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Post by valorius on Apr 21, 2021 17:21:25 GMT
So im doing a DEEP dive in my eqp file for all major nations artillery forces.
Everything from the big rail mounted guns, to the 300mm+ siege mortars, to the full gamut of heavy howitzers, and even post war rocket assisted projectile shells.
My question: Do i go for balance, or for realism?
For instance: In 1942 the US gets the M1 8" gun with a range in excess of 20 miles. Nearly double that of the field artillery of any other nation- all of which fall between 10-13 miles.
The next nation that will get a comparably ranged artillery piece is the soviet union, in 1950 onward, and even then it requires RAP shells to exceed (or even match) the range of the M1 gun (not sure what year those were even introduced).
So....range or balance?
Thoughts?
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Post by jeff on Feb 21, 2022 16:57:03 GMT
Good question. Artillery always has a maximum range greater than the practical range. Forward observers, and fire control are the most important things to consider I guess. Knowing exactly where your shells are hitting. I know naval guns can fire a lot further than the range in the game. The actual size of the hexes is a bit fudged in the game too. I guess I took the PG/AG approach of fun over realistic. Remember the map scales in the old game varied widely. Yet the unit ranges remined the same. I think I have a map scale factor associated with each map. I was going to work on using that a bit. Using the Movement/Range factors from the equipment file, but dividing them by the map scale. So, I have actually considered using the more realistic approach. Hmmm, length of turn would also factor in. At least as far as movement is concerned. Air range is a bit abstracted too. Say the turn is three days. The max fuel is supposed to be just the range of the aircraft. But in three days you could actually fly 9 or 10 sorties ! Which the air units hovering turn after turn without returning to base kinda actually factors in weirdly.
What is the scale of the europe map ! Ha ...I forgot...I am thinking about 3-5 miles 5-8 KMs ? I will have to check. I have thought about adding some longer ranged art. I think the game might benefit from Heavy Anti-Aircraft guns too. (For city protection from high flying level bombers.)
Battleships can fire a lot farther than they can hit other ships. (Except for miracles I guess.) Hitting Islands would probably be easier than moving ship targets, eh. (Shore bombardment)
This reminds me of some of my first impressions when I played the old PG game a lot of years back. I was sort of put off by the fact that the units were Tiger I's, 150mm Art, 75mm AT guns, Infantry, etc. I tried to reconcile these units to actual military formations I was familiar with. It seemed sort of silly at first, and put me off. I finally figured out the abstract element I needed to embrace. The Sherman unit was not actually a mass of like 100 Sherman tanks, but a combat command of Sherman tank battalion, armored infantry battalions, TD units, engineers, etc. The Pz-IV unit was the part of the Panzer Division which used the Pz-IV battalion mostly. With other elements. Same for the Pz-V, Recon, etc. There are not usually Recon units of Brigade/Regimental size. But the game was showing a Battle Group which contained a large proportion of the Recon Battalion. I have slowly dis-associated my concept of the units from being actually T-34, Gd's Rifle, Stug-IV, etc. And think of them more as Armored Units with all their trucks, maintenance facilities, support units. I figured even some of the infantry units might have tanks attached. So, thinking of them as more generic military formations helped me overcome my first aversions to PG. Then I noticed the really great playability, and fun of the game. I think that is why I love the original so much. It was 'sort' of realistic, but kept the fun part first. I have played a LOT of wargames in my day. Most of them were the early Avalon Hill games. Operational level usually. Then came PanzerBlitz, and Squad Leader. I actually favor PanzerBlitz a bit more because it is much simpler to play. We created a new game that was a cross between Panzerblitz, and Squad Leader. We called it Quarter Scale Squad Leader. Squad Leader hexes were 40 meters. So guns had a Loooooong range. The game was actually meant to be an infantry game. Rifle units had a range of about 6 hexes max. But tanks were virtually infinite range on those maps. We used the old PanzerBlitz maps, or other maps of a tactial nature. Using 160 meters per hex. We bumped the time to about 5 minutes per turn. This game infantry a firing range of 1 or 2 hexes, and movement usually 1. (But, you could double time, or march along roads faster.) Tanks speeds got quartered. And especially the ranges were not practical on our game. We used the Squad leader combat resolution tables, (To Hit, Damage, etc.) We also changed the unit size to platoons. Usually 30 men, or 5 tanks. So tank units could get step losses. 1 or 2 tanks knocked out before the platoon was no longer functional. (A variable, and random factor depending on the morale of the unit.) We changed the turn sequence too. Swiping an initative based simultaneous movement system from some other game. (I forgot which one off the top of my head.) But basically the turn was interactive. I think we rolled a die at the beginning of the turn. The winner activated a stack of units, and moved or fired. Marked them with the appropriate counter, and then the other player activated a stack of units. I would really like to program that game. I started a couple times, but have not got finished yet. Not sure where all that came from, or how it pertains to PGX....just rambling on.
