plastictree

Hi guys The thread here http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbforums/showthread.php?t=12900 piqued my interest - I was wondering if the community had information on the deployment of SPAA and SPSAM assets in various forces, specifically during the 1980's and at a company/battalion level. For example, according to some Orders of Battle a Soviet Tank Regiment in a Guards Tank Division in the late 80's had 4 SPAA and 4 SPSAM vehicles. Would these have been kept under regimental control, or were they parceled out to the individual battalions or companies? Also, Guards Tank Divisions also seem to have included an air defense regiment, consisting of both medium and short range SPSAMs and manpack SAMs. Would these have likewise been allocated down to regimental level depending on need, or kept in a central location, perhaps as integral air defence for the Divisional HQ and logistical train? I'm particularly interested in information on the following forces: West Germany (the thread I've mentioned above http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbforums/showthread.php?t=12900 had great info on how the Gepard was deployed, but what about the Roland?) US Army BAOR DDR Canada China

I'm pretty deadly when firing snap shots from the hip and completely manual (ie. no FCS, stabilisation, etc.), but when taking deliberate shots at static targets from my own static vehicle, I am slightly less accurate, and much less accurate with Sabot than I am with HEAT. I know its arse-backwards, but I tend to overestimate the drop of the sabot round over range and aim slightly high. With HEAT though, I must be subconciously more careful in estimating the range, because I can almost always drop a round right on top of the target. This is long range shooting only though (over 3,000 meters), as anything closer than that I think you should be getting, at worst, second round hits every engagement. After those ranges, you can cut yourself a bit of slack, because dispersion can make you miss even a perfectly sighted target when you're using full LRF, FCS, etc., let alone manual firing.

I had a thought about a possibility for the future of tank sims (PLEASE tell me if something like this already exists) - - Provide a basic engine to cope with graphics, sounds, terrain modelling, physics, weather, etc. - Provide tools to make it quick and simple to plug your own content into the engine. For example, make a model of some obscure vehicle yourself, then enter in a whole ream of stats for that particular vehicle - everything from ground pressure, turret swivel rate, ballistic stats, armour stats to things like fuel consumption at rest, at full power, etc. - Provide a host for user generated content, with some developer created content also (eg. the basics, like providing stock a stock M1A1 vehicle, etc.). - Provide tool for managing and classifying units in database. - Player generates random scenario or campaign by selecting theatre, date, nationalities involved, supply level, etc. with option of modifying unit/formation listings themselves, down to the names of the units. - Player can also create pre-made scenarios and campaigns. What do you reckon? This is just a really basic concept so far, but if enough people are interested I'll flesh it out, then look at what sort of dev resources would be necessary, and maybe get something started in the community.

Had a play around with this last night, and it is an awesome mod. Sure, its nothing like as realistic or as fast paced as either SB or Steel Fury, but for an old engine it is quite decent.

Well, apparently it was just some issue with my home connection, because I'm able to download all of that no problem from work. Will check it out when I get home.

Daskal, once I can actually get the mod, and stop PE from being stuck in fast-forward, I'd be quite interested in having an online game. Haven't played the Ostpak mod for a number of years, and even though I thought it was a great mod, the one thing that always got to me was the time of flight of projectiles was 0, which is why I stopped playing PE in general. However, from your original post I understand that projectiles have at least semi-realistic flight times now, is that correct?

Still can't get through to it - the domain chollie.co.uk (and all subdomains) are returning the following error in Firefox: Connection Interrupted The document contains no data. The network link was interrupted while negotiating a connection. Please try again. Is anyone else having this problem?

The site appears to be down - does anyone know of another download link?

I'm at work now so can't confirm whether this is the case, but last time I installed PE on a new machine earlier this year, the game seemed to play twice as quick - I don't mean the frame rate was better, I mean my tanks would drive twice as quick, fire twice as quick, etc. etc. - made it unplayable. Did anyone else run into this problem? I think it might have been a video card issue, which I'm hoping will be resolved when I install it again this afternoon, as when I tested last time I had twin 6600's, but now have twin 9500's.

I'm just pissed that what would have cost me about $28AUD a few months ago will now cost me like $50AUD. Curse you, global economic crisis and the crappy aussie dollar!

