Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gameplay

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MickMannock
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by MickMannock »

nikivdd wrote: Let's not make Panzer Corps 2 a kind of OOB clone.
I second that.
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by David105 »

nikivdd wrote:
Let's not make Panzer Corps 2 a kind of OOB clone.
100% percent agree! HOWEVER, there is some good ideas in OOB and some of those solutions is really missing in PC!
I say – Let’s take the best (from OoB) to make the masterpiece!!!)))
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Kerensky »

You know what I've been asking for in Panzer Corps ever since I made this gif??
Image

You know what was awesome in Xcom2? Rapid fire animation sequences from ambushes.
Image

You know what game shares an engine with Panzer Corps 2? Xcom 2.

I'm just saying, maybe it's possible to finally get this kind of a feature. It doesn't have to be crazy camera swirling like the Xcom 2 ambush there, but I think it would be ultra cool to be able to 'queue' a series of orders to multiple units and then execute those orders all at once to create an awesome fireworks display.

The tricks I've used in the past, are like, using that Sherman tank as the attacker to provoke mass defensive fire. And then using that long animation time to queue up orders from many units quickly and then move the cursor away from the action and just let the animations play out one after another.

It would be fantastic if in PzC2, we could get some way to make animations be able to overlap. Meaning an animation does not need to fully finish before new animations begin playing. This, plus queueing orders, makes for impressive visual displays.

Some technical stuff:
1. When queuing orders, probably a 1/2 second delay (or shorter depending on the average PzC2 animation length) will be good before a new animation begins. This way animations don't all play with 100% simultaneousness, which would just be a huge messy cacophony.
2. If we want this to be an actual mechanic and not just for visual fluff... You know what mechanic badly needed visualization in Panzer Corps? Mass attack. You know what animation would look super awesome to reward players who engage in mass attacks? This idea. Because mass attack is so damn important, the difference between sending your 109s single file into a Spitfire and clustering them around that same Spitfire before engaging is the difference between a player who can play on Colonel or Field Marshal difficulty, and the player who can survive and thrive on ultra beefy Manstein difficulty. A mechanic that important deserves some kind of wicked cool animation as a reward for pulling off, because it's clearly hugely important and deserves more than a line in the combat log that says 'mass attack'.

In addition to mass attack in the Panzer Corps sense, mass artillery barrage would also benefit from this new system/animation. In Panzer Corps, you can mass attack units, but you cannot mass artillery them. You have to pick each artillery unit and bomb an entrenched unit one at at time.

What if you could tag multiple artillery units at once, and order them to mass barrage a target. Not only will it look cool, like the Nebelwerfers above, but it can be a mechanic like... artillery that participate in mass barrage gain a stacking bonus. 1 artillery attacking by itself, gets a 1.0 multiplier. 2 mass barrage artillery get a 1.2 multiplier, so each unit is doing 20% more damage/suppression than normal. 3 mass barrage artillery get a 1.3 multiplier, so each gun in 30% more effective, which is basically getting a 4th attack for free.

So on the one hand, you have a nice bonus for something 100% historical (massed artillery barrages). On the other hand, it will look awesome and way better than just one gun firing at a time. And lastly, because to control this from being crazy overpowered, you have the fact that you are using multiple artillery units single attack actions and using all of that effort into a single target. So it better be worth doing because artillery is an expensive resource to spend so much of it focused on a single target!
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Cerberus51 »

I have been thinking about heroes and introducing a unit class trait.

How about units still able to gain up to 3 heroes as now but add in a % chance with each hero that the unit also gains a class trait. Chance could be 33% with first hero, 66% with second and 100% with third or just 25/50/75 to leave a possibility of not getting the class trait.

Class traits could be abilities like -

Recon - chance to retreat if attacked
Anti tank - reduced initiative penalty when moving and firing
Infantry - entrench at double speed
Artillery - reduced ammo usage or higher rate of fire
Strat bomber - some suppression becomes kills.

On the subject of heroes, if they are going to be in PzC 2 maybe level them out a bit more or make it so a unit doesn't get more than one of any type.
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Yrfin »

Kerensky wrote: It would be fantastic if in PzC2, we could get some way to make animations be able to overlap. Meaning an animation does not need to fully finish before new animations begin playing. This, plus queueing orders, makes for impressive visual displays.
Whether it is possible to turn off this animation or it is necessary to have coffee and it will end waiting on the 100th unit so far?
KeldorKatarn wrote: And the oh so cool unit animations that everybody loved in E3 presentations? Yeah everybody turned them off after 1 gameplay hour because they're repettitive, cost only time and slow down the gameplay. It's annoying, stupid once you've seen it 5 times and you'll turn it off (please make sure we can turn them off, I don't watch my Stuka make an attack run EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's annoying as fuck) Everybody loved the small 2D animations videos in the original Panzer General and EVERYBODY ended up turning them off because they took too much time.

