Companion

Well, helos can... big ones such as "Halo" at least. Though whether using big fat juicy transport helos in heliborne assault mission is realistic/feasible is another matter...

AFAIK AT-4/5 equipped BMP-1/2 series carry ATGM mounts for dismount use as default. But I guess people won't rank it anywhere near "the best" IFV for various reasons... (and rightly so, these are too old for that glorious title) Not IFV per se but M113 TOW and M113 Dragon also have firing mounts for dismounts IIRC (not modeled in SB though)

Well I was suggesting using T-72 etc as the defending side (thus mentioned "equipment swap") Soviet defend vs NATO assault/counterattack type of games I mean.

What's that? Any more detail about that IFV? Reminds me of higgins boats...

You might try and create various NATO vs CCCP missions and draw some conclusions based on the experience but I would warn against using SB as a proof of concept for any doctrinal thinking. (AFAIK this is eSimgames' position too regarding using SB as a "wargame") Some points: Is the scope of SB good enough for it? No unless quite some elements within "Soviet tactical doctrine" (so to say) are abstracted. Soviet 'tactics' or any other tactical concept for that matter, is a continuous process starting from recon to commitment of follow-on forces that does not fit in the SB's typical gametime of a few hours and size of coy-btn. Does SB have historically correct equipment/gears for it? And is the game engine up for the challenge? We might have a few vehicle/ammo sets for late 70s and early 90s but that's it. All the other parts of the combined arms system, esp. artillery, is lacking or severly abstracted. For example: In tactical scope, soviets placed a great emphasis on combined arms coordination and suppression fires, careful fire planning before any battle. If you have D.Isby's soviet book, (I know the book is outdated but there're still some interesting snippets in it) you could find this table supposedly used by soviets that show percieved success rate of an armored assault in relation to assault force size and number of defending anti-tank weapons. The bottom line is that any assault is a suicide if certain level of suppression of enemy's AT fire cannot be achieved for the duration of assault. Adequate suppression is normally achieved by a concerted effort of both direct and indirect means of fire. And currently, the only indirect fire we have in SB is a generic heavy mortar that delivers barrages for a fixed duration. (I won't include 500lb bombs since it's more of a mission making tool than a realistic on-board indirect support) And even if players try to suppress targets suitable for heavy mortars and direct fires, is the result desirably realistic? IMHO it would be just good enough for SB's intended training purposes. And this suppression/artillery issue is just one of the many small and big parts of the whole equation that are either abstracted or nonexistent in SB. (such as effectiveness of CB fire duels, crew fatigue, realistic simulation of HE effects, environmental effects and thermal image degradation, etc.) Even if all the above are all taken care of, are us players adequately versed/trained enough for the challenge? So let's not forget that in the end, SB is good for what it's designed to do: 1. Giving basic training for fighting one's own vehicle/plt/coy 2. Presenting a tactical problem to trainees to reinforce/punish certain behaviors as intended 3. Providing a good armored fun If your question is more about viability of basics of soviet tactical thinking, then I'd say it's perfectly viable since it's just another iteration of so-called 4Fs tailored to meet Soviet realities and history of thinking: Find him: numerous recon elements from higher echelons + CRPs at the local level poking around Fix him: Forward detachments and FSEs maneuvering and trading zaps with the enemy as required Flank him: Main force and Flanking detachments maneuvering to flank and destroy enemy F**k him: Destruction of enemy reinforced by raiding detachments, follow on forces, deep fires, etc. The most intriguing question is, IMHO, whether the Soviets had abilities - adequate combination of system, technology, competence, etc. - to do the business as they have proposed to do. I think the answer to this question is the Holy Grail to Cold War military enthusiasts like myself that none would ever find out. But hey, isn't that the beauty of the quest for the Holy Grail? :biggrin:

Now that the OPFOR motorized essentials - T-72, BTR, BRDM - are playable, it will be interesting to swap equipment between Blue and Red for certain missions, like the delay mission mentioned here. It's a unique experience, when, say, you are defending with a coy(+) of offensively designed tanks (esp. reversing takes forever) that lacks thermal against a horde of TTS equiped M60s (or M1s for a challenge) Although defending T-72s would outgun and outarmor M60s to a large degree, (or achieve parity in case of M1s) they cannot reverse fast enough nor can they use smokes to break contact. It calls for different tactics and different fire plans. Also, if you would opt for BMPs rather than BTRs, you can see how deadly BMP-1s could be against M60/M113 mix with proper human guidance even when uncrewable. Or, you might want to play as Red against your best Blue plan so far, thinking what human Red commander/each tank crew would've done in such and such situations... Addition of playable OPFOR vehicles opens a lot of possibilities for fun games :smilelove-1:

