Slitherine

I mentioned this idea in a conversation with Deducer, but I remember playing Dungeons and Dragons as a kid. When you started the game, you rolled the dice to generate your new character. The maximum and minimum strengths were governed by the size of the die used. I think a similar system could be implemented into Panzer Corps to randomize the strength of the same type of unit. Say a player wanted to buy three Panzer IVGs. As it stands, each Panzer IVG a player purchases has exactly the same initial combat values. To add a bit of human realism and chance to the equation, what if there was a built-in random variation of the combat values for the Panzer IVGs, perhaps a spread of five initial combat values? 1 and 2 would be below average. Three would be average. 4 and 5 would be above standard value. Perhaps the chances of getting an above-average combat value Panzer IVG would be increased for a player that has a greater number of DVs over a period of time and thus has generated a favorable "charisma" and is rewarded by German High Command with first crack at the best equipment and troops. Perhaps a person could develop such high charisma that when they purchased a Panzer IVG that it came right out of the factory with a hero capability? This way, a player who was very successful and had a high charisma could perhaps use less power equipment, say a Panzer IVE, but with their bonuses have a tank that fights as well, or almost as well, as a Panzer IVG? In this way, a talented player could use cheaper, older equipment and accomplish the same goals. On the other hand, someone who did not have a good battle success history, or poor charisma, could buy the latest and greatest equipment, but the chances that it would perform at below-average in its combat values would be increased. Of course, a player could, through victories and experience, improve the strength of a unit from below average to average to above average. The same could be true with infantry units.

Just my two cents for future development....

I am afraid this won't work in the current system due to way to small granularity. Considering all values in the game are integers the minimal deviation will be one. Now considering the average attack value for example is something around 10 then every deviation would mean a 10% difference in the statistic. This is imho way to huge. The difference between a tank with +1 vs one with -1 would be already 20%.

To come to your explanation behind the deviations: All the human factor you want to use to explain this just seems wrong to me when you consider the scale of the units. It's not like you are buying a single tank with a single crew. Depending on the scale of he scenario the "tank" you are buying is something between a regiment and a brigade. Of course some of the crews in there are slightly better and some are slightly worse but it just averages out in the masses. The different experience is already modeled in a stat accidentally called experience.

Additionally if you grant a player who wins a lot of DVs a higher chance to get better equipment you will be helping the wrong person. Someone winning mostly DVs already get rewarded with more prestige which allows him to use more elite replacements to get higher experience and allows him to upgrade more of his equipment to better models. Implementing this will just widen the gap between someone breezing through the campaign and someone struggling which makes balancing even harder. While it may be realistic to reward better commanders with better gear from a balance point of view this is a nightmare.

Semi off topic: I used to play quite a lot D&D games myself and all the random character generation actually was a major pain for the game master. One lucky person could get a monster of a character while an unlucky one got stuck with a weakling. Now balancing the opponents become really difficult as opponents challenging for the first one would kill the second easy but opponents fit was the second was just a cannon fodder for the first. Of course you could create a fitting opponent for everyone of them and try to "assign" them properly but you should know how bloody inventive players are when it comes to totally ruin the GM's plan. In the later versions of D&D btw. they introduced a point budget stat buying system to amend exactly this problem. Randomness is not always something good.

Tarrak wrote:I am afraid this won't work in the current system due to way to small granularity. Considering all values in the game are integers the minimal deviation will be one. Now considering the average attack value for example is something around 10 then every deviation would mean a 10% difference in the statistic. This is imho way to huge. The difference between a tank with +1 vs one with +1 would be already 20%.

To come to your explanation behind the deviations: All the human factor you want to use to explain this just seems wrong to me when you consider the scale of the units. It's not like you are buying a single tank with a single crew. Depending on the scale of he scenario the "tank" you are buying is something between a regiment and a brigade. Of course some of the crews in there are slightly better and some are slightly worse but it just averages out in the masses. The different experience is already modeled in a stat accidentally called experience.

