Panzer Corps 2 gets its first Dev Diary and a glimpse at key features By Joe Robinson

While it’s rare that we highlight individual dev diaries in their own news post (we could have saved this for Wargamer Weekly, for example), the fact that this one is for Panzer Corps 2 represents an obvious and exciting exception.

While you're here, check out our list of the best WW2 strategy games around.

Not only that, but it’s the game's first Dev Diary, which means two things:

We’re going to start getting regular updates on PC2, which is only going to be good. The fact that they’re starting these diaries now could mean we’ll see Panzer Corps 2 release this year. It’s rare that a Matrix/Slitherine game that’s getting regular dev diaries doesn’t release in the same year they started, although there are always exceptions (and this could prove to be one of them).

Regardless – new information! Yay! Let’s breakdown what we’ve learned.

Gameplay Features

Some of this may already be known, as we covered a lot in our Panzer Corps 2 Everything We Know guide, but we’ll cover it again anyway and update accordingly. Matrix are key to stay true to the original design philosophy of Panzer Corps, in the sense that it was a spiritual successor to Panzer General:

Many aspects of the game, including the list of unit classes and unit stats, remain unchanged, and Panzer Corps veterans will feel themselves instantly at home with the new game. At the same time, we are giving the player a number of new tactical options, which will make the playing experience even more interesting and engaging.

Overrun & Encirclement: these two features were already known about, but they’ve gone into a little more elaboration in the dev dairy. Overrun better reflects the role of tanks in WW2 by allowing these units to destroy severely damaged units (threshold unknown) without spending their movement or attack action.

For ‘encirclement’, while PC2 won’t have a full-on supply system like Order of Battle, the dev team are keen to bring in the tactical implications of units being out of supply. A unit that’s surrounded by enemy units so that it can’t move onto any passable terrain hexes will be considered ‘out of supply’ and will start to suffer combat penalties over time.

Splitting Units: this was also a known feature. At the cost of an additional unit slot, any unit can be split into two equal halves that can act as independent units. Useful for things like recon and encirclement.

Captured Units: this is a feature that wasn’t talked about before with regards to Panzer Corps 2, but it’s a feature that was in some of PC1’s campaigns. It’s now being made into a core mechanic:

When you force enemy unit to surrender, its equipment is captured and added to a pool. Later you can use this pool to create new units or replenish existing ones for free.

Unique hero abilities: Unlike Panzer Corps, where heroes only gave stat boosts to units, in Panzer Corps 2 they will have many unique tactical abilities, and some of these abilities will be synergistic with your units.

Air and Naval Warfare

We only got vague details during our initial brief and there’s little extra detail in the dev diary, however the team have gone into more depth to talk about the design intent for Panzer Corps 2 at least. Their main aim is to make Air and Naval Warfare as interesting as ground warfare so that Air-only or Naval-only scenarios can be a legitimate design choice, and their looking to similar dedicated wargames for inspiration:

The most important change in the air war is that all aircraft act from airfields now and return to their base automatically at the beginning of their turn. Also, just as in real life, the effectiveness of aircraft drops as the distance to their base increases. This means that all air rules and mechanics from Panzer Corps (like mass attack, interceptors etc.) remain in place, but at the same time the airfields, their location on the map, timely capture and proper defence become key elements in air warfare. As for naval war, naval terrain is “by definition” less interesting than ground terrain, with endless sea hexes going in all directions. To compensate for this, ships themselves will be more complex entities, with various factors (like orientation and position of turrets) affecting combat effectiveness, and a damage model (inspired by Pacific General) going beyond the simple “strength number” under the ship. Carrier and submarine classes will be much better fleshed out to represent their unique roles in naval war. A more advanced naval model will allow this series to branch out into any theatre of war in the future, including the “naval-heavy” Pacific, something which Panzer Corps never did.

That’s all we have for now – are you excited yet? We’ll try and keep you up to date as and when more information comes to light.