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Article by Peter von Kleinsmid Panzer Commander Editor Tips and Tricks
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| Here are my current notes on making scenarios for Panzer Commander. The manual already includes basic instructions and some good tips, so read those carefully first. My notes below are my additional tips, advice, explanations and warnings. General Notes: You can whip up a scenario in a few minutes using the editor. Unfortunately, getting a scenario to turn out something like you had in mind can take hours of trial and error. What looks good in the editor may be a mess in the game, so to get things the way you want, you’ll probably have to go back and forth from game to editor a lot. If you have two networked computers you can save yourself a lot of time, since the editor and the game do not run at the same time - don’t try to run both as in my experience this causes unpleasant crashes. However one thing you can do for simple changes is edit the scenario file (.PZS) with a text editor - you can Alt-TAB in and out of the game without causing problems. To make a scenario where the player can drive a non-tank unit, modify the VDF file for the desired weapon type so that type = TANK. The editor will then let the player use that vehicle type, which generally works just fine. The people running your scenario don’t need to modify their VDFs to be able to run such a scenario. I recommend changing the VDF back to its original form after making the scenario however, because then the game will score that weapon as non-tank as intended. Warning: In version 1.2, at least, if you try to save a scenario name that contains certain special characters such as a slash "/", the editor will crash immediately, losing any changes made since the last time you saved. Objects: This screen handles topography, season / terrain-type and sky as well as objects. Squares on the map and in the game are twenty meters apart. Elevation shades change every five vertical meters, although each point’s actual elevation can be a fractional value. Minimum elevation is zero meters and maximum elevation is one hundred meters. You really want to try to grade rivers and roads last because any elevation changes in the same area later will lead to uneven river and road surfaces which can be problematic and difficult to correct.
Experiment with different sculpting settings (radius and up/down) to learn to get the effects you want. Generally, many small sculpts dispersed overlapping over a small area give more natural landforms than a few scattered big sculpts. Notice that you have to click on the Sculpt button after typing in the value boxes or the left arrow key will not scroll the map but rather delete the last digit you typed. Unfortunately there are no other localized land-shaping functions besides round curves in and out, and the color contours are in five-meter increments. This makes accurately entering elevations almost impossible. The only way to explicitly set an elevation is one point at a time, setting the elevation down to zero and then up to the desired value. It would be a nightmare to try to accurately duplicate real world elevation data. Also note that the map display can be quite deceptive. Objects and vehicles are all bitmaps that don’t change size. The actual location in the game will overlap the bitmap at some point, but you don’t really know where until you’ve gone back and forth to the game to see. Buildings are particularly difficult to judge without loading the game. Also, while in the game there are rectangular tiles and on the map in the editor there are rectangular tiles that correspond as far as ground texture, the elevation on the map indicates the elevation of corners between tiles in the game. For example, a road will have a row of tiles one square wide in the game and for textures, but the elevation needs to be the same two points wide for the road to be flat - if you change the elevation in a square that appears to be next to the road, you may actually tilt the road up in the air. Conversely, a ditch that appears to be one square wide on the map will be two squares wide as far as textures go, because it is the point between two squares that is low. The textured tile shown on the map has a different elevation at each corner, so that: The elevation shown by the shade of the tile is actually the elevation of the upper-right-hand corner of that tile. Thus the elevation of the lower-left-hand corner of a tile is indicated by the shade of the tile to the lower-left of that tile, and so on. In the Desert deciduous trees become palms and evergreen trees become shrubs. The map display always shows springlike colors and the same two kinds of trees. Don’t accidentally hit the Clear buttons! Bridges can be difficult to place so that they come out well. A bridge placed on bad (by its standards) ground yields a broken bridge, and a bridge on flat ground yields a curious paved road section with guardrails. (Funny how the tanks have such a hard time with these guardrails.) There is a limit to how big a forest section can be - not very big on the lowest zoom setting. Also, you can only have so many forest sections: maybe 50? Not nearly enough to make a heavily-forested map unless you only plan to use a fraction of the map area (see the map in my Bulge scenarios). When you exceed the limit, old forest sections start turning back into single trees, which is quite annoying since there is no warning and the forest sections you are losing may not be visible where you are working! If you want a lot of forest, I would recommend creating all the sections you think you will need in advance - then place them where you want them without creating new ones that might make old ones disappear. Remember that if you change object positions or ground levels after the last time you used the Grade button, some objects may end up slightly embedded in the ground (sometimes not a bad effect) or floating in the air. Note also that forests on hills may sometimes appear to be floating in the air at a distance since they appear out of the background before the hills do in some cases. If you're having trouble placing rivers and roads, review the instructions and hints on the top half of page 66 of the manual. Units: Forward Observer - This places a binoculars unit on the map that can have different skill levels. I haven’t noticed that it does anything in the game, however. Each platoon and each vehicle or emplacement can be named. This is nice within the editor; orders to defend or attack a specific unit will use the name on the orders list or the victory conditions list. However the names aren’t used at all during play. To change an existing vehicle’s type, select the vehicle on the map and the new vehicle type you want it to be, then click the Change button. I believe there is a limit to the number of units you can place in a scenario, including emplacements. Unfortunately the editor doesn’t warn you about this - instead, some of the units you placed last simply won’t end up in the game, which you can only learn by running the scenario and noticing they aren’t there. The limit is something like thirty units, but I’m not sure exactly how many. I also think that if you make a scenario with too many units and then assign the player a unit that won’t exist, the game will crash when you run it, so if your scenario is crashing this may be why.
