Ready to answer your Kharkov '43 Questions...

[Strela]

What about the game balance of the main event?

My biggest problem with nearly all Pzc titles is that it seems the designers have never actually played the main campaign.

The vanilla Kursk '43 and Moscow '41 are great examples for this.

9/10 times the full campaigns have a completely ahistorical result (Decisive german victory in Kursk and russians counterattacking and blowing the germans away after the 20th turn in moscow)

This is why I never play the vanilla versions and use VM's mod only.


So what about this one?
Has it been tested in head to head?

thx
Sch

Hi Sch,

As you can imagine playing campaigns multiple times to the end is well nigh impossible in the time we have to release the game - particularly 8 of them. It's not just time but also updates to the game OB, code changes etc.

Now that said I and two others played Operation Star (all 149 turns) end to end HTH. We adjusted quite a few things along the way but found it one of the most enjoyable and balanced campaigns we have done for a long time. Another group tackled the combined Star/Gallop and came back with positive feedback.

There are also shorter campaigns that were tested HTH to the end.

Of the others at least 30 - 60 turns were played HTH in the design team to make certain it played how we expected. There was also significantly more testing done against the AI to ensure that played appropriately also.

One of the reasons we chose not to do the mega campaign for this title was that it would definitely not be historical and impossible to test in any depth. That's not to say you may not see it in the future, but it will come with disclaimers to the level of play testing and final balance.

So in summary - yes there was quite a bit of HTH play testing of the campaigns and I would even suggest that is the optimal way to play them as the AI struggles over time due to the flexibility a player has.

David

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David, I'm a bit concerned about 5% bunker prob with so many turns ahead (Star), it's possible for the german moving half a dozen eng units (or even most mobile engs) and build bunkers on key crossing points (Donets). There're less than 5000 VP before the Donets, that would let germans move back forces to block incoming 40th Army.
Even fiixed engs could build Bunkers, on a 149 turn game that's possible for a unit to build bunker every 25 turns... (5 turns for TRENCH, 20 turns for Bunker).

PD: in my first test achieved a Bunker in Belgorod on turn 4! that was a strike of luck. I'll post how many turns it will take me build 4-6 bunkers on the donets crossing points.
Turn 15: 4 bunkers build, 2 at the Donets.
Turn 20 6 bunkers, 3 at the donets. (I'm using only fixed engs from the start).
Turn 30 all 9 starting engs units have built a bunker.

I've not used another 4 unfixed eng coys from DR). Maybe 5% it's a bit high.

On Star+Gallop my worries are much lessened.

What a fabulous game have you made, I'm enjoying reviewing it.

Bests
César

César,

Thanks for the feedback here. This was a late addition in the game. It was left in to allow the Soviet player to fortify Kharkov and other urban centres later in the game.

If in play this proves to be a problem it can either be fixed in an official patch or updated by players themselves using the parameter editor.

5% was selected as that matched the current mine laying percentage.

My only other comment is that there is never enough engineers in game and it will be hard for a player to build anything other than isolated strong points. This allows the offending bunker to be flanked and cut off - even when it is on a river crossing point.

I hope seeing the community get some play under their belts will show whether there is any issue here.

David

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I gather from here that there is no main campaign; the campaign has been broken down into its discrete phases:

http://johntillersoftware.com/PanzerCamp.../notes.pdf

Start at page 54. There's one that's 149 turns, another two that are 179 each (variations), Manstein's Backhand Blow is 89 turns, Manstein Pushes North is 129 turns, another that's 80, etc. No monster, though. In reading between lines, it seems that it's as hard to playtest a monster as it is just to play it.

Glad someone is reading the notes, I put a lot of effort into them!

By the way the notes are available on John's website if you are on the fence about buying the game and want to know more.

As far as the monster game question - it was a very conscious decision not to include one in the initial release. Many people, particularly PBEM types go straight for the monster campaign assuming that is the definite work in a title. In the process they miss many of the absolute gems that come in the other scenarios.

Kharkov '43 was actually a very hard campaign to simulate - it swept across 400 km of steppe - twice. That's why we broke the campaign down as there is no way a monster campaign would approximate the correct starting positions or forces available. Players in Panzer Campaigns tend to run their units into the ground and in Kharkov '43 it is very easy to burn out the starting German forces early on by standing and fighting when you should be conducting a skilful withdrawal. I paid a lot of attention to the comments coming from those that played Marquo's FSoR mod - which usually saw the SS destroyed in the first 10 days.

In fact I can't think of any other Panzer Campaigns game that tries to simulate 400 km of attack by one side and then recovery and push back the same 400 km by the other side over a six week period. Even the desert games are setup similar to the way Kharkov '43 has.

Now that said we could build the requested campaign game as all the components exist - but I would not want Kharkov '43 to be judged based upon how that scenario played to the detriment of the rest.

Do yourself a favour and look at the existing campaigns - there is a lot of meat there.

You also mention variations in the campaigns - that is incorrect. There are currently no variations in any of the scenarios - these are all historically accurate in terms of releases and reinforcements etc. What you are seeing is two different operations - Star on the northern half of the map and Gallop on the southern half. The other 179 turn game is the two operations combined.

David