PANZER GENERAL (DOS) PBEM RESEARCH CENTRE
ARTICLE 010

ADVANCED GAME MECHANICS AND SCENARIO NON-SPECIFIC TACTICS INVESTIGATIONS

A) DIRECTLY VERIFIABLE PLAY RULES AND FEATURES

One of the great things about a game title like Panzer General (PG) is that, given an inquisitive player, A LOT of useful information can be extracted and eventually documented in unambiguous terms through DIRECT experimentation and observation. For example, consider the following tactical situation: an allied destroyer class unit is adjacent to a friendly dismounted artillery unit which has some ammo. An axis tank unit adjacent to the allied destroyer class unit attacks the latter. Will the attacking unit be subjected to defensive artillery fire ? In order to answer this question, all the inquisitive player has to do is to go to a scenario like NORWAY or CRETE, use the PG (DOS) setup for play between humans and manipulate the scenario to bring about the desired tactical position. Once this is done, he simply proceeds with the attack and observes what happens. That is all there is to it; short and to the point !!

B) INDIRECTLY VERIFIABLE PLAY RULES AND FEATURES

Let me start off by saying that the need to do research in this area exists SOLELY due to the fact that SSI REFUSES to responsibly answer certain important questions dealing with the programme's internal "mechanics". If this company were committed to servicing the needs of serious hobbyists, the need for such research would simply not exist !

Since we cannot count on somebody from SSI to come out of the woodwork and help us, we have to indirectly verify some of these internal "mechanics" in our own "laboratories". Some of these questions are easier to investigate than others. One thing that I personally find rather challenging in this area is that, each particular question calls for a customised "research" approach to answering it.

I will give you a medium difficulty example here. On page 99 of Prima Publishing's PG -- The Official Strategy Guide, one comes across the assertion that submarine class units "have a 75% chance to evade enemy tactical bomber attacks." Now, given that this information source is not very reliable, I should think that it would be foolhardy on our part to blindly put our faith in this assertion (or, any other, for that matter).... How could one go about verifying such a thing ? Without going into the gory details, I would imagine that one would have to set up a scenario situation where tactical bombers are placed over enemy submarines and let their bombs rain on those poor subs turn after turn after turn, while keeping score all the time. One will have to be careful about controlling things like weather and crew experience, but the general idea is to derive a statistical estimate via the application of what in statistical theory is known as the "law of large numbers".

C) SCENARIO NON-SPECIFIC TACTICS

In PG (DOS), scenario non-specific tactics are approaches and attitudes involving stereotypical battlefield situations that can be thought about without making reference to any specific scenario geography. In general, such pointers or conclusions are based on the interaction of several rules and features enjoying inter-scenario applicability. For example, fighter combat invariably entails much higher air attack values in comparison to air defense values. This means that, other things being more or less equal, the fighter unit that gets to shoot first will very likely inflict devastating damage on the other fighter unit. Given the overriding importance of this fact, players are well advised to pay a lot of attention to fighter unit listed initiative values as well as experience levels. It also goes without saying that, the probabilistic elements that the programme automatically factors into combat better be very well understood....

The author, Panos Stoucas, is a long time Panzer General (DOS) PBEM enthusiast and is currently the "Facilitator" of the PG (DOS) PBEM RESEARCH CENTRE. He can be reached at pstoucas@istar.ca