I want Panzer Corps 2 to focus on AI, on historical accuracy, on constinstent scenario scale and better campaigns.
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Kerensky »

Yrfin wrote:Whether it is possible to turn off this animation or it is necessary to have coffee and it will end waiting on the 100th unit so far?
Considering if you play normally, you'd go through all those animations at an even slower rate than the overlapping rate, I'm not sure what your point is.

That said, no matter how good the animations are, there's always some minority of players who always want them off. That might be a nice option, but that's all such a thing ever is. A nice option the devs can gift to such players, but clearly not the default setting and not even one that is a must have either.

One thing I will say about Xcom 2 though, the primary reason I did end up stopping playing it was the excessive load times, even when I had that game installed on my SSD. This was compounded 10 fold by adding mods, and it got to the point where I never even played the uber Long War mod because of the dramatically increasing load times. Definitely something to be conscious of, and hopefully keep to a minimum in Panzer Corps 2. That could include topics such as animations, as well as the AI turn. An AI turn where you don't watch anything happening, but a progress bar slowly fills or an hourglass spins is annoying at first, and just plain painful after any serious length of time playing.

I wonder how that will turn out. If the AI needs to move large amounts of units in the fog during its turn, how fast can this operation perform without the playing just sitting and staring at a progress bar, or just getting up and going afk during the AI turn completely. Depending how it is, this may boil down to your individual scenario and campaign designers. Designers who give the AI too many units with too much to do on their turns could bog down the AI turn, where as smaller maps with smaller populations may perform smoother and quicker.

I recall one 40k solo scenario in particular, a huge defensive battle part of the free DLC, some of the enemy formations were so large, some players thought the game was just freezing during the AI turn, because there were so many units moving in the fog that the player couldn't see, but the game was slowly processing all of their movement. And that scenario had many waves of these attackers too, it wasn't like Panzer Corps Bagration 1.0 where the entire map's population was all attacking all at the same time, lol. What a nightmare that was, I still remember that. Made for an excellent object lesson in the need to stagger AI offensives. Though I guess it was a historical steamroller, it just didn't play very kindly. ;)
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Kerensky »

KeldorKatarn wrote: And the oh so cool unit animations that everybody loved in E3 presentations? Yeah everybody turned them off after 1 gameplay hour because they're repettitive, cost only time and slow down the gameplay. It's annoying, stupid once you've seen it 5 times and you'll turn it off (please make sure we can turn them off, I don't watch my Stuka make an attack run EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's annoying as fuck) Everybody loved the small 2D animations videos in the original Panzer General and EVERYBODY ended up turning them off because they took too much time.

I want Panzer Corps 2 to focus on AI, on historical accuracy, on constinstent scenario scale and better campaigns.
I found the loose interpretation of scenario scale was a huge boon to Panzer Corps. It allowed for making scenarios of all shapes and sizes, from maps spanning entire countries to some maps spanning a single city and its suburbs. That created incredible variety in the amount of content that could be and was explored. Some of my best memories and experience of Panzer Corps was trudging through Warsaw, and then the grand daddy urban nightmare of Stalingrad. That was definitely a 'play till 5 AM 1 more turn' scenario for me. But if the entire game was like that... I think that would very quickly be a pretty bland and even painful experience. But the variety of having flexible scale like open country maps kept things changing, helping to fight content stagnation and repetition to an incredible degree. There's no 144 scenario Grand Campaign without such useful tools, I'll say that much!

I'm just trying to imagine Warsaw or Stalingrad or Berlin from the Grand Campaign, and if the entire Grand Campaign was just one city battle after another for every single scenario. Oh my goodness... just no, no way. And on the higher end of the scale, 1 or more countries per scenario, well we saw how fast and short the base campaign ran through the course of the war. In fact that shortfall of content turned out to be beneficial too. It really created an environment where the player base was hungry for more content, helping to open the door to more expansions and DLC that covered battles in much finer detail.

So even bad or not ideal things can still be full of potential to explore, and improve as content continues to be produced and expanded beyond version 1.0.

