Frontlines represents a brand new chapter in the Panzer Corps Saga, so a dev diary is the perfect opportunity to introduce players to the general idea behind it, and particularly to the first entry in this series.
What it is, and what it's not
Frontlines - Bulge gives players the chance to experience a decisive part of World War II in Europe – for the first time in Panzer Corps 2 from the American side.
The campaign depicts the Battle of the Bulge from mid-December 1944 to mid-January 1945.
The new Frontlines series will offer shorter, but nonetheless very intense campaigns, and this more focussed approach allows us to show specific operations in a much more detailed way.
A typical Panzer Corps 2 DLC depicting an entire year of the war wouldn’t spend a dozen battles to cover only 4-5 weeks of combat. But, due to the different scope of Frontlines - Bulge we have the opportunity to dive deeper.
And the fierce fighting during the Battle of the Bulge, from the start of the German offensive to the iconic siege of Bastogne, and finally to the Allied struggle to regain lost ground, is certainly worth being shown in a dedicated DLC Campaign.
History in the making
The move away from Germany-centered content may not come as a surprise for players after the conclusion of the Axis Operations series in AO:1946, but it marks a fundamental shift in many ways beyond just taking another side.
There is less of an incentive to add large ahistorical campaign paths since the Allies won the war, and we think that a campaign about the Battle of the Bulge should reflect the actual course of it more closely but without putting historic accuracy above gameplay and fun factor.
Featuring the US Army in the Ardennes in 1944 adds an extra layer of challenges, since you are soon confronted with highly effective late-war equipment fielded by the Germans and need to find ways to deal with it.
On top of that the typical strengths of the Allied side, especially of the US, are not readily available when the German offensive begins.
Allied air power was initially limited by bad weather, and the Ardennes were only thinly held by a few US divisions, while the Germans had secretly amassed substantial forces to establish numerical superiority at least in the early stages of their surprise offensive.
The Devil is in the details, but so is God
To give you an idea what "focussed" or "detailed" means, let's compare the standalone "End of the Bulge" map included in the base game already to an example from the new Frontlines content.
As you can see we show the entire perimeter around Bastogne in a completely different scale now. Houffalize, the next important town in the Ardennes is near Bastogne in the standalone scenario – in Frontlines' siege of Bastogne it is outside the map area.
Obviously a single map featuring most of the Bulge requires a more abstract take, while a dedicated campaign about the same topic allows for a much more detailed look.
Similar approaches have been taken before sometimes in the Panzer Corps series, but now this more zoomed-in take is applied campaign-wide, which has a huge impact in various ways:
We use a consistent scale for maps which are closely linked geographically, with only slight variation where needed.
For example the early stage of the campaign plays in the northern sector of the front, with several maps showing different parts of it, but in the same, more zoomed-in scale.
This enables us to include smaller, but historically significant locations, and most importantly to depict key engagements with more varied forces that resemble the historic realities to a higher degree.
All those various aspects add up to a campaign that offers an in-depth experience of the Battle of the Bulge. It aims to be closer to history without abandoning the fun-to-play nature of the Panzer Corps series.
Put differently, in Frontlines - Bulge it is not your job to rewrite history, but you can relive it.
All quiet on the western front?
The limited timeframe of the Battle of the Bulge, coupled with more zoomed-in maps, means that individual turns are measured in hours, and a complete scenario represents - at best - days of combat, not weeks or even months.
Instead of an entire battle we often depict certain key stages of important engagements.
To come back to our example of Bastogne: the initial German encirclement and siege of the town, the following US relief effort and subsequent heavy fighting around Bastogne are three separate scenarios in this campaign.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves too much here. Frontlines - Bulge begins a few days before the Germans launch their surprise offensive which led to the formation of the large front bulge that became eponymous for the entire battle.
At this point the front along the old border between Germany and Belgium is rather calm. US forces only conduct limited attacks to prepare for a bigger offensive on their own, unaware that their enemy is already moving in position for an all-out offensive against them.
Consequently the first map is intended to be a smaller, and relatively easy intro battle to the campaign.
Decisions, decisions...
The gloves are coming off when the enemy onslaught begins. But for the second battle players can still decide between an easier task at the northern tip of the front or the more chaotic and difficult first clashes just a few miles south.
There are several of these choices throughout the campaign to select easier or more challenging battles. However, they are also included to depict different, yet equally important developments that happened roughly at the same time.
So do you rather hold out with the 101st Airborne in Bastogne, or do you support the 82nd Airborne to stop Kampfgruppe Peiper trying to break through towards Antwerp? Do you then move to Patton's relief effort for Bastogne, or aim to cut off Wehrmacht Panzers which almost reached the Meuse River?
You do not have to follow a specific campaign path resulting from these choices. This is a gameplay decision to allow players to explore the different scenarios linked to those choices more easily.
Conclusion
That’s it for the first part of this Dev Diary. We hope you enjoyed this introduction to Frontlines, and that it gives you a better sense of what to expect in the new campaign. Stay tuned for the next Dev Diary, which will arrive soon!
Join now the Beta
You can now apply to the beta and help us in developing the game. If you are willing to test it, find bugs, offer feedback and criticism and you love Panzer Corps, we definetely could use your help.
What are you waiting for? Click here to sign up: https://www.slitherine.com/beta/panzer- ... ines-bulge
