Ssnake

Why the question marks? They have been in theater since at least 2009, but I think even longer (2008?).

There's two things to be said about it which might explain the madness - the CV90/35 is a relatively potent IFV and might, if equipped with a suitable ATGM like Spike - have enough firepower to handle tank threatds (survivability against an armored assault is a different question, of course). Second, what good are tanks if there is no discernible political will to use them in foreign deployments. If you keep them parked at home and there is no prospect of an enemy invading your country, why then keep the Leopards. The pivotal element is the political will. The Afghanistan engagement has shown that the government had to sugar coat it as a "reconstruction mission" to sell it to the parliament, and when it became obvious that it was more about warfighting than anything else, the diverging interests ripped the government apart, resulting in new elections. The only reason to keep tanks was to expect a change in that political will. On the other hand there are immediate fiscal benefits from abandoning the tanks, and with the Euro crisis and all the temptation may be too big to make a quick buck by giving away seemingly unneeded capabilities. In the long run however... but which politician has ever been genuinely interested in long term perspectives? By the time that the madness of decisions becomes obvious he'll be out of office or retired or dead.

We'll have to start with generic sounds, I'm sorry. The purpose of this prototype is to create some interest in the British Army so that, maybe, they recognize that most of what they need is already there and that only very little extra effort is needed. Or maybe some crew members can do some recordings on their own and give it to us. Either way, we need to show that the thing is within reach in SB Pro even if it won't be perfect at first. Which is in the best of British traditions anyway - fitted for, but not with the original sounds.

There's still time - essentially all summer. Maybe ask on ARRSE or Tanknet for more volunteers. It's a worthy cause, after all. Then again British players make up the third largest customer group of SB Pro PE sales (by nationality). That should give a sufficient pool size to draw from. Now git out of yer closets, by golly! .

I was trying to be polite to the History CHannel.

Like with every other training tool, people need to learn for what to use virtual simulations and desktop trainers, and when to pick some other tool. I'm the first to admit that computers aren't always the answer. That being said, the guys wondering why they weren't just mounting the vehicles accounted only for their training time, disregarding the costs of maintenance, repair, and fuel consumption. With such a partial look at the consequences it is only natural to dismiss a desktop trainer as irrelevant, especially if it doesn't offer quite the fidelity that they might expect.

It is to a real historian's work what SB Pro is to driving a real tank.

"The Pentagon Wars" are a very entertaining movie, and while I concede that many episodes are factually true, there certainly was a generous application of a satirical slant. The Major's boss certainly is depicted as a sinister conspirator, yet many of his arguments in the senate hearing were actually quite true. The only point undermining his stance against a destructive full system test was that the previous tests were rigged - a central point, yes, but it remains unclear whether he was actually responsible for these shenanigans. Likewise his buddy generals are depicted as incompetent buffoons shifting the development goalposts, yet the addition of the TOW missile launcher (described in the movie as yet another folly) was probably the single most important and beneficial design decision made in the entire program. If the entire program was such an abysmal failure, how comes that the Bradley turned out to be a reasonably good piece of kit that survived countless RPG attacks in Iraq with rather moderate loss numbers? That it even prevailed against MBTs during Desert Storm? The original design was lean and low cost, admittedly, but it was essentially just like the previous M113s except bigger, faster, and about as undergunned. Its combat value as a force multiplier would have been no match to the final design. "The Pentagon Wars" is an entertaining and funny movie, but it tells the story in a very one-sided way. Which isn't a problem for the movie as such. It's just even less useful as a source as the History Channel.

Sshh! It's a secret!

I suppose they tested it before in a more reasonable fashion, and then made this movie clip as a "confidence builder" to prospective customers. "See? We trust this bullet-proof glass so much that even the cameraman got behind it, and see that even the wife of the inventor trusts the quality of this new glass! (and we all know how much reason women have to trust their husbands, ha, ha, ha..." That being said, it's on the same level of horribly stupid as that Afghan "testing" of bullet proof vests that was on YouTube a while ago, just with better shooting skills in this case.