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Post by teophrastusbombastus on Feb 22, 2022 1:58:28 GMT
What is the scale of the europe map ! Ha ...I forgot...I am thinking about 3-5 miles 5-8 KMs ? As approximation; distance from Lisbon to Hakkari (eastern tip of Turkey) 4565 km divided by 622 hexes gives 7,3 km. But of course to start with the scale problems list when you do the math for the y (vertical) axis the result isn't that anymore. I think I remember writing in an e-mail that, except for the heaviest types, artillery shouldn't go beyond the adjacent hex... if scale was to be taken into account. In the original game it seems that principle was followed only for "assault guns". Easy to see, if artillery was to be kept a separate class with separate units the light and medium types would have to be adjacent to the enemy to have firing range, exactly where the enemy may shred their fragile frames to bits. Solution: extend range so that the artillery may shoot from behind a protective "screen". "Assault guns" are expected to rely on their armor to resist at least against infantry so they didn't get the "bonus" range. And this is one of the reasons why at some point I remembered about smaller strength support units capable of integrating with or detaching from main types of units. When integrated the support unit would benefit from the protection of the main type. A typical association would be light artillery or "heavy weapons" associated with infantry. One other recon with tank. That would grant some protection to range 0 artillery provided the main unit was automatically set to withstand attacks. Although the issue raised seems to be more about "big guns". Those - following scale - would range 2 or in select cases 3 hexes. And probably shouldn't fire in support of adjacent units as it is the case in many an Open General e-file. My war gaming was based on 1/72 scale miniatures, so it was completely "normal" for me to see a unit represented by an icon as they appear in PG, depicting a single real piece of equipment. However, prior to PG I had come across "Vulcan" which had a more "abstract" approach on unit imagery. "Vulcan" was vague about the specific type of equipment - "tank regiment" - says nothing about tank types. But it was quite precise about how many tanks the regiment had unlike the PG strength factors. Part of the playability / fun probably comes from a degree of vagueness that allows each player to make his own interpretation about what is being represented... or even just play and not really think about long words like "interpretation". By the way a curiosity: on 1/72 scale the maximum range of a 7.5 cm PaK40 amounts to... 42,5 meters... Maybe if we took our miniatures into a war game scenario built over an olympic pool... This should be the one I remember reading about as the "platoon" version of PGX. I'm sure the JP's archive has a few references on that...
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Post by valorius on Feb 22, 2022 3:56:28 GMT
In WWII and for quite a while after the only time guns could really realistically/effectively fire to max range was when you had pre-registered grids, and for Final protective fires. Nowadays max firing range is very important for counter-battery.
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Post by valorius on Feb 22, 2022 4:04:46 GMT
For aircraft:
I just went by the existing 1 hex per point of fuel, and figured out the distance in hexes using the distance from southern England to Berlin on google earth, then set fuel points accordingly.
A few examples:
A soviet Yak-9DD long range escort fighter has 145 fuel points. A P51D has 191 A P38J has 209 A B17G has 242 A B29 has 325
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Post by jeff on Aug 18, 2022 22:35:14 GMT
I did start a Platoon level version of this game a long time ago. I have never finished it. (Well I guess I will never be truly finished with anything, if you know what I mean.) But, I never got the platoon Tactical version to a point I felt like sharing it.