Oops, didn't see the "lets start with the 4x4's" bit lol

I'd have to say the 76 and 105 versions of the Rooikat appeal to me, for their long range, (so I've heard) high reliability, speed, firepower and decent (for an armoured car) armour and fire control system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooikat Actually, I am kind of annoyed that Australia hasn't purchased them, or designed a more capable vehicle along the same lines, since the service requirements in SA are so similar to Australia - eg. very large spaces, settlements and logistical centres very few and far between, large portions of the country without natural concealment, large portions of the country without much of a transport network. To my mind, they would be much more suited to the Cav role than the ASLAV is, even if it was only for the much longer operational range. Are there any South Africans here with first hand experience of the Rooikat?

Is that the Von Mellenthin that wrote Panzer Battles? (ie. the WW2 german staff officer).

Thanks Guys, these will come in handy. By the way, I've never run into it yet, but is there a game-set limit to how many units can be in a scenario (rather than just having too many for your computer to handle)?

I was wondering if anyone knows of repositories of authentic NATO/Warsaw Pact deployment/tactical maps from the 70's/80's in Central Europe. A good example would be the maps Warulf posted here http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbforums/showpost.php?p=158305&postcount=3 Any scale will suffice, although I'd be particularly interested in any maps with individual units being either company or battalion level, and regimental identification (ie. preferably non-generic). Basically I wanted to use these maps as a guide for relatively authentic SBProPE and WinSPMBT battles.

I don't suppose you would accept compensation through the barter system? Because I've got 3 chickens, a donkey and a vw kombi van named Bruce ready for postage.

Didn't realise that wasn't modelled - are there plans to implement this in the future, or is the difference between the correct value and how the model performs too small to justify the effort? The modelling does seem to indicate that the Leo 2A4 is somewhat more maneuverable laterally, but that the M1A1HA stops and changes between forward and reverse quicker (especially handy for hull-down positions). Is this correct? It might be more a matter of taste then training, because I am not qualified on either platform, but vastly prefer the Leo 2A4 to the M1A1HA. Also, up until a few months ago I was using (not quite realistic, but pretty functional) control handles that I had built from cannibalised bits of joysticks and what not. Since then I've been using a generic Logitech joystick. I actually found the M1A1HA FC system more difficult to use via the control handles than with the joystick, but I would assume that the real-life controls are much better suited to the task. (In a side-note, I had also built a couple of control panels with switches, toggles and buttons - worked great until stuff got broken or caught fire ) I thought that those calculations are based on a facing, not discrete points (for example. a generalised value for the front left facing of the turrent, rather than the specific value for the spot exactly 240mm diagonally left/down from the coax mount). I'll have a look through some of his articles though , as Paul seems to know his stuff. Indeed - was just really wondering how much better. I knew about the new FC system for the A2 and A2SEP, but I thought that the armour configuration was only slightly improved over the A1HA (which I had originally thought was much stronger than seem to be the case). Granted, I'm working on somewhat old reporting and anecdotal evidence, so feel free to call me an idiot and move on The A2's hunter-killer sight does seem very flash, and I very much want to have a try. Good point - in most of those test battles I conducted, the one thing that seemed to be in the M1A1HA's favour was that even though it was penetrated more often than the Leo 2A4, there was a greater likelihood than the Leo 2A4 of the penetration resulting in (serious) damage, rather than a catastrophic kill. In a side note, I'm not sure why the M1A1HA takes far longer to ready ammo than the other MBT's modelled - had thought it would be quicker, or that there wouldn't be a need to ready ammo, due to the M1 series storage solution in the rear compartment (ie. I thought all the ammo in that area was "ready", rather than a small portion). Can anyone give me a better rundown of how the actual layout works, beyond the safety features of there being a blast door, blow out panels, etc.?

After playing for quite some time, and doing some testing where I played the same missions repeatedly but changing the vehicle type, I can't shake the impression that the Leo 2A4 modelled in SBProPE is a more capable vehicle than the M1A1HA. The Leo 2A4 seems faster, more maneuverable, and has a much better fire control system that lets you get in your shots quicker. Also, it seems like the Leo 2A4 can stand more hits in the front arc, which is strange because if I remember correctly the M1A1HA has much thicker and better laid out frontal armour. Does anyone else get the same impression from these two vehicles? Can anyone out there who has served both in M1A1HA's and M1A2/M1A2SEP's give us some insight into whether the A2 is significantly better than the A1HA? (I'm not comparing the M1A1HA to the Leo 2A5DK or the Strv 122, as they are much newer).

