almost little things punches me hard in the stomache

[soldier]

I understand that many things have to be carefully considered before making changes and such changes, if not well thought out can result in other problems. Unfortunately things like artillery suppression, entrenchments and troop experience cannot be directly modded in the game without actually altering the stats of many other units as well (which is what deducter is currently attempting with his DLC mod).
Of course if i did a whole lot of modding it would also be much more difficult to find online players which to me is what Panzer Corps is really all about.
Anyway I'm back to Leningrad

[Lamont]

Well believe it or not, significant game play decisions, especially changes to a specifically designed system are not taken lightly or even under the control of a single individual either.
There has to be a pretty strong consensus on such matters, not just among the public community but also among the team responsible for planning and actually implementing any such changes.

And currently, in neither place does such a consensus even exist.

We're always listening to good feedback though, and we very much appreciate the efforts of the community.
As deducter mentioned though, if you are looking for speedy/quick fix solutions, you are highly encouraged to mod the game (one of the best points of Panzer Corps is the ability to mod the game, as we can see by the very active design forum!) to suit your individual desires of how gameplay should play out.

Any changes to the base game are simply too far reaching to be made quickly and rashly though, because it effects thousands of players in a variety of ways, with impacts in both single player and multiplayer capacities of the game.

I do belive most understand changes to a game isnt taken lightly kerensky, but let me ask you this: Are entrenchments and arty supression working as intended or not ? To me its not but I dont know what your intention was from the start though. For me arty reduces entrenchments first to a point where suppression and then kills are allowed not all 3 at a high level entrenched infantry in a good defensive (city, forrest etc) position. Do you agree with this or not generally from the developer point of view ?
Just curious to know where you stand on this subject. I dont think its necessary at all to change stats around for all units, just let the game mechanics work differently compared to now when it comes to entrenchments and arty/supression thats all.

[ivanov]

Well believe it or not, significant game play decisions, especially changes to a specifically designed system are not taken lightly or even under the control of a single individual either.
There has to be a pretty strong consensus on such matters, not just among the public community but also among the team responsible for planning and actually implementing any such changes.

And currently, in neither place does such a consensus even exist.

We're always listening to good feedback though, and we very much appreciate the efforts of the community.
As deducter mentioned though, if you are looking for speedy/quick fix solutions, you are highly encouraged to mod the game (one of the best points of Panzer Corps is the ability to mod the game, as we can see by the very active design forum!) to suit your individual desires of how gameplay should play out.

Any changes to the base game are simply too far reaching to be made quickly and rashly though, because it effects thousands of players in a variety of ways, with impacts in both single player and multiplayer capacities of the game.

I think that all members of the community are well aware that any possible future changes wouldn't be take lightly. For the moment the discussion is what matters. Maybe a day will come that the devs will think of PC2 and then our feedback could be really helpful

Creating a custom e-file, could be a temporary solution to some of the issues mentioned here, but as it was said before - the game's mechanics cannot be modded.

[brettz123]

The nature of combat in DLC 42 and 43 makes German infantry very specialized units that can be fragile at times. It goes without saying that infantry is best against soft targets, city-fighting, and killing armor that ventures into cities, forests, or on hills. In DLC 42 and 43, most, if not all, enemy "soft-targets" are very well entrenched to begin with. Unless you are attacking Russian conscript units, it is unwise in many situations for an infantry unit to try and take on a soft target without some artillery suppression. Also, because there are a lot of open spaces in DLC 43, if a German infantry unit manages to get out in front of German armor in flat hex space without the protection of hills or trees, I have found that the infantry unit becomes a magnet for Russian armored units, and even Russian infantry units. German infantry become road-kill for Russian armor on open hexes. As such, when I play I always try to keep them behind my armor, and close to supporting arty units. I usually bring them forward only for "kill moves" after armor has blasted/blocked other threats from the front and flanks. I currently have about eight or nine infantry in my core, and even though they are fragile, I think it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to successfully play the scenarios without them.

I only take my two SE infantry with me in most of the 43 scenarios and it wasn't very difficult without them. Artillery plus tanks wipes out anything very quickly. This has pretty much been the case since I was able to get the PZ-IV f2 in 42. Once you have those you can pretty much wipe out any infantry unit that you have suppressed in one attack from an overstrengthed panzer.