Additionally if you grant a player who wins a lot of DVs a higher chance to get better equipment you will be helping the wrong person. Someone winning mostly DVs already get rewarded with more prestige which allows him to use more elite replacements to get higher experience and allows him to upgrade more of his equipment to better models. Implementing this will just widen the gap between someone breezing through the campaign and someone struggling which makes balancing even harder. While it may be realistic to reward better commanders with better gear from a balance point of view this is a nightmare.

No developer of Panzer Corps has ever indicated the scale of units or equipment or hexes. Does 1 tank = 1 tank, or does 1 tank = a tank battalion? an armored division?

Also, heroes awarded randomly in combat in the game already can add defensive, offensive, or other bonuses up to +2 or up +3 to a unit's standard. As such, I do not agree that adding an element of randomness to each unit purchase is a necessarily a bad thing, or that it will through the strength of a unit so far out of wack to screw the game up. You could get a really great unit, or one that sucks and needs a lot of training. If you are the type of player that uses no infantry and all tanks, or all of one type of unit, there will be differences between them. Just like real life. There are special forces, and regular forces. You can have two tanks of equal capability, but commander and crew of the tank make all of the difference. Two FW 190s may be identical on paper, but they become very different in their capabilities depending on who is buying them.

You need to open your mind and think beyond the limitations imposed by the pre-set game limits if you want to keep improving this game. I'm just thinking out of the box. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe there is something to it. I'm just throwing it out there.

Zhivago wrote:
No developer of Panzer Corps has ever indicated the scale of units or equipment or hexes. Does 1 tank = 1 tank, or does 1 tank = a tank battalion? an armored division?

Actually somewhere there was a post stating the scale of the units vary between a regiment and a brigade depending on scenario but i be damned if i can find it again. But it doesn't really matter imho what exactly it is because quite certain it is not a single tank.

Also, heroes awarded in this came can add defensive, offensive, or other bonuses up to +2 or up +3 to a unit's standard. As such, I do not agree that adding an element of randomness to each unit purchase is a necessarily a bad thing. You could get a really great unit, or one that sucks and needs a lot of training. If you are the type of player that uses no infantry and all tanks, or all of one type of unit, there will be differences between them.

Yes the heroes are already adding some randomness factor but adding another one just makes this worse. I don't say that randomness per se is a bad thing but just the amount of randomness is to high. Deviation by 20% at least are just way to high. If the system get changed, maybe in PC2 and it allows more granularity so for example the difference will be only in the range of 2% then it would be possibly fine but 20% at least is just way to high.

Just like real life. There are special forces, and regular forces. You can have two tanks of equal capability, but commander and crew of the tank make all of the difference. Two FW 190s may be identical on paper, but they become very different in their capabilities depending on who is buying them.

As i said on a single vehicle scale certainly in big units it all averages out. Plus the different capabilities and experience are already modeled in the game by experience. I don't see any point in modeling this additionally with some random variance in stats.

You need to open your mind and think beyond the limitations imposed by the pre-set game limits if you want to keep improving this game. I'm just thinking out of the box. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe there is something to it. I'm just throwing it out there.

I never said it's bad to think about it and come up with new ideas. I am just pointing the flaws, i at least, see in them.

Tarrak wrote:

Zhivago wrote:
No developer of Panzer Corps has ever indicated the scale of units or equipment or hexes. Does 1 tank = 1 tank, or does 1 tank = a tank battalion? an armored division?

Actually somewhere there was a post stating the scale of the units vary between a regiment and a brigade depending on scenario but i be damned if i can find it again. But it doesn't really matter imho what exactly it is because quite certain it is not a single tank.

Also, heroes awarded in this came can add defensive, offensive, or other bonuses up to +2 or up +3 to a unit's standard. As such, I do not agree that adding an element of randomness to each unit purchase is a necessarily a bad thing. You could get a really great unit, or one that sucks and needs a lot of training. If you are the type of player that uses no infantry and all tanks, or all of one type of unit, there will be differences between them.

