Improvement to Recon

[edahl1980]

Armageddon looks boring.
Why would anyone buy that? Boooo!

[bebro]

Do you have anything planned for the immediate future bebro?

Well, there's OOB: Pacific in beta now, which is of course not *my* project, but I'm involved in the gxf part of this game.

In the world of Panzer Corps I'm just a modder

[rezaf]

Do you have anything planned for the immediate future bebro?

TigerIII, you should be ashamed to ask bebro such pretentious questions.

Seriously, mis-quotation aside, I was of course just kidding. Well, half kidding - I think it'd really be advantageous if Rudankort got a little help onboard. If he burns out on PzC one day, history will have to repeat itself - somebody in the future will have to make a freeware code-reengineering of PanzerCorps, only to promptly abandon it in favor of a commercial project called "Panzertruppe"...

Well, there's OOB: Pacific in beta now, which is of course not *my* project, but I'm involved in the gxf part of this game.

How's that going? Matrix/Slitherine have a strange strategy of eerie silence before releases, as opposed to the long buzz-building campaigns most publishers seem to opt for. Is OOB due in 2014 or will it only come out next year?
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rezaf

[bebro]

OOB beta is progressing well, and work is quite far from what I can tell. The silence in the (open) OOB forum is mainly due to focus on beta stuff etc.. Dunno if the beta forum is made public after release, but if it is gets opened people could see it's very active, lots of postings already.

But - NDA aside - not being a coder I can't say much on ETA since I simply don't know how the remaining workload is in that regard.

[Radoye]

Would it not be simplest to just let Recon units have an additional +1 to spotting?

It would certainly be worth a try. I guess one issue would be if it makes them too good in 1939-1941 when recon actually are decent. All of these options- evasion, taking away the recon move penalty, or adding +1 spotting- would be pretty small buffs that would be unlikely to break the game, so it would be nice to see at least one of them tried.

well there's always the option to add +1 spotting only to the late war recons and leave the early ones as-is, no?

[MartyWard]

What do you want? Recon vehicles capable of handling T-34's and Sherman fireflies? Maybe an American greyhound beating up on tigers? Cause that didnt happen.
That players dont bother with recon is ok. I use them and love them. I move them up in front of my armor to clear the path, then move my armor up, and the recon moves back behind them. That is how i advancerapidly and avoid ambushes.

My favorite recon unit is a Panther with a move and a spotting hero. It can actually live to report what is sees!

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Armageddon looks boring.
Why would anyone buy that? Boooo!

Perhaps it is boring... for you. Many Warhammer fans will buy it on first sight!

- BNC

[edahl1980]

Do you have anything planned for the immediate future bebro?

TigerIII, you should be ashamed to ask bebro such pretentious questions.

Seriously, mis-quotation aside, I was of course just kidding. Well, half kidding - I think it'd really be advantageous if Rudankort got a little help onboard. If he burns out on PzC one day, history will have to repeat itself - somebody in the future will have to make a freeware code-reengineering of PanzerCorps, only to promptly abandon it in favor of a commercial project called "Panzertruppe"...

Well, there's OOB: Pacific in beta now, which is of course not *my* project, but I'm involved in the gxf part of this game.

How's that going? Matrix/Slitherine have a strange strategy of eerie silence before releases, as opposed to the long buzz-building campaigns most publishers seem to opt for. Is OOB due in 2014 or will it only come out next year?
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rezaf

Did i ask him that question?

[rezaf]

Did i ask him that question?

Nope, I did - it was a misquotation by bebro. I was just kidding you a bit.
I thought that was clear from my post, sorry for being too vague.
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rezaf

[bebro]

Yeah a bit confusion with quotes on my part

As for Warhammer, I've never been much into that, but the screenshots look cool IMO, and I'm curious about the game and its features too, so I guess I'll get it once it's out.