But I do think you have a point about the maps in 43. There are a lot more that have wide open space than in previous DLCs and this certainly has an effect on the ability to use infnatry. I found my infantry very useful in a lot of the 42 scenarios.

[4kEY]

If I see enemy infantry dug into hills, or forests, I almost always hold back my tanks and wait for infantry to catch up. Even with suppression, rugged defense always causes casualties that add up and become expensive. I just played Oboyan and it was a pain in the ass for this very reason. I have six infantry, split into three groups, depending on the deployment setup. I always need them to reduce casualties because of rugged defense. Also, infantry can wipeout armor in close terrain faster than a tank can in the open.

I'm starting to run into the same problem with Russian towed AT dug into close terrain.

[brettz123]

If I see enemy infantry dug into hills, or forests, I almost always hold back my tanks and wait for infantry to catch up. Even with suppression, rugged defense always causes casualties that add up and become expensive. I just played Oboyan and it was a pain in the ass for this very reason. I have six infantry, split into three groups, depending on the deployment setup. I always need them to reduce casualties because of rugged defense. Also, infantry can wipeout armor in close terrain faster than a tank can in the open.

I'm starting to run into the same problem with Russian towed AT dug into close terrain.

I find that two artillery shots from 17cm plus a strafing run from a Stuka will pretty much supress any soft target very close to 100% and then you can take a PZ-IV f/2 or better and pretty much wipe out the infantry. I don't know what tanks or artillery you are using but the various wurfrahmens would even be better at this. The Wurfrahmen 40 is particularly good at doing this as it can often suppress almost an entire unit by themselves.

Now granted I have a lot of artillery running around but last time I finished 43 East on Field Marshall with over 20,000 prestige. This includes upgrading everything to the best version.

[4kEY]

Perhaps I need an even higher artillery to tank ratio. My point is that even with full suppression, rugged defense does happen, and I seem to be a magnet for it lately. Wurfrahmens ARE extremely effective, especially since I improved all rocket artillery (Russian included). I tend to have six or seven Wurfrahmen and 2 or 3 towed Nebelwerfers. The rest are SU, sIG, or other SP. I think the main reason I buffed rocket arty was to get my Dad to try using them, lol. Now that he's hooked I think I can reduce their strength slightly (although I can't remember the original values), because it seems like they're possibly too effective. An experienced Wurfrahmen can and will chop off nearly half a soft target's strength before my ground unit even attacks, and what's left will usually be fully suppressed. I used to use the towed 17cm alot, epsecially after the SS range increase to 4, but once I started learning the game mechanics I found the smaller towed guns have better suppression.

I took a chance and upgraded my two Stukas into FW-Fs instead of Me410s, with much satisfaction. I do love Stukas, and I'll miss them. Two FWF, two Me410s, and four 128mm AA seems to fill any void from having only three fighters.

Unrelated, but what do you think about changing the Nebel/Wurfrahmen attack sound to the Katyusha's?

[lordzimoa]

Unrelated, but what do you think about changing the Nebel/Wurfrahmen attack sound to the Katyusha's?

Just to stir up the bee`s nest here, Katyusha's are rockets leaving from a rail and we all know the typical and much loved woooosh sound.

A Nebelwerfer lauches his rocket from a tube. There are a lot of popular video`s on YouTube and other places about Nebelwerfer`s sound, but most of them are false and dubbed over, using the well known and very popular Katyusha's wooosh rocket leaving rail sound dubbed over and often used for the Nebelwerfer.

In fact it became popular belief that those sounds are the one and only correct ones for Nebelwerfer. If you look at it pure from a scientific acoustic point of view, tube against rail launching system, the popular Katyusha's just don`t fit. A rocket launched from a tube sounds different.

So we did a lot of research on it as it puzzled us why everybody still wanted the woooosh sound, we contacted several specialized WW2 war musea and weapon experts to confirm or reject our sound theory. Even consulted some acoustic experts on the matter.

Another reason why there may be this confusion is the Nebelwerfer`s were nicknamed by the Allies "screaming mimi's", this is correct though, the rockets in flight and especially in descent, when coming down, made a very high screaming noise just before impact, but not so much when being launched. This in comparison to the Katyusha's very distinctive screaming woooosh rail launching sound.

