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What Tank Simulations did you play before SB


Marko

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On 10/20/2016 at 9:16 AM, smithcorp said:

Panzer Elite (including early morning multiplayer sessions with Euro names), and T72 Balkans on Fire for me. Panzer Elite with lots of mods was (still is) great.

Could never get in to any WW2 tank sims even though i am very interested in  WW2 Armour.

Some looked good graphics wise but for me the fidelity was not there. 

 

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Has, a sad admission for someone who was 48 at the time, but I tried airsofting with some gaming friends who had formed a now defunct club for it locally. I had been told to expect realistic play with section tactics etc. What happened was 20 big kids all trying to be FPS heroes and out do each other. More disturbingly safe weapon handling was non existent with lots of waving around of guns inside the netted safety area. Needless to say, I only went once.

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  • 3 years later...

Greetings!
 

I cleaned and powered up my trusty desktop PC and got some old tank games running this week.  It’s been a few years....I can’t win diddly.  I installed Armored Fist, got 2/3 of the way through the campaigns, and am just stuck.  I can’t beat the thing anymore.

 

I tried a WOT knockoff game on my iPad and got killed repeatedly.  Utter humiliation.

 

So, I unpacked and reinstalled Steel Beasts and tried my skill at the gunnery range...hah! What skill?  I think I hit 2 tanks with sabot rounds, all APCs that had HEAT used on Them had the rounds fall short...WTF?

 

Bottom line - I can’t play anything!

 

But...quitters never win, so I’ll be back!
 

To answer the original question - M1 Tank Platoon and Armored Fist 1 were all I played before SB.

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3 hours ago, Armored_Fist_Player said:

Steel Beasts and tried my skill at the gunnery range...hah! What skill?  I think I hit 2 tanks with sabot rounds, all APCs that had HEAT used on Them had the rounds fall short...WTF?

Chances are, you forgot to index your ammo.

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17 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Chances are, you forgot to index your ammo.

I forgot everything!  I need to sit down and reread the manual.  Releasing palm switches, dumping the lead....I skimmed through it last night and realized I have to relearn everything.  
 

Hey, I do remember that gunnery range part of the sim rocked!  There’s something satisfying about getting the reticle right on target with the joystick, nailing an enemy tank, and watching the turret fly!

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6 minutes ago, Armored_Fist_Player said:

I forgot everything!  I need to sit down and reread the manual.  Releasing palm switches, dumping the lead....I skimmed through it last night and realized I have to relearn everything.  

Playing the tutorials for the vehicle that you are using (I assume an M1) is a great way to get back up to speed.

 

Seriously, the tutorials are very under-appreciated, and often under-used. I'm convinced that you can successfully learn to fight your vehicle by just playing the entire series of tutorials. 

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59 minutes ago, Armored_Fist_Player said:

I forgot everything!  I need to sit down and reread the manual.  Releasing palm switches, dumping the lead....I skimmed through it last night and realized I have to relearn everything.  
 

You might also find this of use:

 

http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbwiki/index.php?title=Starter_Pack

 

Edited by Gibsonm
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14 hours ago, Mirzayev said:

Playing the tutorials for the vehicle that you are using (I assume an M1) is a great way to get back up to speed.

 

Seriously, the tutorials are very under-appreciated, and often under-used. I'm convinced that you can successfully learn to fight your vehicle by just playing the entire series of tutorials. 

That’s a good idea, thank you, sir!  I’m having a tough time concentrating on manual reading right now.  I am revisiting a lot of old tank programs, mainly the Armored Fist series.
 

To be honest, I don’t think I have what it takes to play much of anything In SB past the gunnery range part and maybe driving.  It’s a well-done sim, no doubt.

 

I did a bit of the real planning when I was in the Army with a Mech Infantry (Bradley) unit.  It wasn’t really fun.  The hand-eye coordination aspect of gunnery, though...that’s another story, that IS fun!

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The mission editor allows you to create the kind of mission complexity that meets your sweet spot. With the use of Jump to end, if... you can randomize the starting locations enough to fool yourself. You have multiple ways to adjust the lethality of your adversaries,

  • Make them blind
  • Make them impotent
  • make some impotent, but not all
  • give them old ammo
  • adjust the difficulty settings
  • set the training level for enemy infantry
  • set their fire control orders to return fire only

And of course you have full control over the quantity and type of enemy that will occur. If you want more complexity, add a neutral party or two with different equipment, so you need to go through proper ID procedures. Make those neutral parties turn hostile if you shoot too many of them. These are endless and very simple variations even for scenarios that just have you drive along a fixed path with a single tank, similar to what some tank games do.

Add weather variations.

Save variants of the scenario for winter and desert themes, with different time of day, and see how that changes the experience.

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21 hours ago, Armored_Fist_Player said:

That’s a good idea, thank you, sir!  I’m having a tough time concentrating on manual reading right now.  I am revisiting a lot of old tank programs, mainly the Armored Fist series.
 

To be honest, I don’t think I have what it takes to play much of anything In SB past the gunnery range part and maybe driving.  It’s a well-done sim, no doubt.

 

I did a bit of the real planning when I was in the Army with a Mech Infantry (Bradley) unit.  It wasn’t really fun.  The hand-eye coordination aspect of gunnery, though...that’s another story, that IS fun!

 

Why don't you give one of the VU, ago from my personal experience its the best way to learn.

