The Competition & Teaser Thread

[Strela]

You are right, but i think more in 15 minutes turns because PzC is 1 hour daylight turns in 1km hex, 30 minutes for me are excesive for a PzB turn i think in the rule of divide time and space by the same number, 1km/4 1hour/4 (2/4 for night turns).

I see this in MC, where hexes represent 2 km and time is 2day-4night hours.

And OOB... when i see a detailed OOB i never think in battle generators no because is hard do it only because i see the games more aiming to "static" scens.... i never understand why is so hard a game mode where you select map, points per side and you can in the OOB tree "buy" the units (in the end all units have a value based in victory points but i only remember see them in REN) but i add this to the ??? with the lack of team game support in PBEM when is present for TCP/IP games

In this moment we are

Wow - you guys are on fire, I go to bed and wake up to a deluge of new comments in this thread!

Firstly, Xaver PzC is two hour turns, not one hour. PzB is based on a quarter of PzC and it is consistent across the game. The time scale works really well and most scenarios fall into a sweet spot of between 8 and 25 turns.

Secondly, note my comment regarding focus 'on a day', it's important. The PzB series is a battle or engagement simulation, not a campaign simulation. Many campaign like features like explicit supply and night fatigue aren't included as they aren't relevant to the scale. What it allows us to focus on is specific actions. Here's one example, in the movie a 'Bridge too Far', the SS try to use their Aufklarung (Recon) battalion to storm the bridge. That would be a perfect 4 to 8 turn scenario in PzBs. Same with the initial Paradrop of 1st British Airborne and the clearing of the landing sites and then rush for the bridge in their jeeps. That would be something like a 15 to 25 turn scenario.

Another example might be Stalingrad and the specific assaults on the various factory complexes where the fighting raged all day but died down at night due to mutual exhaustion on both sides. The scale of PzB's works very well for these kind of 'engagements'.

The real nice by product (it wasn't planned) is that with most scenarios between 8 - 25 turns this game series will be perfect for PBEM, tournament and mobile play. I can play a medium scenario against the AI in less than an hour and can turn around PBEM games super fast.

There will be no random scenario generator. History gives us some amazing situations and with the detail included in PzB a chance to emulate it. Richie61 highlighted the comment from John Tillers web site vs my combined arms comment. It is definitely combined arms! When John wrote that blurb, he had a slightly different vision of where the series could end up, but put in the hands of us developers.... What I will say is that this scale is probably my favorite to design for. A battalion will have something like 9 - 15 individual platoons but you will usually run around in 3 to 4 companies. You can suddenly have a clear objective or 'job' for a battalion sized formation that you could never have in PzC.

Again considering my SS Recon unit at Arnhem example how do you storm the bridge? Do you put your ranged fire units such as armored cars/light armor and MG's in over watch as they have decent ranged fire? Do you send infantry across in platoon or company strength? Platoons may reveal the enemy if sent over as scouts but will be vulnerable due to their small size and volume of firepower. Or do you send a company, but have a negative 'density' modifier against you because you put too many troops in a single hex. Hit 50% of the stacking limit and bad things start to happen when direct and indirect fire starts to hits a hex. Do you drive across in your half tracks for protection from small arms, but run the risk of piats at 1 hex range that would decimate the tracks? These are just some of the considerations and flexibility you'll see in PzB.

Every type of unit has its strength and weaknesses and you will not see any one type dominate generally, though it is situational. For example tanks in Stalingrad are bit players vs the infantry, while armor and mounted infantry take the fore in a maneuver title like Smolensk.

Finally, there won't be 4 or 5 titles on a subject like Normandy but a focus on the major engagements in a single title. There are 60+ scenarios in the first PzB title and the campaign is covered pretty well....

I'll post details from the FAQ soon, but I think this post will hopefully clarify some questions and whet your appetites!

David