Yes the heroes are already adding some randomness factor but adding another one just makes this worse. I don't say that randomness per se is a bad thing but just the amount of randomness is to high. Deviation by 20% at least are just way to high. If the system get changed, maybe in PC2 and it allows more granularity so for example the difference will be only in the range of 2% then it would be possibly fine but 20% at least is just way to high.

Just like real life. There are special forces, and regular forces. You can have two tanks of equal capability, but commander and crew of the tank make all of the difference. Two FW 190s may be identical on paper, but they become very different in their capabilities depending on who is buying them.

As i said on a single vehicle scale certainly in big units it all averages out. Plus the different capabilities and experience are already modeled in the game by experience. I don't see any point in modeling this additionally with some random variance in stats.

You need to open your mind and think beyond the limitations imposed by the pre-set game limits if you want to keep improving this game. I'm just thinking out of the box. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe there is something to it. I'm just throwing it out there.

I never said it's bad to think about it and come up with new ideas. I am just pointing the flaws, i at least, see in them.

I appreciate the feedback, but I think it's do-able. How about sharing some of your ideas to make the game better?

I agree with Tarrak - if you want to randomise something, combat values probably wouldn't be my first choice.

Because of the abstract way "playing pieces" in PzC are modelled the stats, at least in my opinion, represent the specific piece of equipment it is equiped with, regardless of what scale they represent. If you randomise the combat values, it's like saying that the **equipment** is somehow different from one unit to the next: this unit had defective PzIVGs, this unit had PzIVGs which mysteriously equal Panther tanks, and the 3rd unit got PzIVGs based on the intended design. A PzIVG should be a PzIVG, should be a PzIVG (yes technically there were variations but for the purposes of the game they are handled by F2/G/H models, not variations within a model.)

A mechanic already exists in game which affects combat values based upon how good a unit is at using their equipment equipment: Experience. Instead of adding a new mechanic, *IF* you wanted to randomise unit quality, why not just randomise starting experience? Or give every unit a randomised 1-100pt experience bonus in addition to the ~500XP they can earn through combat? A unit with a higher bonus will behave like a more experienced unit sooner than one without.




I say "if" because personally I don't like randomness affecting my core design. I don't like the current implementation of SE units (but now, with the all eqp cheat, I can work around it). I don't like the hero randomness. And I would not enjoy my favorite unit, which got shafted, being less powerfull than some other random unit bought as cannon fodder which won the jackpot and got +5.




TBH if the developers were to invest any time in developing additional ways to differentiate units, my prefference would be to replace the current hero system with something like the attachment system from PeG. After buying a unit you could choose 2 out of 8 possible upgrades (the squares along the bottom of the window) to increase various stats like +1 spot, or +3HA, or give it additional abilities like bridging (overpowered) or reduced ammo consumption.

You could replace the current random heroes with a similar bonus concept: 2 or 3 attachable subunits, or staff members. That way player could customise their units for different roles/playstyles - for example choosing whether to give an artillery unit +1 range or +ammo or better camo (fewer loses to air attack). Likewise for my tanks do I value a +attack leader or a -33% fuel costs leader? Ideally I would multiply all values in the game by some global constant (2, 5, 10) to room for finer adjustments then I could have "basic leaders" (+1) available from the high command and randomly generate higher quality leaders (2+, +1 movement), prefferably into a pool to be assigned as I see fit.

In otherwords for the RPG crowd it would be like swapping out different gems on your gear to give different bonuses. Basic gems would be readily available, epic level gems would be randomly aquired.