There a good bunch of guys, (newbies are always welcome. )

You will learn more in a couple of sessions with a VU then hours reading the manuals.

Brush up on your gunnery.

The great thing about playing with a VU is you are only responsible for you tank/PC or maybe a platoon.

All the higher level stuff is taken care of by the C/O and company commanders.

Lets you focus on blowing shit up.LoL

Check the forum fro the various units and times.

 

 

 

Edited by Marko
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11 hours ago, Marko said:

 

Why don't you give one of the VU, ago from my personal experience its the best way to learn.

There a good bunch of guys, (newbies are always welcome. )

You will learn more in a couple of sessions with a VU then hours reading the manuals.

Brush up on your gunnery.

The great thing about playing with a VU is you are only responsible for you tank/PC or maybe a platoon.

All the higher level stuff is taken care of by the C/O and company commanders.

Lets you focus on blowing shit up.LoL

Check the forum fro the various units and times.

 

 

 

Thanks, Marko for the warm welcome.  I didn’t make this clear, but I’m still “playing” (more like fooling around with)  the original SB from 1999/2000.  Gents, I don’t even know what a VU is, lol!  Virtual Unit, perhaps?  I don’t own SB PE yet but have been following the players on YouTube and this forum and eventually intend to buy it.  You guys are all at another level!!
 

Obviously, Steel Beasts is the ultimate simulator for a personal computer.   I’ve been away from computers as a hobby for a while and the last time I was up on things, Steel Beasts was about to be re-released with 3D graphics with one version being for the military and a lite version for serious enthusiasts.  I recall one version was going to be  “Pro” the other was PE (Personal Edition).  There was also a debate about a security dongle.  
 

I'm getting back into computer games and just bought a 1994 Thrustmaster FCS from eBay to plug into my sound blaster PCI game port so I can play old DOS sims in DOSBox.  I’m 11 missions away from beating all 47 Armored Fist 1994 missions.  Yes, it’s an old silly arcade game, it’s a joke as a sim, but for reasons unknown, I love it.  It was kind of a “sequel” to M1 Tank Platoon back in the day.  Once I’m done with it SB is next!

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3 hours ago, Armored_Fist_Player said:

I’m 11 missions away from beating all 47 Armored Fist 1994 missions.  Yes, it’s an old silly arcade game, it’s a joke as a sim, but for reasons unknown, I love it.  It was kind of a “sequel” to M1 Tank Platoon back in the day.  Once I’m done with it SB is next!


👍

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  • 1 month later...

World War Two Online (later Battleground Europe) was a game that I played addictively from June 6, 2001 to November 2005.

 

It was the first Massive Multiplayer Online game that I played - and the last. Nothing will ever compare to its scale (1/2 scale continuous map of Europe) and I still find it hard to play 'smaller' games because there was a massive purpose within WW2OL - win the war. 

 

The game focused on the German invasion of Western Europe, and the only factions were Germany, UK, and France. Most players flocked to the German side, and the others mostly played French (French used some US equipment in the later tiers) but a good friend of mine and I sided with minimal numbers on the British faction. We played exclusively for the BEF for most of the time that we played. Tanking was a task; the BEST tank that the BEF had in game (originally) was the A-13. It's 40mm 2pdr and its speed made it a contender in any tank match, but its thin skinned armor made you second guess every action. A single 37mm round from a Pz38t or Pz. 3F could easily take you out of action. 

 

There were many times I remember forming massive convoys. We would clear out every arsenal of its tanks, from 3 to 5 towns behind the lines (each town had its own limited supply of tanks, although limited. We would spawn ALL the tanks from those towns and form massive attack convoys).

 

I don't know how much time I invested in the game. At one point, I learned how to 'mod' sounds in to the game and eventually Corned Rat Software (developers) brought me on as an intern (for college credits). They flew me to their HQ in Dallas twice and I was able to interact with the team. 

 

It was a great game. It is still around, although player numbers are extremely low due to a lack of development (all original developers are long gone, having moved on many years ago). 

 

 

Edit - this was also the first game that fully employed Combined Arms combat. Infantry, tanks, planes, ships. It was the start to a gaming affliction that I still have with combined arms gaming.

 

 

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Edited by Apocalypse 31
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Battleground Europe

1/2 scale to real Europe. We would fly bomber missions from England to hit factories on the eastern edge of the map. It would take hours. Ground forces would launch 'weekend operations' that would be massive drives deep into enemy territory (depending on which side was launching the operation). 

 

God save your soul, if you were the only BEF player in a town that was on the receiving end of a massive German attack. The horizon would suddenly fill with dozens of Panzers and Stuka's. 

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20 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

When the project was in trouble their publisher asked us if we could salvage it. Fortunately we passed the buck and continued working on Steel Beasts.

That would have been an impossible task...or at least extremely difficult.

 

That development team made so many bad decisions that it would probably take a Herculean effort to trace what worked and what didn't work.

 

At one point their lead coder left and they discovered that the code was so complicated that it took 2 years to untangle the web of code.

 

It's really sad. In its heyday it was an incredibly fun and popular game.

 

It certainly had the largest game world of any game I have ever played.

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Yeah, it had "bad karma" written all over it, at least for a team of our size and experience. I mean, this was, like, 15...20 years ago. Plus, my heart was never in WW2 anyway. I'm a modernist, as far as my motivation is concerned. Not to say that WW2OL didn't have its merits.

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