Panzer Corps 2 Axis Operations – 1946 | Dev Diary #2 is out now

[h2]Axis Operations 1946 lands on November 30th, we’re a mere month from launch as of this writing![/h2]

On top of that, we have an extra special focus on the BIGGEST ground units ever seen for today’s Panzer Corps 2 Dev Diary: Landkreuzers!



For the first time in the Panzer Corps series, we’ll be bringing these behemoth vehicles to the battlefield in the upcoming Axis Operations 1946 Campaign. For anyone who doesn’t know, the concept of a Landkreuzer was to make what was essentially a mobile fortress. While super heavy vehicles such as the Karl-Gerat mortar were intended for long range fire support, the Landkreuzer was envisioned to participate in the thick of combat. Armed with battleship-grade main guns, a Landkreuzer could easily smash any Allied tank without contest. Should entire formations of enemy vehicles challenge this super tank, the Landkreuzer boasted many secondary weapons to fight with, all protected by unsurpassed armor thickness.

This uncompromising design of outrageous firepower and unparalleled protection meant Landkreuzers were designed to be more than 1000 tons in weight, so heavy that they needed U-boat diesel engines to power the tank. To attempt to bring this monster vehicle into Panzer Corps 2, we definitely had to make some unique rules just for Landkreuzers.



Landkruezer Special Rules

To make Landkreuzers work in Panzer Corps 2, we couldn’t just give them more stat inflation over say a Maus tank. Just adding more attack and defense values is insufficient for how insane the concept of the Landkreuzer really was.

The first thing we needed to do was to give Landkreuzers a ranged attack, similar to a Karl-Gerat mortar, to properly represent the range and power of its battleship-grade 280mm primary guns. This range attack is absolutely devastating to even the heaviest Allied tanks, which cannot even retaliate at extended distances.



But to prevent the Landkreuzers from being an invincible titan on the battlefield, we’re experimenting with giving it a non-standard unit strength value. By inflating this number past the default 10, we can make a Landkreuzer a target that can be swarmed and defeated by enemy tanks who manage to get in close, as opposed to giving a 10 strength Landkreuzer impenetrable 40 or 50 ground defense ratings.



In addition, the Landkreuzer acts more like a naval vessel, in that it is a single entity. This means that regardless of its strength value, it attacks and defends itself with a set number of attack rolls. This will further allow swarms of enemy tanks that managed to close range with the Landkreuzer to be able to effectively engage it, without the Landkreuzers retaliation fire instantly obliterating its assailants.

We’re in the final stages of the process of testing the exact stats and traits of Panzer Corps 2’s massive Landkreuzers, but getting these vehicles into the game has been a dream since Panzer Corps 2 first launched, so we’re going to give them all the love and attention they need to be amazing new units for Panzer Corps 2 players to enjoy!



A Unique Landkruezer

But wait, there’s more! We have a very unique announcement to make. Even more special than revealing the existence of Landkreuzers in Panzer Corps 2, we are even going to have a completely original Landkreuzer design added to Panzer Corps 2.

In the bizarre German tradition of naming larger and larger vehicles after smaller and smaller creatures (Maus/Mouse, Ratte/Rat), we have christened our original design as the Landkreuzer P.1600 Meerschweinchen.

Image Credit Google Images

Oh wait, that’s not the right image of our Meerschweinchen, it’s this one!



The main difference between a ‘normal’ Landkreuzer Ratte and the new Meerschweinchen is an even more absurd upgrade of the main armament. The Meerschweinchen utilizes a turret from a Yamato Class super-battleship, with whopping 460mm main guns! How exactly this turret ended up on a Landkreuzer, you’ll just have to see for yourself inside of the upcoming 1946 campaign.



Final Musings

Before we end this Dev Diary, I actually wanted to just share some musings about Landkreuzers with our readers.

Did you know we actually planned to add Landkreuzers to Panzer Corps 2 right after the 1.0 launch back in early 2020? I’ve wanted to add this very unique and special vehicle to the game for a very long time now, because so few games include them in their roster of units.

We discussed plans and prototypes to get Landkreuzers working in Panzer Corps 2 quite extensively. The original idea was for Landkreuzers to be true multi-hex units, with the front of the vehicle acting as the ‘head’ of a snake that the ‘tail’ unit was forced to follow in whatever path the ‘head’ moved along. While this idea worked great in many ways, especially to control the orientation of the two pieces to ensure they always remained in sync, it proved to be untenable in other ways, such as properly linking the health of the two halves together. Personally, I thought it would have been amazing to see the front half of a Landkreuzer reduced to a burning wreck, while the Maus Turrets and FlaK weapons of the back half continue to operate and fight, but alas it was not to be.

Our experiments with super-sized naval vessels proved this concept could be done so, and so we ultimately choice that option to deal with some of the more complicated aspects of implementing Landkreuzers into Panzer Corps 2.

One thing we should say though, the images you see here of our new Landkreuzers models aren’t 100% complete, we’re still making final adjustments to the formulas around these monster machines to get them nice and polished for the upcoming game release. So their size as seen here might differ from what we end up with in game. Me personally, I hope they get EVEN BIGGER, but I suspect we might have to tone down their size a little bit to better accommodate the game’s unit selection and targeting mechanics.



But not only will players have access to two different Landkreuzers, there just might be some strange circumstances where you just might encounter hostile Landkreuzer under American control. Taking on this monster vehicle and its escorts could prove to be the ultimate Elite Objective!



Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed this sneak peak into the Landkreuzers that are coming to Panzer Corps 2. Be on the lookout for our next Dev Diary, where we’ll be taking a look at even more new units that are being added to Panzer Corps 2 for its Axis Operations 1946 campaign!

So get ready for Axis Operations 1946, launching November 30th:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2393021/Panzer_Corps_2_Axis_Operations__1946/