Out of this investigation came that our sound for the Nebelwerfer was in fact more close to the real thing. They make more of an explosion, followed by a droning pipe-organ sound, followed by a typical rocket sound.

It is hard to kill a popular myth and something excepted as common truth or knowledge, but we stand by our sounds after this research.

Cheers,

Tim

[VPaulus]

I fully agree with Tim.
Some of you, know that I have done a sound mod for Panzer Corps. I had to research about the real sounds that the equipment would make when firing and when moving.
I've come to the conclusion, that the Nebel/Wurfrahmen's attack sound do not resemble at all like the sound we heard the Katyusha's making in most of TV documentaries.
In fact the 30cm Nebelwerfer attacking sound used in Panzer Corps seemed so real that I didn't change it in my sound mod.

[4kEY]

<< Corrected.

[McGuba]

Earlier here:

ivanov:

I have also mentioned earlier that it is too easy to suppress the infantry units with the artillery, even when it is entrenched or on the defense in the close terrain. I guess that the main idea behind it, was to have the focus of the gameplay on the offensive action. I suppose that the the devs assumed, that most of the players would enjoy more destroying infinite waves of the AI units, rather than trying to break through more difficult to overcome and harder to suppress AI defensive positions. I personally would prefer the second option.

deducter:

One solution is just to lower the ROF of all artillery, so that each shot only suppresses 2-3 strength points. This will massively increase the difficulty of the game, as you can't effectively use artillery to defend yourself when attacked, making the AI much more potent. It would also be a bad idea to put your tanks into close terrain, even with artillery support, as artillery can't suppress enough infantry when they attack. You might also be forced to attack into unsuppressed entrenched infantry with your own infantry to speed things up.

This change is radical, but could work. I think it would bump up the difficulty very significantly, as it takes away one of the player's best tools.

Tarrak:

I don't think reducing the RoF of Artillery will help. Reducing RoF of artillery leads to three things:
1) It reduce the amount of suppression it can create which is exactly what you want but
2) It reduce the amount of damage artillery is doing and this is already somewhat low
3) The less shots you fire, the less dices you roll in the current system making the unit more prone to some strange RNG quirks.

This three things together will imho have a bad effect on a game play and will push artillery from, maybe a bit overpowered, to pretty useless.

deducter:

I am sure that reducing the ROF of all artillery by half, so that they are around 5, will make entrenched positions extremely tough to defeat. Each shot of artillery on an entrenched position probably won't even suppress anything, but it will remove one entrenchment, like some players proposed earlier. You'll basically use artillery to remove entrenchment and maybe cause a bit of suppression, then you'll have to attack with infantry and take heavy losses in the process. Your panzers will mostly be sitting uselessly outside of cities/forests/swamps. Doesn't this accomplish all the goals?

So what about reducing the arty's ROF by half AND at the same time increasing their SA/HA by 40-50% to match approximate PG values of the same units?
E.g. 10,5cm leFH 18 in PC now has SA: 9 HA: 6,
new values would be like: SA: 15 HA: 8 (same as in PG)

In this way according to Tarrak's observation it would 1) reduce suppression that many players seem to want, 2) would not reduce artillery damage ON AVERAGE, but 3) obviously there are less dice rolls so sometimes artillery would do more damage, sometimes less. It could be seen as kind of luck of war and also ww2 artillery was not very precise in today's standards.

[deducter]

I already tested the game with artillery ROF set to 7, and even with 3-4 stars and overstrength, they were significantly nerfed, perhaps too much so. I've concluded it's probably best not to change ROF radically on artillery. Instead, the best approach I found is to increase their cost, which is what I decided to do for my mod.

[Chris10]

Unrelated, but what do you think about changing the Nebel/Wurfrahmen attack sound to the Katyusha's?

Just to stir up the bee`s nest here, Katyusha's are rockets leaving from a rail and we all know the typical and much loved woooosh sound.

A Nebelwerfer lauches his rocket from a tube. There are a lot of popular video`s on YouTube and other places about Nebelwerfer`s sound, but most of them are false and dubbed over, using the well known and very popular Katyusha's wooosh rocket leaving rail sound dubbed over and often used for the Nebelwerfer.

