The Competition & Teaser Thread

[Strela]

In regard to artillery; who can be used as a spotter? Hopefully not every unit can spot as that would not be very realistic, particularly with smaller platoon sized units that would almost certainly not be equipped with radios.

Jim,

It's dependent on the level of the 'artillery' piece. If its a Divisional gun then yes, technically all units in the Division can call the fire in. That said, artillery uses the alternative artillery rule from PzC. That means each artillery piece can only fire once but can hit all units in a hex. There is actually a surprisingly small amount of artillery fires in game as most artillery starts at a minimum at battery strength and usually at full battalion (12 guns). Mortars and direct firing infantry guns do not use the alternative artillery rules.

There is also a number of flags in the OB that allow the designer to turn on or off whether a mortar only supports it's local organisation or the next level up. For example the HW Company mortars mentioned previously would only support the HW company unless the flag is turned on. Then it would support the whole battalion.

Finally regarding spotters there is a very nice feature added into the Artillery Dialog that allows you to highlight spotting units on the fly. Simplifies life a lot.....

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I'm wondering about supply. Can units run out of ammo? What about reupply? Many was the time a unit could fire through their ammo in a short period of heavy combat.

Yes units can run out of ammo and go low fuel, artillery can go low availability. That said this is WIP currently and less of an issue at this scale than at a PzC's scale. See the note above regarding isolation.

David

[Al]

...early war battles in France could also be interesting.

Agreed.

BTW - thanks for all the info you've provided, Strela. Looking forward to getting this one.

[ComradeP]

It's silly, but I only just realized that there being no battalion indication for some units, something I commented on earlier, is probably just because it wouldn't fit (it would be platoon/company/battalion/regiment) or it isn't needed at this scale because giving platoon/company/regiment is enough.

However, it might be confusing that merged platoons don't drop their platoon indication (such as in the example on page 18 where the merged unit is still 1st Platoon, 6th Company) unlike PzC where companies drop their company indication when merged into a full battalion until they're broken down again.

[Strela]

It's silly, but I only just realized that there being no battalion indication for some units, something I commented on earlier, is probably just because it wouldn't fit (it would be platoon/company/battalion/regiment) or it isn't needed at this scale because giving platoon/company/regiment is enough.

However, it might be confusing that merged platoons don't drop their platoon indication (such as in the example on page 18 where the merged unit is still 1st Platoon, 6th Company) unlike PzC where companies drop their company indication when merged into a full battalion until they're broken down again.

Post #109 on Page 11 & Post #128 on Page 13 answer these questions.

David

[Mr Grumpy]

Finally, with over 12,000 views & 200 posts in this thread, I am getting a positive feeling.

Well this thread has moved up to 11th place in the all time list for replies to a thread, considering there has been 27,748 threads posted at the Blitz that is not bad going...........

The views list is a little harder to climb with the top thread having 333,016 views!!!

[Outlaw Josey Wales]

Looking at the way the title seems to be going, each PzCs title could have several PBs titles to cover those entire areas. I hope that there will be plenty of variety and nationalities. I agree with not neglecting France 40. Maybe we will get more in Italy. Would also like to see other areas like Greece and Yugoslavia as well. If venture into the Pacific to include China-Burma-India could be called Jungle Wars or Jungle Battles series.

[Mr Grumpy]

Well in reality the sky is the limit with this series, the only limiting factor is the ability of the guys who work with JTS in their spare time to design and test new titles, it is all so very time consuming.

I personally would love to see a desert title.

[Kuriltai]

Well in reality the sky is the limit with this series, the only limiting factor is the ability of the guys who work with JTS in their spare time to design and test new titles, it is all so very time consuming.

I personally would love to see a desert title.

I think that's where the HPS/JTS secrecy about which titles are being worked on trips them up.
I know these games are no ones primary job including JT.
When Smolensk came out way back when,I am sure he had no idea it would turn into this many titles.
The guys designing titles now learned from the design work of the earlier titles and designers.This makes for a more polished product.As someone who is playtesting titles, it is damn hard to find mistakes.
I believe the Blitz community has guys who could start a team and bring there pet projects/battles to life if they knew that that title was not being worked on.But how to find out?


Kudos to Strela for being so forthcoming about Pz Battles. Hopefully we have not kept him from working on the game too much and that he considers this discussion productive.

[Aaron]

Well in reality the sky is the limit with this series, the only limiting factor is the ability of the guys who work with JTS in their spare time to design and test new titles, it is all so very time consuming.

I personally would love to see a desert title.

Well come on over, we got room for you and will help get you set up and going.

[Strela]

I'm wondering about supply. Can units run out of ammo? What about reupply? Many was the time a unit could fire through their ammo in a short period of heavy combat.

Yes units can run out of ammo and go low fuel, artillery can go low availability. That said this is WIP currently and less of an issue at this scale than at a PzC's scale. See the note above regarding isolation.

David

Ok, I don't want to mislead anyone here. I have gone back and checked my notes.

We have removed supply changes in a scenario for all units other than artillery. Units can be setup as low ammo or low fuel at the beginning of a scenario by the designer and they will roll to recover during play.

The rationale is that in periods of a day or less units would be carrying enough ammunition or fuel to handle combat conditions. Some of this was driven around the justification of units not going low ammo when isolated.

Artillery on the other hand could run out of ammunition more quickly and that has the potential to become unavailable at various times. This reflects both the size of the ammunition and the more finite size of supplies.

As mentioned this may still change, but it's not an issue in the battle covered as there were few if any documented supply shortages.

Finally, a word on supply sources. They are in the game primarily to determine supply of artillery ammunition as well as determine isolation. Being isolated will still drop a unit one morale class. This is viewed as the 'psychological' effect of being cut off. The removal of low ammo when isolated ensure that it isn't a drop of two morale levels.

David