New SBP manual - and it is brilliant!

[Skybird]

A new manual is available for German players, replacing the spiral book the sim comes with. It is not just a 1:1 translation, but a complete reworknew, with many new chapters on vehicles that make it a new version, which is more than twice as thick as the original (over 220 pages). The book focusses more uncompromisingly on the the simulation elements and tactics, and amongst other features (plenty of graphics, f.e. all sight types are presented) presents all vehicles in the sim, giving all info and keycommands for each of them in a separate chapter.

I am very impressed. Those of you who red my review may remember that I had some complaints with the default manual, and recommended to use it together with the old one from SB1. But this new one is brilliant, very illustrative, well structured, and adresses all questions and details of SBP. Plenty of graphics and diagrams included.

One should re-translate it into English!

http://www.steelbeasts.com/Downloads/p13_sectionid/257/p13_fileid/1344

[Smaragdadler]

He, he. That's what I call synchronology. Was just thinking I should be starting now to realy get into this sim. (It is laying for over a year now on my drive)
Dankschön auch.

[ReM]

Isn't this the other way around?

A manual in German first that needs to be re-translated into English?

I know Ssnake is German, but Esimgames in a US firm!

[Skybird]

ReM, don'T get this wrong. The sim comes with a 90 pages spiral book in English, and several pdf-documents on disc. But the documentation was not considered by me to be adequate (in my review), it gave you most of the needed things, but not all, and left out too many details. I also think, that it could have been done better, and with more illustrations.

the new one in German is written by people from the community, and it is much better, although not replacing everything but sometimes just translating the default manual. But there is plenty of additonal stuff. The default manual had 90 pages or so. This new one has 220 or 230.

[ReM]

ReM, don'T get this wrong. The sim comes with a 90 pages spiral book in English, and several pdf-documents on disc. But the documentation was not considered by me to be adequate (in my review), it gave you most of the needed things, but not all, and left out too many details. I also think, that it could have been done better, and with more illustrations.

the new one in German is written by people from the community, and it is much better, although not replacing everything but sometimes just translating the default manual. But there is plenty of additonal stuff. The default manual had 90 pages or so. This new one has 220 or 230.

I know about the spiral bound manual, it is on my shelf, next to the jewel case and dongle of SBPPE....it is not a work of great proportion.

The German fanbase of SBPPE seams very active (now what is that with Germans and panzers?;) )...and now they produced a nice manual....too bad for me! I can read German but not so well I consider it casual reading.

Edit: just downed it and I must say it looks like it is pretty extensive! And it comes with illustrations!

Do you know if there are plans to translate this manual into English Skybird?

[Skybird]

No plan for that I heared of, but word is they are about starting to write an extensive second manual about theme, terrain and mission editing alone. Which i welcome, theme editing I find to be confusing, and several options in mssion editor are not explained as well so far.

Leopard 1 and 2 has been sold to more nations than the Abrams have sold, so more armies operate German tanks than American ones. This is reflected by the custmer lost of the military version of SBP, which sees far more nations operating Leropards, than Abrams. This is the explanation for the strong focus on German tanks in the sim - they receive more demands and requests for vehicles and detaisl from german-equipped armies, than from American-equipped armies. Well, roughly, don't make that difference too strong a point. The German community probably is the second laregst in the international SBP community, with the Americans probably still forming the biggest. Fins and Swedish also form a great sub-group. Australians seem to hbe under-represented. But all that is my subjective perception only. Black on white numbers may tell a different story, maybe.