In fact it became popular belief that those sounds are the one and only correct ones for Nebelwerfer. If you look at it pure from a scientific acoustic point of view, tube against rail launching system, the popular Katyusha's just don`t fit. A rocket launched from a tube sounds different.

So we did a lot of research on it as it puzzled us why everybody still wanted the woooosh sound, we contacted several specialized WW2 war musea and weapon experts to confirm or reject our sound theory. Even consulted some acoustic experts on the matter.

Another reason why there may be this confusion is the Nebelwerfer`s were nicknamed by the Allies "screaming mimi's", this is correct though, the rockets in flight and especially in descent, when coming down, made a very high screaming noise just before impact, but not so much when being launched. This in comparison to the Katyusha's very distinctive screaming woooosh rail launching sound.

Out of this investigation came that our sound for the Nebelwerfer was in fact more close to the real thing. They make more of an explosion, followed by a droning pipe-organ sound, followed by a typical rocket sound.

It is hard to kill a popular myth and something excepted as common truth or knowledge, but we stand by our sounds after this research.

Cheers,

Tim

I still have to object on this matter...their nickname among the Brits were "Moaning Minni" and there is a little confusion about this matter cause the small Nebelwerfers did not had this howling sound but the bigger ones indeed did...
The 10cm, 15cm and 21cm Werfer in fact had less of this moaning sound as you can observe in this German Wochenschau Nr 680 15/09/43
at 3:30...

but the bigger ones 30cm,28cm/32cm did it even more...
another except from a german Wochenschau NEBELWERFER 28/32cm

here an esxceprt from en english documentary where the different sounds of the different calibres of the Werfers can be observed too
The big ones were moaning/howling like crazy...

[VPaulus]

Chris, you know, that none of this footage had the sound. To my knowledge the sound was added later in studios.
The sounds for the 10-21cm nebelwerfer in the first documentary seem quite plausible.
The other sounds I really don't know. However I don't deny that the Wurfrahmen 40 nicknames, indicate some kind of howling, but I doubt hat they were so prominent has the "Stalin Organ".

[Chris10]

Chris, you know, that none of this footage had the sound. To my knowledge the sound was added later in studios.
The sounds for the 10-21cm nebelwerfer in the first documentary seem quite plausible.
The other sounds I really don't know. However I don't deny that the Wurfrahmen 40 nicknames, indicate some kind of howling, but I doubt hat they were so prominent has the "Stalin Organ".

Paulo...I have seen hundreds of these German Wartime Newsreels and I can confirm this is the original sound from back then and it is the only real reference we have nowadays so where is the point widely accepting all other sounds of tanks,cannons,planes and stuff and when it comes to one single piece of equipment then its a fake ?...well...that doesnt seems logical, does it?
Of course there were some music and voice dubbing when cutting the footage for the cinema,after all it was a propaganda program, but its the original sound added back and really nobody nowadays is in the postion to claim a sound as fake as long as it has not been overdubbed after the War.
If you watch the german newsreel shows you see that the sound almost always matches 100% with the footage which is the best indication for direct taping.
Here some more german newsreel excerpts
1:55 nebelwerfer howling

1:22 - 1:23 fired from a ship but its hard to detect cause the music and voice is heavily overdubbed but you can hear the howl for a microsecond

another warshow excerpt with original sound,music and voice (the speaker was the same during the entire war)

[VPaulus]

I'm positive that most of the times they didn't capture the sound when filming. They used their sounds libraries. So some of the sounds might be correct but that doesn't mean that you're hearing the correct sound for the correct equipment.
I'm not disputing that the Wurfrahmen and probably the higher caliber nebelwerfer could make some howling sound.

[VPaulus]

It seems that Chris found the reason why some of the Neberwerfer would have an howling sound effect when shooting.
Hopefully he will write it here the explanation.
Kudos to you, Chris.

