New features

[Kerensky]

I thought it would be good to mention some of the new features in Panzer Corps, and see what people think.

1. Seeing the distance you can walk versus distance that will require mounted/truck/half track transport.
Awesome, it seems like such an obvious thing too. However, I think it needs some visual work. The black dot is really... lacking.

2. Units are not automatically brought up to full strength between scenarios in a campaign.
I'm conflicted on this one, mostly I'm concerned the effect this will have on an expensive 5 star unit that is damaged down to 1 or 2 strength in a scenario. It could result in
A. Have enough prestige to fully elite replace your 5 star unit, which means the player is probably inundated with prestige amounts
B. Have to accept that you won't end the campaign with 20 or 30 units that are all 5 star units, they are going to be taking damage and need replacements and you won't always be able to get elite replacements.

3. Recon movement.
I have to say, I'm not a fan, I much prefer Pg2 style.

4. Detailed replacement information.
You want regular troops? You gain X strength, you lose Y prestige, your experience changes from A to B.
You want elite troops? You gain X strength, you lose Z prestige.
Awesome.

5. Weather.
I'm not 100% on this, because the weather doesn't seem to change in the tutorial, but to the left of 'end turn' looks like TODAY/THIS TURN, and to the right of 'end turn' looks like TOMORROW/NEXT TURN
If so, I welcome this change, 1 day advance forecast is just right.

6. Combat Log.

As for a log for beta testers, there is some sort of a log. Press L hotkey after a combat, and you will see what happened in detail. Alternatively, you vcan Ctrl+click a target to see "extended combat prediction".

I think I need a little help understanding this picture, basically what happened was I attacked with 10 guys vs 10 entrenched guys with artillery support, and all 10 of my guys died. Did 'rugged defense'/'ambush' trigger, or was that just crazy bad luck?:
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/6059/combatlog.jpg

It starts off: Artillery firing vs my infantry. Left vs right, 5 suppressed.
Then it switches, now my infantry unit is on the left and the defender is on the right. (That's confusing BTW)

If rugged defense/ambush did trigger, where does it say that? If not... wow I can't imagine what could have happened if it DID trigger.

What other new features have people noticed?

[boredatwork]

I think I need a little help understanding this picture, basically what happened was I attacked with 10 guys vs 10 entrenched guys with artillery support, and all 10 of my guys died. Did 'rugged defense'/'ambush' trigger, or was that just crazy bad luck?:
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/6059/combatlog.jpg

It starts off: Artillery firing vs my infantry. Left vs right, 5 suppressed.
Then it switches, now my infantry unit is on the left and the defender is on the right. (That's confusing BTW)

If rugged defense/ambush did trigger, where does it say that? If not... wow I can't imagine what could have happened if it DID trigger.

What other new features have people noticed?

It says "AMBUSH!" in red if it does trigger.

I agree that the left/right switch is confusing - I would always have friendly on the left and enemy on the right for consistancy.

[Kerensky]

Considering I went from full strength 10 to dead, I can't imagine how devastating an ambush could be, I suppose they would have taken 0 losses instead of 3?
I agree, friendly left, enemy right is pretty universal. PzC likes to switch it, like on battle prediction mouse over.

Another feature:
Game doesn't end when you occupy the last victory hex. The AI still gets its turn.
Looks like there's no skin of your teeth victories here, if you take that final VH with a crippled 1 strength unit expecting the scenario to end, you could potentially be in for quite a rude shock.

[boredatwork]

Railroad movement is kinda of neat.

However it's utility might be somewhat limited. For it to be really usefull I think you would need large maps and a reason to shift forces great distances. Reinforcements only buildable in a handfull of start cities would be one reason. "dead end" objectives could be another. Random counter attacks or defense scenarios where the main thrust of the attack is randomized might be another.

[comradep]

I don't think I ever used the strategic movement in Operation Barbarossa: the struggle for Russia, so I doubt I'll use the rail movement capabilities much, but they're nice to have. It also makes sure people don't have to make a rail line out of port hexes with rail units using naval movement.

The "your unit dies" rugged defence results can be annoying, but they also happened in PG2 and other later games. Hell, artillery could be so overpowered that just the covering artillery barrage could knock a unit out.

[Rudankort]

First, a general comment. Check out gamerules.pzdat file in the game's Data folder for some balancing constants used by the game. In the future there will be more, but even now it can give you idea about some other changes in game rules.

The reason behind the decision not to give replacements between scenarios is simple. Elite units earn you more money (by taking more cities, killing more units, taking less casualties, ensuring more decisive victories), so they should be more costly to keep in the core. That is the reason why it still costs you to elite-replace them between scenarios. There are a number of balancing constants involved here, and we'll tweak them in the course of playtesting. Here is a quote from gamerules.pzdat:

Code: Select all

# Upgrade penalty. When a unit is upgraded within the same series of equipment (e. g. between two PzIII or Bf109 modifications), its experience does not change. But if the unit is upgraded between two different series (e. g. from Bg109 to FW190), it loses some experience in the process, specified by this parameter.
UpgradeExpPenalty	100
# Experience of green replacements, in percent of experience of the unit being replaced.
GreenReplacementsExp	30
# The following 4 parameters specify replacement costs in percent of a new unit cost. The first two parameters are used during a scenario (for normal and elite replacements respectively). Second two parameters are used between scenarios in a campaign.
ScnReplaceCost 25
ScnEReplaceCost 100
CamReplaceCost 0
CamEReplaceCost 50
# Overstrength cost, in percent of "ordinary" elite replacements cost
OverstrengthCost	200
# Upgrade cost, in percent of new unit cost
UpgradeCost	100

As you can see, between scens green replacements are free (and they have 30% exp of the unit), and elite replacements are 50% of their in-battle costs.

[Rudankort]

I think I need a little help understanding this picture, basically what happened was I attacked with 10 guys vs 10 entrenched guys with artillery support, and all 10 of my guys died. Did 'rugged defense'/'ambush' trigger, or was that just crazy bad luck?:
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/6059/combatlog.jpg

It starts off: Artillery firing vs my infantry. Left vs right, 5 suppressed.
Then it switches, now my infantry unit is on the left and the defender is on the right. (That's confusing BTW)

If rugged defense/ambush did trigger, where does it say that? If not... wow I can't imagine what could have happened if it DID trigger.

As boredatwork said, ambush was not triggered. But normally, even with an ambush, you should not get so bad results. You were extremely unlucky. In the log you see that the chance to kill for defending unit was 56%, but instead it scored 100% due to lucky dice rolls. The log shows all dice rolls, and you can see that they all were >44. The program generates a random number between 1 and 100 for each shot, and then interprets the result. In this case all random numbers were in kill range.

Now if this is a very rare occasion, it is ok. But if we see such situation often, this may indicate that we have a poor random number generator, and we need a more uniformly distributed one. So, let us watch out for this issue.

[Kerensky]

Related to new feature #1, the visual aid for movement.
It needs to be toned down, especially for aircraft that just whitewash the entire screen every time they are selected.

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/7158/bug3zty.jpg