Snowdrifts

[Isto]

I noticed that the game does not warn when driving a wheeled vehicle to a hex with Snowdrifts in the same way it does with rough hexes (or rough slopes at least).

I think this would be a nice addition to make it warn against Snowdrifts in the same way. This would save many vehicle from immobilization as the snowdrifts are even harder to spot than rough terrain.

[jp10]

I can tell you from personal experience that on cloudy days (no direct sun) snowdrifts can be practically invisible in real life. A white drift against a white background throws no shadow in that situation. Infantry will walk right into them and also step into snow filled depressions that looks like a flat white snow field. Tanks moving off road will plow into them and also sink while driving over frozen ponds. I find the game perfectly realistic in this regard.

[Suhiir]

Having grown up in South Dakota and Minnesota I like to think I have a "little" experience with snow.

As jp10 said, drifts can be near invisible anyplace but perfectly flat terrain, and sometimes even then. Being a Canuk I think DRG can back me up on this. The light snowfalls most folks (if they live in places where it snows at all) are use to are like saying since you've seen a mild thunderstorm so you know what a hurricane/typhoon is like. Two entirely different beasts.

[Imp]

I am happy as it is, snowdrifts are not hard to spot except maybe under trees but just zoom in or hover your mouse they follow a pattern.
On drifts in real life winter sun can make seeing them difficult and judging the scale hard but not to the extent you drive into them if your talking pilled drifts.
Dangerous ones are open terrain, open ground you know there’s a road goes up to that tree but you also know there’s a 4’ ditch runs beside it and the winds filled it all in, time to admit the weathers won and go home.

[Suhiir]

Even more fun is "black ice".

I once took out 20m of barbed wire fence and did a number on my car when I hit a patch. No indications at all, no snow nearby, I'd been driving a couple hours so had no clue what the temperature was, just cruising down the road on a sunny afternoon one moment and spinning off into the ditch the next.

[Warwick]

Black ice is seriously not fun. A long time ago I was a motorcycle courier. I came to a patch of road shaded by trees just before a compulsory stop on an intersection. Black ice! I froze in terror and sailed right through the intersection. Luckily for me nothing coming. If I had braked or steered I would have been toast.

[Isto]

The issue here is the gaming experience. You can spot the drifts if you look yourself but you would not want to share your focus in it because your mind is in other more important and fun aspects of the game.

The added feature for rough hexes is a really good feature that adds to the gameplay value. You can spot the hexes from the map if you look, but you usually do not have the mind to do so and in some cases they are hidden under the trees.

[jivemi]

Originally Posted by Isto

The issue here is the gaming experience. You can spot the drifts if you look yourself but you would not want to share your focus in it because your mind is in other more important and fun aspects of the game.

For winter scenarios the importance of maintaining vehicle mobility (including tanks) is magnified. Which is why any off-road movement should be carefully plotted in advance.

Winter assaults are especially challenging since roads are usually heavily mined, often with obstacles. Rather than simply waiting for them to be cleared it can be useful to find alternate paths to the objectives.

[Suhiir]

Yep, half the "fun" of winter warfare is restricted mobility. The other half is keep your troops alive and fit for battle.

[Isto]

I personally like many of the convenient features added in the game. In my opinion they add a lot to the gameplay.

But i suppose this one would be too much as this seems to create surprising amount of opposition.

It is always possible to make a house rule that forbids snow maps entirely as this problem only occurs on them.

I would add a map file in here of the map we have been playing. Otherwise i like the map a lot, but there are a lot of single snowdrift hexes that make the movement on the map really taxing, as it might take more than 15-20 minutes extra in every turns just to move vehicles one hex at the time. This is extremely frustrating when there are lots of vehicles on the map.

Last game this feature would have saved a lot from the gameplay experience as my opponents advance was halted by a sudden snowdrifts he did not spot and in this game i have had at least one unit immobiled by snowdrifts in every single turn.

This is even more frustrating because this forces you to move all your vehicles by one hex at a time and always check their surroundings compred to a gameplay where you would just move them normally and the game would ask about entering them. Do this 40-50 times in a turn and you might see why i am suggesting this. It would still be an option to click yes if you did not spot the drifts, if that is the feeling the player wants but -> it would give the opponent the possibility to click no, which seems to take away from some of the player's gameplay.

One option would be to edit the map of course, and take those away, but they add to gameplay also being there and it kind of is part of the map.

How can i add a map file here ?

I could share the map. Seems strange that the file type is not supported by this forum. (There is another thing i suggest to change, to be able to share maps in here so everyone could enjoy them.)

Seems a .zip file is supported. I will add the map as a .zip file and i am curious what other people think about this map.

We have been playing it so that the victory hexes are positioned in the middle of the map and there are clearly 4 "areas" to form 4 different fronts. The upper part of the map, the "lake city" part of the map, "the road" part of the map which is concidered to be the main target and the lower part of the map and in the lower part there is the canyon.

This map have some legendary value in our games as it is an old custom made map by my opponent and we have played many games in this map. It was originally designed to happen in Finland, where we live. We usually play Finland vs Russia or Finland vs Sweden as a fictional battle. The ongoing game is between Germany and Russia and it is the first Ww2 game in that map as we want to see how it works out in Ww2. The map have been designed to be played with MBT.

That map is an extremely tricky one and in my opinion, the most complex map i have ever played in Steel Panthers.

For some reason i get more easily frustrated about these kind of things, in the past it seemed not to matter that much and for some reason, not to happen so often. Probably because our games were more straightforward as we mostly ride the roads and nowdays try to sneak on the opponent.