One Month On...

[Strela]

Hi All,

I thought it appropriate to give you all an update on Panzer Battles, one month after releasing Kursk.

Firstly, Kursk has been the most successful release John Tiller has had since he decided to self publish. The Panzer Battles system has been generally well accepted with a good volume of feedback.

The pre-release information certainly helped to build momentum behind the title. We will look to repeat the approach with future titles, but using similar horizons; little information before a few months before release.

Generally, Kursk has been bug free. The title was getting new features right up to just before release and this may have skewed (negatively) some of the balancing in scenarios (particularly multi-player). This is probably the easiest area to fix and we will update a number of scenarios for the first patch. That said, we need to see playing results to make certain we aren't breaking things while fixing others.

As mentioned in another post we are going back and looking at tank vs tank engagements. We have a number of ideas but want to be careful in this particular area. We have the historical data for losses and in the main a lot of the play testing was not far removed from these actual benchmarks. Its easy to build an opinion after a couple of play-throughs but as Bayes has shown with his analysis the results after multiple engagements are in the realms of possibility. I'll keep you all updated on any changes that may be made to the system and we will continue to welcome further feedback.

John Tiller touched on new titles in the recent interview he gave. He also mentioned that there was a sister series to Panzer Battles called Armor battles which covers off post WWII engagements. There are now a number developers working on both series - more than we have ever had before. We are all in close contact and ensuring that all proposed enhancements to the game system will add value in all the situations we are working on. A lot of cool features are already being tested to give players a great range of gaming situations.

John mentioned that we were a fair way through the second Panzer Battles title. This was the title that went into hiatus back in 2009/2010. The original developers had done a ton of work; the map in particular is gorgeous & the OB was very extensive. We are in the process of bringing the graphics up to Kursk standard and working through both the current scenarios while determining what needs to be added to round out the scenario list. One of the original scenario designers is back and helping to build out this further content. We are also experimenting with a campaign system, like the one in the Civil War battles that will allow branching scenarios based upon options that players choose. There is a good chance that this new play type will be included with this title. Don't ask when it will be released (!), we have a good base but also a lot of work to do. I was able to dedicate my time full time to Kursk for ten months but I'm now back in the workforce and that is inevitably reducing the time I can dedicate to building titles.

We have other titles in the prototype stage as well as building assets that will allow future games to be built quicker. Two examples of this; graphics are now of sufficient quality to be reused without the need to create new imagery for each game, secondly, we are building reference orders of battle that can be used across multiple titles. Mike Avanzini has already built configurable OB's that allow us to create any German formation for the period 1940 - 1942. We will continue to expand our 'library' over time and ultimately speed up the time it takes us to build a game covering a particular period.

Finally, I'd like to know whether some of the features we have included with Kursk are worthwhile in future titles. All carry an overhead in releasing a game and if they aren't of value we may excluded them in future. Features I have in mind are the alternative (top down) graphics, all the documentation such as the Designers notes, Visual OB & map packs as well as the number of scenarios (dropping below the current sixty). Happy for your feedback.

Thanks to you all for supporting us.

David