NEW: Prokhorovka 5: The Historical Battle

[Cole]

My final input after the team game participants also decided to call it early.

1: I do hope this scenario can be improved in the future.

2: Artillery is becoming a dislike for me. All these years I really didn't mind but I remember seeing a negative review of CS and the reviewer showed the replay in the background while giving his review. I hope EF III revamps they way artillery is handled in the game. In this scenario it takes about 20 minutes to assign all artillery fires, and about 20 minutes to view the enemy's artillery in replay on top of the enemy's move, then another 20 minutes to watch one's own artillery at the beginning of the next turn. Revamp artillery and save an hour.

3: Prior post mentioned the length of the game. Forgot the original Talonsoft documentation for how long each turn was but think it was 6 minutes!! No more than 15. Here's the deal. Hexes are 250m across. Russian infantry can move up to two hexes in the open and still fire. Maybe some of the infantry dudes can correct me but there is no way you will get a platoon to move 500 meters/yards then deliver accurate fire (defined here and now as a unit has enough action points left to shoot) in 6 or even 15 minutes. Some may argue that a platoon charging can cover a lot of ground in 15 minutes then fire and I agree but they will rapidly tire and could not keep that up for turn after turn.

I always get around this by thinking that each turn could be an hour or even two, especially for the larger scenarios. There is probably room to increase the time each turn represents.

4: While I think this scenario can benefit by less turns I'm not 100% with Earlman that this game should eliminate some of the smaller units such as HQ's below regiment, 81mm mortars, etc. I think Earl's scenarios are immensely enjoyable (just starting up an Earlmann monster game now) but support the designer in trying to come up with the most historical OOB. The end result would not be a really enjoyable game like Earl's Kursk series but as historically accurate as possible under the limitations of the game engine.

5: Campaign Series was just not designed to simulate Corps level engagements. A lot of the faults with this scenario reside in the game engine.

6: Already mentioned but VP points are way out of whack.

7: No doubt the Germans are predestined to lose but in game turns but suggest they could, for example, get a victory for doing better than they did historically.

Anyway, great work by the designer but with a project of this size there's more to do.