How do you improve PzB???

[Fonebone]

Interesting discussion.

Here are my thoughts after my first weekend of play.

1) It's not particularly dangerous crossing open ground under fire. After the tutorial, I never bothered with smoke again. The usual result from being shot at while moving in the open is “NO EFFECT.” Maybe the loss of 1 man and 2-3 points of Fatigue. In fact, I don't really notice much difference between being stationary in a brush or village hex and moving in the open.

2) There's too much firing going on out there. I don't know how defensive fire is determined by the program, but it seems that every unit fires regardless of its actions during its half of the turn. While both this game and the PzC games remind me of The Gamer's TCS series, TCS handles defensive/opportunity fire much better. There units can fire once per turn. Broadly speaking, only units that did not fire offensively can be used to fire defensively. This is really the cornerstone of that game, strategically. Which units to fire and which to hold back? PzB would benefit greatly from such a system. As it is, combining the first issue with this one, your attacks don't have to be very thoughtfully planned at all. The end result is that you don't really get a very tactical feeling from the game. Maybe the scale is still too big. At 250m, the game is still PzC.

3) Speaking of Defensive Fire. A unit surrounded by the enemy and fighting for its life will still take thousand-yard potshots at non-threatening enemy units. I'd like to see greater restrictions on DF generally.

4) Units fight to the last man. As in PzC, Broken units are rare. It is more common to destroy a unit entirely. There needs to be a better morale system, whereby units rout rather than stand to the last man. Units can take a great deal of punishment. In my current game I have German units with B morale with greater than 25% casualties and they're still at B morale. I can be rushing across open ground assaulting bunkers with artillery flying everywhere and my start-of-turn Command Report always reads “1 unit undisrupted out of 1 checked.” After all that?

5) Some strange Line of Sight rules in forests. It seems that a unit at a higher elevation can see over the top of adjacent lower forest terrain and into the forest hex on the opposite side. Usually in games like this, a unit in the middle of a forest means adjacent LOS only. It's hard to tell at a glance who can fire at whom.

The best I can say about the game so far is that it's a serious hex wargame, and that's good. I hate to be critical since these games are so rare. But I consider this, like PzC, a missed opportunity. But I've only played a few scenarios. Hopefully, things will improve.