Slitherine

I was added as a new beta tester a few weeks ago. Until now I've had little time to look at Panzer Corps because I'm in the final stages to help Slitherine get Grand Strategy 2.0 out the door. It's an expansion to Commander Europe At War.
Now our job (beta development team) is done and Slitherine will release next week so I can focus upon Panzer Corps.

My first attention was the Norway scenario since I'm a Norwegian. Here I found several spelling errors on the towns. The map doesn't look much like southern Norway either, but that's probably harder to fix.

Town errors:
Correct spelling (wrong spelling currently in PC):
Fredrikstad (Fredrikstadt)

Kongsvinger (Kongstinger)

Voss (Vossevangen). Most people just call this town for Voss even though the town centre is called Vossevangen by locals. On most maps you just see Voss.

Roros (Rores). Correct spelling is actually Røros, but we type ø as o in English.

Honefoss (Hoenefoss). Correct spelling is Hønefoss, but you don't show Norwegian special letters. It's typical to just let ø be written as o and å as a (as you did with Dombås and Åndalsnes). Sometimes ø is written as oe, but it's more common to remove the e. Hoenefoss is possible too, but then Dombås should be Dombaas and Åndalsnes Aandalsnes.

Placement of airfields:

Sola airfield near Stavanger. Stavanger and Sola should change places because Sola is actually located southwest of Stavanger.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ty_map.jpg

Airfield near Trondheim can be named Vaernes (Værnes).

Airfield near Oslo can be named Fornebu. This is actually the place I work.

Strangely enough the airport at Bergen (called Flesland) wasn't completed until 1955 even though initial plans started in 1937 so there should be no airport in Bergen as PC correctly shows.

Hex 11,27 could be an airfield called Kjevik. Kristiansand had an airfield the Germans captured soon after the invasion begun.

Danish airfields are probably the important airfields of Aalborg. Hirtshals is a small coastal town, but Aalborg is actually slightly offmap so I guess it can be used. Maybe airfields can be called Aalborg W and Aalborg E or something. Or left one can be called Hjorring and east one Fredrikshavn. Problem is that neither Hjorring nor Fredrikshavn had any airfields. The Aalborg aerodrome was the ones the Germans used. It was actually captured by paratroopers in April 9th 1940.

Also maybe its me... but I didn't think the british Navy was present in such force as this scenario of the campaign would have you believe. The British Navy is basically on top of you from the start.. historically wasn't it just the destroyer Glowworm and some bombers that made contact until Norway's fate was sealed ?

Map:

There was a rail line between hex 16,17 and eastwards to Elverum. The hex 16, 17 should be a town called Hamar. It's the biggest town in the area and bigger than both Elverum and Lillehammer. Hamar was an important rail intersection. The left line to Trondheim (Dovrebanen) went via Lillehammer and Dombas and the right line (Rørosbanen) went via Elverum and Røros.

Larvik should be placed in hex 14,24 instead of 14,25. It's located slightly left of the mouth of the Oslo fjord.

Bergen should be in the hex 5,18 instead of 5,19.

If you have coastal batteries as unit type could could consider adding Oscarsborg 1x S of Oslo. This coastal battery sunk the German heavy cruiser, Blücher, and routed several other German warships. This allowed the Norwegian King and Government to escape from Oslo.

Hex 17,16 should be hills or forest and not mountains.

Rail line between Honefoss and Bergen and Lillehammer and Trondheim should be mostly forest, but maybe it's made clear to allow for faster unit movement?

The Royal Navy was lurking in the Norwegian Sea and spotted the German naval force sailing for Trondheim (e. g. the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper). The problem was that the German ships had a northwest course at the moment. So the Admiralty wrongly concluded that these ships were surface raiders sailing for the North Atlantic trying to break the British naval blockade.

Near Narvik the RN lead by Warspite managed to sink 10 German destroyers. Other encounters happened too. Admiral Hipper was damaged, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were engaged and had to flee etc.

Read here for details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Campaign
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... way-1a.jpg

cmoore019 wrote:Also maybe its me... but I didn't think the british Navy was present in such force as this scenario of the campaign would have you believe. The British Navy is basically on top of you from the start.. historically wasn't it just the destroyer Glowworm and some bombers that made contact until Norway's fate was sealed ?

remember, it is a game so they want to make it playable, fun and challenging.

cmoore019 wrote:Also maybe its me... but I didn't think the british Navy was present in such force as this scenario of the campaign would have you believe. The British Navy is basically on top of you from the start.. historically wasn't it just the destroyer Glowworm and some bombers that made contact until Norway's fate was sealed ?

