Features for human defenders - let's find a suitable set

[redwolf]

We've seen a number of requests for improvements in PZC when it comes to infantry, hold fire and the like but I think these individual requests missed parts of the point, we should instead try to find a "feature package" which - in combination - will improve game experience most.

What I am most concerned about is that defending as a human is underdeveloped for now. In my opinion, requesting implementation of TCP play or hotseat makes no sense as long as you cannot have a fun experience as a human defender.

Here are the problems I see for human defenders:

[*]no "hold fire and hide", or settable engagement range. It is pretty much impossible to set up ambushes this way. And HQs in church towers are not supposed to expose themself and get themself killed along with the main artillery spotting capacity for your side

[*]no partial infantry damage. Shooting interdiction mortor fire is pretty much useless that way as all squads will be back to full strength. For the attacker it's also bad as extraction of any defending squad no matter how beaten up it is will give the defender a full-strength squad a short time later

[*]no foxholes, entrenchments etc. This can partly be made good for with just giving them good cover value anyway. Not an easy problem to solve, of course. But currently the best that squads can do is houses.

[*]inadequate model to determine who's in radio contact and hence can call in artillery fire. Artillery capability unrealistically removed from defenders in many situations. Defenders in their original position should have a drastically better chance to stay in contact as long as they stay in the start position or close to it. Going as far as having the defender's chance to be inverse to his distance to his starting point might be the best way to do it, reasonably simple and easy to understand for players.

[*]no towing of guns

[*]no smoke

[*]no stealthy infantry of any kind for scouting and spotting purposes to place in front of the force and provide early warning and maybe artillery spotting

[*]no real concept of setup zones

[*]scenarios dragged out, attacker doesn't really get a "sorry buddy but it's over now"

[*]no LOS tool at setup (or elsetime for that matter)

Now, if you look at these not as individual points, but in combination things look pretty bleak. In combination with the flat maps there is pretty much no capacity at all for a defense with multiple lines and fallback, unless you defend with armor. The lack of towing vehicle for guns in most scenarios and smoke in artillery also makes fallbacks very difficult.

A realistic defense of first splitting the attacking forces by interdiction from outposts in front of the line, then hitting them in a coordinated manner, then falling back with your force intact to frustate the enemy retaliation is disabled on multiple levels as things are now. That's fine for a campaign game where the AI defends which wouldn't use any of the above anyway, but human defenders are forced to use unrealistic tactics

%%

Now, you can't just go and "fix" all of these. Apart from the little problem that it takes programming time, all these changes, many of them complex, are almost guaranteed to cause side effects in the game engine that make things worse in the end.

What we need is a set of low-impact fixes that, in combination, provide the best improvements in defender play for the lowest messing with the rules and with the source code.

There is some low-hanging fruit that you can do outright:

[*]Lacking true scenario-defined setup zones, I think there is need for at least "within 100m" setup limit but any unit can be placed in any other unit's 100m radius, so that you can redistribute defenders between flags, but don't have to use the current "no limits at all" setting. You don't have to go too fancy here, nobody cares about a few meters of setup zone limits
[*]The radio fixes as mentioned above
[*]LOS tool is needed for setup but can probably be code-copied from target tool
[*]Partial infantry casualties are not easy but seem to be underway anyway, so let's assume they are in any package


So that's easy stuff but among the more complex items, what is most needed?

Given the low hanging fruit, what is gameplay still suffering from?

It's fallback capability, and outposts. And ambushes.


I'll continue about fallback in a second post in a minute.

[redwolf]

So what to do out fallback capabilities?

What do we need for a realistic fallback? For realistic outposts? With the least coding effort.

If you consider a certain competitior's game you'll see that things are really not that easy. Foxholes in CM were a joke protection-wise and the trenches don't work in any realistic manner if the attacker knows what they are doing. They certainly didn't provide the fallback you needed. In addition, the trenches as user-placeable items on the map have huge coding effort associated to them.

CM did have smoke in tactically interesting implementation, and they had the sharpshooters for stealthy outposts. Obviously, CM from CMBB on excels in ambushes with it's cover arc command. But cover arcs are complicated playing-wise and coding-wise and copying them from CM wouldn't be sportish.

%%

But what is the nature of the fallback in reality? Is it earthworks? Is it covered routes? Is it support fire?

No, on the original level it is preparation. No matter the means of preparation, it all boils down to the fact that the defender picks whatever means of preparation gives them fallback capabilities. There are many means by which to ensure or create fallback capability.

The question is: do we have to model all these means of creating fallback? If we implement some but not others we force the players to make unrealistic use of those we implemented and no use of those we didn't.

I suggest that we can get away with abstraction.

