The Competition & Teaser Thread

[Strela]

Panzer Battles is a new simulation series that is designed to fit between Squad Battles and Panzer Campaigns and uses many features of both. It is built on the Panzer Campaigns engine with Squad Battles features as well as new routines to reflect this scale.

Reading the whole topic I see that the above is true, Panzer Battles derives from Panzer Campaigns with elements of Squad Battles. So a general question: how much have the PB designers played, playtested and got inspired by John Tiller's Campaign Series? After all the scale is quite similar - I suppose even for time scale the actual movement and casualty rates will differ less than what 6 vs 30 minutes implies - and JTCS has many concepts and features which are useful for this scale and that were later scrapped in Panzer Campaigns. I see Glenn Saunders is on board: IIRC he was heavily involved, either officially or as a devoted player and scenario designer, in the Talonsoft games. What about the others?

I don't really understand the following snippet from the PB vs JTCS FAQ (emphasis mine):

John Tillers Campaign Series covered multiple hypothetical engagements in a campaign format. Panzer Battles covers a specific battle in depth.

John Tiller's Campaign Series covered multiple historical engagements (with some what-ifs and hypotheticals). Obviously as it covers basically the whole war, it won't cover a specific battle in depth, though for some of the major actions you will find plenty of scenarios.
Sure, there are two campaign games formats: the few, historical "linked campaign games" and the quite useless random/hypothetical "dynamic campaign games", but they are kind of an afterthought and surely not many gamers played them. The strength of JTCS was (and still is?) the hundreds of single engagements. So I would say both games are quite similar in this regard, though one will focus on one big action only, while the other has historical engagements at a similar scale from the whole war.

Finally, I have only seen 2D graphics in this thread. Will there be 3D graphics?

Hi,

It is my 'fault' that I described JTCS as such. I have only had passing interaction with it and my understanding is that many of the stock scenarios were based off very loose orders of battle etc. I completely understand that JTCS has a dedicated community that has built some very accurate orders of battles, scenarios & campaigns. I have already been dinged privately on the 'hypothetical' comment and want to make it very clear that I wasn't trying to demean in any way JTCS or its aficionados - it was purely me passing on a description I had been told. From that it should be clear I have had minimal time with JTCS, so it is of little influence for me. That said, Glenn built the first title that to this date has not been released and the DNA of that initial work is in the upcoming title. If Glenn was involved with JTCS then there may be have been some consideration - I can't confirm that.

There has also been a lot of development of the Panzer Battle system since we started the project, largely due to the play testers that have been involved. Many have had extensive war gaming experience and many of the features and decisions made have come from those years of gaming. We have been fortunate that John Tiller has made changes to the system if we have presented a well reasoned argument that shows a material enhancement to the simulation. John has added new features to all his games as further titles have been released and I expect Panzer Battles will be the same as new topics are covered.

So in summary JTCS may have been one of the influences on the various testers, but much broader experience has been more prevalent.

As far as 3D graphics - no, it's only 2D with the range of different counter sets and the map with 'depth' contours.

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Well, the AT ranges in infantry is allways a problem, for me in early and middle war infantry is unable to engage tanks/hard targets at range (1 hex) other quetion is assault/close combat... in PzC where the AT guns in regimental and battalion level are not present (and not in all titles, i think now in USA regimental support weapons) i can understand the abstraction but in PzB no.

You've seen an example of the OB, the AT/Infantry guns are all there at battalion & regimental level. The question regarding Panzerfausts is how they were handled in PzB. In SqB they are separate weapon systems, in PzB's they are not. Essentially infantry platoons have there small arms, embedded MG's and AT capabilities built into their hard and soft factors. The assault value (i.e. in hex) will take into account factors such as prevalence of automatic weapons, engineering weaponry such as flame throwers and the veracity of infantry AT weapons. So I don't quite understand where you are seeing an abstraction.

Yes, the question is, what is the true attack range??? we count the unit hex or no??? i think you dont count it because the infantry soft range is 4, if 4 is for me close to the max range 4+1 is out.

A range of four means you can hit a unit four hexes away. There has been a nice little enhancement that we only got in the last build that colour codes the various ranges. Blue is AA, Red is hard & green is soft. This example has a soft range of four.

Ammo... this is for me the Achilles heel in all Tiller engines specially when last wargames i buy in all them apply individual value/% in ammo per unit, terrain affect resupply but units have their own fuel/ammo reserves and can fight cut off supply lines certain time. I never like Tiller games in this area because you cant control units ammo/fuel levels they enter in low ammo/fuel totally random even when they are in a well supply hex with a good command chain they enter in low ammo... apart the problem in PzC with the isolated rule where you can have an unit days in a position and in 2 hours fighting in isolated status be low ammo... WTF a unit as garrison in a city enter in low ammo in 2 hours??? WTF they dont have depots???

And that's why we have taken those out of PzB as a consideration - at least for this initial release. As I mentioned there were no issues with supply in this particular battle. The change was driven specifically because of a discussion about the way units drop to low ammo as soon as they are isolated. That sparked a deeper conversation around combat loads and the period each scenario was covering. If I was doing a game on the Moscow Counterattack then I would be wanting some enhancements to the supply rules that we have, but I can categorically say that this release is not the Battle of Moscow

And finally, i dont see why PzB doesnt have scens covering battles in more than 1 day, a scen with 100 or more turns... is nothing strange in Tiller games (even more, you can play Jena in a single scen for example and here you have 10-15 minutes turns, 6 days of fight in 524 turns) i am more a medium scens player but i dont say no to big scens in turns... apart this, you can create a battle scenario covering in a single scen all the fight this could be good for team games for example.

No one is stopping you having a scenario of any length. We chose not to have scenarios longer than I have mentioned because they best represent the battle that way. Future titles may have longer battles if appropriate. This series is not intended to be a platoon level Panzer Campaigns. The design intention by John Tiller was for Panzer Battles always to focus on engagements rather than sweeping multi day campaigns. There has been discussion of using a campaign engine linking scenarios similar to what has been seen in the Civil War and Squad Battles games that may make it into a future release. How that would work I'm not certain.

As far as team games, the play testers will tell you there are some very good scenarios for team play - the difference to Panzer Campaigns is that you might actually finish them...!

David