That's just grand. Don't forget to upload the work results afterwards.

Hm. 30mm HE should definitely not have a chance. This shall be investigated.

Maybe I read more into what you wrote initially than what you actually meant to say, and hence my reply may appear more hostile than your initial message deserves. I'm not against broadening the scope of SB Pro as long as we understand it to focus on the post WW2 period. Even then it must be understood by everybody that armies don't pay for work on military history; budgets are limited to 90% current operational requirements and 10% anticipated developments. To that extent obsolete equipment gets funded only if it is still in use somewhere. That doesn't mean that we won't tackle it. It just means that we can't address it with the same development pace that we show in other areas. Toi name three recent examples, no army paid us to do the T-55, T-62, or the Challenger 2. Yet we still invested effort there. These are genuine contributions to the SB Pro PE community.

It's utterly credible, and likely even. The question ultimately is how you want to deliver effective and useful training for your AFV crews in urban terrain. Do you do live training? Live training is costly, and you can't actually train certain combat procedures for urban terrain properly with live tools. Most live training is laser based (like MILES and similar solutions). Lasers don't shoot through walls. For safety restrictions and cost limitations you can't fire live ammunition at real houses to train procedures like "forced entry". You need to haul equipment to a live training facility, handle accommodation for the troops, plan to rotate all units through such a training center - ideally before their deployment, which isn't always possible - and even if you can afford all this and if you can get your training schedule to match operational requirements, you still can't get past those limitations of laser based live training systems. Constructive? Doesn't help your AFV crews at all to get their procedures right. Virtual. It seems to be the only viable option, really. But where are the simulations that allow for the integration of mounted and dismounted infantry, armor and mech vehicles, in urban combat of at least large villages if not medium to large cities, with partially destructible buildings? They just don't exist, period. It's an incredible engineering challenge, and I can tell you, the solutions still are in the making. And as long as suitable training tools don't exist, well, the training doesn't take place, no matter how badly needed it may be. Add to that cultural resistance/doctrinal inertia. Before Basra and Fallujah it was accepted doctrinal wisdom that bringing tanks to a knife fight in highly restrictive terrain like urbanized areas was a folly as it would negate most of a modern tank's advantages (true) and make it more vulnerable (also true); experiences of the Israelis notwithstanding ("interesting, but an irrelevant aberration"). What the armored branch leaders forgot about was that even despite all these reasons tanks still were the most survivable weapon system with the highest firepower that could be used with precision, as long as they would be protected by friendly infantry. Therefore tankers simply have to accept that they are a needed element in urban combat, like it or not, and if they don't want to get entangled in this kind of a mess they will be considered an irrelevant element of the force structure. This however means that armies are now accepting that they actually need training tools for mechanized operations in urban terrain. The nature of virtual simulations is however that it takes years to deliver something, especially if it is so radically different in the general requirements from established solutions as this.