We just give some kind of abstract general fallback bonus to the defender at scenario start. He can use it a few times, then the advantage is gone after everybody on the battlefield mingles.

%%

So, more concreate, what can you do?

Here's a package of simple rules/features to do it:

[*]In their original position defending infantry gets a bonus of getting extra protection and concealment. Forget about foxhole modeling, it's not quite realistic to occupy them as the attacker and magically the firing positions in the foxles now point into the other direction

[*]Each defending infantry unit gets two moves worth of "fallback", a new command. Infantry moving under the fallback command can move with a huge concealment, cover and supression benefit. You get two of these moves per unit. Use them up, you are subject to normal infantry rules. This move can only be used in the direction of friendly territory. What that is needs to be determined.

Forget about trench modeling, it's really just one detail that leads to the same result. We don't need trenches for resupply in PZC, just for cover and for fallback. We can have that easier.

I'll continue on ambush features later.

[Mobius]

[font=arial]1.  For ambush maybe some kind of entrenched and camouflage position.  (buyable by defender?)   Where the gun in this cannot move during the game, is very hard to spot (unless firing) and is protected.   But only has a 30°-45° arc of fire (can't be rotated).   Green troops might fire pre-maturely or respond to recon by fire.[/font][/align][font=arial][/font] [/align][font=arial]2.  For attack a general unit morale where when after a platoon suffers a morale loss through some level of casualties and other random factors it will no longer advance.  So when all movable attacking platoons can no longer advance and have not taken their objectives the day is done for them.  Scenario over.[/font][/align]

[Erik Rutins]

redwolf,

Given that infantry was not our focus for the initial release, I can understand the need for improvement. As I've said before, Panzer Command is not intended to stay a mainly armored warfare design and we've already decided to make some of these improvements in a free, post-release update for all owners of Panzer Command. Other improvements are coming down the line for the first expansion.

ORIGINAL: redwolf
[*]no "hold fire and hide", or settable engagement range. It is pretty much impossible to set up ambushes this way. And HQs in church towers are not supposed to expose themself and get themself killed along with the main artillery spotting capacity for your side

This will be in the free post-release update, with the following options:

Defend -> Hold Fire ->
Good Shot (will only fire if it has a "good" chance of hitting)
Close Assault (will only fire if the enemy is in close assault range)
Hold Fire (will not fire at all until you tell the unit otherwise)

[*]no partial infantry damage. Shooting interdiction mortor fire is pretty much useless that way as all squads will be back to full strength. For the attacker it's also bad as extraction of any defending squad no matter how beaten up it is will give the defender a full-strength squad a short time later

This will also be in the free post-release update, with modeling for light casualties and heavy casualties as well as an additional suppression state called "pinned down".

[*]no foxholes, entrenchments etc. This can partly be made good for with just giving them good cover value anyway. Not an easy problem to solve, of course. But currently the best that squads can do is houses.

Foxholes and entrenchments will be in the first expansion. Also, before we get to destructible buildings, we'll be adding some resolutoin to the current building rules by allowing some heavy fire to penetrate the building and ignore some of it's cover. This should reduce the survivability of infantry in a building when being fired at with short range HE.

[*]no smoke

Planned for the first expansion.

[*]no stealthy infantry of any kind for scouting and spotting purposes to place in front of the force and provide early warning and maybe artillery spotting

Infantry is stealthy on its own and the initial release allows experienced infantry to earn abilities that make it stealthier (i.e. "Infiltration" for the Soviets)

[*]no real concept of setup zones

Setup zones are not, IMHO, the be all/end all method for deployment. With that said, we plan to expand the deployment options for the first expansion.

[*]no LOS tool at setup (or elsetime for that matter)

Already added, along with a cancel target option (for Orders and Reaction) and additional facing options (added to Engage and Withdraw), to the first post-release update. [8D]

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: redwolf
[*]In their original position defending infantry gets a bonus of getting extra protection and concealment. Forget about foxhole modeling, it's not quite realistic to occupy them as the attacker and magically the firing positions in the foxles now point into the other direction

[*]Each defending infantry unit gets two moves worth of "fallback", a new command. Infantry moving under the fallback command can move with a huge concealment, cover and supression benefit. You get two of these moves per unit. Use them up, you are subject to normal infantry rules. This move can only be used in the direction of friendly territory. What that is needs to be determined.

Interesting ideas, thanks for all the suggestions.

Regards,

- Erik

[Mobius]

Are there hedgehogs in the game?   This could be a combination of foxholes and trenches maybe an area 30m deep and 50m wide.  Infantry could move from firing position to firing position under cover.  If they have to withdraw or even rout they could at least get to the back of the hedgehog before they run away and are exposed to direct fire.