List of ideas and enhancements

This page contains a list of ideas and enhancements that have been proposed and discussed by players.

General game behaviour and game model

• Turns per day. As mentioned in #197, even though each scenario has a special parameter indicating how many turns should pass before a new calendar day starts, it is not accounted for. In other words, at the moment every turn triggers a new calendar day.

• Profiles/rule sets. Even though we try to follow game model as defined in PGII, there are ideas and proposal to experiment with slightly different rules. As an example, artillery support during the ranged attack, ranged anti-tank attack only during LOS, etc. Instead of hard-coding all these details in the game and arguing which model we should follow, we can just introduce support for "PGII default", "OpenGeneral default", and "custom" profiles so that we can experiment with different game behaviour.

Units and related enhancements

• Disband/downgrade units. This enhancement is part of the PGII functionality. Since unit downgrading will require more efforts, we can introduce a new "disband" button so that we can sell a particular unit. To make it simple, the amount of received money can be calculated by the same formula which we use now while upgrading units.

• Unit names. While SCN scenario files in most cases provide exact historical unit names (e.g. battalion/regiment/division/corps), the game does not import those names into XML files. The enhancement is to import correct unit names so that they can be displayed in the unit inspect window adding historical accuracy and realism. As a related enhancement, there should be a way to rename (at least) core units so that once a new unit is purchased, a particular name can be assigned to it.

• Transport options during upgrade. As reported in #185, while upgrading a particular unit the game does not enforce you to upgrade the transportation unit, if so required. As an example, you can buy a light artillery with horses, and upgrade it later to a heavy artillery without upgrading its transport to e.g. half-track heavy tower, which could be the only option if a new heavy gun unit is purchased.

• Transport pool. As expressed in #186, once you a buy unit with a certain transport option, the only thing it is possible to do later is to upgrade the transport unit, but it is not possible to change it flexibly. As an example, suppose you have a cannon or an infantry with Opel truck. While it is a perfect choice for plain terrains, swap/muddy terrains would require half-tracked or even tracked transport to be able to move quickly. So, depending on the scenario you play and a strategy you pursue, you might consider different transport options for your cannon and infantry units, especially if a particular scenario has a mixture of different terrain types. In summary, you may have a pool of transport units, which you can attach/detach to your units in the beginning of the game.

• Basic and current unit strength. As proposed in #193, at the moment the game only supports current unit strength, whereas SCN files define both basic and current unit strength. The use case is somewhat limited, but it might be useful to model core units of reduced size, e.g. just 2 companies instead of the whole battalion comprising 4-5 companies. Similarly, this enhancement would allow for buying units of reduced size, e.g. 5 instead of 10, which could be useful when you do not need full strength recon unit or when you do not have enough money to buy full strength Tiger or Ferdinand.

• Air-borne and air-transportable units. According to the PGII game model, there are units type, such as paratroopers, that can be deployed to any hex. And on the contrary to it, there are some units, such as light infantry and guns, that can be transported over air but can loaded/unloaded only at airfields. At the moment the game follows somewhat simplified model, in which we do not account for those differences allowing any infantry unit to be transported over air and be paradropped at any hex. As the outcome, some scenarios are logically broken if played with OpenPanzer. There is "Green devils" campaign which is effectively not playable at all with the current version of the game.

• Flak and anti-air units. PGII has two different unit classes, Flak and anti-air, with somewhat different rules and behaviours for each of them; however, those differences are really questionable. For instance, OpenGeneral game deprecated Flak unit class completely and model all the units as anti-air with the corresponding unit attributes. It is possible to follow the same principle and to model all Flak units as anti-air class (and in fact some Flak units are already modelled as anti-air).

• Air and naval transports. In some scenarios it is possible to transport units over air/sea if the scenario has transport units of a particular type. However, there is no way to buy air/sea (additional) transport units. Thus, the enhancement will be to consider adding the corresponding functionality (availability of which can be controlled by PGII default or a new ruleset).

• Defence modifier depending on the unit direction. In the real life, it matters from which direction you attack a particular unit type. While the attack direction could be somewhat irrelevant for infantry, it would have a greater effect on tank and heavy artillery units. Since the game model knows unit direction i.e. which direction it faces, it is possible to introduce an additional defence modifier. For the sake of simplicity, the corresponding defence modifier can be assigned per a unit class.

Interface

Media

• Unit dying sound. When a unit is destroyed the same "dying" sound is played. However, it could be different for different unit types, e.g. sound of crashing airplane, sunk ship, etc.

• Background/ambient music. The SCN file has the corresponding field indicating which music file should be played in the background. Even in those scenarios when this field has a non-empty value pointing to a particular MUS file, we do not play it. However, SCN files refer to music files in the PGII specific MUS format. So, one way to circumvent around the problem is to keep references in the SCN files, but convert music files into WAV format.