[proline]

Recon is overpowered early in the war. Late war they are where they are supposed to be.
They recon, deal with infantry and finish off damaged enemies.
Why change something that is working?

Um, none of your uses for recon involve actual recon. If that's how you use them, have you ever considered using a flamm? I mean its great that you've found a use for them, but I suspect non-recon units would do just as well.

The point myself and others were making is that you can't actually use recon for strategic recon, the best they can do is scout a couple hexes ahead of your ball of units. I would like to see recon take on the role it had in WWII, where it was absolutely critical to avoid counterattacks, determine where to attack, how many units to bring, etc. In PC, you mostly just go around to all the hexes with your units in 2 or so big armies, hope you don't get a big surprise when a massive ball of enemy units appears where you don't have enough guys, and if you do you restart and win easily since the scripted reinforcements are always the same.

Point being, nobody is saying we should make combat effective recon units in the late game. Just that there should be recon effective recon units. To do that, they need more survivability be it from defense, speed, or sight radius.

[proline]

But at this point, it's pretty likely Rudankort won't make any more changes to PzC. I'm eagerly awaiting Armageddon to see how the engine has progressed in that game - chances are any developments might find their way into a possible PzC sequel...
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rezaf

Why are you so convinced PC is dead? Isn't a USSR expansion coming?

[rezaf]

The point myself and others were making is that you can't actually use recon for strategic recon, the best they can do is scout a couple hexes ahead of your ball of units. I would like to see recon take on the role it had in WWII, where it was absolutely critical to avoid counterattacks, determine where to attack, how many units to bring, etc. In PC, you mostly just go around to all the hexes with your units in 2 or so big armies, hope you don't get a big surprise when a massive ball of enemy units appears where you don't have enough guys, and if you do you restart and win easily since the scripted reinforcements are always the same.

Point being, nobody is saying we should make combat effective recon units in the late game. Just that there should be recon effective recon units. To do that, they need more survivability be it from defense, speed, or sight radius.

Well, following your argument, having recon units in the first place is totally pointless (beyond the scouting a couple of hexes ahead). And there's some truth to this, unfortunately.
Having true recon like you describe would require a complete redesign of at least most of the games missions from scratch. Even in the early war missions, there's hardly ever any true room to maneuver, and the late war ones are just crammed chockfull of units to the brim.
In the vanilla campaign and even some of the GC missions, the AI would just use it's alotment intended for the AI to be able to repair it's units to flood all of it's cities - unimportant as they may be - with an assortment of low-cost INF, AT, ART and AA, turning the capture of each city into some sort of medieval siege warfare.
I was always disappointed by this approach, but the very limited AI of PzC seems to necessitate it.

I mean, one might argue that tanks are almost as mis-represented in the game as is recon, no? Using armor should be about piercing deep into enemy territory, (relatively) rapid movement, cutting off and encircling enemy formations and so on. Yet, this is basically never the case in PzC, nor was it in PG (though I feel Rudankorts AI is a worse offender here than that of PG was, ever since PGForever - and the PzC scenario designers took that ball and ran with it).

Anyway, all of this is the reason the core reason of this thread - I'm sure you'd agree - was not lobbying for fundamental gameplay changes but for ideas of possible tweaks that could be made to the games systems to make recon at least a little more feasible without redesigning scenarios or making other breaking changes.

Why are you so convinced PC is dead? Isn't a USSR expansion coming?

I'm not saying PzC is dead, maybe there'll be more patches, but the game has clearly moved out of the spotlight at this point, and Rudankort can only spend some time with it if nothing else is on the table. Currently, there's mainly Armageddon, the WH40k game. And for the forseeable future, that game will require patches and updates, bugfixes and rebalancing etc.
And if it's successful, it will get it's own share of addons, which will require additional coding time by Rudankort. So it's likely he won't be able to spend a tremendous time with PzC development.