That is indeed what happened, Dragon, but I'll give the mission another try and send you the AAR. I knocked out the 4 BDRM's, then sat there for roughly 10-15 minutes (with time compression on) before thinking "You know what, I don't think anyone else is coming." So I went hunting, found the MTLB at the bottom left hand quadrant of the map , apparently just driving back and forth. Took it out (no troops appear to have dismounted), then I get the battle won message. Perhaps it is a problem with the version of SB I'm using - I'm running the beta version, rather than the current stable release. Is anyone else using beta to play this mission?

Dragon, can you confirm whether the enemy OOB is completely randomised? I played through your mission last night (and I agree with the comments above, the choice of terrain is great). I only killed 4 BDRM and 1 MTLB, but it then said that the battle was won and when I went through all the AAR those appeared to have been the only units that were present.

That is a silver lining, for sure - however I've also noticed that since realising that there is lead computing, the extra first round hit probability means that I am getting a much more favourable ratio of kills to losses, especially in large battles where there is a lot of perpendicular engagements, such as the Fulda Gap scenario.

Yep, I'm learned my lesson and from now on will always rtfm - Never realised the Leopard 1, 2A4, 2A5DK and Strv122 had dynamic lead calculation, until I was reading something entirely unrelated to SB about the Leo fire control system. After thinking for a bit "I wonder why it isn't simulated in SB", I realised that I was an idiot and hadn't read through the whole manual for each of these vehicles. So there was an "oh, I see" moment, and now my gunnery against moving targets has improved from 80% when "shotting from the hip", to 95% or so.

Also, those screens look like shopped gameplay screens to me (eg. messing with the lighting, smoke effects, etc.).

The gameplay looks a lot more promising than Armed Assault, which in my mind failed pretty dismally compared to the original OpFlash (except obviously in the graphics department). Has anyone here played the wargames mod of OpFlash? http://ofpc.de/wargames/wglhelp/index.php?page=Home I know they're not doing any further development work on it, but my god its a well rounded mod. Looks pretty much the same, but plays so differently!

Hey guys Can anyone think why no one (as far as I know) has built a WW3 central europe tank sim based in the 50's/60's/70's? Obviously tank sims are a pretty rarefied genre to begin with, but personally I would love to see something that is post ww2, but doesn't feature any of the....lets call them super tanks - eg. your M1's, Challengers, Leopard 2's, T80's, etc. State of the art prior to the introduction of great little gizmos like thermal sites, laser rangefinders, digital fire control, chobham/reactivate protection, etc. Personally, this would be my ultimate tank sim. It would not only make for a great simulation, but also a great game due to the challenge involved. It would no longer be a case of picking off T72's with your St122 as fast as the gun can be loaded. Instead you would have to put a lot of serious thought into how to best use your shiny new M48's and Centurions, bearing in mind that the Soviet tanks are going to be as good if not better than yours, plus there is a hell of a lot more of them. Also, your main worry as far as infantry are concerned isn't getting picked off at 4000m by a guided missile - rather, it would be your vehicle being used as a pinata by all the nasty recoilless rifles out there from 300m (I'm looking at you, WOMBAT's and 106mm's). Of course, something like this would absolutely require a great campaign mode and the ability to keep track of crew's experience/moral/supply/fatigue progression. Perhaps a two-tiered system, whereby you control the large scale movements of brigades, divisions, etc. through something akin to the engine of John Tiller's Fulda Gap/North German Plain wargames, then drop down into the action when ready. This would also allow for accurate (or should we say seemingly realistic) force correlation, as units engaged would based on historic units and your own large scale movements, rather than simply selecting from a picklist. Logistics, replacements, state of repair, etc. should also be modelled. Sorry about the rant/brainstorm, I just want there to be a way to match my love of tank sims with my love of operational level wargames. Perhaps I'll put some ideas on paper and speak to a few developer friends. What do you all reckon?