Panzer Battles 2 - The Official Teaser Thread

[ComradeP]

That was my guess as well, and those of someone on the blog website, but there are 2 raillines there, and note that both the central objective and the central straight north-south railline are just 3 kilometres from the railline in the west, and also 3 kilometres from the railline in the south.

In PzC Normandy, the railline across the Orne and the one to the east are 6 hexes apart. That's a stretch even taking map distortion into account, and there are still only two raillines.

Edit:

We might be looking at Operation Spring.

Weather conditions seem to be soft, judging by the darker shade of the terrain hexes.

The commander on the left is Brigadier W. J. Megill of the 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade, 2nd Canadian Infantry Division. The 50 point objective south of them is probably "the factory" in St. Martin de Fontenay. It looks like an industrial hex.

The commander on the right seems to be Brigadier Sherwood Lett, commander of the 4th Canadian Brigade. Reserves and follow-up units were commanded by the 6th Canadian Brigade.

The famous unit mentioned is presumably the Black Watch.

Tank support comes from the Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment, 1st Hussars (both of Canadian 2nd Armoured Brigade) and supposedly a unit from the (British) 22nd Armoured Brigade of the 7th Armoured Division, possibly the 1st Royal Tank Regiment as they have Cromwells.

The central-southern village would be May-sur-Orne.

The village on the right is presumably Verrieres.

They're facing the 272nd Infanterie Division with SS support.

[Xaver]

As usual ComradeP scores a direct hit

This means that we are going to see "Fury" but with the UK equivalent of Brad Pitt...

CHAAAAAARGE!!!!! in Cromwell tanks we trust



HANS HANS RUUUN WE NEED CLOSE RANGE TO DEFEAT THEM!!!! and with global crisis mount panzergrenadier on tiger to made they dont waste a lot of ammo to kill us

[Strela]

Hi All,
 
Jumping on the Friday bandwagon before someone asks me where the latest update/leak/revelation is...!
 
Testing reports continue to come in and there is active tweaking of scenarios underway. Nothing new, but we are close to content complete.
 
I continue to play around with the new 'feature' and generally it is going to give us some interesting situations. A lot more to be done and more will be shared on this at the right time.
 
It's also at this point of development that there is a level of 'peer' review. Currently inconsistencies in naming, spelling and other attributes are being checked in the Order of Battle. New eyes pick up lots of things that have been overlooked by those that have looked at it for the whole project. As there are a range of languages involved (German, French, English - Commonwealth and US) it’s easy to get variations. We're trying to clean that up as much as possible.
 
Documentation is also well underway. The player notes are complete, though they need to be updated every time we add a scenario. For reference these are already over 100 pages(!!!). The Getting Started scenario is complete but now needs to be written up and for poor Mike Avanzini, the 'completed' work on the Visual OB has been 'uncompleted' with the latest graphics changes. 
 
The good news there is that we think we're done with the (final) graphics upgrades. We have been challenged on some images and managed to find superlative replacements and we think we can finally put them to bed.
 
 
Here are this week’s examples!
 
 
After the commentary on the British last week, we went back and had a critical look. Many of the base images used were either representative of Italy or even the desert. With that in mind we went out and found some better base images and have cobbled together some more representative North West European campaign troops. Old on the left, new on the right;











We also tidied up the engineers. The top gentleman is one of the 'sub-beach' units that were landed on the first day. They had distinctive helmets;











There have also been some updates for the Germans. There were a range of MG squads in the base German company as well as intrinsic in the beach defenses. We have created a much more atmospheric image for these teams. Old is on the left;











Finally we continue to update the Luftwaffe troops. Here are some further examples. The engineer with cap is used in both the Fallschirmjager & Luft Feld formations;











That's it for this week!

David

[Strela]

Also if you haven't seen, JC has got further entries on the first ever AAR on the game.

Go to; http://kriegsimulation.blogspot.com/

There is even an acknowledgement of this web site and thread!!!

David

[Xaver]

Nothing better to wake up than this... leaks leaks leaks!!!! and AAR update hehehe

Ummm things are going very well to dont need   to see leaks and info... maybe things are going even better than expected??? this is scary because is when all works fine and you are breaking your time goals when something CRACK and send all to the hell

Ummm that top secret new feature... you use it like a fisherman every time i read about it you my interest hehehe.

If you continue increasing documentation pages you are going to sell a book with a wargame as gift

The new images are very good, especially now Uk troops look more continental and you can reserve the used portraits for "future" PzB titles

The AAR is very interesting and we can see the first stats and is from a new unit... in general firefly is a little "worst" than Pz IV-H in Kursk maybe i expect see a better HA value and lower SA value but apart this looks well balanced.

Now find time to read it.

Thanks for the leaks and info, this help to made waiting less painfull

[Strela]

The AAR is very interesting and we can see the first stats and is from a new unit... in general firefly is a little "worst" than Pz IV-H in Kursk maybe i expect see a better HA value and lower SA value but apart this looks well balanced.

