The Competition & Teaser Thread

[Strela]

Here is an example of what I am talking about. This is the 1st - 3rd & 4th Platoons of the 6th Company of the 4th PzGr Regiment. Though not shown on the front, the II Battalion designation is shown on the OB on the back. Highlighting the II Battalion organisation is also easy.


David

David, firstly thanks for the steady flow of information.

In regard to the above images I confess to being somewhat confused. I can't tie up the information on the fronts and backs with your description.

The second image is obviously a platoon (36 men) and I assume that the designation - 4.6/PzGr Regt 4 - relates to the fourth, Heavy Weapons, Platoon. This has an attack value of 12 and a range of 6.


I assumed that the first image was the full company (144 men; 4x36?) - if it is only platoons 1-3 how is that shown in the text information - 1.6/PzGr. Regt.4? If it is the full company, incorporating the HW platoon, why does it only have an attack value of 4 and a range of 11, less than the single platoon?

I really like the unit graphics and the fact that you can switch between them on the fly, although I also favour the Nato set.

However, I can't see an easy way, just looking at the counters, to distinguish between a platoon and a company. I know you can get that information from the side panel but the map is always the first port of call and getting a quick idea of which is which is extremely important IMO. Would it be possible to have text saying PzGr Co or PzGr Plt rather than just PzGr, for instance? Or have I missed something?

Ok, I hope I'm not going to regret going down this particular rabbit hole...!!

Firstly, the way text is laid out on the side graphics is not always as intuitive as we would like. This is partly due to the mix of unit types at this scale. Because the panzer grenadier company has both panzer grenadier platoons & MG sections they will NOT combine into a single company name. Compare it to the infanterie companies designation which summarises because it only contains 3 platoons in the company.




What does show is that the unit in question is larger than a single unit with the +++ designation. This was evident both for the combined panzer grenadier platoons (3) and the MG sections (2). We deliberately built this OB as ultra realistic as we could but found there were 'exceptions' that would have created nightmares if we tried to force 'standardised' naming. As a rule of thumb, normally units have been setup in companies on the attack and as platoons and/or companies on the defence.

As far as counters, I have always (as have the play testers) found it easy to know which units are companies vs platoons. Using the show organisation button dispels any uncertainty when checking.

Finally to show you how a segment of OB looks like and where we have compromised for playability.

This is a panzer grenadier battalion. It is made up of three panzer grenadier (PzGr) kompanies and a heavy weapon kompanie. Each of the PzGr companies had an attached two tube 81mm mortar section - this combined with the two MG sections formed the support platoon in the PzGr kompanie. These ended up being a nightmare - they could only support their individual kompanie and the firepower was negligible. We moved all these sections to the HW kompanie which allowed them to both combine into a six mortar battery as well as support all units in the battalion. We did leave them with the correct kompanie designation for aesthetics reasons. Trust me this change removed a ton of units from the artillery dialog.

So that's one of the few changes we have made for playability reasons.



Also note in the above the Infantry guns in the HW kompanie can combine into a full battery.

David