Slitherine

Very happy to know that you plan Panzer Corps 2 and warm congratulations on your outstanding Panzer Corps.

THINGS I MISSED IN PANZER CORPS

* Hard to see Hero bonuses on a unit

• Should be able to easily see this info in unit's statistics panel.
  Something like :
  Attack 8 ( 8 with some different color if it is a modified value and if I hover over the 'Attack 8' to see e.g Base 5, Heroes +3 )

* Certain units I could not find much use for

• Maybe it is just me but I did n't overall find all units liable options e.g :
  - Alpine infantry & Bridge engineers ( not many maps where they could be useful? )
  - Anti-aircraft ( especially towed ones )
  - Strategic Bombers ( not clear to me why I should use them apart from attacking naval units )
  - Recon ( +1 to spotting is nice but I thought is not enough )

* Combat Random was too ...random

• I appreciate randomness plays a role and much liked the option to choose between 3 different levels but at the Normal state,
  I thought it was too random and frustrating at times ( "forcing" me to scum-load many many times )

* Rail lines not that useful?

• I appreciated the addition of rail movement in Panzer Corps but I hardly ever used it. Maybe rethink how it can be improved?

* Campaign paths often cut you out from several scenarios

• I would like to be able to experience as many scenarios as possible when achieving major victory. When the campaign path splits into brunches I feel I am missing out some of the game.

PANZER CORPS 2 SUGGESTIONS / WISHLIST

* If I can afford a single request it is this :

• Please stay faithful to the spirit of Panzer Corps as Panzer Corps stayed faithful to Panzer General - do not go overboard with 3D.
  As far as I am concerned the Panzer Corps 2D HD graphics are all I can ask for. I much more care about subtle improvements to gameplay and quality of life
  than fancy 3d maps and animations.

* Other stuff / ideas / suggestions

- Saved games list to be grouped / filtered by Campaign for easier access
- Whenever a unit's statistics are affect in any way by heroes/terrain/weather/e.t.c I want to see this effect in unit's statistics panel
- Tooltips , tooltips and more tooltips with information. Does a font have different color? I want to hover over it and understand why by reading its tooltip.
- Attacking a unit multiple times in the same round should give you some bonus ( e.g a decreasing percentage - based on unit's experience - of unit's strength will be used to defend/attack when it retaliates per attack )
- Add air recon units that reveal enemies along their whole trail of movement
- More realistic supply/reinforcements ( currently a unit seems to be able to get reinforcement indefinitely even if very far away from allied units or too close to or surrounded by enemy units )
- Add tooltip that shows the prestige cost of a Standard or Elite reinforcement. Ideally allows us to reinforce incrementally by clicking again & again as we do not always need or can afford a full blown reinforcement
- "Campaign Hardcore mode" that disallows restarting a scenario and scum-loading in the middle of a game. Auto-save only - no going back. Possible rewards : e.g +20% prestige
- World War I theme?
- Short video cutscenes with historical footage in between scenarios would be nice

HerrGeneral2017 wrote: * Hard to see Hero bonuses on a unit

I very much agree with this. This needs to be in the game. Without this the unit comparisons you can do are completely pointless. XP bonuses need to flow into this as well.

* Certain units I could not find much use for

• Maybe it is just me but I did n't overall find all units liable options e.g :
  - Alpine infantry & Bridge engineers ( not many maps where they could be useful? )
  - Anti-aircraft ( especially towed ones )
  - Strategic Bombers ( not clear to me why I should use them apart from attacking naval units )
  - Recon ( +1 to spotting is nice but I thought is not enough )

Hmm... while I can see how Alpine Infantry and Anti Aircraft Guns and especially bridge engineers are a BIT situational, the Level bombers are by far one of the most powerful and flexible unit in the game. They destroy the target's supplies, making russian heavy tanks completely helpless, they can neutralize cities so the enemy can't buy units there, they can supress units to an insane amount once they have XP and force surrenders left and right and they're essential to attack fortified positions or cities. So I'd say Strategic Bombers are almost pefect the way they are. In fact the naval bombardment is probaly the one thing that is least realistic and that I'd like to see go. Strategic Bombers are VERY important and effective already in ground combat for supply lines destructiona and suppression and I'd like the naval stuff be handled by torpedo bombers as it was historical. I don'T remember a lot of B17s destroy German ships (unless in port maybe). Dive bombers and torpedo bombers should be the ship killers I feel.