Just as well I could point out that time and again I have been confronted with basically the same questions that I answered countless times before. At the very least I take it from your remark that I have remained consistent in my answers for the past years. You may not have meant this the be a compliment, but I take it as one. As long as the fundamental business situation doesn't change, I wonder what makes you expect changes in the answer? Anyway, I suppose you are venting in an attempt that goes a bit deeper than the "polite standard response", so here you go: I suppose we could try to change our business model in favor of WW2 stuff and micro transactions, but I think I also mentioned since 1998 that our personal interest is not WW2 but contemporary armor, partly as a matter of personal preference and professional background, partly because WW2 has been approached by so many other game developers, partly because it would mean to give up the one reliable and established market for training solutions for which we fought with nails and teeth for the better part of a decade. Like it or not, the harsh reality is that eSim Games follows a business strategy that isn't compatible with your ideas of how we should run our business. We do what we think is best for the long-term interests of the company, and the #1 priority is to survive as a business entity. The Game Developers' Cemetery is full of companies and teams that didn't make it past their fifth year, and especially independent developer teams have, on average, a life expectancy that approximates that of fruit flies. Our experience with game publishers hasn't been particularly encouraging to put it mildly, and both were said to be the nicer guys of the lot. Game sales are extremely cyclic and unpredictable by nature. You invest money for years, and if you don't get back your investment within three months after releasing a title chances are that you are and will remain financially screwed. Excuse me, but if there is a viable alternative of government agencies who will honor contracts to the letter, who enter long-term software maintenance contracts with the resulting stable and reliable cash flow to allow us to plan for two to five years ahead, I will pick that option. I may be self-employed, but I still like to not be awake at night worrying how I might pay the dues next month or whether I may just digging an even deeper hole with a certain development decision that will cost more money with unclear chances for a positive return on investment. Maybe you consider this mindset as entrepreneurial cowardice. I call it due diligence and responsible decision-making. Four people are now working full-time for eSim, another four are part-time working on Steel Beasts. My job as "the commercial department" brings the responsibility to make sure that all of them can rely on regular payments without the need to get the company owners into irresponsible, personal debt. Unlike certain high-paid business executives I do not take this responsibility lightly. We created jobs that exceed the quality of burger-flipping considerably, and I have every intention to maintain these jobs for as long as possible. I have been ridiculed by personal friends as a daydreamer for working on a crazy thing like Steel Beasts in the first place, fought against nay-sayers in the military that PC based training tools would never be a viable alternative. I can certainly endure forum wisecracks on the sidelines suggesting how I should run our business. But I expect that, even if you can't accept my decisions, at least you will respect them for what they are - expressions of my free will, accepted responsibility for the well-being of all the people who are financially dependent on eSim's commercial success, and the pursuit of happiness by following a certain business vision. I hope that you can learn to accept Steel Beasts for what it is instead of concentrating on what it doesn't even attempt to be. My yardstick to measure success is how closely SB Pro approximates the ideal, a comprehensive and thorough survey simulation of contemporary, armor/mech centric combined arms combat at tactical level. If you can't subscribe to this end-state, I suppose the resulting product isn't your cup of tea. You have a strange way to express the appreciation that you claim to be feeling. I concede that there indeed is some element of randomness in the additions, but since you aren't interested in the background because it's "the standard answer" that you get "from all the other software houses" I'm not sure if you are actually interested in a true exchange of opinions. I'm not saying that we have no other choice. Everybody always has a choice (the question is whether you can accept the consequences). But I think I made clear what our goals are, and where our priorities lie. The rest follows from those fundamental decisions. Limitations that we experience in our freedom to develop "other stuff" which is less dictated by our army customers' training requirements can only be overcome by growing our development capacity. I think I said this as early as 2006 that we would like to take a bit of time off to hire additional programmers, but that we couldn't do this before approximately 2009 due to formal and informal business commitments. Okay, it took us a year longer than anticipated in 2006. Staying the course in our business was at times like wild water rafting with an oil tanker. I am extremely proud that we managed to fulfill these commitments and delivered about 75% of what was promised during that time, and I am very happy to report that with the expansion of the team we have now prepared the ground to service the demands of our customers better than ever before. eSim Games is my first business, and I am not ashamed to confess that we had to learn how to run our business on the go. We overestimated certain trends and underestimated others, that's just the nature of running a business. Not every plan survives contact with reality. All in all I think that things turned out remarkably well. Steel Beasts has made tremendous progress from its early days to now in pursuit of the ideals that I described above. We managed to follow an idea that formed in 2002, at a point where it was everything from clear whether the whole venture would actually work out. The development path that we took may appear be a bit winded, labyrinthine even to some. Consider a streak of lightning that follows the path of least resistance through the atmosphere; it ultimately follows a straight and simple course to channel two points of differing electric potentials. Just like that, we have an idea where we want to go, and a dynamic business environment represents the convective currents of an atmosphere that force occasional twists and turns in the direction. Still, by looking at where Steel Beasts was in 2002 and comparing it with what it is today, even a casual observer should be able to make out that all in all we have been following a pretty straight course.