Why not drive a new Panzer IVG or whatever out of the factory with bonuses already available or attached to it (either awarded to a player randomly (as the game does already during combat), or using a variation of your system that allows a player to buy a unit and choose an upgrade (at an additional cost, like the over-strength feature). Perhaps a system where a player could accumulate hero points in addition to prestige points for achieving certain victory conditions would allow a player to earn up points to "choose" what type of "hero" to attach to a core unit, or perhaps gain favor with German High Command to be eligible to upgrade to new and/or experimental equipment before it is normally historically available. It would be a nice reward to be able to buy a new, 13 strength tank, or 14 strength SE grenadier units. By the way, wouldn't it be nice to be able to buy SE versions of certain units?

There are already quite a few factors in the game that can add randomness to a unit type
-Experience
-Heroes
-Overstrength
-SE variants
So I don't see too much wrong with the current system. Experience is gained in combat and overstrength can at least help those units that get no bonuses from it. Regarding heroes, probably no one really knew who would act bravely in the heat of battle and they seemed to be a pretty random occurance in real life too. Perhaps the current SE system could be better though, there's no reasoning behind when they might pop up. I guess you could see it as the Fuhrers wacky influence.

"Send Totenkopf to the northern sector"
"but mein Fuhrer ? "

In PzC different elements have different roles in the game. Experience and overstrength are things under your control which you can use to make your units stronger. Heroes and SE units are used to add a bit more variety to the game, and make replays less repetitive. Placing them under control of the player would remove this aspect of variety, and also would make them overpowered.

Zhivago wrote:I appreciate the feedback, but I think it's do-able. How about sharing some of your ideas to make the game better?

It's a bit off topic here but since you asked: I said this already a few times in different threads here tho imho the main improvement to the game would be a "weighted core slots" system.

The main flaw of the current system that leads to the predominance of only the best and strongest unit in the core is the fact the the only limiting factor is prestige and amount of core slots available. Prestige is difficult to keep at the right level without it being to less or to much due to vastly different skill levels of players and additionally this super units seems to preserve you more prestige in the long run as they take a lot less damage so use less prestige to repair. So the only really limiting factor is the core size. Now with ample prestige available even if a Tiger costs 4 times as much as a Panzer IV the question is often not 1 Tiger vs 4 Panzer IV but far more 1 Tiger vs 1 Panzer IV due to core size limit. Here the weighted core slot system kicks in. Different units consume different amount of core slots. For example standard infantry and light tanks consume 1 slot, heavy infantry and medium tank 2 slots, heavy tanks 3 slots and so on. Of course this values need to be well thought and tested but if done right this would lead imho to far more diversified core without forcing it on the player but giving him a choice. Do you want to drive around with 4 Tigers, 12 Pz.IVs or a combination of 2 Tigers and 6 Pz.IVs? It's your choice and no matter how many prestige you have you can't just field 12 Tigers and steamroll everything.

boredatwork wrote: You could replace the current random heroes with a similar bonus concept: 2 or 3 attachable subunits, or staff members. That way player could customise their units for different roles/playstyles - for example choosing whether to give an artillery unit +1 range or +ammo or better camo (fewer loses to air attack). Likewise for my tanks do I value a +attack leader or a -33% fuel costs leader? Ideally I would multiply all values in the game by some global constant (2, 5, 10) to room for finer adjustments then I could have "basic leaders" (+1) available from the high command and randomly generate higher quality leaders (2+, +1 movement), prefferably into a pool to be assigned as I see fit.

I like this idea a lot. You can spend prestige to attach a staff officer to your unit that give special attributes, not just +1 attack, +1 defense, etc. I mentioned this idea in another thread before. The officers should have special abilities not normally found on other units, but properly balanced so that no officer is overpowered. For instance, the Soviets can get a commissar for infantry that makes the unit not only defensively tougher, but never retreat/surrender. A type of artillery officer could allow it to fire twice in a turn but each shot is only at 50% capability (still very useful against two weaker enemies). A defensive leader could make the unit entrench faster and ignore the mass attack penalty.

There'd be two settings: one is just the default, where you know exactly what you buy. Another is a random option: you pay a certain amount of prestige to attach an officer, but you won't find out what that officer does until the unit has gained some combat experience.