[Chris10]

It seems that Chris found the reason why some of the Neberwerfer would have an howling sound effect when shooting.
Hopefully he will write it here the explanation.
Kudos to you, Chris.

no big deal Paulo...just took the time to read some Wehrmacht sources a this was starting to bug me... I never questioned the howling as I always perceived it as natural...
Well..its simply the rockets who make the howling after being launched from the frames/tubes (it doesnt matter).
The first 15cm Werfer charges did not had much range and did not present the typical howling but the propellant charges became considerably stronger in later versions resulting in higher muzzle velocity which then caused the rockets to compress the air in a certain way which caused the howling. Because of physics laws the launching crews will hear the howling sound just for a moment but the sound was present all the way down until impact which caused the brits to call Werfers "Moaning Minnies" due to the bloodcurdling sound the rockets made on closing in.
Its pretty much the same effect as for the Russian Katyusha Rail Launchers and the sound is very similar.
Nebelwerfer,Wurfrahmen40 and Panzerwerfer42 ..all had howling sound when fire the right ammunition , on the other hand a Wurfrahmen40 (SdKfZ251) could be used within the same village with a very low propellant charge ammunition resulting in a simple "floshhhhh" on launching...

Especially the propellant charge 28-cm-WK-Spr for the 15cm Werfer was called "Howling Cow" and "Walking Stuka" because of the similarity in sound the early Ju-87 made while divebombing and cause of its huge disperse angle and destruction due to gas-blast (airpressue shock caused soldiers to die)
Bte the Russians called the Panzerwefer42 „Ischak“, Donkey, cause of the donkey like screaming of incoming rockets

So yeah...a nice howling sound for Werfer attacks is rightfully justly.

[lordzimoa]

can confirm this is the original sound from back then and it is the only real reference we have nowadays so where is the point widely accepting all other sounds of tanks,cannons,planes and stuff and when it comes to one single piece of equipment then its a fake ?

its the original sound added back and really nobody nowadays is in the postion to claim a sound as fake as long as it has not been overdubbed after the War.

That is why we asked for advice from The Royal Armouries in Leeds, The British Imperial War museum in London, Le Mémorial de Caen museum in Caen, Het Leger (Army) museum in Leiden and Koninklijk Museum van het Leger en Krijgsgeschiedenis (Army and Military History) in Brussels for advice on this matter. It intrigued me personally if the sounds we got used to in documentaries and movies were historically correct. There were controversial theories about the correct sound of the Nebelwerfer, so it was fun to try and find an answer.

They used their sounds libraries. So some of the sounds might be correct but that doesn't mean that you're hearing the correct sound for the correct equipment. I'm not disputing that the Wurfrahmen and probably the higher caliber nebelwerfer could make some howling sound.

Correct they were almost all dubbed, Nebelwerfer definitely made a lot of howling sounds seconds before impact and it was quite scary.

Another reason why there may be this confusion is the Nebelwerfer`s were nicknamed by the Allies "screaming mimi's", this is correct though, the rockets in flight and especially in descent, when coming down, made a very high screaming noise just before impact, but not so much when being launched. This in comparison to the Katyusha's very distinctive screaming woooosh rail launching sound.

"Moaning Minnies" due to the bloodcurdling sound the rockets made on closing in.

cause of the donkey like screaming of incoming rockets

You give the answer yourself, the screaming, howling sound was certainly there caused by the rockets descending and just before impact, but not at launching, that is the whole point. If you want add howling sound, place it a few seconds before impact, that would be much more correct.

[VPaulus]

Well, I too have thought, that the enemy troops usually attributes the shells nick names, from what they saw when exploding or hear during the flight or in the shell's final impact.
During WW1 the British soldiers would nickname a lot of those shells by the sound, for example like the "whizz-bangs". Curiously the British had already used in WW1 the nickname "moaning minnie" for the sound caused by some of the German mortars during the flight of the shell.
Another thing that I've already thought is why I never hear, in the modern Katyushas launches, the noise of the howls during the launch?
I'm also pretty sure that when filming the documentaries, they would rarely bring with them sound equipment or any sound team. Sound record equipment was big, heavy and not easy to handle. So most of these action footages were made by a single cameraman, and they were after dubbed in studio using libraries of sounds recorded before. However that libraries had real sounds, so the film editors could easily dubbed with the real sound. The question is how some are accurate or not, because most of these WW2 footage were exhibited for propaganda, so it's possible that some of the firing sounds weren't the correct ones but rather replaced by ones that would produced a "better" sound effect. BTW the sounds used by the BBC WW2 war footages is preserved by the BBC itself.

I still think that both theories make some sense. Still I would like to hear a German specialist speaking about this... or the MythBusters.