Yes, we added it back.

Makes sense in the desert, but how useful is it as soon as the terrain involves forests, rivers, villages, and lakes? A company is usually at least 1.5km wide, and we're talking about a horde of brain-dead zombies that you want to guide around. I'm convinced that such a group movement command option will create more trouble than it solves ... until we have an option for limited or fully autonomous pathfinding.

Yes. They won't let us take us photos without censorship, and that censorship is so gratuitous that it renders the whole exercise useless. We have tried. Heck, the whole thing has been done entirely on our own initiative. We did it simply because we could, and because there was an open time slot for its development. I expect at least one more of these opportunities this year. I'd be highly surprised to ever see that. Sure, if given the chance, it'll be done, but the reality is that the British Army seems to be predisposed towards other solutions. Whitehall decision makers seem to be fitted for, but not with common sense.

Hey, everybody is free to criticize me, even here. This is not a dictatorship. It's perfectly legitimate to ask for any AFV that isn't there. In a perfect world we'd have the time and resources to attack the issue in a more systematic manner. Unfortunately we can't afford this luxury, so you will have to rely a bit on your imagination here. The BTR-80 is a perfect substitute. General looks and capabilities are nearly identical. You have a point about that "generic" feel, but... well, you have to squint a bit harder for the forseeable future. I'm sorry.

That was a deliberate omission as it would allow to use it in lieu of range estimation in the gunner's place. We didn't want to create such an exploit.

As I'm going to send out press releases next week anyway: We now have a playable Challenger-2 in SB Pro, and will present it to the general public in May. It's an ... interesting, and decidedly British fire control system, I have to say, with differently behaving reticles for day and thermal sight. Someone deserves a thorough spanking for this. We shall see at the ITEC if our solution matches the quality of the VBS model.

While in the mission editor or in the planning phase, create a waypoint at the base location from which you want to measure ranges. You now have two options, Create a battle position for this waypoint (e.g. assign "Hold" tactics), then click and drag the LOS bubble to the desired location. A range reading will appear next to the bubble while you drag it across the map.Create a route, and finish the route at the desired location. Click the route, and look at the "Route Length" indicator on the right. The advantage of this method is that you can follow a curving road, or even create a looping route. It doesn't not take into consideration height variations, though. Going 10m forward down a 500m deep gorge will still yield 10m as the range, not 500.1m as would be the geometrically correct range. (Laser range finders don't have this problem during the execution phase)

I have found virtually no book on (contemporary) military history that has maps in sufficient quantity and quality. What's wrong with the editors? Why not at least put links to a supplemental web page into these books if the page dimensions and print costs are prohibitive.

I know that from a wargamer's perspective it would be great to have "packages" of equipment of the same force and time period, and I'll try not to forget about it. Warrior, FV430 - they would certainly make good additions. But their addition would have to be credited to the "PE development budget". But we already are committing a disproportionate amount of development time to things that are primarily for the PE community. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining; but given this background I simply can't afford to make any promises here.

No fundamental objections from my end here, although technically you just asked for an entire new (playable) Bradley. Reliable info about 115mm ammunition is extremely scarce. What's in SB Pro at the moment is all that we could squeeze from the notorious web sites and Jane's Ammunition Handbook. What would be needed are firing tables of the T-62 and some accurate measurements of APFSDS rounds, if there are actually a few more than those that we already covered. I suspect that the Soviets actually didn't spend that much R&D time on the 115mm caliber and I wouldn't be extremely surprised to learn that, by and large, our collection of rounds may actually be almost complete. It's just a hunch. Maybe the T-62 is just neglected in internet coverage, and nobody bothered to inform Jane's about the wealth of different munitions for 115mm. Of the lack of information is actually an indicator that there is indeed not much more. Cal .50 rounds - yes, duly noted and on The List.