Every once in a while I get the urge to work on it again. Not sure now if it would be better to go back, and code on it. Or just take the current game, and re-write the combat results, etc. I decided to keep the turns very short. So I did not have to use 'opportunity' fire rules. (Shooting at moving units). Those rules work well in board games, but did not work so well on the computer. (well maybe I need to think about it some more...?)
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Post by teophrastusbombastus on Aug 19, 2022 8:10:35 GMT
I did start a Platoon level version of this game a long time ago. I have never finished it. (Well I guess I will never be truly finished with anything, if you know what I mean.) But, I never got the platoon Tactical version to a point I felt like sharing it. Every once in a while I get the urge to work on it again. Not sure now if it would be better to go back, and code on it. Or just take the current game, and re-write the combat results, etc. I decided to keep the turns very short. So I did not have to use 'opportunity' fire rules. (Shooting at moving units). Those rules work well in board games, but did not work so well on the computer. (well maybe I need to think about it some more...?) Entirely different "animal"! If I had to bet on it I'd bet on a separate approach. On board game rules: It's a world I only had marginal contact with but I'm sure there are tactical level board games as well as the higher echelon ones. What I did have some contact with were miniature based games and those tend to remain within the tactical sphere. Even so various scales of miniatures are used allowing different degrees of organization. If you're using 1/200 or 1/300 metal miniatures you form sections but you form enough of them to step up onto the next level(s), which is much more difficult with the very old and much bigger 1/72 plastic stuff. Bottom line, relating with the subject at hand, miniature wargame rulebooks may eventually be a source of study material. I still have photocopies of... some of that stuff... with two sets achieving some level of detail. One is a collection of pages taken from the Portuguese Army magazine; they had a "Jogos de Guerra" (wargames) section. The other one is in English and even includes aircraft rules. Author is Bruce Quarrie, title seems to be "Battle for Wargame". The late Bruce Quarrie wrote many books on wargames of various eras and military history. Seems finding net references to his books is easy but PDFs of them not so much. But there is this one from an author who cites the old master as inspiration: www.wanowandthen.com/EBooks/wargames.pdfSpeaking of projects in mind there are others among the pages of the archive. The World version is the most obvious because it even took off. There was also mention of WWI and Napoleonic variants, not to mention more that came to other people's minds. Near the end of JP's you mention a D&D sort of game for the grandson. It is time, not ideas, that is in short supply... From another coder there is an idea I really would like very much to see working. Xlightwavex' idea of something not very far from PGX but aimed at multi playing. The "duel" mind set inherent to HvH playing doesn't appeal to me. But the "cooperative" mind set possible in a game that would allow various players to coordinate in alliance does.
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Post by jeff on Nov 7, 2022 14:12:41 GMT
I worked on the combat system a bit last week end. Artillery units were getting a bit OP I thought. Just buy a couple 150mm Art units, place them next to each other and except for Air Power they were pretty much invulnerable. (I am using the normal Europe_1939 and World_1939 equipment file values.) I think the Hard Attack values in those files for Artillery were based on the actual penetration/damage done to a vehicle if it hit the vehicle. Hitting the vehicle is the hard part though. Most of the situations in the game are indirect fire. I halved the HA value of Art if they were firing in an Indirect Fire role. If the Artillery unit is getting attacked directly by Armoured units it is functioning as an Anti-tank unit at that point. The combat system up until now has let artillery fire without the defending unit being able to respond. (Even if the defending unit was within range of the attacker.) I changed that too. If an Artillery unit fires at another Artillery unit, and they are both within range of each other....both will fire. Initiative/Experience will determine who gets the first shot. (Just like regular combat between two Tanks, or two Infantry, etc.) I have been playing it a couple days now...since Friday, and I really LIKE it. Tanks are back in the game Baby ! I hope to get this update posted today. This is a bit of a big change as far as I am concerned.
