Ive been to Consimworld, PB forums other than this, and numerous yahoo groups. All are brimming with rules debates and clarifications for the Panzer series. Its been one of the reasons I am highly critical of the series. In the past I had no money for the magazines and books like the General, my dollars were few and went to the actual games and miniatures I used. As I surf the web I find more and more of these old magazine articles trying to clear up the rules. They were clearly an issue for many over the years confirmed by the fact that many letters were written to magazines for calcification. Lord only knows what kind of mountain of mail AH got themselves. I know they got ALLOT in general as they always alluded to that fact in there catalogs. www.imaginative-strate...s/PBQA.pdf Here is another article compiling the enormous amount of Periodical support PB needed to be clear to its fans. Mr Arvold can be a sensitive chap, so I make this statement with no intent at criticizing him or the article itself. In fact, Its a fine work and handy tool. But these complied articles come decades too late. And in reality AH should have done allot more cleaning up the mess to begin with. TO me these letters and articles only reinforce the fact this game was never that good. I see Panzerblitz allot like Microsoft Windows. Windows is poorly written product that received very little Q&A and the latest inceptions of it are only worse. Gates is not that much of a technical innovator. Windows is not a success cause its good, but a success do to marketing and other non technical considerations. Namely a public that instead of demanding quality has accepted that the crap PC users have to put up with from the industry as a whole is "Just the way it is" If what I am saying is not clear look take the Ford Pinto, and suspend reality for a hypothetical. Say the Ford, found a way to marginalize Pintos bad press, and sold 10 times as many. Many would record in history Pinto as a success due to its numbers sold. So for people that think money is the bottom line it would be a success. But would another car designer and automotive engineer look at the Pinto as success? NO no matter how much money ti made the Pinto was a faulty machine that had defects that included being a potential bomb on wheels. I think those that want to tinker with rules in general can eviscerate Panzerblitz and heavily criticize it through analysis. And those that do not, simply look at the media buzz that heralds this game as a classic today. Many find Deep technical and historical analysis as interesting as the game itself. Others who don't, tend to respond with the "shut and play" and "its only a game" type attitudes.

LOL classic, You type it right and then forget the carriage return. Dude, who's making the keyboards you buy? Fisher Price?

I think we are the only two left, unfortunately. But yeah I think you have accomplished your point on the rules being written poorly. There was a discussion on a yahoo group. with a supergrover?? YOu? Amazing how out of control the people there got. But if you, I agree with the your points about the previous article.

On how to change things? Well just keep on keeping on with what your doing.

Separating the Anti tank from other direct fire is a good thing as I see it.
Step reduction needs to be addressed also. Shows what your coming up with.

I havent really followed the anti-tank and step reduction debates too closely. Anti-tank combat is not my first priority for revision; my priorities include:

1. Accurate time, space, and frontage. (PB does much better than most [other] SPI [derived] tactical games: Soldiers, Panzer '44, etc. have serious problems here; frontages are about 5x too short in Soldiers.)

2. Realistic brigade and battalion tactics. (More CC/C3I would be appropriate. But I'm leery of including more unit-by-unit detail unless it affects the company's or battalion's capabilities.)

3. Appropriate infantry combat rules. The biggest problem is that infantry operates more slowly than armor. Infantry-vs.-infantry engagements take more time to reach a conclusion than armor-vs.-armor engagements.

4. Appropriate artillery rules, for direct and indirect fire. How do artillery combat factors compare with infantry combat factors. Should the indirect-fire units be so effective in direct fire?

5. Appropriate armored combat rules, and integration of the different rules. Separating the anti-tank factors seems reasonable.

PB is an armor game. But there aren't many infantry and artillery games out there: Soldiers and the Tactical Combat Series, and the various squad-level games. Pz '44 was even more of an armor game. Assault was an armor game. First Battle didn't provide enough data to make an infantry game.

BTW, I would like to see better armored combat rules, including new ratings, facing, and other ideas.

That was web formatting issues. This one is not my fault, I made about 4 posts on that WD yahoo group, it is amazing how wild that got. Geeze, anyway. IM working on the computer assists. :lol:

Marja, I am bit unclear on Points 1 and 2 of your post above, can you expound a bit on them please?

1. I like to see realistic frontages, realistic movement rates, realistic engagement ranges, etc. Let's drop back to the First World War. A Russian infantry company would attack in two waves, along 200-250 meters. Panzerblitz uses 250-meter hexes and platoon and company-sized units, so the standard attack formation has one company per hex, with reserves behind. Soldiers, SPI's old WWI tactical game, uses 100-meter hexes and company-sized units... so the standard attack formation would have 1 unit every 2, sometimes 3 hexes. Soldiers encourages much tighter formations than were actually used. Panzerblitz could do with some adjustments, but the unit scale, map scale, and time scale work with each other.

2. Do players use their forces realistically? Do historical battalion and brigade tactics work? Do unrealistic tactics work instead? Does the game encourage players to use the right troops for each mission, or the wrong ones?

Do players use their forces realistically?
Do historical battalion and brigade tactics work?
Do unrealistic tactics work instead?
Does the game encourage players to use the right troops for each mission, or the wrong ones?

Good questions but no easy answers. It would seem you are trying to turn your wargames into simulations to answer some interesting historcial questions.

CQ

This one was busted see below

This one I made while tired, its not relevant and has been edited as I did fix thr other post.

Well my philosophy on games and game design lead me to do these things in certain ways.