And even beyond Rudankorts timetable the game seems to be largely written off. Nikivdd, who's like a one-man assembly-line for campaigns (and has proven to deliver quality work beyond that), got the title of official scenario designer, and he'd basically do all the work alone, without requiring any significant input/action from other folks at Slitherine, yet they have not seem fit to make the insignificant time investment of coordinating stuff with him so it can be published. I think that's quite telling.

As for Soviet Corps ... yeah, it's supposedly incoming (and I'd assume it to come out at some point), but the thread asking for unit ideas is a YEAR old, and there's been nothing but silence on Slitherine's part for many months now...
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rezaf

[McGuba]

In the vanilla campaign and even some of the GC missions, the AI would just use it's alotment intended for the AI to be able to repair it's units to flood all of it's cities - unimportant as they may be - with an assortment of low-cost INF, AT, ART and AA, turning the capture of each city into some sort of medieval siege warfare.
I was always disappointed by this approach, but the very limited AI of PzC seems to necessitate it.

Sure, me too, and that's why I made it virtually impossible in my custom mods. This feature was much hated in Panzer General, too, so it is kinda sad that they did not change it. The AI should only spawn a few new units next to cities and only occasionally at best. Nothing can be more frustrating when you have just one more turn to win the war for your king & country and then the AI miraculously spawns a bunch of brand new units around the very last objective. With some good scenario design and scripting it can be easily avoided, though.

I mean, one might argue that tanks are almost as mis-represented in the game as is recon, no? Using armor should be about piercing deep into enemy territory, (relatively) rapid movement, cutting off and encircling enemy formations and so on. Yet, this is basically never the case in PzC, nor was it in PG (though I feel Rudankorts AI is a worse offender here than that of PG was, ever since PGForever - and the PzC scenario designers took that ball and ran with it).

Since supply lines are not modelled in the game it does not really makes sense to encirle and "cut off" (form what?) the enemy. (Even though it can be simulated as well by some extra scripting, and I did so.) So I think it is more to the engine itself than to the tank class. It seems that the coming OOB: Pacific game will try to address this, we will see how it turns out.

I'm sure you'd agree - was not lobbying for fundamental gameplay changes but for ideas of possible tweaks that could be made to the games systems to make recon at least a little more feasible without redesigning scenarios or making other breaking changes.

So how about increasing their speed by 2 hexes to and average 10? Most recons now have movement = 8, which would be more or less enough if it was not for the minus one movement penalty for moving in phases. Then we would have 5 forward (to keep the speed with most tanks) and 4 back to find cover, if necessary. This is not a huge change, IMO to have a big re-balancing impact on the official stuff. I guess that's all we could do without having acess to the hard coded traits, even though that would be the real solution. E.g. I would welcome to see retreating recon units when attacked, like evading submarines, but that's all hard coded stuff obviously.

[edahl1980]

Spawning of units sucks.
Especially some of those GC 42 campaign maps where the Soviets spawn 5 fresh KV-1C tanks.

There should be entry points for both sides in the game. And that is where units spawn. Or you place fresh units after something was destroyed.
Also, in order to supply you need to controll certain cities and rail lines up to that point. Ok, this will never be added. But i like the idea.

[edahl1980]

Spawning of units sucks.
Especially some of those GC 42 campaign maps where the Soviets spawn 5 fresh KV-1C tanks.

There should be entry points for both sides in the game. And that is where units spawn. Or you place fresh units after something was destroyed.
Also, in order to supply you need to controll certain cities and rail lines up to that point. Ok, this will never be added. But i like the idea.

[rezaf]

Sure, me too, and that's why I made it virtually impossible in my custom mods. This feature was much hated in Panzer General, too, so it is kinda sad that they did not change it.

