Armageddon and what it means for the future of Panzer Corps
Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2014 8:13 am
So, Armageddon is out and having played it for a solid number of hours now, I find myself wondering what effect it's release will have on the future of Panzer Corps.
Rudankort has hinted at the possibility of a return to WW2 - no promise, of course, but it seems to be in the cards.
We'll see how that goes depending on the success of the Wh40k stuff and whether or not there are many addons which could suck up all of Flashback Games' development time.
Provided we see a return to WW2, what are the hopes/concerns those of you harbor when looking at Armageddons version of the Panzer Corps engine?
Here's my personal take on this issue:
Good stuff:
The basic map sure looks better. The viewport can be zoomed seamlessly. That's a great step forward from PzC.
Six unit perspectives. This will also complicate modding, but it sure looks much better.
Fluff. Due to the more personal level of Armageddon, stuff like briefings and even ingame messages have been greatly improved.
Different weapons. Caveat emptor: The actual implementation leaves something to be desired, imo, but it's a change with great potential.
Bad stuff:
*Almost no lessons learned from the complaints about Panzer Corps over the years. This applies to a variety of issues. A general trend is that if something was discussed as being sub-par in PzC, chances are it's now even worse or at best not improved at all. Examples would be hidden unit traits or core limited strictly by number of units as opposed to unit value or something.
*Obnoxious touch centric UI. Rudankort has stated this is actually great as things are better to read, but I don't need glasses yet and find it annoying. There's also a lack of tooltips, keyboard shortcuts and popup windows. Still, feel free to list this as a good thing in your own assessment.
*No more elite reinforcements. No more manual reinforcements. Wtf? I sure hope these would reappear in a new PzC game, but for now, they've been steamlined (in the "You're fired" sense).
*No ships. No true airforce. I hope these would make a return in a PzC sequel, but Rudankort omitted them when rewriting the engine. Make what you want of that.
*Multiple weapons in their current implementation do nothing but make it harder to see which unit is good and which not. Same about HP for individual equipment pieces / soldiers. It's the return of the RoF mechanic that was hard to understand already, only worse by several orders of magnitude.
*No more ammo.
*No entrenchment.
*Appearently no support for frames/animations. I can understand that it was much cheaper to create the art assets this way, but the rewrite of the engine would have been the time to make this change, even if all official graphics hadn't actually made use of it.
*Disimprovements to campaign scripting. I was hoping for improvements in this area, but everything seems even more limited than it was in PzC.
*Dumbed down scenario objectives and the return to "do it in 14 turns or less". No more major/minor victories.
I'll leave it at that for now, though maybe I'll edit this list as I play more (I'm still in act1). As you can see, my list of concerns is much longer than my list of hopes, which is kinda disturbing.
I hope on a return to WW2, resolving quite a few of those issues would be mandatory ... but you can never be sure.
In general (being a software developer myself), I find myself greatly at odds with Rudankort's approach not to implement anything he feels he doesn't absolutely need RIGHT NOW.
Firstly, this also prevents any modders from potentially making use of it (that goes without saying), and secondly, it's almost certain that implementing it in the future will cause a higher workload or have unforseen consequences - or at worst, it'll be impossible to implement it at all for some reason not thought of at the time of the general design.
Anyway, those of you that have played Warhammer Armageddon, what's your take? What are the hopes and concerns you take away from the experience, if any?
_____
rezaf
Rudankort has hinted at the possibility of a return to WW2 - no promise, of course, but it seems to be in the cards.
We'll see how that goes depending on the success of the Wh40k stuff and whether or not there are many addons which could suck up all of Flashback Games' development time.
Provided we see a return to WW2, what are the hopes/concerns those of you harbor when looking at Armageddons version of the Panzer Corps engine?
Here's my personal take on this issue:
Good stuff:
The basic map sure looks better. The viewport can be zoomed seamlessly. That's a great step forward from PzC.
Six unit perspectives. This will also complicate modding, but it sure looks much better.
Fluff. Due to the more personal level of Armageddon, stuff like briefings and even ingame messages have been greatly improved.
Different weapons. Caveat emptor: The actual implementation leaves something to be desired, imo, but it's a change with great potential.
Bad stuff:
*Almost no lessons learned from the complaints about Panzer Corps over the years. This applies to a variety of issues. A general trend is that if something was discussed as being sub-par in PzC, chances are it's now even worse or at best not improved at all. Examples would be hidden unit traits or core limited strictly by number of units as opposed to unit value or something.
*Obnoxious touch centric UI. Rudankort has stated this is actually great as things are better to read, but I don't need glasses yet and find it annoying. There's also a lack of tooltips, keyboard shortcuts and popup windows. Still, feel free to list this as a good thing in your own assessment.
*No more elite reinforcements. No more manual reinforcements. Wtf? I sure hope these would reappear in a new PzC game, but for now, they've been steamlined (in the "You're fired" sense).
*No ships. No true airforce. I hope these would make a return in a PzC sequel, but Rudankort omitted them when rewriting the engine. Make what you want of that.
*Multiple weapons in their current implementation do nothing but make it harder to see which unit is good and which not. Same about HP for individual equipment pieces / soldiers. It's the return of the RoF mechanic that was hard to understand already, only worse by several orders of magnitude.
*No more ammo.
*No entrenchment.
*Appearently no support for frames/animations. I can understand that it was much cheaper to create the art assets this way, but the rewrite of the engine would have been the time to make this change, even if all official graphics hadn't actually made use of it.
*Disimprovements to campaign scripting. I was hoping for improvements in this area, but everything seems even more limited than it was in PzC.
*Dumbed down scenario objectives and the return to "do it in 14 turns or less". No more major/minor victories.
I'll leave it at that for now, though maybe I'll edit this list as I play more (I'm still in act1). As you can see, my list of concerns is much longer than my list of hopes, which is kinda disturbing.
I hope on a return to WW2, resolving quite a few of those issues would be mandatory ... but you can never be sure.
In general (being a software developer myself), I find myself greatly at odds with Rudankort's approach not to implement anything he feels he doesn't absolutely need RIGHT NOW.
Firstly, this also prevents any modders from potentially making use of it (that goes without saying), and secondly, it's almost certain that implementing it in the future will cause a higher workload or have unforseen consequences - or at worst, it'll be impossible to implement it at all for some reason not thought of at the time of the general design.
Anyway, those of you that have played Warhammer Armageddon, what's your take? What are the hopes and concerns you take away from the experience, if any?
_____
rezaf
. I am sure it is excellent for being exactly what it is aimed for. It looks like it fits perfectly to the game and crowd that I used to walk past in the games workshop store and i am sure it is very faithfull to the board game.