...which usually ends up with an unintentional crash and a dead driver... You can even kill the poor driver (occasionally a loader) by driving backwards and hard-kissing a tree, etc. but TCs are very resillient to crashes

Now I almost always use HE/smoke mix whenever I need screening. In a stark contrast to smoke only barrage, HE mix creates very thick and high pillars of smoke in addition to dirt geysers that even partially blind thermals. Also the height of smoke pillars somewhat compensates for minor misreadings in terrain.

1. they are shooting at your last known position 2. try using he/smoke mix for screening. For some reason, smoke only barrages drop smokes identical to that of smoke grenades in terms of thickness and height, so it could be that smoke is not really covering you due to terrain features.

Nice skin except for that hilarious Korean on the turret... I almost died, where did you get it? "let's unify" (as in Korean reunification) / "(we/I) won't" Sort of a "two-face T-55" heh, And AFAIK NK tanks usually have some three digit numbers on both turret sides and no propaganda/decoration/unit insignia/whatsoever when not on parade grounds, so dull... Edit: of course it's T-62, not 55, what was I thinking!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_63_(light_tank) I think this is what we're looking at.

See attached. One of those "wonder shots" that happen while playing SB. ...Don't ask me how it happened. I fired a long 14.5 salvo at its flank, from front to rear, and this is what AAR showed me as the kill shot. Rest of the hits from the salvo were not registered in AAR

Just finished a single playthrough. Here's a quick AAR: OBJ "Siber" was selected. Did initial forward recon myself with BRDM and found an ugly hammerhead sticking out behind a ridge. Sent the whole force due north on top speed while masked by terrain and woods to outflank that M901 position and hopefully quickly overcoming any flank protection that M901 has with 3 tubes of 125mm. Misread the terrain so that during maneuver, my tanks flanked and sighted the M901 in open but the range was too far to successfully engage the vehicle that immediately retreated back to alternate position upon sighting my tanks. Pivoted almost 90 degrees to chase the ITV with BRDM leading from front-right of the tanks. Spotted that ITV at close ranges, lost a tank (a micromanagement oversight that could be avoided: forgot to turn fire control from return fire to fire at will) before killing it with a long 14.5mm salvo from the flank. Could discern no sign of enemy activity around "Siber" and indeed, no contact was made while the force approached "Siber" at top speed and occupied it. Took about 35min. score 84, major victory (which surprised me) It was a fun experience, but from the AAR, I found out that there was a M60 tank section east of "Siber" that could've moved to intercept me but never did so while that lone ITV was chased to hell and shot to pieces... Why didn't this section respond to contact? Maybe because my forces were spotted outside of the region "North"?

But what about the engine, gearbox, etc that you just mentioned? How do those behave differently from armor plates in making BAD clouds?

Related question: why would an APFSDS, esp. DU penetrators, (from a tank gun) be less effective in killing BMPs than HEAT rounds? Don't sabots have more post-penetration damage potential than HEATs? My untrained brain was imagining things like 'catastrophic penetration overmatch and armor failure' but it seems this isn't the case, right? Admittedly though, endurance of BMPs in current version more 'feels right' than before. Before, I think 2.5x onward, BMPs occasionally acted as 'pin cushions' for tank sabot rounds, withstanding several hits and often retaining mobility/combat power before finally silenced by one more sabot hit or a single HEAT hit.

Were soviet tankers issued with NVGs? If so, since when? Will it be historically plausible to set NVG option to soviet side in cold war themed missions?

Like what Zipuli said, Soviet smoke grenades are more oriented towards offense. Artillery smoke preparation cannot perfectly mask the advancing unit's frontage (not to mention that it also can land too short or too far) and battlefield factors like crosswinds can interfere with smokescreen. So Soviet smoke grenades are designed to supplement smoke obscuration in conjunction with aforementioned engine smoke. i.e.) A company assault line launches smoke volley just as it emerges from artillery smoke screen - it now can advance 200-300m more under smoke cover and start direct fire engagement at close ranges, mitigating defenders' accuracy advantage (esp. ATGMs) and possibly surprising them. Of course most blue kits in SB have thermals that never degrade in quality but now that we have multispectral smoke option for Russian kits, it could make some interesting situations.