Actually, it was much worse in PzC than it ever was in PG, because of Rudankorts idea to change the rules so the AI had to pay for unit repairs, too - from it's normal prestige pool. Players tend to try and destroy AI units whenever possible, so often enough there is nothing to repair. And even if there is, I've often seen the AI rather buy a set of cheap throwaway units rather than repair the fighter landed on it's airport.
In general, the AI buys too much cheap crap and doesn't acquire enough quality gear. It never saves up for something and will only buy expensive things if given an outrageous amount of prestige that very turn.
In the vanilla campaign, this quirk turned many a mission into a tedious exercise, worsened by the fact that you were always running agains a merciless turn limit.

The DLC campaigns used more elaborate scripting to partially circumvent the issue and it generally worked. But not always. Up until DLC 45 East you'll sometimes see the AI surround one of it's cities with BT-7 tanks...

Since supply lines are not modelled in the game it does not really makes sense to encirle and "cut off" (form what?) the enemy.

Oh, I totally agree. I believe more could have been done by making the maps considerably larger and having a semi-randomized element about where troop concentrations are and where there's only undefended ground, but even then, without supply, it'd always be a cheap substitute. At this point, this ship has looooong sailed for PzC, that goes without saying.

So how about increasing their speed by 2 hexes to and average 10? Most recons now have movement = 8, which would be more or less enough if it was not for the minus one movement penalty for moving in phases. Then we would have 5 forward (to keep the speed with most tanks) and 4 back to find cover, if necessary. This is not a huge change, IMO to have a big re-balancing impact on the official stuff.

Might be a possible way to cover it. Though, to be honest, I would probably never purchase recon units in any of the official scenarios, as there's just not enough reason to scout. There's enemies everywhere, no need to even check beforehand.

Spawning of units sucks. Especially some of those GC 42 campaign maps where the Soviets spawn 5 fresh KV-1C tanks.

That's probably scenario designers spawning in reinforcements rather than the AI purchasing issue we talked about. I agree that this also feels very artificial, but once again, I presume the game systems and first and foremost the very braindead AI are to blame. If you were to spawn enemy tanks in reinforcement zones on the map border, god knows what the AI would do with them. But I'm pretty sure it'd not assemble them into a well organized formation and strike at the weakest part of your forces...
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rezaf

[MartyWard]

That's probably scenario designers spawning in reinforcements rather than the AI purchasing issue we talked about. I agree that this also feels very artificial, but once again, I presume the game systems and first and foremost the very braindead AI are to blame. If you were to spawn enemy tanks in reinforcement zones on the map border, god knows what the AI would do with them. But I'm pretty sure it'd not assemble them into a well organized formation and strike at the weakest part of your forces...
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rezaf

I don't know why it would be hard to have a reinforcement hex as opposed to using cities. Lots of mods use reinforcement point, even to give you the reinforcements.

[edahl1980]

That's probably scenario designers spawning in reinforcements rather than the AI purchasing issue we talked about. I agree that this also feels very artificial, but once again, I presume the game systems and first and foremost the very braindead AI are to blame. If you were to spawn enemy tanks in reinforcement zones on the map border, god knows what the AI would do with them. But I'm pretty sure it'd not assemble them into a well organized formation and strike at the weakest part of your forces...
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rezaf

I don't know why it would be hard to have a reinforcement hex as opposed to using cities. Lots of mods use reinforcement point, even to give you the reinforcements.

It is a much better solution than having a horse cavalry capturing a town behind your lines, and all of a sudden a bunch of BT-7 tanks appear in that city.

[McGuba]

There should be entry points for both sides in the game. And that is where units spawn.

Yeah, I did it like that in the Battlefield: Europe mod in most cases. E.g. Soviets units spawn in the Ural mountains which is in the far eastern part of the map. And Western Allied aircraft spawn in England, and their Allied armies used for the invasions are spawning in the open seas, etc. However, to make it work probably you need a large enough map so that the player cannot block the spawing areas easily, and the designers of PzC made an early decision to make relatively small maps, even smaller than in PG. Probably for some reason they thought that most players will be casual players, who would be frightened away by large and complex maps, so they went for the small maps instead. Anyway, nowdays everything is about speed and above all quick success, there is no time for thinking, lol. It also explains why there is no space for maneuvering and why the vanilla maps are crowded with enemy units. Small maps = quick battles = everyone can handle them = everyone is happy. (Well, it seems not everyone, but who cares now that we payed and left the till?)