The officers should be limited so that you can't just attach them to every unit, only a small % (perhaps 25%).

This system could work side-by-side with to the normal heroes with the stat bonuses that you can get, or it could function separately.

boredatwork wrote: You could replace the current random heroes with a similar bonus concept: 2 or 3 attachable subunits, or staff members. That way player could customise their units for different roles/playstyles - for example choosing whether to give an artillery unit +1 range or +ammo or better camo (fewer loses to air attack). Likewise for my tanks do I value a +attack leader or a -33% fuel costs leader? Ideally I would multiply all values in the game by some global constant (2, 5, 10) to room for finer adjustments then I could have "basic leaders" (+1) available from the high command and randomly generate higher quality leaders (2+, +1 movement), prefferably into a pool to be assigned as I see fit.

In otherwords for the RPG crowd it would be like swapping out different gems on your gear to give different bonuses. Basic gems would be readily available, epic level gems would be randomly aquired.

I personally don't care for this idea in the context of a historical wargame, as IMO it would lead to min/maxing in order to create wholly unrealistic exploits. I very much prefer the PzG approach of having to work with what you are given in any given unit as a result of its combat record.

To put it another way, if an officer was trained to lead infantry and figured out a way to get his infantry from Point A to Point B faster on foot (say, via some type of formation), I don't think any rational army would pluck that officer out of the infantry and put him in charge of their armored spearhead in order to make the tanks roll faster.

Well there would have to be some kind of restrictions In the number and type of heroes assignable to any given unit: + range on tank or triple +move on an 88 would be cheese.


As for historical accuracy...

To put it another way, if an officer was trained to lead infantry and figured out a way to get his infantry from Point A to Point B faster on foot (say, via some type of formation), I don't think any rational army would pluck that officer out of the infantry and put him in charge of their armored spearhead in order to make the tanks roll faster.

Obviously the german army was completely irrational then for plucking Rommel out of the infantry and putting him in charge of a Panzer Division.

About for Rommel getting a Panzer Command, it was entirely against the wishes of the General Staff (they cited exactly that Rommel was an infantry commander, not a tank commander) and only by intervention of Hitler (since Rommel was in charge of his personal security) that Rommel got 7. PzDiv during Fall Gelb. So yeah, it was actually irrational, but Rommel turned out to be an amazing panzer commander.

Regarding the "realism" aspect of officers, while there are examples of commanders who can excel under almost any conditions (see Manstein commanding an infantry corps France, Manstein commanding a PzC in AGN during Barbarossa, Manstein then commanding an infantry army), I suspect the vast majority of officers you'd assigning are merely good at their trained roles, not good at every possible role. Surely at the very least it'd take time for someone plucked out of an infantry command to get good at a panzer command or vice versa. Maybe allowing 1 or 2 super officers per core might be fine.

Completely freely allowing officers to be switched is not a good idea. In most operational war games, switching officers request prestige or administrative points, and rarely do you have enough to do more than a swap or two at a time, and even then it commands various penalties to combat efficiency for a formation.

boredatwork wrote:As for historical accuracy...

To put it another way, if an officer was trained to lead infantry and figured out a way to get his infantry from Point A to Point B faster on foot (say, via some type of formation), I don't think any rational army would pluck that officer out of the infantry and put him in charge of their armored spearhead in order to make the tanks roll faster.

Obviously the german army was completely irrational then for plucking Rommel out of the infantry and putting him in charge of a Panzer Division.

I had forgotten about that little fact - thanks for the reminder, although no thanks for trashing my analogy so effectively.

I still stand by the min/maxing concern, though, even with restrictions, because players will always come up with some way to exploit the available possibilities given enough time. I also think that the game's more replayable when you can't micro-manage your exceptional leaders for the best combinations, but instead just have to work with what you get.

deducter wrote:About for Rommel getting a Panzer Command, it was entirely against the wishes of the General Staff (they cited exactly that Rommel was an infantry commander, not a tank commander) and only by intervention of Hitler (since Rommel was in charge of his personal security) that Rommel got 7. PzDiv during Fall Gelb. So yeah, it was actually irrational, but Rommel turned out to be an amazing panzer commander.