Stats: Paint job is always the same for all vehicles in a platoon. It can be set for emplacements but has no effect and such requests aren’t saved when you save the scenario. The “Platoon Skill Level” buttons (Elite, Crack, Veteran…) set all the crew members of the currently-selected vehicle to the same skill level. This only affects the currently-selected vehicle in a platoon, despite the label in the manual as a Platoon setting. Nonetheless the scenario file does also store this nominal platoon skill level in the scenario data, but I don’t know if the game uses it for anything. Driver skill supposedly makes the AI drive better, so I tend to set this high unless I think particular incompetence is called for, although I haven’t noticed much difference in practice. Gunner skill ends up being more effective than you might expect. Very low skill levels will miss a little more often, especially at long range, but a gunner with skill 5 out of 100 will still hit quite often against distant targets. Because of this, I tend to think very low skill levels for all gunners make things more realistic and interesting. Loader skill has the clearest effect, since it directly modifies reloading time. Orders: Rush - In Panzer Commander version 1.2, the Rush command is less of a suicide charge than it used to be. Units ordered to rush may sometimes stop when enemies are nearby, or at other times. Units not ordered to rush may stop when enemies are near before even spotting them, and so can’t be trusted to make much forward progress. Target Structure - Doesn’t seem to work. In my experience the unit will ignore such orders. However it may be that my attack order was over-ridden by a later order to attack all enemies. Hitting the Enter key while entering orders results in the current order becoming “Column Formation,” which I don’t think actually does anything. So remember not to hit Enter after entering values. Recon - Under patch 1.1, units ordered to Recon seemed to drive away from threatening enemies. Under patch 1.2, as far as I’ve seen, they seem to stop in place and shoot. Way Points - Units follow way points more or less precisely. Units without waypoints hardly even move, or may creep forward very slowly. An exception is when an vehicle attacks an enemy, in which case it will often turn to face the enemy and move slowly (often very very slowly) towards the enemy, leaving its plotted route. Running away from heavy attack, or running into obstacles, slippery ground or steep slopes may also cause unplanned displacement. After all such distractions the driver will try to move from the current position to the next waypoint. Withdrawal Point - As advertised, units under superior attack will usually flee to the indicated location. Sometimes they will also run away from the enemy first, and then turn back towards their withdrawal point after they escape enemy fire. Units seem to always run to the last withdrawal point on their orders list, regardless of where they are on their waypoints list, so it’s not possible to specify different withdrawal points along for different positions along the unit’s ordered path. Reserve - Makes a unit wait before continuing to move to the next waypoint, either for a number of minutes or until a certain unit type appears nearby. To set a number of minutes, type the number (don’t hit Enter) before hitting the Time button (which appears after hitting the Reserve button). The unit will still shoot at enemies while in reserve mode. Getting a platoon to move between obstacles can be particularly difficult. In driving through a town, for instance, the lead vehicle may follow the waypoints and turn at an intersection, while the vehicles following the leader will all turn at the same time, thus crashing into the buildings lined up along the road before the corner. Therefore avoid having AI platoons drive near obstacles, and/or observe what they do in the game to see if they’re having particular problems. Scenario: When assigning victory conditions, first set the points awarded for the condition you are about to enter. Consider awarding points not just for enemies destroyed and objective locations but for friendly survivors as well. Think of an example of Minor and Major victory in your scenario, and for failure, and then make sure these come out to the right point levels using your scoring system. Artillery missions come with a starting and ending time - the attack will land some time within that time range, and last for a few seconds, high explosive shells hitting randomly at some distance around the point you indicate on the map. First enter the time ranges by clicking in the boxes and typing. Don’t hit enter after typing. Select an empty slot in the list of artillery and airstrike missions with the mouse, select a nationality and point at the cannon icon for artillery, or the airplane for an airstrike. I’m not sure if nationality really makes any difference for artillery - it may affect whether a side gets credit for kills from artillery, and perhaps the kind of guns used. Then click on the Strike button, and finally click on the map where you want the attack to be centered. A little circular yellow and orange explosion symbol marks the spot. You can grab this like any other object and move it around the map.
Airstrikes have a time range like artillery, but this determines the time when the plane will appear. Unlike artillery, planes will generally continue to return even after the time listed. You can’t tell them to go away after a certain time. Airstrike attack points look exactly like artillery strikes on the map. Note that when you select an artillery or airstrike attack on the map, its entry is underlined on the Off-Map Strikes list. This is the only way to tell an airstrike from an artillery mission, and the only way to see which strike symbol matches which strike on the list. It is also the only way to delete a strike - select it on the map and hit Delete. Be careful, because if you only select a strike on the list, it underlines but doesn’t select the strike on the map - if you press Delete with nothing selected on the map on the Scenario screen, you will delete the currently selected victory condition! There is also no way to insert a strike except at the end of the list. I don’t think the order of the list has any effect, however. The Wargamer's Panzer Commander Section
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