Destruction in Call to Arms: Panzer Elite

I've played and enjoyed Ostfront and MoW: Assault Squad 2 quite a lot, so I've been very curious about the tank game spinoff in the series. In this post we'll have a look at the destruction in the game.

Building damage

The good news are, as far as I saw, except from one church building - all are going to be destructible. And the destruction system is going to be similar to what we're familiar with in the previous games.

You have variations mapped out throughout the building, and rather than giving the building a health bar and taking it all down once it drains (as we have in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 or Company of Heroes, for example), you have structural integrity relations between different parts of it. And that can deliver really cool and varied results. Rather than a clean state, gradual chewing up of the exterior walls and an eventual destroyed state you can have a really nice variety of possible outcomes. Some looking like they came straight out of a WW2 documentary.

But, there is one massive issue- huge chunks of the building are getting destroyed way too easily. See the showcase below, the first hit causes just a bump mapped decal, then the 2nd one will have about a third of the building brought down. 3rd shot also leaves just a decal (hidden below the leaves there) and the 4th will bring down another huge part of it.

And as far as I can see, it's not for a lack of variations. For whatever reason it just activates a whole lot of them rather than destroying a specific small section in most cases (when filming for the demonstration, I had the latter happen, once).

What I do very much like about it is that as sections are taken down you will see piles of rubble form below. I'd just add a milder dust and debris decal around it.

Terrain and vegetation

As for the terrain, at least for tanks in skirmish mode you'll just have a decal on the ground at the point of impact. No deformation and no grass deletion.

Other vegetation will get destroyed. All trees seem to come down, they'll even stick around for quite a decent while, and bushes will pop away as well.

Props

Speaking of things popping away, you will have a whole bunch of props scattered around that will be destructible. It can be a small tower, a fence, a cart and so on. Some of those objects will have a lasting destroyed state, others will just pop away into some physical debris that will vanish quickly.

Tank damage

When it comes to this aspect, there were some expectations. The previous games had a really cool system with armor penetration taken into account, various parts of the tank taken into account, IIRC crew members too. And so you had many instances when a tank could just get disabled. There was no fancy explosion, but critical components were disabled and so the crew fled.

As far as I can see damage model wise - it's all there. Armor penetration, component damage (visualization for this is even prettier here) and crew status are all here. BUT, all tank kills end with a fiery explosion, and if you have a repair kit all component damage can be fixed. If it hasn't changed since the initial release, that includes crew members too. A shell went through you? Maybes some shrapnel? Just use a repair kit bro.

I probably wouldn't focus on that quite as much if it was some other game (though I would have some amusement with crew member resurrections), but once again, I came into this one with some expectations. And this specifically was pretty disappointing.

And I'm not suggesting a hardcore tank simulator here. I think the controls and the 3rd person view are great, but I don't think that arcadey controls and actual consequences for hits are mutually exclusive.

A possible solution can be a more hardcore mode. Less information on the HUD, no hit\kill confirmations, actual consequences to damage, and repair kits can fix only certain types of damage.

Plus that could potentially give you the option of gunning down fleeing crew members (and potentially some bonus if they do make it out of the map safely).

What stands out

• You can transform the maps almost entirely. Practically everything you see can be destroyed, and that is the most important thing for a responsive experience.

• Despite them getting destroyed way too easily, the building damage is quite cool. As I mentioned, some results can look like they came out of a WW2 documentary.

Key points of feedback

• While the buildings in the game are not directly the enemy, and that's probably the reason for shells taking out huge chunks of a building. I would really like to just see the appropriate damage. If a shell needs to take out just a part of a building, let it do just that.

• The very arcady consequences to damage are quite disappointing, especially taking the RTS game in the series into account.

• Not a point of feedback on destruction, but for whatever reason you can't choose the time of day and weather when initiating a skirmish game. Or much of anything else really, only the map, how many capture points, whether bots fill empty player slots and whether you want the game to be public.

Conclusion

On one hand you can transform the environments. Almost everything will respond, but I must say, I'm really disappointed by the tank damage being much more forgiving than it is in the RTS titles. So for me, that really keeps me from being able to recommend it for the response side of it.

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