* Combat Random was too ...random

MAYBE. Certainly some too extreme results should be avoided I guess. Stuff like I attack a groundunit that has [-1] air defense with a fighter and suddenly I lose 5 strength points to that 1 attack value because I get an insanely unlucky roll. That should not happen, especially if my unit is very experienced.

* Rail lines not that useful?

They are actually very useful in certain scenarios. However... the biggest problemwith them I feel is that you cannot transport multiple units per turn since you cannot immediately move an unloaded unit. That might be realistic since they first need to redeploy, BUT.. I feel the rail lines would work better if instead of unloading the unit only in the city I could also unload it, just like when buying a new unit which would arrive by train also anyway, on all adjacent hexes. That way you could unload up to 7 units in a city. They would still only be able to move on the next turn, but I can use the transport network more efficiently. The game could still limit how many trains I can use per turn to balance this, but if I have 3 trains available I want to be able to move 3 units to the same place. Right now that would take 3 turns. Before this watch patched it would have taken 6 turns. Especially in the Vanilla Campaign where time is very critical this makes the feature almost useless. SOmetimes transporting one unit can be enough, like moving in another artillery on Moscow. But for themost part you need to strategically relocate and entire Division, not just one bataillon. And that just doesn't work right now. I feel if you could unload adjacent (this might be useful for airtransporting to airfields too btw and maybe also for landing ships on ports (obviously not for airdrops or naal landings outside of airfields and ports). These regular means of transporting troops need to have higher throughput to be really powerful.

* Campaign paths often cut you out from several scenarios

I agree with this one. The Vanilla Campaign was the best example, the other ones were actually fine. In Vanilla if you won too much you basically had no chance in the US because you neither had the prestige nor the experience to win over there, especially sine the enemy troops are exaclt ythe same. it's kind of stupid that if I beat the USSR in 1941 I can still only attack the US in 1946 and I face tanks and experienced units that would never exist if they had never fought in europe. So I pay a price that I shouldn't have to pay. In fact if I win in 1941 I should be able to attack the US in 1942 (unrealistic yeah but landing in the US is completely unrealistic no matter when) and face M2s and M3s and probably even some Renault FT tanks, not M4A8 Shermans, M10s and pershings. The Pershing was specifically developed to defeat the Tiger among other things. The Germans don't even have the tiger at that point so why would there be Pershings (2-3 star pershings no less.. where did they fight to get that experience??)

- Saved games list to be grouped / filtered by Campaign for easier access
- Whenever a unit's statistics are affect in any way by heroes/terrain/weather/e.t.c I want to see this effect in unit's statistics panel
- Tooltips , tooltips and more tooltips with information. Does a font have different color? I want to hover over it and understand why by reading its tooltip.
- Attacking a unit multiple times in the same round should give you some bonus ( e.g a decreasing percentage - based on unit's experience - of unit's strength will be used to defend/attack when it retaliates per attack )
- Add air recon units that reveal enemies along their whole trail of movement
- More realistic supply/reinforcements ( currently a unit seems to be able to get reinforcement indefinitely even if very far away from allied units or too close to or surrounded by enemy units )
- Add tooltip that shows the prestige cost of a Standard or Elite reinforcement. Ideally allows us to reinforce incrementally by clicking again & again as we do not always need or can afford a full blown reinforcement
- "Campaign Hardcore mode" that disallows restarting a scenario and scum-loading in the middle of a game. Auto-save only - no going back. Possible rewards : e.g +20% prestige
- World War I theme?
- Short video cutscenes with historical footage in between scenarios would be nice

[/quote]

I agree with a lot of these. My biggest ones are the save games and the tooltips. I shouldn't have to right or Alt-Click on tons of stuff to get additional info. Basic stuff like the unit info should be a tooltip popup. Maybe in two stages. Short hovering, minor info, longer hovering I get the full story while I can get the full story also with a direct click or something. but a lot can be handled with tooltips.