But I would personally say one of the cornerstones of Panzer Corps's brilliance was the absence of strict scale. Units could be a company, battalion, division, or whatever a particular scenario needed them to be. 10th Jagdpanther... could be anything, so each scenario was free to make it into whatever that particular scenario needed it to be. On city scale, it could just thought of as a single or pair of tanks. On country scale, a whole division. And it worked beautifully. Well I guess the beautiful description is entirely subjective. :)
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Kerensky »

Having further obscurity such as stats like base 10 strength units also lends itself to breaking through strict scale definition and allowing freedom for interpretation. What a nightmare 40k was to balance, with unit sizes have no base line. Formations ranged from 1 to potentially past 100, and combined with a much more zoomed in art style that was clearly defined in no uncertain terms, that also killed any chance for open interpretation for what a unit was. 1 Titan was forever going to be 1 Titan. 150 gretchin could never be interpreted as 150 companies or divisions, because you can't cram 150 divisions into a single building. It crushingly limited the design space of 40k Armageddon and was one of the primary, though not only, reason that game never could have or ever did get a multi-linked Grand Campaign. And it certainly did more damage than good in a game that would probably have significantly benefited from just being a Panzer Corps clone wearing Warhammer 40k skins than whatever it ended up turning into.
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by hgbraun »

Sorry for offtopic. But after reading the name Kerensky, seeing Sci-Fi-stuff and PanzerCorps on one page, I just wish that you had applied for the BattleTech-franchise.

Back to topic: there would be no scaling problems like in 40k with Mechs. ;-)
MickMannock
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by MickMannock »

Kerensky wrote: That said, no matter how good the animations are, there's always some minority of players who always want them off. That might be a nice option, but that's all such a thing ever is. A nice option the devs can gift to such players, but clearly not the default setting and not even one that is a must have either.
Looking at the posts since the announcements of Panzer Corps 2 I must say your judgement is pretty off. Sure, some have been indifferent about animations and moving to 3D, but the majority has definetely been, if not against it, atleast wanted priority in other aspects of the game. So if you are looking at the core audience of the game (a lot of them fans since Panzer General) I'd say the vast majority are not favouring a lot of resources going into animations or graphics in general (just look at the suggestions in the thread; have anyone mentioned graphics?).

On the other hand, you are part of a business that wants to make money and I get that this might mean moving from 2D to 3D to reach a different (and perhaps bigger) type of audience. But in that case I think you should be honest enough to say so. I think it's a reasonable step to take for you as a company who wants to make money and put food on the table for X amount of families, but please don't bullshit those of us who fell in love with Panzer General way back in the Dark Ages. :)
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Kerensky »

hgbraun wrote:Sorry for offtopic. But after reading the name Kerensky, seeing Sci-Fi-stuff and PanzerCorps on one page, I just wish that you had applied for the BattleTech-franchise.

Back to topic: there would be no scaling problems like in 40k with Mechs. ;-)
Oh, but there is an awesome BattleTech game already coming! In fact the BETA for BattleTech was supposed to have already begun... but sadly it got delayed. Still, they're aiming for that release this year. Who knows what the future will bring, but I'm pretty sure that BattleTech strategy game is in good hands, and should be great to play.

If it was up to me, I'd luv to make some kind of sci-fi strategy game. But that's a discussion for another day. Or year, realistically, lol.
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by hgbraun »

I know about the game, but I'm a bit skeptical. Their Shadowrun-attempt was quite OK but the setting has so much more potential.

But back to PC2. I've got to agree that most of the fans don't need fancy effects or graphics. It's more about recognizing the fanboy-stuff like lots of different Panthers, Tigers, PzIVs, Bf109s, FW190s. If you want to satisfy fanboys like me, give me options to further customize my troops like I wrote 2 posts earlier. :wink:
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Cerberus51 »

On the question of graphics and 3D let's be realistic. The hard core fans of PzC (I include myself in that group) want gameplay over graphics but developing a game costs money - which is recouped by selling copies of the game. To expand the potential number of purchasers means offering graphics that compare with other new games on the market - otherwise the more casual gamer won't look at buying the game and discovering what it is all about. If developer resources going into graphics is the price of PzC 2 getting released (and future expansion campaigns as well) I'm fine with that - just as long as the gameplay and AI are up to the mark.
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Kerensky »

hgbraun wrote:I know about the game, but I'm a bit skeptical. Their Shadowrun-attempt was quite OK but the setting has so much more potential.

But back to PC2. I've got to agree that most of the fans don't need fancy effects or graphics. It's more about recognizing the fanboy-stuff like lots of different Panthers, Tigers, PzIVs, Bf109s, FW190s. If you want to satisfy fanboys like me, give me options to further customize my troops like I wrote 2 posts earlier. :wink:
I went back to read what you wrote. Sure, I'd agree customization is fantastic for adding levels of polish. When I'm playing Ghost Recon Wildlands with my friends, i'm always excited to find new character or weapon customizations. I've found that giving the player customization options is always welcome, but it can be taken even further. Set up reward systems in game to encourage players to not only play the content, but maybe play it in new ways they normally wouldn't try or have thought of. Instead of always having tangible rewards for mission objectives like extra resources or bonus units, why not have the occasional vanity reward. What if the iconic Panzer woodland camo was in the game, but not available at the start. It is unlocked by completing a higher than normal difficulty setting or something. I bet players might enjoy chasing after that carrot, and be more than happy to show off their elite camo/other customization options in future campaigns they playthrough.