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Post by teophrastusbombastus on Nov 7, 2022 15:30:47 GMT
I worked on the combat system a bit last week end. Artillery units were getting a bit OP I thought. Just buy a couple 150mm Art units, place them next to each other and except for Air Power they were pretty much invulnerable. (I am using the normal Europe_1939 and World_1939 equipment file values.) I think the Hard Attack values in those files for Artillery were based on the actual penetration/damage done to a vehicle if it hit the vehicle. Hitting the vehicle is the hard part though. Most of the situations in the game are indirect fire. I halved the HA value of Art if they were firing in an Indirect Fire role. If the Artillery unit is getting attacked directly by Armoured units it is functioning as an Anti-tank unit at that point. The combat system up until now has let artillery fire without the defending unit being able to respond. (Even if the defending unit was within range of the attacker.) I changed that too. If an Artillery unit fires at another Artillery unit, and they are both within range of each other....both will fire. Initiative/Experience will determine who gets the first shot. (Just like regular combat between two Tanks, or two Infantry, etc.) I have been playing it a couple days now...since Friday, and I really LIKE it. Tanks are back in the game Baby ! I hope to get this update posted today. This is a bit of a big change as far as I am concerned. Quite! A barrage hitting an area with tanks may not do much damage to them. In the game, from my experience, light artillery very rarely affects tanks. Medium artillery does, occasionally, 1 damage. Heavy types may shed significant parts off of tanks, even to some of the most robust. It is much more damage than the odd tank receiving an unlucky direct hit. On the other hand the heavier artillery could be given an alternative way of affecting tanks. With the new approach it will not damage tanks (as) much, at least from a distance, not on its own. But marking it as capable of Long Term Suppression would allow it to make way for other units to have an easier go at the tanks. To the opposite direction, not uncommon to see in OG is making heavy artillery not capable of support fire while maintaining it powerful in terms of damage. The counter battery element exists in OG, although I think only some of the most recent e-files use it. Another thing that is possible in some OG e-files is ordering a barrage onto a fog of war hex. "I think they are there, let's take no chances and blast that area just for sure".
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Post by jeff on Nov 8, 2022 14:59:07 GMT
I think you will like the new combat system ! I will make an effort to post the new version today. I made a few changes to the AI to make sure it new about the new rules.
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Post by jeff on Dec 12, 2022 16:04:32 GMT
The 'new' artillery rules. Are they really new, or just something my program had gotten 'out of whack' since the old Panzer General clone days ? Artillery had so many options in the coding. Should they fire to support any unit within range, or only units adjacent to them ? Should they fire to support any unit, or only units in their chain of command ? Are the forward observers calling to request fire via Radio, Field Telephone, signal flags, or runners !?! Getting a quick response to a support request was a pretty sophisticated communications task. The original PG was kind of a cool compromise. Having the artillery next to a unit was a way of saying....I am assigning this artillery unit to support these three units in their current situation. PG2 got a bit more tricky. I thought the artillery was a bit too flexible for a lot of the nations to have. Perhaps Germany, US, and UK on a good day. With their best units, and equipment. I doubt the Soviets could have pulled that sort of fire support off even in 1945. In PG2 Artillery would even fire to support units in another Army wouldn't they ? Like British Artillery firing to support US units. (Were there any normal scenarios with both nationalities ? I forgot now.) I think the Artillery suppression rules are GREAT. Shelling an area might not destroy tanks, but it will make it impossible to re-fuel them. Or, the crews to get hot food, or sleep. All being said and done....this is just a game. Having fun is one of the most important considerations. (I really think making the system as accurate as possible is the best way for me to have fun.) I believe 80% if casualties inflicted by the US Army in WWII were from Artillery. So, I would not be-little their power. I just felt I had to break the phenomenon of placing two 150mm artillery regiments next to each other, and getting an impregnable death dealing monster. That was an indicator that something was a bit 'off' in the simulation part. (Two artillery regiments sitting in the desert next to each other could pretty much get overrun by tanks as easy as one artillery regiment sitting in the desert ?)