And savegames really need to be handled better. First of all file enumeration has to be done asychronously (in fact a TON of stuff needs to be done asynchronously. The game locks up way too much. It's not ok that I have to wait 10 seconds in the file menu because I have too many save games. They should be shown one by one asychronously and the UI needs to remain responsive. It's also not ok that in the replay system the buttons don't work half the time because the game is busy doing calculations and doesn't process the message chain. That needs to go.
Savegames also need to be searched and filtered and the game should be able to find savegames in subfolders and I should be able to create those subfolders in the game.

One thing I also suggest is being able to reinforce my units +1 at a time. @Rudankort you asked in another thread why this is useful. Well on Rommel or other difficulties where you are very short on money you actually might not want to reinforce your unit during the scenario, or even during deployment phase to full strength. maybe you feel a 7 strength Tiger is enough. but you definitely don't think the current 3 strength one is enough. But if you fully reinforce it to 10 you don't have the prestige anymore to buy that important truck for your infatry that you wanted. Yes in this case you can first buy the truck then reinforce the tank but the point it, you want more control on how you spend your prestige. Maybe you wouldn't run out of prestige doing both, but you're saving up for something down the line and you want to minimize your expenses. I know a lot of people who think this would be useful and most of them are experienced players playing at higher difficulties that want to manage their core in detail. A simple Ctrl-Click or Shift click or whatever to do this would be fine. Or make buttons for +1 and FULL reinforce. I would also suggest changing the overstrength stuff, maybe by a flag that I can set in the options, that it requires either a different button or a Ctrl+Click to overstrength. Sometimes I accidentally overstrength a unit and then I hopefully havea savegame of the deployment phase to go back. It's annoying if that happens in a big core because you have to start over because you missclicked. Another option would be to put Undo into the deployment phase so I can undo stuff I didn't want to do. Maybe I want to try certain upgrades and overstrength combinations only to find I don't have enough prestige. I need to reload to start over. it would be nice if I could just undo the last couple of things and try something different.

HerrGeneral2017

Great post. I think, all UI/usability improvements which you suggest are good ideas and we'll try to implement them all in the new game. As for the rest, we are surely looking at various ways to make individual units and classes more balanced in terms of their usefulness.

Regarding randomness, didn't the options of reduced and no randomness (chess and dice chess) help with this one?

KeldorKatarn

Good points on replacements and overstrength, put them on my list.

everything mentioned here would be useful additions!

well-thought-out

[quote="HerrGeneral2017"]Very happy to know that you plan Panzer Corps 2 and warm congratulations on your outstanding Panzer Corps.

THINGS I MISSED IN PANZER CORPS
* Certain units I could not find much use for...
- Alpine infantry & Bridge engineers ( not many maps where they could be useful? ) ~~~Useful in Europe...Spain & Italy!~~~
- Anti-aircraft ( especially towed ones ) ~~~I see your point!, however in reality only a small portion of the Ground Forces Involved were fully Mechanized.~~~
- Strategic Bombers ( not clear to me why I should use them apart from attacking naval units ) ~~~Good Point Again!, but even so, these Strategic Bombers were mainly used for Strategic Targets such as Factories, Ship-Yards and Industrial Complexes. In this game, there doesn't seem to be much of a use for this Game-Element.~~~
- Recon ( +1 to spotting is nice but I thought is not enough ) ~~~Agreement Again!~~~
* Combat Random was too ...random
I thought it was too random and frustrating at times ( "forcing" me to scum-load many many times ) ~~~Agreement Again!~~~
* Rail lines not that useful? ~~~The Russian's & the German's were the foremost user's of Rail Lines in Western & Eastern Europe. The German's for example could save a great deal of Fuel by transporting hardware & supplies by Rail, But as you mentioned..."Maybe rethink how it can be improved?' Germany was almost alway's near exhaustion regarding "Fuel-Supplies", however this is for some reason not reflected in the game and therefore no effort has been made to utilize the Rail-Resource!, or the pursuit of such targets to aquire more of these scarce resources!, or to deprive the opponent of such said resources.~~~

* Other stuff / ideas / suggestions
~~~Again!, all good ideas~~~
"Campaign Hardcore mode" that disallows restarting a scenario and scum-loading in the middle of a game. Auto-save only - no going back. Possible rewards : e.g +20% prestige
~~~This is an "Irritation-Point" for me!, I more than sometimes find that the "AI" gets too generous a combat result that does not reflect the realistic situation,technological and otherwise on the ground based on a multitude of factors, so to correct the injustice or wrong I have on occasion reloaded the game. I think this is a feature that should or could be turned on or off!.~~~

Great post, and lots of good ideas.

