties statistic does not show it as loss. Now i doubt it but i could have had a brain outage and let it somewhere not at an airfield and it run out of fuel and crashed but even in that case should it not be listed under casualties then too? So either we have a random unit disappearing bug or at least a casualties list bug here.