Proposal for more managed (elite-) replacements

[El_Condoro]

The OP had some interesting ideas with using different key combinations (Shift et al) so no need for any extra UI clutter. Of course, that would be another thing to add to the list of 'hidden' data to put in the updated manual.

[Molve]

your opinions

I'm okay with reinforcements automatically filling up to 10, and specifically that the game does not even give the option to do it any other way.

[jokerrr88]

OIC: Sir my Units have taken heavy losses and I'm in dire need of replacements!!

HQ: So you need replacements to bring your units back to full strength then?

OIC: NO!!!! I need 1 Soldier, 1 Tank, 1 Plane, Rambo, and Chuck Norris

HQ: Do you want cheese on that order?

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I don't understand how game works so is there a way to add a feature to allow your subs to turn into Dophins of Doom? It would be easy to add just make it where you push UP+DOWN+SHIFT+INSERT+CTRL+ALT+DEL and then your sub switches.

[rezaf]

I'd rather have buttons to "Reinforce all", "Reinforce all (Elite)" and "Reinforce all (Elite) + max. overstrength)" during deployment, though - those would save me hundreds of mouseclicks over the course of a campaign...

Where would you insert the icon/button?
For players which play in lower resolutions could turn the UI bar more hard to use, if you and an extra line of icons.

Well, if you're concerned about lack of space, you should probably not waste tons of space by displaying buttons that essentially not belong on the deployment screen.
There's nine main buttons. During deployment, Undo Move and Supply Unit don't make any sense.
Sleep one turn can be activated by placing a unit and then selecting it.
Oddly enough, this does NOT allow to select a unit and put it onto it's transport or a train - the buttons remain greyed out.
Not sure if switching works.

That said, there are many options.
You could just cramp in another row of big buttons (making it 12 in 4 rows). I'm not sure how well the UI scales (if it'd show a scrollbar for that part of the screen if it ran out of space), so this might be problematic for low resolutions.
But the buttons could easily be made smaller. The row with purchase button etc. is a quarter as big and also frequently used.

You could make a tab-control, with the first tab consisting of the 9 standard buttons and a second tab with up to 9 more.

You could make it so keeping the mouse button pressed or right clicking on the reinforcement button opened a sub-menu with additional options.

You could just add a select all button to the top of the unit listing (below "Units in reserve: x"), and make a press of any reinforcement button with multiple units selected apply it to all those units. Requires checking for available prestige upon selection and probably special handling for overstrength.
Or you could just add the Reinforce all etc. buttons there, though that would be an odd place to put them.

You could add a context (right click) menu to the entire screen handling stuff like this.

You could add a separate core management screen.

There's probably more options, but these come right to mind. In this part of Panzer Corps, I think you actually went a bit overboard in cloning Panzer General - there have been numerous UI improvements commonplace in todays apps and games that were almost unheard of when PG (for DOS) was released, and it wouldn't have hurt to make use of some of them.

In the bottom line, however, I can live with the system as it is now. It's a bit cumbersome, but that matters little in the core campaign or the DLCs, nor in any mods currently available. It COULD be more problematic if you made a camaign with loads of core units.
Seeing how little stuff you guys get done for patches, I'd honestry rather see you concentrating on other things - even if I believe a single day of hard work could do wonders in the UI part of the game.
_____
rezaf

[rezaf]

OIC: Sir my Units have taken heavy losses and I'm in dire need of replacements!!

HQ: So you need replacements to bring your units back to full strength then?

OIC: NO!!!! I need 1 Soldier, 1 Tank, 1 Plane, Rambo, and Chuck Norris

HQ: Do you want cheese on that order?

------------------------------------

I don't understand how game works so is there a way to add a feature to allow your subs to turn into Dophins of Doom? It would be easy to add just make it where you push UP+DOWN+SHIFT+INSERT+CTRL+ALT+DEL and then your sub switches.

Dude, nobody says you should be able to add Me109 to your Me110 squadron, your imagination made that part up, so stop bringing it up already, would you?
_____
rezaf

[jokerrr88]

Pfft, who needs a picture to remember those button combo's. Amatuer!!!

[Rudankort]

Guys,

"we haven't had a chance to implement feature X yet" does not automatically mean "we will never implement feature X at all"

I always said, and will repeat again, that a lot of suggestions made by people on this forum make perfect sense and will likely get into the game at some point. Nobody is going to "reason against" all of them. However, we do prioritize things, which means some features make it into the game faster than the others. Thanks for understanding.

The original suggestion in this thread is one of the features which I don't object against, only I would do it like this:
- you click "replace" and it works as now
- you shift+click "replace" and you get a popup box with a slider where you can get any number of points you want (as long as you have enough prestige of course)

So veteran players who like to micromanage their army can try to squeeze a few points of prestige this way. However, I do consider this feature very low priority, because, in my opinion, it is not going to affect game balance. All campaigns we create are balanced with existing replacements mechanics in mind, so technically this micromanagement is never needed, even on the hardest difficulty. Which means that such a feature will be interesting to a few purists rather than a majority of players. There are many much more useful things we could do for the game.

[rezaf]

There are many much more useful things we could do for the game.

Kinda hard to argue about that one Rudankort. Also, you should come out of the Beta forums more.
Oh, and I hope you enjoyed your holiday.
_____
rezaf

[Rudankort]

Also, you should come out of the Beta forums more.

I'm doing my best. If I miss anything on the forum which requires my attention, please by all means drop me an email to rudankort@rsdn.ru.

[Xitax]

One absurdly simple way to do the reinforcements is to allow multiple reinforcement clicks on a single turn, but once you reinforce you can no longer move or shoot.

