Description

Dateline: May 12th, 1942. “General Winter” has loosened his grip on the Eastern Front of World War II and both the German and Soviet armies have made plans to seize the initiative with a major offensive to follow the thaw. As fate would have it, both sides choose the Kharkov region as their focus. The stage is set for a decisive battle and one that will hold many surprises for both sides.

After a massive artillery barrage, five Soviet armies launch their assault on the Wehrmacht lines, which they find better defended than they had expected. With determination they push forward and a week of hard fighting and retreating has the Germans at the breaking point. This is the moment when the German counter-punch is revealed, as an entire Panzer Army strikes the base of the south flank of the Soviet attack, threatening to cut off the attacking Soviet forces

As a commander in the 169th Rifle Division, lead the assault on the northern flank into tough German defenses. Test your mettle and see if you can uphold the reputation of one of the Soviet Union’s most decorated formations. As an officer in the 14th Panzer Division, lead your panzers with speed and decisive force to slice through the Soviet flank defenses and encircle an entire Soviet Army Group, then hold on tight as they attempt to break out through your lines!

Experience the new Panzer Command series of tactical wargames. In Panzer Command: Kharkov, you play a company-level commander on either the Soviet or German side in the Eastern Front. Preserve your men and defeat the enemy, there is no other way out! Panzer Command: Kharkov is the latest in a new series of 3D turn-based tactical wargames with a campaign mode that takes you from battle to battle with realistic units, tactics and terrain

Winner of the UseNet’s War-Historical 2008 Wargame of the Year Gold Award

Armchair General Magazine: 89% “Panzer Command Kharkov is a great addition to any wargamer’s hard-drive. The interface and mechanics are straight-forward enough that even beginning gamers can quickly catch on. But the action in Kharkov is realistic and pure wargame; players ignore real-life tactics at their peril. The endless replay value and open game engine promise to keep gamers happy for a long time to come. Koios and Matrix Games have given us a great game that is easy to recommend.”

Out of Eight: 7/8 “Panzer Command: Kharkov brings up a lot of memories of Combat Mission (in a good way) and the turn-based strategy gameplay is enjoyable.”

