my pzc feature wish list

[Al]

hehe F40 is a rail baron game! love it. We French have frequent rail miles for 3rd and 1st DLM!
Where shall they go after the front caves in?

There's a large stock of wine somewhere along the French coast. I suggest you send them there to look for it.

[Volcano Man]

Outside of F40, where is rail movement used so much?

F14 uses rail movement out the wazoo. ;)

[Dog Soldier]

Outside of F40, where is rail movement used so much?

F14 uses rail movement out the wazoo. ;)

Do not have that one yet. Is keeping track of the units in rail mode versus total capacity for a side a pain in that title? If so, what would help a player know he near capacity and better choose who gets the private sleeping car carefully.

What are the rail capacities in F14?

Dog Soldier

[Fhil]

I´m currently playing the Sealion ´40 campaign game, on the side of Allies, and I can say that the rails are being used by me to the maximal extent as well there, shifting around all the units and reserves. And it happened to me that I wanted to load more but I was unable, but I don´t think it´s such a catastrofy, although something for helping to keep track on it would be nice

[Mafooo]

Friendly minefields, entrenchments, obstacles visible at all times, even if no friendly unit has LOS to that particular hex.

Nothing like running into my own minefields because I forgot they were there.

[Juan Manuel]

Friendly minefields, entrenchments, obstacles visible at all times, even if no friendly unit has LOS to that particular hex.

Nothing like running into my own minefields because I forgot they were there.

Totally agree with you. It is one of the few things missing from this series to be perfect.

[Outlaw Josey Wales]

What about having the ability to use airstrikes on rail lines and bridges with engineers able to repair and rebuild them?

Also, where engineers can bridge a river, it should be able to have to attempt to blow it if it abandons it just like any other bridge. It can take it down, why not have it stay in place it eng abandons it. If trying to take it down or abandon it, should be able to attempt to blow it in place like any other bridge.

[tquinn]

One simple improvement that would really help when playing large campaign games is this:

Allow the "N" hotkey (next unit chain selection procedure) to be changed so a player can begin "N-ing" with any unit.

Right now, if you save the game, when you revisit later to resume your move, you have to begin "N-ing" from the first northwesternmost unit - not the one where you left off. In F-14 it could take ten minutes to get to the unit where you ended your last session.

[Mr Grumpy]

Nothing like running into my own minefields because I forgot they were there.

This has been discussed at length in designer notes from earlier titles.....

"Mines in the Panzer Campaign Series often comes under scrutiny of players who feel that all mines that are "theirs", thus friendly mines, should remain visible at all times, so the owning player won't accidentally step on them. On the surface this idea is appealing to players who think top down. They reason that because they can see them on the map at some point, that HQ would know where they were and thus all units would avoid them.

True enough. But I like to explain that just because HQ (ie You the player) knows where all the mines are, doesn't mean that each and every units in the games also knows where each and every mine. Furthermore, even if each unit on the map were to have a specialty "Mine Officer" to keep track of them all, then who is to say mistakes wouldn't still happen sometimes. So for Alamein '42, where mines play such a dominant role, I collected a few references to illustrate the point that, "There is no such thing as a friendly Minefield."

Here is a good quote from Clayton and Craig - "End of the Beginning" which characterizes the design feelings about Mines:

June 5-14: "Ordered forward toward the Sidra Ridge from the north, 32nd Army Tank Brigade first ran on to an unmarked minefield laid by British infantry, ..."

June 18-20: ".., their platoon of four 6-pounders had entered Tobruk through the minefield that surrounded it, a minefield full of mines whose location was by now unknown to the defenders, and which destroyed the odd portee."

But this next reference says it best. It comes from "Rommel's Greatest Victory" by Samual W. Mitcham.

The confusion of battle is perhaps best illustrated by the exploit of Maj. C. C. Lomax, the commander of HQ Squadron of the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers. Leading a column of supply trucks and trying to find the 201st Guards Brigade Box at Knightsbridge, he veered too far north and got lost in the darkness. Suddenly he spotted a low trip wire, which denoted the boundary of a minefield. His driver hit the brakes and they stopped a few feet from the wire. Two sentries approached and identified themselves as Guardsmen. Lomax asked if this was the Knightsbridge Box, and they replied that it was.

"How very fortunate!" the major exclaimed. "Another few yards and we would all have been in the minefield."

"On the contrary, sir," one of the sentries replied, "another few yards and you will be out of it."

He and his whole convoy (which was following in his tracks) had passed through the entire minefield without hitting a single mine!

Even when crossing a known "Friendly Minefield", in a lane swept clean to allow friendly troops to pass, there were mishaps as illustrated by this reference from Jon Latimer's "Alamein":

On the route following 22nd Battalion came the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry on a mine-free track cleared and marked by the Kiwi infantry. 'Lurch, clank, bump. Up comes the dust again and before we've gone few yards we're back in the "pea-souper" once more,' recalled the, Yeomanry's historian as the precious protecting darkness dissolved. At 0600 hours the lead squadron was well forward of the infantry and thus became the only armoured regiment to break out beyond the infantry on the first day of the battle. But it was at a heavy price. Those in the rear of the column have been speculating about the origin of a new addition to the carnival of noise which is going on around them. Something different, this one. Deeper and more earth-shaking than the rest. Woomph! This is quite unmistakable. A very sinister sound.' Mines' - despite the declaration that the lanes were clear. The armour ought to have been clear of the minefields, but 'Woo-umph! There it goes again And this time there is no mistake. A spurt of flame appears in the distance through a gap in the fog and quickly grows into a flaming mass.

So accidentally running into mines, be they in "cleared lanes", or stumbling into a minefield, even a known minefield was not uncommon. Therefore, when you run a unit into a hex containing a mine - even one of your own - one that you wouldn't have run into had the hex been marked, because you had another unit in the line-of-sight a few turns ago, then think nothing more of it. These sorts of things happened, not only here in the desert, but in all theaters of WWII.

With mines in the game unseen in hexes when they disappear from the players view, understand that this is not a bug or a problem that needs to be fixed. This is just part of the game, all be it one aspect that some players find frustrating, due to the fact that had they see the mine on the map at some point from their "God-like" overhead perspective."

[76mm]

Foul, thanks for the long explanation but in my view the fact that this kind of thing happens occasionally IRL does not mean that it should happen by default. IRL, units would generally know about the minefield 1000 in front of them, but with the huge maps and number of units in these campaigns, it is impossible for players to track this. In my view, the current set-up grossly overstates the frequency of running into friendly minefields. If it was this bad IRL, you have to wonder if anyone would bother to lay minefields that are almost as likely to kill them as the enemy?

Same units issue with enemy units BTW--I think that units should "remember" last known enemy positions rather then blundering into them completely blind every morning after losing LOS to them overnight.