Slitherine

Great to see these made it to the Beta finnally! Any chance you guys can give us some more info about those? How are awards gained? Random Leaders just awarded randomly or after great deeds achieved by units? How are those randomized? What kind of special abilities, if any, did you include? Or Is it just a cosemtic add? Any plans to develop a bit more for the future?

Also glad to see you icluded the big explosion for unit destroyed. If you could make that special animation for type of unit destroyed (naval/air/ground) then you would really make my day

And last but not least, I have not received any feedback on the idea of making Library items locked from the begining and make them unlockable as you prgress through the campaigns and get to use those units included....don´t think its worth it? I always believe if make it like an award for progressing through the campaign, player would feel more interested in them. They look quite nice by the way!

Cheers

Thanks for the topic. Awards and heroes are still new, so any feedback and suggestions how make them more useful, balanced and fun is welcome. Below I'll explain how they work, to make testing easier for all of you.

Awards

Awards are used to distinguish veteran units, event if they were given green replacements and lost all stars. Awards are tied to unit's kills (total enemy strength killed, i. e. inflicting 5 points of damage to enemy unit gives you 5 kills). As was in real life, many awards are "upgrades" of the previous grade of the same award, and replace it in the same award slot. There are 3 award slots, but germans use 2 atm.

Full list of awards:

Iron Cross 2nd Class (50 kills)
Iron Cross 1st Class (100 kills)
Knight's Cross (200 kills)
Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves (300 kills)
Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords (400 kills)
Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds (500 kills)
Knight's Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds (1000 kills)

Last award will probably be very rare, much like in real life.

Heroes

Heroes are similar to awards, but there are 2 important differences:
- They modify unit's stats, and so are more useful
- They appear more randomly, so you won't know in advance when exactly you will get the next hero.

First hero appears somewhere in the range of 50-100 kills, second - 100-200 kills, third - 200-500. So you can have maximum 3 heroes on a unit, but getting them can take longer than to get 3 heroes on 3 different units.

New hero gets a randomly assigned name and image. We'll try to add historical heroes in the next update. Each hero can give a certain bonus to each of the base 5 stats: attack, defense, initiative, movement and spotting. Special abilities do not exist. The reason is, special abilities are often useless or, on the contrary, unbalance the game, and we don't want any of this before release. However, in the future special abilities can well appear.

Acererak wrote:And last but not least, I have not received any feedback on the idea of making Library items locked from the begining and make them unlockable as you prgress through the campaigns and get to use those units included....don´t think its worth it? I always believe if make it like an award for progressing through the campaign, player would feel more interested in them. They look quite nice by the way!

About this, I must have missed this idea when you originally posted it. It sounds interesting, I'll give it more thought. However, as we are getting closer to release, we have to aggressively prioritize our work. So, no promises.

just got my first kill upgrade. My Tiger has gained +1 defence. I also received a Waffen SS panzer 1V bonus unit. I think the new upgrade to include these are great and a new dimension to the game and work really well. This game is so much more than Panzer General. Do u think in the future there will be new add ons, such as the desert campaigns etc.

Panzer Corps: Africa is definitely on our own wish list...

Finding historical heroes ofcourse will be connected with the respective images right? (re.g no infanty pictures to a pilot).

Also, would it be great to show the hero's stat upgrade on the unit screen (possibly with green color?)

Finally, is it possible to make medals more rare (perhaps based on a different medal policy like battle overall kills)?

pstamatis wrote:Finding historical heroes ofcourse will be connected with the respective images right? (re.g no infanty pictures to a pilot).

Also, would it be great to show the hero's stat upgrade on the unit screen (possibly with green color?)

Finally, is it possible to make medals more rare (perhaps based on a different medal policy like battle overall kills)?

I like the idea with the color!!!

What about multi-player.

Any chance to reduce the cost to get hereos and rewards?

pstamatis wrote:Finding historical heroes ofcourse will be connected with the respective images right? (re.g no infanty pictures to a pilot).

Also, would it be great to show the hero's stat upgrade on the unit screen (possibly with green color?)