Regarding the "realism" aspect of officers, while there are examples of commanders who can excel under almost any conditions (see Manstein commanding an infantry corps France, Manstein commanding a PzC in AGN during Barbarossa, Manstein then commanding an infantry army), I suspect the vast majority of officers you'd assigning are merely good at their trained roles, not good at every possible role. Surely at the very least it'd take time for someone plucked out of an infantry command to get good at a panzer command or vice versa. Maybe allowing 1 or 2 super officers per core might be fine.

Well more generally units of battalions and higher in most armies (eventually) fought as combined arms formations - so infantry officers commanding tanks and tank officers commanding infantry was, at least in the armored branch, the norm rather than the exception.

However I wasn't actually thinking of differentiating them as infantry or tank officers - a +2 attack is a +2 attack - just restricting some bonuses to some units, and air officers to air units.

But if you wanted to go that extra mile, I did suggest thinking of them as a command staff where it might be entirely reasonable to attach an artillery specialist to an infantry unit. You could go crazy and have a specific staff have different functions depending upon where they're attached. For example a +1 range artillery officer attached to a artillery unit would increase it's range by +1. The same artillery officer attached to an infantry unit could allow it to receive defensive artillery fire from 2 hexes away. Put the artillery officer in a fighter (as a spotter) and every artillery piece on the board gets +1 range as long as it's firing at the target the fighter is above. Etc, etc.

As long as the basic stat intergers are scaled up sufficiently to allow the various bonuses to have an impact without being overpowered there would be no end to what you could do.

Rudankort wrote:In PzC different elements have different roles in the game. Experience and overstrength are things under your control which you can use to make your units stronger. Heroes and SE units are used to add a bit more variety to the game, and make replays less repetitive. Placing them under control of the player would remove this aspect of variety, and also would make them overpowered.

I'm advocating more randomness--I would not take away the random heroes and SE units from the game--just give people more ways to get them and more ways to attach certain hero bonuses to certain unit types. At the beginning of a scenario, a player has a statistical chance once in a while of getting an SE unit. What about at the beginning of a scenario getting assigned a hero, or maybe a new category altogether like "specialist" that could add a given bonus to whatever core unit the player decided to attach it to?

And it's just my what-if idea anyway. The game is fine. I am thinking about upgrade 1.20...maybe 1.30....

About randomness, does anyone here remember Dune 2? In this game, you could build a starport to order units from intergalactic arms dealers. And the prices would vary over time, sometimes you badly wanted a siege tank but is was really overpriced at the time and instead settled for a couple of medium tanks, which were 30% discounted. Other games used similar mechanisms (like Jagged Alliance 2).

Since the prestige cost is the only stat which can be adjusted in very little steps (unlike things like hard attack etc, I'm in agreement with Tarrak here that the those steps are a bit to big in most stats) and as prestige cost is not just a representation of mechanical abilities it could be randomized a little to allow the player to have a little discount every know and then, or pay a little over standard price if he doesn't want to wait. It has the added bonus of encouraging players to keep a little prestige in reserve to snap up discounts, make them consider alternate (discounted) units when their favourite is overpriced and spread out their purchases instead of buying things the moment they become available. Alternatively the only other stat I can think of now which could be randomized a little without big changes is the fuel stat.

PzC already has a dice roll for combat effects, and random heroes, some of which I find a bit too strong already. Speaking of heroes, some different hero types might be added, like 'quartermaster' or 'logistical expert' which cause the unit to carry more ammo or fuel. Or heroes which add some traits to units, like a hero which will give a (infantry?) unit 'fortkiller' or 'minesweeper'? Randomness had two good things: it promotes replayability and adds flavour. Maybe newly bought units could start with a little bonus experience sometimes to represent talented units, that's fine in my eyes.