Talking of future PC additions to SB, I'm hoping for older western IFVs of cold war vintage, such as M2A1 brads or Marder 1A1s. (even noncrewables would make me so happy) Though BMPs are still dangerous foe, (I've even seen BMP-1s separating Leopard turret from hull with well placed Grom gun flank shots) As mentioned, currently BMPs are facing western counterparts more advanced than their Cold War contemporaries and the lack of advanced ammunitions to balance it out means any Cold War themed mech. inf. battles are quite heavily biased towards blue favor. Oh, and the old warhorse YPR could use some love; it's still trapped in its SB1 glory. Edit: as an afterthought, adding BMP-3 means I can make a Korean war themed mission with 'exotic' SK kits (T-80U and BMP-3) :drool:

I guess I could gather a few people for testing new installer but translation? I don't know about other countries but honestly, implementing Korean translation is not worth your precious development time (even though translation itself could be done by us fans) There're not that many players around here (maybe about a dozen on the whole peninsula) and the MoD is so preoccupied with using domestically developed product that they just won't bother anyway. Thanks for the offer and the support, I'll welcome whatever choice eSim makes. :remybussi: BTW, are there any more Asian lurkers around the forum?

Since carbine is too busy celebrating over the successful install, (finally) I'm happy to announce for him that the problem has been solved minutes ago with help of vistalizator and liberal application of "run as administrator" (even though he's already logged in as the administrator) Case closed

Ok, I think I heard that enough to automatically remember it in any ammo discussion :debile2: Now I just want to know which round has better chance of hurting that Leo shooting at me in-game.

Please, allow me to digress a bit and saturate you with some questions: How the 3BM32 and 3BM42 differ in performance? By just looking at muzzle pen. and velocity information available at SB, they are almost identical. Same question also applies to 115mm KE series and 30mm AP and APDS. Also in some cases, subsequently developed rounds actually perform marginally worse than its predecessor, why? Why bother producing rounds that are no better than what you already have? Just one more: Some rounds such as L64A4 and M728 are APDS rounds, right? Then how come they show similar or even better performance than some APFSDS rounds such as M111 and 115mm series? Seeing much touted 115mm APFSDS (If "The world's first APFSDS" means anything) on the lowest end of the spectrum came as a shock to be honest.

But his frustration is understandable: all his attempts to install SB failed since his purchase on the release date and the two of the fellow Koreans who experienced similar error got it sorted out by now (Me and Redmouse), not to mention somebody (me) keep telling him about how great this or that feature of 2.640 is :debile2: On top of that, we all use different OS (Win 7 64bit for me, XP for red, 7 home 32bit for carbine) that duplicating the suspected settings is not possible. My installation went smoothly after changing unicode language setting to English (but never had that "????" error message myself ever) and Redmouse somehow managed after re-downloading the files and changing the unicode language and display language to english (except that the installer refused to create start menu group and desktop shorcut for him after an obscure error message) Taking a wild guess, I suspect display language might be the problem for our Mr. carbine here but apparently his Win 7 32bit "Home Premium" does not allow changing display language from its Korean default. Heck, who named those windows edition names? what a hype it is to call the barebones common edition "Premium"...

A BMP-2 shot a burst of coax to the back of its comrade's turret, of which several shots went through-through from back to front, surprisingly killing only the passengers and not the turret crew. In midst of the madness, a blue LMG manages to damage another BMP-2's roadwheel with his rifle... Are these penetrations normal? First three attachements show a single instance of turret through-through Fourth shows the damaged roadwheel (or suspension, can't say).

This is how I installed it, crude, but it works: oh, FYI, i'm using win 7 so folder structure might differ. 1. create a folder named "Russian" inside "loc" folder of main game folder 2. extract the mod's wav files into my documents\esim games\steel beasts\mods\sounds\voices\Russian 3. copy the files in the main gamefolder\loc\english folder and paste it inside the mods\sounds\voices\Russian folder but DO NOT OVERWRITE anything, just paste the files that are not there. 4. Run the game, go to options->language and choose Russian 5. Enjoy the comrades' voiceacting