I agree with that statement above.

Stauffenberg,

Feel free to make your own scenario based on the facts you stated, I will gladly play it! I`m sure it can be Historical and fun with a little play balancing.

Stauffenberg wrote:My first attention was the Norway scenario since I'm a Norwegian. Here I found several spelling errors on the towns. The map doesn't look much like southern Norway either, but that's probably harder to fix.

Town errors:
Correct spelling (wrong spelling currently in PC):
Fredrikstad (Fredrikstadt)

Kongsvinger (Kongstinger)

Voss (Vossevangen). Most people just call this town for Voss even though the town centre is called Vossevangen by locals. On most maps you just see Voss.

Roros (Rores). Correct spelling is actually Røros, but we type ø as o in English.

Honefoss (Hoenefoss). Correct spelling is Hønefoss, but you don't show Norwegian special letters. It's typical to just let ø be written as o and å as a (as you did with Dombås and Åndalsnes). Sometimes ø is written as oe, but it's more common to remove the e. Hoenefoss is possible too, but then Dombås should be Dombaas and Åndalsnes Aandalsnes.

Thank you for corrections. I have check it and it will be changed except maybe for Vossevangen. It looks to me this is a term in transition. So I would keep the name of locals.

http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vossevangen

http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voss

Stauffenberg wrote:Sola airfield near Stavanger. Stavanger and Sola should change places because Sola is actually located southwest of Stavanger.

It is true Sola is more to the south but Stavanger is located correctly. I didn't want to use 5,26 because it is too close to sea and 6,26 has road I didn't want to remove so it was placed where it is. But good idea to switch places.

Stauffenberg wrote:Airfield near Trondheim can be named Vaernes (Værnes).

Airfield near Oslo can be named Fornebu.

In most cases airfields do not have special name but for Sola it was easy available and because you kindly provided other names there is no reason not to include them.

Stauffenberg wrote:Hex 11,27 could be an airfield called Kjevik. Kristiansand had an airfield the Germans captured soon after the invasion begun.

After all I placed paratroopers there so I could place the airfield too although it is not so important from perspective of strategic placement of airfields but just to represent such airborne action more accurately.

Stauffenberg wrote:Danish airfields are probably the important airfields of Aalborg. Hirtshals is a small coastal town, but Aalborg is actually slightly offmap so I guess it can be used. Maybe airfields can be called Aalborg W and Aalborg E or something. Or left one can be called Hjorring and east one Fredrikshavn. Problem is that neither Hjorring nor Fredrikshavn had any airfields. The Aalborg aerodrome was the ones the Germans used. It was actually captured by paratroopers in April 9th 1940.

You noticed correctly that Hirtshals is here because Aalborg is of map. And two airfields are placed only to provide sufficient room for resupplying and replacement.

Stauffenberg wrote:There was a rail line between hex 16,17 and eastwards to Elverum. The hex 16, 17 should be a town called Hamar. It's the biggest town in the area and bigger than both Elverum and Lillehammer. Hamar was an important rail intersection. The left line to Trondheim (Gudbrandsdalsbanen) went via Lillehammer and Dombas and the right line (Rørosbanen) went via Elverum and Røros.

I was not aware of importance of Hamar but decision which cities to place in this case was done to get better composition of supply hexes.

Stauffenberg wrote:Larvik should be placed in hex 14,24 instead of 14,25. It's located slightly left of the mouth of the Oslo fjord.

Larvik is on border between 14,25 and 15,24 and Fredrikstad should be in 16,24. That way both cities would be adjacent to each other even if they are on opposite sides of bay. So one is moved little bit to left other little bit to right. and there are two sea hexes between them.

Stauffenberg wrote:Bergen should be in the hex 5,18 instead of 5,19.

My mistake but I always give myself tolerance of one hex.

Stauffenberg wrote:If you have coastal batteries as unit type could could consider adding Oscarsborg 1x S of Oslo. This coastal battery sunk the German heavy cruiser, Blücher, and routed several other German warships. This allowed the Norwegian King and Government to escape from Oslo.