Advantage:
-You can choose your level of reinforcement. If you have a 3-star unit you can reinforce from 10 to 12 and save some of that prestige by clicking elite reinforcement button twice. This would be KISS in the GUI as you simply would leave the elite reinforce button un-grayed for as long as you have capability to reinforce (up to 13).
-You could reinforce from 7 to 12 in three clicks - choose your own level of reinforcement combination, either standard + elite + elite or elite + elite + elite. Simple.

Disadvantage:
-AI knows how to use it?
-Is there a gameplay reason why we don't want to allow to reinforce max overstrength on a single turn?

[kjeld111]

This system makes a lot of sense, and is a great idea, but I'd play the devil's advocate on this one.

It seems (to me) obvious that there is already a big rift between knowledgeable players that can min/max to squeeze every ounce of prestige (disbanding units, favoring certain upgrade paths, having a solid knowledge on when and how to elite reinforce and overstrength ...) and players who play in a more intuitive way, and it is, as you can read in many of the "hot" topics on those forums lately, the current prestige reward scheme is something not quite easy to balance (with players struggling already in Poland on the basic level, and others swimming in pretty ridiculous amount of prestige at the same time).

Adding this system will in my eyes widen this rift even more, with advanced players who would essentially fine tune their reinforcements to reap the rewards of their unit current "star" level (by using just enough elite reinforcement to keep the desired level) in an even cheaper way than with the current system, while less math-savvy players will use this feature in a less optimal way (or not at all) : either paying too much (full or more than optimal elite replacements) to keep their experienced units or wasting their hard earned stars (full or more than optimal rookie reinforcement) they could have kept with a moderate expense. Thus, fuelling the snowballing effect of good/bad prestige management.

So it is definitely a good idea, but there should be some help or safeguard to prevent this kind of problem (perhaps an additional "reinforce to current level" that will automatically mix and match reinforcement types to exactly keep the current "star" level with no extra experience, and could be explained to newbies in the tutorial).

[Razz1]

We need to open our eyes wider. We have no idea on how these people are playing the games to be swimming in prestige.

They could be saving and reloading, cheating, or taking advantage of the AI by not playing with in it's boundaries, for example enticing the AI to leave cities and other defensive positions.

Besides.. what you point out is exactly what everyone wants in a game. To learn and become better.

[Aloo]

We need to open our eyes wider. We have no idea on how these people are playing the games to be swimming in prestige.

They could be saving and reloading, cheating, or taking advantage of the AI by not playing with in it's boundaries, for example enticing the AI to leave cities and other defensive positions.

Besides.. what you point out is exactly what everyone wants in a game. To learn and become better.

I believe they are playing normally - like I wrote earlier, once you discover that elite replacements are not so great you start getting lots of prestige. There is no need to cheat. Also I believe that such people are much less prone to save reloading since they have lots of green units so its much easier for them to accept a loss than people going for elites and loosing a 4-5 star unit.

PS I did make the AI leave a defensive position by mistake - moved a transport close to a defensive position actually not realising that they would be so stupid to go for the transport and leave the city Now that I realize they will leave defencive positions I try to avoid such situations.

[Molve]

So veteran players who like to micromanage their army can try to squeeze a few points of prestige this way. However, I do consider this feature very low priority, because, in my opinion, it is not going to affect game balance. All campaigns we create are balanced with existing replacements mechanics in mind, so technically this micromanagement is never needed, even on the hardest difficulty. Which means that such a feature will be interesting to a few purists rather than a majority of players. There are many much more useful things we could do for the game.

I agree completely with this assessment.

[vasilak]

I am also in favor of adding this feature to the game and even though I agree it is not a primary concern I wouldn't rate it as low priority.
I believe (and this is my opinion of course) that when you are low on prestige ( pretty much all the time ) you want to able to control how many replacements you get for your very damaged units.
Especially when there are a few turns left and you can achieve a DV with only a few reinforcements.
This is even more important for people who tend to use primarily elite replacements (as I do) and want to try to minimize the prestige spent.
This may be considered micromanagement, but it can clearly save lots of prestige in the course of the entire campaign.

[Kerensky]

So veteran players who like to micromanage their army can try to squeeze a few points of prestige this way. However, I do consider this feature very low priority, because, in my opinion, it is not going to affect game balance. All campaigns we create are balanced with existing replacements mechanics in mind, so technically this micromanagement is never needed, even on the hardest difficulty. Which means that such a feature will be interesting to a few purists rather than a majority of players. There are many much more useful things we could do for the game.

I agree completely with this assessment.

Throwing my hat behind this.

[Lamont]

So veteran players who like to micromanage their army can try to squeeze a few points of prestige this way. However, I do consider this feature very low priority, because, in my opinion, it is not going to affect game balance. All campaigns we create are balanced with existing replacements mechanics in mind, so technically this micromanagement is never needed, even on the hardest difficulty. Which means that such a feature will be interesting to a few purists rather than a majority of players. There are many much more useful things we could do for the game.

I agree completely with this assessment.

Throwing my hat behind this.

Just out of curiosity, how do you know only a few selctive would use the function to say put 1 elite replacment on a damaged 5 unit for ex just to be able to ensure not lose it during say one of the last siges of a map ?
Frankly I would love to have that option compared to how it is now. Its very irritating and not fun to just pull out a highly damaged unit becouse I cant decide on the exact nr of replacements I want. To me thats just....dumb playing and not rewarding at all.
On the contrrary, I find it insulting at times. Each to his own i guess, but the current system is not the way i would,ve implanted the whole thing in a game designed like PzC. Clearly its not winspat II and tactical that way. Cant see a real problem really.