Panzer Battles - Kursk Version 1.01 released

[ComradeP]

I might in some ways be one of the loudest critics on these forums, but I'm still playing and I'll buy the next game on the day it is released provided I have access to an internet connection on that day. There's no "if such and such things would change" in there. If this were an awful start of a series, I wouldn't be here posting about it and would've dropped it months ago. The vast majority of the arguments and discussions here are aimed at improving the game, even though that might at times not be clear at first glance.

I don't feel tank vs. tank or tank vs. gun combat is all it can be, and I'm not a fan of the fairly non-lethal nature of tank vs. tank combat on a tank for tank basis, but all of those things will be ironed out in the future.

The bonus for firing downhill changes the game substantially from a statistical perspective, so I'm looking forward to Ozerovskii in terms of seeing how masses of armour work against an opponent with inferior tanks (in terms of hard attack values) but in good positions.

I don't feel the Soviets should be weak and useless or that Tiger tanks should be able to kill anything at their leisure, on the contrary I feel the Soviets are a bit too weak/useless when not in bunkers currently (for example: in State farm, removing the first line D quality Rifle units and replacing them with well-hidden spotters and the mortar regiment in a less suicidal position would in all likeliness result in an increase in German casualties, those D quality Rifle units really might as well not be there) but I do feel the Germans don't have their necessary edge in quality for armoured combat. There are certainly instances where they can get swamped through proper use of Soviet assets in situations which historically didn't result in high German losses for good quality units. Casualties will always be higher in a wargame than in real life, which makes it important for the side with fewer units or in this case: fewer vehicles to get their historical bang for their buck.

The current system doesn't necessarily give a lot of room for that, as opportunity fire is still fairly rare (on a tank for tank basis, infantry opportunity fire is fine at the moment) and you can move adjacent to enemy units with relative ease and do some damage (with C quality units), so there is in my opinion room for an improvement there, but not so much that good quality units suddenly become invincible against hordes of mediocre units. They should still be vulnerable, just a bit less so than is currently the case.

I feel the assault system could be improved, as there are times when it more or less doesn't work well, but all things considered I support the ruleset and the direction the game is going.

I don't regret spending the money to buy the game or the hours I spent playing it so far, even though some of those hours were not entirely pleasant.

It's certainly not a bad title in the sense that it just doesn't work, as it works in many ways, just not in all ways that it could work in at the moment, but which it will in the future.