Welcome to the first Developer Diary exploring the upcoming Fall of Poland DLC Campaign for Panzer Corps 2. There’s all kinds of interesting details to be found in the latest upcoming Panzer Corps 2 Campaign, so let’s get right into it!
Your War Story
The first thing we want to share is what this campaign means to really make it your own War Story, as there’s a few changes to Panzer Corps 2’s campaign structure going on here in Fall of Poland. For example, Fall of Poland has aimed to maximize its campaign length, meaning that there are no branches in this campaign structure and all focus is on playing from the Polish perspective. We’ll talk more about this further down in the Mission Design section, but the goal here was to make a really meaty campaign to extensively cover the struggle for Poland in the autumn of 1939.
At the heart of the campaign, from the very first scenario to the very last, are a group of Key Characters. As you journey through the campaign you will encounter these Key Characters directly on the battlefield. They are figures who will be fighting alongside you, or in need of your protection, as war threatens to consume Poland all around them.
But to make their appearance throughout the gameplay as pleasant as possible though, you will find you have full control of these characters wherever they appear. This will prevent any obnoxious issues of being frustrating by giving control of them to the AI, which may not act as a player might want to, or expect them to.
This control is a double edged sword though, because it will also mean you are fully responsible for these characters. Their fate will be in your hands! But to once again avoid unpleasantness around them, keeping these Key Characters alive are actually entirely optional. If a player really isn’t interested in these characters and their missions and the historical information they have to share, you can safely play through the entire campaign with any or even all of them having been killed off!
We didn’t want to mandate players to keep these units alive at all costs, it is going to be entirely up to you whether you want to devote your forces to helping these characters to reap the rewards they offer, or not to, as you can opt to focus purely on your mission objectives to progress the campaign.
To get into those details we have to talk about...
Mission Design in War Stories Fall of Poland
Looking at a couple of scenarios will quickly highlight this new system and how we kept it flexible for the players to engage with, or not engage with, at their own initiative. This scenario here is one of the early battles of the campaign, the Battle of Westerplatte and the city of Danzig(Gdansk). Your deployment zone is primarily located here, on this central island within the city of Danzig.
Your primary orders, the task needed to progress the campaign, is directly south of your deployment zone.
However, the Key Character here who needs your help is all the way on the other side of the map, way up here on the Westerplatte Peninsula.
So as you can see, right away you have a dilemma. Do you focus purely on your primary objective, or do you risk splitting your forces in two opposite directions to help escort this Key Characters to safety? That decision is yours to make, but if you leave this Key Character behind, it will be the last you see of them for the remainder of the entire campaign!
One more example, from further into the campaign:
In this battle, your primary orders are actually very close by to your deployment zone, just a few hexes due west. However, if you’re looking to continue to shepherd and safeguard Key Characters, they’ve requested your help to be escorted deep into enemy territory, way down here on the bottom edge of the map!
If your Key Characters are already lost, there’ll be no reason to fight so deeply behind enemy lines. But if one or more of them are still with you, and you hope to keep them that way, you’re going to have to take on extra burden and efforts to see to it!
These are just a couple of examples, but hopefully this illustrates how the Key Character system exists inside of the Fall of Poland Campaign, and now you see how it’s entirely in your hands to assist and participate in this extra aspect of the scenarios or not to.