Agree that some units are not as useful as they could be. Gebirgsjager are a bit like Kradschutzen and Kavallerie - rather useful up through Greece, then not so much. I love that special Gebirgsjager you get with +3 move, fantastic at rapid advance through Norwegian mountains etc.

Flak is situational - the Brits and Americans don't need it at all, the Russians depend on it, and the Germans really need it late war. The 88s are sometimes hard to get into position, but a 4-star flak 88 can devastate an enemy fighter, allowing for your fighters to get the easy kill without taking serious losses. Plus they can blast away at enemy armor, so I find them very effective even in France '40.

Bridge engineers need a re-work. They're not quick enough to justify the slot, and of course they have no real combat capability. Should either be support units with more capabilities (maybe airfield construction, fortification construction, and quick move onto rivers for bridging), or should be an additional trait added to combat engineers.

Strategic bombers... part of the difficulty here is that the category includes genuine strategic bombers (British and US heavies), which were of limited battlefield use, and medium bombers like the Ju88 and He111 and SM79 which were genuinely good torpedo bombers and tactical bombers, and actually not great at strategic bombing. In game, I find them very situational as well. Nice for knocking down enemy supply, but often I'd just prefer a Stuka to destroy the unit!

[quote="HerrGeneral2017"] (edited with my thoughts added)

• Should be able to easily see this info in unit's statistics panel.
  Something like :
  Attack 8 ( 8 with some different color if it is a modified value and if I hover over the 'Attack 8' to see e.g Base 5, Heroes +3 ) - Great Idea!

* Certain units I could not find much use for

• Maybe it is just me but I did n't overall find all units liable options e.g :
  - Anti-aircraft - didn't use much but the 88's were essential (if awkward to move), especially for German defence as human or AI. I also kept 1 mobile AA for use depending on the scenario.
  - Strategic Bombers - absolutely essential for reducing entrenchment and softening tough targets before attack.
  - Recon - essential again, I had at least 2 per scenario. Look after them, get them experience and learn how to use them. Good for finishing off weaker units as well as recon.
  * Combat Random was too ...random
  
  • I appreciate randomness plays a role and much liked the option to choose between 3 different levels but at the Normal state,
    I thought it was too random and frustrating at times - I agree on the normal level, so that's why I use dice chess! Three options have been offered so choose the one you like - I would never play on normal.
    
    * Campaign paths often cut you out from several scenarios
    
    • When the campaign path splits into brunches I feel I am missing out some of the game - I felt the same so I replay the campaign choosing the other path each time and get to play all the scenarios... easy solution?
    PANZER CORPS 2 SUGGESTIONS / WISHLIST
    
    * If I can afford a single request it is this : - Agree 100% with this
    • Please stay faithful to the spirit of Panzer Corps as Panzer Corps stayed faithful to Panzer General - do not go overboard with 3D.
      As far as I am concerned the Panzer Corps 2D HD graphics are all I can ask for. I much more care about subtle improvements to gameplay and quality of life
      than fancy 3d maps and animations.

* Other stuff / ideas / suggestions

- Saved games list to be grouped / filtered by Campaign for easier access - I give each save game a name starting with the campaign name (I delete the date) so not an issue for me
- Attacking a unit multiple times in the same round should give you some bonus ( e.g a decreasing percentage - based on unit's experience - of unit's strength will be used to defend/attack when it retaliates per attack ) - good idea
- Add air recon units that reveal enemies along their whole trail of movement - not sure about this, AI would also need this feature and know how to use it
- "Campaign Hardcore mode" that disallows restarting a scenario and scum-loading in the middle of a game. Auto-save only - no going back. Possible rewards : e.g +20% prestige - good idea