Game Features
• Turn Based Simultaneous Movement, where each 40 second phase of play is calculated down to the millisecond and the terrain down to each meter
• Full Campaign System, allowing units to gain experience, win medals, be repaired and reinforced.
• Realistic 3D graphics, including normal maps, lighting, particles and shadows
• Multiplayer via PBEM
• Improvements over the original Panzer Command: Operation Winterstorm
  • New Scenarios and Campaigns
    • German Kharkov, May 1942, 14th Panzer Division, (8 Battles)
    • Soviet Kharkov, May 1942, 169th Rifle Divison, (8 Battles)
    • German Mcensk, October 1941, 4th Panzer Division, (4 Battles)
    • German Kursk North, July 1943, (3 Battles)
    • Boot Camp Tutorial (6 Battles)
    • Plus additional individual battles and updated Winter Storm campaigns for Winter Storm owners (48 scenarios total if you own Winter Storm)
  • Updated Manual
    • Includes all the new rules and comprehensive tables on game modifiers and effects as well as detailed editor documentation and a full historical background of the Kharkov and Mcensk campaigns
    • Separate tutorial guide
  • New Random Battle Generator
    • Create new battles from 1941 through 1945 on the Eastern Front, choosing from a variety of map and force templates as well as battle options for each side. The resulting battles are virtually infinite in their variety, while maintaining realistic setups and force composition thanks to the predesigned templates (which are also customizable).
  • New Random Campaign Generator
    • Choose a time period, a number of missions and a core force and progress through a series of randomly generated linked battles
    • Also supports semi-historical and historical campaigns
    • Includes support for unit equipment upgrades for longer campaigns
    • Design and share your own Random or semi-Random campaigns
  • New Spring and Summer Maps
    • A variety of new maps that are both historically accurate for the Kharkov campaign also combine to give a representative variety of Eastern Front terrain.
  • Trenches and Foxholes
    • New trenches and foxholes provide more cover for infantry against enemy fire and make them harder to spot
    • New gun pits provide covered firing positions for field guns and vehicles
  • Minefields
    • Anti-personnel and Anti-Tank minefields are now supported for all scenarios.
    • Density and area can be defined and minefields can overlap.
    • Minefields are initially visible only to friendly forces and must be discovered by the enemy
  • Overhauled LOS and Terrain rules for increased realism
    • More realistic sighting uses a combination of 3D line of sight “rays” and defined terrain characteristics to give historical results for infantry and vehicles
    • More terrain types and revised effects for existing terrain types, each type has its own defined effects on movement, spotting and combat
    • Fully relative spotting, each unit only sees what it can see and now you can click on a friendly unit and enemy units it cannot see are hidden from view, making it easy to see who can be targeted.
    • New more detailed sighting table allows for more realistic sighting resolution, especially at shorter ranges
    • Clicking on an enemy unit now shows who it is targeting with a red line
  • Vastly improved Scenario Editor
    • No need to use a text editor or delve into the XML files any longer. The new scenario editor supports all the new features and includes many tools for the designer and full documentation, making it very easy to design a new scenarios for Panzer Command in less than an hour.
  • New Campaign Editor and Template Editor
    • The new Campaign Editor allows you to choose which scenarios to link together in a campaign and allows you to add scenario briefing images and edit and preview the scenario victory text.
    • The new Template Editor allows you to edit and create new map templates for the Random Battle Generator.
  • New Unit Icons and Rubberbands
    • New high visibility on-map floating unit icons for side and unit type are now available to make units easy to spot on any kind of terrain, even when zoomed out
    • Command units have an additional star on their unit icon to make them easy to differentiate
    • New rubberband options allow you to view the movement and targeting rubberbands for the selected unit, the selected platoon or the selected side, making it easier to plan and coordinate movement and targeting
  • Improved Commands
    • Group placement and facing commands to speed up deployment
    • A new improved default pathfinding algorithm, with a command to switch between pathfinding methods
    • Improved Line of Sight check tool
    • New Withdraw command for the Reaction Phase
    • Infantry units now auto-mount on vehicles when placed on the vehicle’s location during deployment
    • Units will now revert to a Defend order when their movement orders are completed, leaving them less vulnerable if you leave them without new orders for a few phases
    • New individual unit Hold Fire orders allow you to create good ambush situations. Options include holding fire until you have a “Good Shot”, holding fire until you are in “Close Assault” range and holding all fire until ordered otherwise.
  • Improved AI
    • The AI opponent is now more intelligent on the attack as well as on defense. It chooses task forces and orders more optimally and is smarter about its objective.
  • No Limit on Units in HUD
    • The in-game unit HUD now supports a larger number of units. If the default display size of 52 units is exceeded, a scroll button now allows the player to flip to additional unit screens.
  • Improved Infantry Combat
    • Infantry now come in squads and teams with differences in combat effects and casualty tolerance
    • Infantry units are no longer either fine or destroyed, they now have “steps” of light casualties and heavy casualties as well, each of which has combat and morale effects. While infantry units can still be destroyed in one phase, if they are in a decent position it is far more likely that they will be gradually attrited through the several casualty steps before destruction.
    • Infantry units can now be unsuppressed, suppressed and pinned, each of which has differing effects on movement and combat.
    • Close assault rules have been modified to take into account more factors, including the new higher resolution casualty and suppression steps
    • Infantry unit experience now plays a larger role in squad survival as well as firepower
    • Separate anti-tank weapons such as rifle grenades, panzerfaust and panzerschrecks
  • Reinforcements
    • Both on and off-map reinforcements are now supported
    • First possible arrival turn can be defined along with an arrival probability
    • Unit point cost is automatically adjusted based on reinforcement settings
  • Surrender Option
    • No need to fight to the death or the last turn, a battle can now be ended with a surrender
  • Smoke
    • Support for artillery, vehicle and infantry smoke is now included. Call in smoke from your supporting artillery, fire smoke shells from your tanks, have your infantry throw smoke grenades. Smoke adds a new realistic dimension to the possible tactics on every battlefield.
  • New Auto-Targeting
    • Units who destroy their target before the phase is over will now retarget automatically based on their targeting priorities (they can still be retargeted manually during the reaction and orders phase as well)
  • Improved Graphics
    • Improved lighting and shadows on terrain elements
    • Several Winter Storm models were overhauled and improved (for example, the T-34) with better modeling and textures
    • Building transparency handling has been improved
    • Various vehicle animations have been improved, including the destruction animations and new unique tank commander animations
    • Now works with pre-DirectX 9.0c integrated video, such as the Intel video chipsets. However, visual quality and performance on these chipsets is significantly reduced.
  • Improved Sounds
  • Improved Performance
    • Better memory management
    • Improved performance to handle more units and more terrain
    • Added more levels of detail for improved performance when the Level of Detail quality is set below the highest level
    • A variety of performance improvements to turn calculation result in improved calculation times despite the many additional calculations done in Kharkov vs. Winter Storm.
  • New Units
    • New On-Map Mortars
    • New On-Map Infantry Guns
    • New unit attributes such as Recon, Sniper, OpenTop, IndirectFire add some capabilities in Kharkov and also are preparation for future improvements
    • New minimum range for guns, primarily used for on-map mortars
    • New start date, end date and median prevalence fields for units to define their historical service histories for random battle generation
    • New summer textures for many vehicles

Game Data

• Complexity: Intermediate
• Field of Play: Tactical
• Historical Period: World War II
• Unit Scale: Squads, Vehicles
• Turn-Based, Simultaneous
• Players: 1 or 2
• AI: Yes, Either Side
• TCP/IP: No
• PBEM: Yes
• Game Editor: Scenario Editor, Campaign Editor, Scene Editor, Fully Moddable

Requirements

• Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, Vista
• Pentium 1.2 GHz, AMD 2200+
• 256 MB (512 MB for XP)
• 64MB Graphics Card (Low texture quality)
• 128MB (Medium texture quality)
• 256MB (High texture quality)
• DirectX 9 Compatible Sound Card
• CD-ROM Drive: Yes, for boxed version installation
• Hard Drive: 550mb
• Internet Explorer 6.0+
• DirectX 9.0c (Included)
• Microsoft Managed DirectX (June 2005 – Included)
• Microsoft .NET Framework v1.1 (Included)