You guys have played games with Artillery rules before. Miniatures, or PanzerBlitz, Squad Leader, or 'Command Decision' ? Look at some of these situations in those game terms. Remember John Teller's 'Battleground:Ardennes' ? That was a most excellent computer game based on the PanzerBlitz , PanzerLeader Avalon Hill series. I think it was one of the best Platoon Level games ever created. His follow up games may have been OK, but the Graphics left me cold. I am colour blind, and the later games he came out with were not as colour blind friendly ! Or even as aesthetically pleasing. Anyway...give the new rules a chance. Play with them a bit. I must admit I have NOT !!! Ha Ha... I have been creating my scenario. The Europe OOB down to batallion level ! Starting Sept. 1st 1939. The Pacific campaign was pretty big, but I took a LOT of liberties, and it was a bit simplistic. I am really putting the effort into this monster. I am almost finished with the British Army. I have made a LOT of map adjustments too. Not so much to geography, to to city location, etc. (I think the old map had two Birminghams, and two Liverpools on it. Whoops.) That was a product of it's original creation being based on a Board Wargame for the Napoleonic Wars ! So, I think I have Germany, Poland, France, and part of the British Army. I need the RAF, Royal Navy, Then the other 30+ countries. USSR will be fun, eh ? Soures vary between Leo Niehorster's web site, and it's links, to the OOB from Game Designer Workshops' 'Europa' series. To Be Continued...
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Post by teophrastusbombastus on Dec 13, 2022 0:29:06 GMT
The 'new' artillery rules. Are they really new, or just something my program had gotten 'out of whack' since the old Panzer General clone days ? Artillery had so many options in the coding. Should they fire to support any unit within range, or only units adjacent to them ? Should they fire to support any unit, or only units in their chain of command ? Are the forward observers calling to request fire via Radio, Field Telephone, signal flags, or runners !?! Getting a quick response to a support request was a pretty sophisticated communications task. The original PG was kind of a cool compromise. Having the artillery next to a unit was a way of saying....I am assigning this artillery unit to support these three units in their current situation. PG2 got a bit more tricky. I thought the artillery was a bit too flexible for a lot of the nations to have. Perhaps Germany, US, and UK on a good day. With their best units, and equipment. I doubt the Soviets could have pulled that sort of fire support off even in 1945. In PG2 Artillery would even fire to support units in another Army wouldn't they ? Like British Artillery firing to support US units. (Were there any normal scenarios with both nationalities ? I forgot now.) I think the Artillery suppression rules are GREAT. Shelling an area might not destroy tanks, but it will make it impossible to re-fuel them. Or, the crews to get hot food, or sleep. All being said and done....this is just a game. Having fun is one of the most important considerations. (I really think making the system as accurate as possible is the best way for me to have fun.) I believe 80% if casualties inflicted by the US Army in WWII were from Artillery. So, I would not be-little their power. I just felt I had to break the phenomenon of placing two 150mm artillery regiments next to each other, and getting an impregnable death dealing monster. That was an indicator that something was a bit 'off' in the simulation part. (Two artillery regiments sitting in the desert next to each other could pretty much get overrun by tanks as easy as one artillery regiment sitting in the desert ?) You guys have played games with Artillery rules before. Miniatures, or PanzerBlitz, Squad Leader, or 'Command Decision' ? Look at some of these situations in those game terms. Remember John Teller's 'Battleground:Ardennes' ? That was a most excellent computer game based on the PanzerBlitz , PanzerLeader Avalon Hill series. I think it was one of the best Platoon Level games ever created. His follow up games may have been OK, but the Graphics left me cold. I am colour blind, and the later games he came out with were not as colour blind friendly ! Or even as aesthetically pleasing. Anyway...give the new rules a chance. Play with them a bit. I must admit I have NOT !!! Ha Ha... I have been creating my scenario. The Europe OOB down to batallion level ! Starting Sept. 1st 1939. The Pacific campaign was pretty big, but I took a LOT of liberties, and it was a bit simplistic. I am really putting the effort into this monster. I am almost finished with the British Army. I have made a LOT of map adjustments too. Not so much to geography, to to city location, etc. (I think the old map had two Birminghams, and two Liverpools on it. Whoops.) That was a product of it's original creation being based on a Board Wargame for the Napoleonic Wars ! So, I think I have Germany, Poland, France, and part of the British Army. I need the RAF, Royal Navy, Then the other 30+ countries. USSR will be fun, eh ? Soures vary between Leo Niehorster's web site, and it's links, to the OOB from Game Designer Workshops' 'Europa' series. To Be Continued... By the later stages of the war the Soviet Union had a smashing artillery power. However, they arrived there through more or less the opposite approach the States did. While the US system was based on the best possible... well, everything: equipment, tactics, communications and logistics, in other words; quality... The Soviet system was based on fielding a gun line as long as they could muster and pounding the targets to oblivion by sheer numbers; quantity. Do not remember exactly where I read it. But I remember reading that during WWII the type of weapon that caused more casualties was the mortar. Aye! In PG2 any artillery within range fired in support. In Open General not necessarily as e-file designers have the possibility to make the heavier types uncapable of support fire. That usually causes the existence of two different types of artillery in OG e-files. One very powerful but also very fragile and the other of a more balanced type. Additionally, when we are talking heavy towed artillery another thing that makes the unit even more fragile is giving it Movement 0. If such Unit is attacked and all the surviving factors get suppressed it goes off all the same. And yes, there were scenarios with US/UK operations... When you call "old map" to the current ETO's... Are you saying you're using another map for the new scenario? Or just trying to sort out the "confusing" parts of the old thing?
