Matrix Games Forums

How easy will it be to take a scenario for Advance Squad Leader and convert it for PCO? From SPWAW to PCO? What about PanzerBlitz? Will there be an ability in the future to go to other Fronts; West, Africa, Pacific, etc.?

Thanks in advance.

Hi TR,

Taking a map and an OOB and putting it into Panzer Command is not hard at all, as long as you have an idea of the scale of the map. One question you have to ask though is whether you want the historical location or not. Some maps done for these battles in other systems have been abstracted. You have a choice between duplicating the abstracted map or finding the real location and doing a more realistic map based on that (which the MapMaker in Panzer Command makes quite possible). A straight adaptation would not take long to do, though no doubt some extra time would be needed to make sure it's reasonably balanced in Panzer Command too, as each system rates and costs its units a bit differently.

We do plan to go to other fronts in the future.

Regards,

- Erik

ORIGINAL: TR Shrum

How easy will it be to take a scenario for Advance Squad Leader and convert it for PCO? From SPWAW to PCO? What about PanzerBlitz? Will there be an ability in the future to go to other Fronts; West, Africa, Pacific, etc.?

Thanks in advance.

Converting SL scenarios to PCO is very doable. This is one of the things that got me committed to this series. I've done a couple of conversions for the PCK release, and as soon as this is released I want to finish up another conversion - Hill 621. I imagine the ASL scenarios would convert as well.

The hope is that the next release after PCO will move on to another theater. though perhaps Erik is the proper person to address that.

thanks
rick

If you can find the actual location using something like Google Earth it probably is better to use as starting reference than using the abstracted terrain from a ASL map. I made a map for a Ponyri Station battle using some reference from the ASL Ponyri maps. Those were made from WWII German air recon photos. But building locations and sizes were idealized to fit the centers of hexes. Same with RR tracks. And streams were forced to be along hex borders. We are free from these constrictions so things can go where they naturally would.

I did a few conversions of ASL scenarios to CM:BB and CM:AK (and many other authors/designers did as well). The general consensus (and you can confirm by going to the Scenario Depot website) is that the straight conversions simply don't work. As noted above by Erik, Mobius, et al, the phony maps that ASL used don't really translate to games like PC that are balanced for real world combat equations. I may be speaking too soon, as I haven't seen Rick's take on all this in PC.

Having said that, I think there is certainly some nostalgia value in seeing those flat boards with the familiar hill masses of Hill 621, etc.

What I found, as Erik suggests, is that the ASL scenarios were a good starting point and that finding either actual terrain, with GoogleEarth (as Mobius suggests) or even just something randomly created (since ASL often used fictional terrain/locations for their "historical" scenarios) and some "balanced" forces was a good starting point to go into the playtest phase with.

What was even better was to locate the historical references that the original ASL authors used to create their scenarios from, and rework using the prime sources - i.e. SMALL UNIT ACTIONS DURING THE GERMAN CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA was the inspiration for a number of scenarios in both the original Squad Leader and Cross of Iron. It was published by the U.S. Army in the 1950s. Finding detailed AARs and maps like that is much better than backtracking the ASL scenarios.

I guess it depends what you want - nostalgia, a "balanced" scenario, or just something playable. They can be three different things altogether, or if the stars align, you can get lucky and have all three.

PCO maps can certainly take on an ASL look to them.

Good Hunting.

MR