Finally, is it possible to make medals more rare (perhaps based on a different medal policy like battle overall kills)?

Haha, I know, I got a picture of a Kriegsmarine sailor as a hero on a Luftwaffe H177 Bomber. Can they name the pics differently so an appropriate "pic" shows up for a specific 'event' that calls for hero generation? Right now, I see no special designation in the pics folder. (unless I'm misreading again?!)

Thanks for the info!

I think the parameters for getting both, as a starting point, is a good choice. It won´t unbalance the game and give more flavor to the units through the campaign. Great job on the page in the unit screen to include them by the way, looks quite nice.

It woul be nice to have other triggers for them besides number of kills : Rugged Defenses or Ambushes sound like one.

And for Leaders, even if I agree with the current simple aproach (great idea about highlighting those stats boosted by the leader in green color if possible), other more special abilities ala PG2 make for more unique builds of units, which is a great feature to have imo. I recall abilities like :

- Gaining Scout movement for Tank or Anti Tank units
- Ability to shoot twice per turn
- Ability to move after destroying unit, even if previously moved

Not sure if those would unbalance the game if randomly awarded, but increasing the requisites (maybe just for the third leader slot?)

Glado you like the Library idea. If possible to implement would be a great motivation tool to reward commited players to the campaigns, although the possibility of starting campaigns in later periods needs to be taken in mind. Maybe just available after specific scenarios have been won with specific victory (decisive)?

I like the addition of leaders/medals. One can get a real feel for how valuable a unit has been over the course of a campaign.

My one question is: where do you go to find out which units have leaders/medals? It was an easy thing to find in PG2 with the nation symbol in the corner and viewing unit capability between campaigns. I have yet to find it yet in PCorps however. My apologies if this has been already mentioned somewhere else or is pending in a new build.

You can alt click a unit to bring up details stats for the unit, although I sort of hope this will get simplified to a different hot key, like 'i'.

Very nice. Lots of detail. Is the plan to leave the ability of the leader floating with mouse prescence?

pickle wrote:Very nice. Lots of detail. Is the plan to leave the ability of the leader floating with mouse prescence?

How about small marks in the toggle unit list in each units box, say one pip per "hero", with three pips for three heroes, or maybe a dot for one, a dot with a circle around it for two, and a dot and two circles for three? It might be too much to do that for Decorations, however. But it would be nice to see, at a glance, what units have heroes!

I wonder if we could do it with the unit panel for strength. Add some detail to it. E.g. a small gold flourish coming off the bottom in the middle for one leader. 2 gold flourishes on the bottom corners for 2 leaders. Both for 3 leaders and maybe more ornate. I rerally dont want to add any more UI elelmnts as it clutters up the screen.

I´m wondering how to get the bonus units. I´m currently in the stalingrad scenario and have no clue on how to get them ... or are they limited to the late scenarios ? That would be some kind of incorrect.

The glitches with the "wrong" hero-pictures, e.g. picture of a kriegsmarine soldier as hero of a panzer unit, was noticed by me too.


An informational eyecandy could be to use little ironcrosses on the unit to reflect how many heros are in this unit.

They only appear in the campaign. Are you playing single scenarios?

Can Heroes be killed by combat? It happened sometimes, I wonder if you will allow for that here? I'm not refering to the entire unit being destroyed, just one hero, or more, from each unit as a random occurance. (Not that I want Sgt. Slaughter to die. . .)

Rudankort wrote: Heroes

Heroes are similar to awards, but there are 2 important differences:
- They modify unit's stats, and so are more useful
- They appear more randomly, so you won't know in advance when exactly you will get the next hero.

First hero appears somewhere in the range of 50-100 kills, second - 100-200 kills, third - 200-500. So you can have maximum 3 heroes on a unit, but getting them can take longer than to get 3 heroes on 3 different units.

Is that "kills" mean units or strength points?

iainmcneil wrote:They only appear in the campaign. Are you playing single scenarios?

I´m playing the campain, so far I´m beyond kursk but no elite units ever appeared, it´s the 0999 version and a new game, perhaps just no luck