Now find time to read it.

Thanks for the leaks and info, this help to made waiting less painfull

An important note. The Firefly JC shows is actually a composite platoon of three normal Shermans and a Firefly. The numbers are a weighted average other than the range. You will see the (3+1) in the description. That's a clue to a composite formation.

The standalone Firefly HA value is something like 54 - it's very good, but you'll never see a platoon of four as they never operated that way. Historically, there were so few Firefly's and such a realisation that the Panthers and Tigers completely out classed the Allies that Fireflies were spread as widely as possible.

David

[Xaver]

Ups, my fault, i didnt notice the (3+1) is the problem when you post in two sites and read a AAR post at same time, thanks for the clarification Strela

A little suggestion here... maybe i can receive heavy fire from the visual OOB area but... to made easier notice that kind of mixed armored units... is possible add to them a + or - simbol??? i refer if you see the portrait of a tank with nothing more is a homegenous unit but if you see the portrait of a ... lets see Firefly with a - represent a lower combat value unit with more less "usefull" tanks, with a + is the same but for example using a Kursk example, if you use the portrait of a PzIII but section has PzIV  use a + represents a stronger unit that portrait shows... this help in the unit portrait box and in the counter when you use non NATO symbols.

I notice that in the scen are 2 types of german MG units... i think that the units with the old kursk MG section portrait represent the company heavy weapons section but the MG alone (now upgrade to have a guy using them) refer to garrison units (inmobile???) or a special unit???

And again, great job ComradeP, nothing can hide to your hawk eyes    keep doing it to prevent we finish lose in the darkness

PD: maybe we can open a new thread for PzB3 predictions???

[ComradeP]

A special symbol for mixed units might be tricky to implent at this stage, although it would certainly be helpful.

The only mixed tank unit with very different tanks I can currently think of in the JT games that I own are the mixed Soviet tank battalions in Moscow '42.

Seeing what looks like a Cromwell company, but not knowing that it also has 4 Fireflies could be a painful surprise. That would be like a company of Panzer IV's also having a platoon of Panthers hidden inside it. Again, averaging combat values does help, but it also means the Cromwells have an improved range.

The various flavours of Shermans for the Americans are, at this point, less of a problem due to the non-75mm Shermans being few in number at this point.

edit: Based on the screenshots in the AAR, it seems Field hexes are terrain height 1, so they no longer block LOS, as he takes fire through Field hexes and can spot units through them as well.

[Xaver]

Well, the first title with mixed armored units i remember is Kharkov42 and here was the old system where only appear mixed as composition (i have in mind that some btls provide more info... or was in other title???), not the type of tanks... and allways find hard notive if is a pure T-34 unit or a mixed one.

For me is a question of standarize what portrait use in the unit... the most logical is use the portrait of the more common vehicle in unit, and over this work with simbols (could be + -, colour dots, letters...) to provide the extra info that player needs.

The basic idea is:
-you see the portrait and notice whats the warhorse in unit.
-you see the symbol that say you if is an unit with bonus, no bonus or penalty (in same way you have 3+1 you can have oposite, 1+3).

Control this using art is easier than do it using engine (but using engine you can hide more time the true composition of the unit).... a + and - symbol is very intuitive and is not mixed with other info in unit box like quality/morale or fatigue.

Ummm fields... fields or villages/buildings??? i refer that i see more logical that areas with buildings offer more vision than 1 hex, in the end even a small village has a church or at least a tall building... but could be interesting know this, i remember as when kursk was released if armor moving in fields can lose camo because you cant hide a vehicle moving in a field like infantry (dust, moving the plants, noise...).

[ComradeP]

Well, with FOW on you only see the "background" with the unit art on it and the number of vehicles as a number or in X's, unless your adjacent to the unit in which case you can also see what formation it belongs to.

A "+" or other indicator wouldn't actually tell you what other vehicle is in the unit unless you have knowledge of the OOB, in which case it should be fairly easy to guess what other vehicle type is in there based on how the unit performs or at what range it opens fire.

The + is also used to indicate combined units for the friendly side, so another + might be confusing.

As to terrain height: I'm still not sure what it actually does aside from determining if certain unit types can be hidden.

A unit in a rail embankment hex, for example, is still only capable of seeing what it would normally see if it were a normal hex type. It can't spot along the embankment either.

Spotting is also at the same time calculated at an angle and also not calculated at an angle: units in a certain hex within LOS are always visible when moving around, even in terrain where that wouldn't be likely (forest, urban terrain), but spotting from high ground does take the spotting angle into account and is blocked by LOS-obstructing terrain.

To use an in-game example:



These men can't see along the rail embankment to the north, even though they're on top of it, due to the brush hex in between. They also can't see beyond the brush hex blocking their LOS angle on the rail embankment to the southwest.