panzer command playtest

[thephlapbadhu]

Hiya
thought i would share my comments/review- some of which have been made before
first off- i love combat mission and so this game is attractive as it looks like cm with nice graphics and plays in a smimilar fashion- the main difference being there are two order phases per turn- main orders and reaction orders
the game looks nice and runs well but there is no recoil on the tank guns (even cm did that)
i love the way you have to send orders via a command structure. can be limiting but would make the game easier to manage in a big battle but the battles seem quite limited in size.
i think its primarily a tank/anti tank gun game though although it seems easier to clear infantry from buildings with sustained infantry fire rather than tanks firing HE which seems a bit strange to me (but then i've never been shot at in a building with either:) 6 turns of 4 pz IV's 75mm HE shells should have had some effect
artillery comes in two flavours- closed and open sheath- which means it eaither spreads over a wide area or a very wide area- the only time i have hit anything with artillery is with a nebelwerfer- which is one of the most inaccurate forms of ww2 artillery. you would need lots of artillery to hit targets, which is realistic but then the game prevents you from having lots of artillery.
foce selection is also very limited- you dont seem to be able to buy lots of infantry in the battles i've played so using them is very risky
no ambush/ hide mode is a big let down and since only certain orders allow you reactive fire it makes other order types a bit redundant.
AI generally good from what i've seen so far but not had any artillery fire on me yet. and the single russian BA64 charging a bridge into four tigers tanks in plain sight was a bit of a hoot
a patch covering these issues would certainly make the game alot better and tap into the combat mission market before cmx comes out
good effort though- haven't played pbem yet. that would be the real test as wasn't keen on cm single player either

[kipanderson]

Hi,

“no ambush/ hide mode is a big let down”

I agree… if one cannot order troops to hold fire until the desired moment I am not sure how one is expected to defend. At this scale.

I must qualify the above by admitting that so far I have always played the attacker so my assumptions on the above point may be wrong. But using CM as my base, the entire defense, at this scale, is based on coordinated fire plans. The ability to order units to hold fire would be top of my wish-list. Or maybe the ability to set covered arcs as in CM. Order units not to fire unless an enemy unit moves within a certain distance.

The developers will know your game better than I do… you may think of a better way to achieve the same end. But setting coordinated fire plans, in some form, is a must have feature of this scale wargame. Be it Squad Leader, CM, whatever.

All good fun,
All the best,
Kip.
PS. Yes… I am old enough to remember Squad Leader [;)].
PPS. BTW… PzC is a stunning game and growing on me, with the odd tweak will surpass CM for sure. The things is does, it does outstandingly… but at this stage still missing the odd feature [;)].

[redwolf]

I agree that as it is PZC misses some important features for the human defender.

However, CM was far from perfect in that regard with TacAI often doing its best to order unrealistic moves on its own, retreating monster tanks, foxholes with pretty much no effect, atomic buildings, no churchtowers, artillery spotters not willing to let the wire go when retreatinging, the retreat command being pretty much unusable, mismodeled sandbag areas and the unrealistic effect of MGs inhibiting movement in trenches nearby in CMBB/CMAK.

I think we should take the opportunity to come up with a more well-rounded set of features to suggest for PCZ.

I think I already have some notes somewhere...