Oscarsborg fortress is placed in consideration and when I look how much room for manoeuvring there is on the south I become desperate. Any force that tries to land there will suffer heavy casualties from the moment of being in naval transports to the moment of attacking the fort and there is no room for concealed movement. So presence of it will not result of making German warships at bay but preventing effective landing on that part of map and maybe causing choke point at Oslo. So it is mostly gameplay question.

Stauffenberg wrote:Rail line between Honefoss and Bergen and Lillehammer and Trondheim should be mostly forest, but maybe it's made clear to allow for faster unit movement?

Units can move fast on road at any terrain, but more to present it as some kind of valley.

A very detailed analysis indeed. For the record, sometimes we have to take certain liberties with our scenario design for the sake of game play and balance purposes. Sometimes we simply don't have an accurate map of how the towns, cities, airfields, and rail lines appeared... as they would have in 1939-1945, not as they appear in Google Earth today.

So while we appreciate this level of critiquing, try to remember that fun and engaging game play is important too, and sometimes causes our maps to 'differ' slightly from reality or perceived reality.

Regarding Oslo.

The German troops that actually captured Oslo were the troops onboard airplanes who landed on Fornebu. They marched towards Oslo via Lysaker. It's about 1 hour march on foot.

The German soldiers that were intended to take Oslo didn't make it after the sinking of Blücher. More than 800 German soldiers died. Those surviving the sinking of Blücher landed at the west bank of the Oslo fjord. The other ships with soldiers were routed southwards. It was only after the Luftwaffe sent a bomber raid against Oscarsborg that the Kriegsmarine ships sailed to Oslo and landed the troops 12 hours delayed.

So it was actually quite hard to land seaborne troops directly to Oslo. It would have been smarter to land the troops near Larvik and Fredrikstad and march them towards Oslo. A parachute unit could be landed at Fornebu and capture Oslo itself. Is it possible to recreate that in Panzer Corps?

The Germans relied upon complete surprise. Therefore the airplanes with German planes with soldiers managed to land at Fornebu unopposed, but at Oscarsborg the local commander there didn't wait for orders from the Norwegian Military High Command. He acted on what he saw and sent torpedoes against the ships sailing in the Oslo fjord. The fjord is so narrow near Drøbak (near Oscarsborg) that the coastal battery can shoot at any ship trying to sail to Oslo. It's strange that the Luftwaffe didn't bombard the fortress until after Blücher was sunk because bombardment could have neutralized the fortress.

The Germans met little resistance in Norway April 9th. Oscarsborg was one of the exceptions.

Info about Weserübüng can be found here:
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/jfq_pubs/jfq1301.pdf

Stauffenberg wrote:Regarding Oslo.

The German troops that actually captured Oslo were the troops onboard airplanes who landed on Fornebu. They marched towards Oslo via Lysaker. It's about 1 hour march on foot.

The German soldiers that were intended to take Oslo didn't make it after the sinking of Blücher. More than 800 German soldiers died. Those surviving the sinking of Blücher landed at the west bank of the Oslo fjord. The other ships with soldiers were routed southwards. It was only after the Luftwaffe sent a bomber raid against Oscarsborg that the Kriegsmarine ships sailed to Oslo and landed the troops 12 hours delayed.

So it was actually quite hard to land seaborne troops directly to Oslo. It would have been smarter to land the troops near Larvik and Fredrikstad and march them towards Oslo. A parachute unit could be landed at Fornebu and capture Oslo itself. Is it possible to recreate that in Panzer Corps?

The Germans relied upon complete surprise. Therefore the airplanes with German planes with soldiers managed to land at Fornebu unopposed, but at Oscarsborg the local commander there didn't wait for orders from the Norwegian Military High Command. He acted on what he saw and sent torpedoes against the ships sailing in the Oslo fjord. The fjord is so narrow near Drøbak (near Oscarsborg) that the coastal battery can shoot at any ship trying to sail to Oslo. It's strange that the Luftwaffe didn't bombard the fortress until after Blücher was sunk because bombardment could have neutralized the fortress.

The Germans met little resistance in Norway April 9th. Oscarsborg was one of the exceptions.

Info about Weserübüng can be found here:
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/jfq_pubs/jfq1301.pdf

That landing at Fredrikstad is what's actually bugging me because fort should have range to reach targets in transports and after landing there. But I know what should I do. Include Oscarsborg, give it somewhat higher naval attack but lower air and ground defense. So it should be represented but it shouldn't be a problem to knock it out with combination of air and ground attack.