A. As should be well ingrained by now. I do not believe in this Tim/Complexity thing. Its been my experience that 90 percent or more of those complaints are really about personal taste more so then actual time taken to play, Time taken to resolve combat, or any complexity or depth in detail.

B. Based on above I try to limit abstraction as much as possible. At the very least what I abstract is usually far different from what others feel should be in most cases.

C. Its been my experience that detailed, technical modeling doesn't have to be complex. And it is very important to have it. IN my experience it is the best solution to any unrealistic tactics or other kinds of exploitation by players.

If accurate modeling can be achieved, players can play anyway they want, but will almost always fail to win if they do not use their forces in realistic ways. When this effect is achieved rules don't have to be mired in restrictions and special rules that attempt to force players to realistically.


Command and Control,
The appears to be a new fad in wargaming about C&C. Lots of new gamers want games where you as a commander are simply trying to herd cats. No subordinate listens to orders and troops will commit to random actions constantly.

I use older concepts that are based in the average. Another article I recently read from the 70's does a great job of explaining these ideas. I use the command radius, A morale factor that can be reduced if units are broken. Etc. Scenarios in my game are set up to eliminate that, unrealistic last turn banzai run to a Objective just to get enough VP to win and other gamey ploys of the past. This isn't done with restrictive rules, its done through victory conditions. This also effects how players feel about units in risky situations and getting them out. It turn, I don't need very strong morale effects. The players can feel through the game when they are in trouble and will have a stronger desire to get out of it on there own without rules telling them they have too. Its a better experience for the players and makes workload and learning curve, less in the rules design and the game play. But because there are some morale rules, the stand and die ploy wont work either. Units can fight to the last man but not unnaturally due to a lack of consideration of morale. Its a subtle balance.

As far as time and scale. My personal opinion is they are all out of whack. My variant of the game will change that. I am a big believer that a time scale that is shorter not longer is beneficial in tactical games. I have cut the 6 minutes to 1 minute. Reduced the hex scale to 100 meters, changed the soviets to platoons, and reduced stacking to 2, though half tracks escorting dismounted infantry count as 1.

The article I posted on the thread earlier, discuses the pitfalls of using gun performance to represent an entire combat between multiple platoons. I agree with the statements in the article and have done away with that system in my rules. For variant of panzerblitz, though I personally can only do it in one way. It would require a chart, and as we know most will complain about this endlessly. They don't bother me, as I mentioned earlier people complain about such things usually call it complexity. I 100 percent disagree. They have never hindered any game I played and are not difficult to read. When people cant pin down any criticism of the system they come up with the fact it may take a second or two to read one. Which IMO is a ludicrous complaint that is not worth the enormous effort it would take to work a system out whose sole purpose is achieving things like a new penetration system but has to avoid a chart to do it. The weird thing on many of these forums is that, many people refuse to just say, that game is not for me. Instead they must pull out the time complexity jargon and try to pick the system apart trying to convinces people, and mostly the designer, they are wrong. Its weird phenomenon. The major forums like Consim, BGG, TMP are rampant with flaming cause of this issue and others.

The variant system I have, will do away with the AF and DF on the counter. OHHH boy will people not like that. I don't care about it all, so I'm doing it anyway. So many people can make their own counters now, making them for this variant is hardly an issue. or they coud simply just ignore the printed values on orginal counters.

The AF will be replaced with two numbers. One for soft one for hard attack. The Hard attack will penetration at the range. So a range of one hex will be a higher AF than a range of 10 hexes for example.

The DF will have facing. So the Tank counters will have Front, Side, Rear DF's

The Dunigan schema will be the same though, dividing by ten to get a two number DF out of a a triple digit number in milimeters. Many factors will be different based on more up to date information then Dunnigan had at the time of production.

Movement will be mostly the same as dunnigan, Jim simply took the top speed of the vehicle and calculated the distance it would travel at that speed in 6 minutes without terrain concideration. I will do the same for one minute. And the hexes now being 100 meters, the movement will be different values. Then the movment is modifed by terrain as in the orginal game.

I like the two attack [more, given range variation] and two defense ratings [not quite sure whether three are needed], and the use of charts. I mean people can prepare German and Russian charts for the second half of 1943, and so on, about one or two per army per year.

However, the time and space scales really bother me. I LIKE the Panzerblitz time/space scale. In part, that's because I'm trying to represent engagements which took a lot of space. In part, it's because it is more realistic than the later SPI games which crammed entire platoons and companies into 100 meter hexes.

Well I for me I have to have the one mintue scale.The reason is, so many didnt play with even the limited op fire rules that it was just frustrating for me to do the 6 minute turn. Watching an enemy move, and fire on you with nothing to do for a whole 6 minutes isnt real. Keeping the 250 hex is fine by me, But I got thinking people would be saying how slow things devolped. But I agree and I think not changing scales is good. I just have to delete a few of my maps. Oh well.

It may be possible to use 100m hexes. Perhaps allowing combined fire at units in multiple hexes?

Having the defender allocate opportunity fire while the attacker moves may not be the best option. Both SPI and Spartan had some other approaches to opportunity fire.

Which spotting rules are you using? IIRC, in the AIW rules, units are spotted whenever they move. That gets rid of some of the more dramatic "Panzerbush."

Opportunity Fire is important against armor but not as important against infantry. Perhaps the rules could allow each unit to make one anti-personnel attack or, for example, three anti-vehicle attacks per turn. Units which are larger or have higher rates of fire can get more anti-vehicle attacks.