Though Ubisoft being Ubisoft they went way too far, having a AAA priced game, with a season pass, and on top of that even more microtransactions for customizations with the real money, in-game store... but that's not a complaint for this forum. :)
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by bebro »

Kerensky wrote: You know what game shares an engine with Panzer Corps 2? Xcom 2.

I'm just saying, maybe it's possible to finally get this kind of a feature. It doesn't have to be crazy camera swirling like the Xcom 2 ambush there, but I think it would be ultra cool to be able to 'queue' a series of orders to multiple units and then execute those orders all at once to create an awesome fireworks display.
I am all for making games pretty *and* providing great gameplay. That being said there are some things that I'd just file under "unneeded clutter". I didn't play XCOM 2 so far, but played the 1st "new" XCOM - the cutscenes were all super cool, but even the bestestestest of those tend to get old at some point. This is when you just want them to go. Dunno if the simultaneous attack anim would fall under this category tho...depends how it's done and whether it can be skipped.

But one thing I really began to hate over time was RTW 2 - esp. how the game forced players to watch the campaign camera get auto-rotated/auto-focussed when a battle occured. Or that players had to watch move anims on the map that also did reset the player's zoom for the campaign map ___e v e r y f r i g g i n g__ turn. Such things only do frustrate players....
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Kerensky »

It's pretty safe to say graphics are a sweet tool and wonderful asset for getting interest for a game stirred up, especially when advertising space is limited to a 1 minute video clip or less. It's also true that good gameplay and a fresh content stream is what keeps the players on board once you have their attention. I think FlashBack knows what they are doing, are we really worried they're trying to cash in on Panzer Corps success with a flashy graphics successor for a quick buck? Maybe I'd have that concern if there was a new development team taking over, but that's clearly not the case here.

Personally I'm excited for the visual fluff and the potential for fireworks it brings. If I ever get the opportunity to I work on Panzer Corps 2 content like I did for Panzer Corps, I'd definitely like to see what this new game is capable of. Can I use new graphics and effects to do things like, make a trigger to cause an explosion where and when I need it to enhance my campaign narrative? For example doing an objective to blow up a bridge. It's one thing to get a text confirmation 'mission complete you successfully blew up the bridge' but it's not nearly as cool as watching that bridge blow up in spectacular fashion. Or attacking an enemy ammo dump, now there's some potential for wrecking havoc and getting an oh so satisfying visual display to go along with my strategic victory.

But a mechanic so important as mass attack deserves a more spectacular visual recognition than normal. Then again who knows, maybe there are some entirely new mechanics and mass attack may be a thing of the past? Either way, the potential is exciting!
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by hugh2711 »

the option to turn off the 3D for those who just want to play the game and are not interested in the eye candy.
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Mark50 »

I`m just putting forward an idea expressed by rezaf a long time ago: a range modifier that adjust how far artillery can shoot depending on the scale of the map.
http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 88#p442488
rezaf wrote: Since circumstances on how large a hex is change constantly, I wonder why there's no "range factor" scenario property that adjusts ART ranges accordingly. But ah well.
That way if the map is small but covers a large area you won`t shoot from Prague to Budapest just like you shot from one neighboring village to the other. Conversely, if the map focuses on a smaller area where a hex represents one or two kilometers you`d be able to shot further than a couple hexes with a 105mm gun.
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by Yrfin »

Mark50 wrote:I`m just putting forward an idea expressed by rezaf a long time ago: a range modifier that adjust how far artillery can shoot depending on the scale of the map.
http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 88#p442488
rezaf wrote: Since circumstances on how large a hex is change constantly, I wonder why there's no "range factor" scenario property that adjusts ART ranges accordingly. But ah well.
That way if the map is small but covers a large area you won`t shoot from Prague to Budapest just like you shot from one neighboring village to the other. Conversely, if the map focuses on a smaller area where a hex represents one or two kilometers you`d be able to shot further than a couple hexes with a 105mm gun.
And what about other ranged fire units (AA, navy) and movements for large/small maps ? Looking too complicated.
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Re: Suggestions, wishlist and ideas for Panzer Corps 2 gamep

Post by asuser »

Despite the pre-critisism to the eventual 3 D eyeycandy some things for the unit icon theme:

-As a minimum 3 basic camouflage types for all units for summer/winter/desert
-Greater diversity in infantry units for various tasks: fighting, recon and support
-Higher level for details between early and late versions of tanks, planes, weapons... eg. Panther A/D/G or Bf 109 E/G/K
-Better identification between regular and SE units (camo, special markings)
-Greater scope of battle field attachements like bunker, barbed wire obstacles, trench systems, supply depots and others
-Implementation of a (nearly) complete unit inventory for the Pacific War, in particular units of the US Marines and the Japanese
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