Panzer Battles 2 - The Official Teaser Thread

[Strela]

It seems that Xaver expects a 'leak' every week - I never committed to that but as it was a holiday here in Singapore today, I have had time to get something posted. 


It's been a busy week with some solid testing underway. With the latest version sent out a few weeks ago a lot of focus has been put on a few of the larger scenarios. All in all most things are working as we expected. There have been some good learnings come from the Panzer Battles tournament that Dog Soldier has been running here in the forum. We have changed some of the 'standards' we have used in scenario design to fix some anomalies that have become evident. We have also had some exe changes that will be beneficial to all games in the series.

Post the release of the latest build we have had two new scenarios turn up. Both are in the small to medium category and as usual Jeff Connor has turned out a super little scenario that handles a challenging situation for both sides. I'm really pleased with the range of scenarios you can play - surprisingly, I personally love fighting in the bocage, talk about cat and mouse!

A team member has been critical of some of the choices of pictures for the units. Fortunately they provided examples of where we were being too generic and I have spent quite a bit of time updating unit graphics. The end result is another step towards an authentic look and feel.

Unfortunately, changing the unit pictures wholesale breaks a lot of the Visual OB that Mike Avanzini has worked on. Mike is that particular that if I even change a unit designation in the OB, it has to be correctly reflected in the Visual OB. I think he is ready to shoot me after this week!

Some examples follow, but one section that hasn't changed in the OB is the 7th Armoured Division that we shared a regiment from a few weeks ago. I thought I'd put up a page covering the 131st Infantry Brigade. This page only shows two of the three member regiments - be assured all are in the Visual OB.

See below and note that this was a motorised brigade but that the HQ companies (which includes the support platoons) are predominantly in Bren carriers - again note that these are full size documents and you can expand them;





As mentioned, we have been updating many of our more generic graphics.

Following are some examples. The first group are British Airborne/Commandos. In all the following screens, the image on the left was the original we have/had in game, the shot on the right is the new replacement;











This next group are the proposals for German Infantry (Landser) and Panzergrenadiers. The shots on the left would be familiar to anyone who has Kursk. The right is the equivalent for Normandy;











Especially for Xaver, here is some Luftwaffe Feld troops. Both infantry and the battalion HQ. Happy birthday, Xaver! Again this has the original shots on the left and the replacements on the right;











It will be evident when you see them, but using Patton & Eisenhower as Tank Battalion commanders was controversial...! As you can see they are present there on the left, but the replacement graphics on the right have banished them off to the upper echelons of the military...!











Finally, I'm personally getting better at 'colouring' these graphics. Here is my attempt at 2nd Tank Battalion above. It's amazing the skills you learn in this hobby...!






Till the next update (whenever that may be!!!)

David