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Post by jeff on Dec 15, 2022 16:30:58 GMT
I have just been making a few adjustments to the Europe map. Moving a few cities. Regarding new artillery rules. I will fix an option button if wanted... (Val.)
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Post by teophrastusbombastus on Dec 15, 2022 23:03:12 GMT
I have just been making a few adjustments to the Europe map. Moving a few cities. Regarding new artillery rules. I will fix an option button if wanted... (Val.) At this point I am trying the Konzev / BoW mix e-file and also trying to adapt to the "new artillery". I will probably not use that option button so soon but I have nothing against it's existence. Actually, in the first turns with the "new artillery" I got "unstucked" from one or two enemy blockings. Definitely, I am using more tanks and less artillery. Comparing with the "old artillery" it comes to my mind I may have been playing "Artillery General" throughout these years... Europe Map: You got me into a little bit of doubt with the inclusion of the New Europe Fiasco 2700X1500 map in v782. Actually I called it "Fiasco" because I could not edit the thing due to the 1000 pixel barrier. But unless my memory is failing catastrophically I have a reduced version that is even 10% edited or so. Let me get back on that... Right! Europetest02 with 1000X600 pixels. Almost exactly the same geographical area of the 2700X1500 map. I remember the reduction resulted in something with a thousand pixels and a bit more. Reason why I ended up cutting 40 or 60, or something around that, pixels to the left side - leaving Canada and the States just a bit narrower than in the bigger version. Almost all of the cut was forest and bits of lakes. But for practical purposes it is all the same an "Europe" map from the center of the US to the center of India, only 2,7 times smaller. I added many cities in the less needed Central American area. A reasonable part of Canada's and a few US's. And the last ones in the area of Somalia. So, it has an immediately obvious disadvantage: it needs a huge amount of city adding, instead of just shifting a few. Plus road adding. Rivers too probably. Additionally the scale is smaller than ETO's. Advantages are a much wider area covered and being just a bit warped instead of ETO's big "curl". (I believe this warp I detected may come from the uneven hex dimensions)
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Post by jeff on Dec 16, 2022 14:26:25 GMT
The new map is just a variation of the old one. Some cities and roads moved around a bit. It will not replace the old map. It will just be another Europe map to go with the new scenario. (I think Pacific has two differnt map versions too ?) Christmas and Birthdays, and Work have kept me busy this week. (Christmas in like going Shopping, cooking, concerts, etc.) Busy time of the year. My Wife wants me to watch the old Christmas favorites in the evening with her too. But, I do get to sneak in and work on the new scenario a bit. Adding some new British units so I can deploy the RAF. Swordfish, Gladiator, Sunderland, etc.
I am creating an excel spreadsheet that I can just enter the data for a unit, and it will convert it to Panzer General (PGX anyway) values. I am using it for the new Air units a bit. Getting the formulas for Ground Defence, Air Defence, Initiative, Move, Range, etc. I would like to share it with you guys, and get your input. (I think this subject could use it's own thread.)
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