So how about increasing their speed by 2 hexes to and average 10? Most recons now have movement = 8, which would be more or less enough if it was not for the minus one movement penalty for moving in phases. Then we would have 5 forward (to keep the speed with most tanks) and 4 back to find cover, if necessary. This is not a huge change, IMO to have a big re-balancing impact on the official stuff.

Might be a possible way to cover it. Though, to be honest, I would probably never purchase recon units in any of the official scenarios, as there's just not enough reason to scout. There's enemies everywhere, no need to even check beforehand.

Now I am a bit puzzled. So do you want to change the recons in the official scenarios, or you want to change the official scenarios themselves, so that recons could be used as intended?

Spawning of units sucks. Especially some of those GC 42 campaign maps where the Soviets spawn 5 fresh KV-1C tanks.

That's probably scenario designers spawning in reinforcements rather than the AI purchasing issue we talked about. I agree that this also feels very artificial, but once again, I presume the game systems and first and foremost the very braindead AI are to blame.

Either it is by random AI spawning or by the scenario designer's pre-placed units, KV tanks should not appear in large numbers in the first place, as they were not that numerous as ten times more T-34s were produced. So if it is about mass tank unit spawning, it should be the T-34 if any at all.

I do not think that the AI is very brain dead, by the way. It is truly basic on its own, but if well scripted it can perform much better. I would rather describe it as a pet dog: if you just chain it to a tree and leave it there all day long on its own it will be nothing but a frustrated poor animal. However, if you train it to find drugs, help the blind, etc. it can even outperform humans. OK, PzC AI will never be as good as a human, but good scripting can help a lot. Problem is that, the official scenario designer dude(s) probalby had to meet targets, and thus did not have the time to add the scripts and to make the scenarios interesting enough. So they just placed some units, added a couple basic scripts and left the AI to do the rest, which it does horribly.

Basically, that's why I turned to modding after playing the vanilla campaign only once.

If you were to spawn enemy tanks in reinforcement zones on the map border, god knows what the AI would do with them. But I'm pretty sure it'd not assemble them into a well organized formation and strike at the weakest part of your forces...

If interested, you can test it in the BE mod. AI units set to attack move to the nearest enemy held victory objective, once they take it they move on to the next and so on. However, AI units can be told to move to a certain part of the map and they can be told to go on the offensive when they reach it or when certain conditions are met. Or to move to another part of the map. Or whatever. It can lead to some nice AI maneuvers, I can tell.

The DLC campaigns used more elaborate scripting to partially circumvent the issue and it generally worked. But not always. Up until DLC 45 East you'll sometimes see the AI surround one of it's cities with BT-7 tanks...

It could be easily cured by making the BT-7 unavailable after 1941/42. But then it would probably purchase T-60s instead. I think the whole AI purchase is essentially flawed and that's why I do not allow the AI to buy anything by setting the max number of AI units to zero in the editor. After all, how can we expect the AI to make the right decision what to purchase, if it is so difficult even for me as a human player? Should I buy another tank, or maybe a fighter to gain air superiority easier? Maybe infantry, as there are lots of closed terrain in this map? No, it should be artillery, it is always good to have an extra piece of gun! Anything familiar?

I don't know why it would be hard to have a reinforcement hex as opposed to using cities. Lots of mods use reinforcement point, even to give you the reinforcements.

Like I said one need a large enough map to make it work. Otherwise it would be just too easy to take and block this area and deprive the AI from further reinforcements. Even if it is in the back, you can use paratroopers for example. But the company decided to go for small maps for financial/popularity reasons.