T 72 Iron Warriors game tips
 

Hey everyone. So after finding out TvsT is crawling on my system (budget Gcard Nvidia 7500LE) I downgraded to T72 Iron Warriors, which seems to be a very similar game. The problem i'm having is not technical though, it seems i just can't find a good way to drive/command/whatever my tank. Commander view seems COMPLETELY and utterly useless in this game, unless you have auto shoot on. I mean, what's the deal? Where do you usually sit? Help! Thanks,
a very frustrated costumer.

By the way, this tittle is identical and probably better known as T 72: Balkans on fire!

Can't help much, I'm afraid... I tried both T72 and Tiger v T34 and hated them both...

SF1942 seemed a bit better, but I still found it lifeless, and the controls bizarre.

Neither is a patch on the original Steelbeasts (despite the archaic graphics), and nothing currently comes close to SB ProPE. (See other threads here for description of pros & cons and possibilities).

It is only fair to mention that I am a Beta-tester for eSimGames, but I consider this to be a fair assessment of these recent, unfortunately disappointing titles.


Having said that, you are aware that the 'commander's position' isn't supposed to be good for anything except 'commanding' the virtual crew and coordinating with the other vehicles in the company?
For firing, the gunner's station should have much superior optics, better range-finding capabilities and access to the ballistic compensators/firecontrol system. The downside is greatly restricted visibility especially to the flanks a lower viewpoint and a tendancy to target fixation.

Thank you for the insight. Yes i recon SBPro should be the best sim around. But the price is too steep for me, as a college student... 125 USD for a game is too much i think. I tried the gold edition but on a 22 inch monitor which is bigger than most room tv sets, the pixelated graphics became too much of a throw off. I need at least a 1200ish x 900ish resolution in order for anything to look decently imersive in this monitor.

If anyone plays this game and has found something that actually works for him please share your knowledge :)

Here's where i think they screwed up with this game: It's damn hard! And the AI always seem to do everything faster, better. And there is no station apart from the driving seat (which is not really fun to play) where I don't get that feeling I'm getting in the way, hardly what i wanted to feel when i started playing the game. Maybe i've set the difficulty too high, i don't know...

A major limitation in my opinion is the inability to REPORT targets. See, if you happen to spot something as the commander, you'll have to shot it yourself instead of reporting the target to your gunner, wasting many seconds doing so. This makes the commander view even more of a pain. Any input is appreciated!

Hey the game isn't bad. Just takes some getting used to. The most rewarding sims all do. :) I take it over TvsT any day. No nasty bugs and really tight.

Tank fighting is difficult, and is more about tactics and SA then about mastering the vehicle controls (after all this is no F4 avionics suite). And death comes quickly, unexpected and mostly from an unknown origin. That'S how it should be. The TC should be able to form situational awareness of what the situation around is like, he should maintain force cohesion and spot, identify and prioritize targets he then usually hands over to the gunner for killing them. A tank sim should reflect this separation in duties, and give the interface and possibilities to have it like this, else it does not simulate the real thing too well.

I play SBP mostly as a TC, and it is very rare that I take over the gunning part of the job (nevertheless I regularly do fire practicing on the gunnery range not to lose routine in aiming the gun quickly). If I have time left to feel bored as a TC, next thing happening usually is me getting killed.

Different to Lieste, I am no Beta-Tester but only a reviewer of SBP - and still I share the man's opinion! :D If you are serious in getting a simulation experience of reality, no way you can pass SBP. Do not think of it in terms of 125 bucks. Think of it in terms of 2.3 games that you buy and leave behind after some weeks or months, while SBP you will play for years. Seen that way it is much cheaper then most games published these days. The military customers need to pay 16.000 bucks per 10-seat classroom licence. :O:

Alternatively you could enlist in the Australian army. Their tank crews got free copies of SBP for home training from their defence ministry. ;)

Thank you sir. That is true, what you speak of. I've also learned it the hard way. Death comes usually from an RPG in my case.

As SBP i can't really afford it right now. I just look for a game i can play with my brother while we don't have college duties to attend to. Cash is low as a college student and my books are in the range of half the price the game costs. If i had a job i'd buy that without a thought. Furthermore, in order to play with my brother in our home lan we'd have to buy 2 copies. Even just one is too much for such game. I understand the price is worth it but in my situation i will have to wait till i finish my degree for such games.

Nevertheless, thank you for taking the time. Your advice applies to all good simulations and T72 Balkans on fire certainly oblige.

Well. If money is running low, that cannot be helped, and real life has priority, of course. However, SBP has such an ongoing support that you can expect it to be still around in 1, 2 or 3 or more years from now on, and your living situation no doubt will change with time going by. If your interest remains, you will be able to still get on the train then - just a little bit later, but still getting regularly upgraded and fully supported. ;) As far as T72 is concerned,, don't be dissapointed by lacking reactions. The game is pretty old, and pretty much left behind by most people now. Hard to get a disucssion started on it.

While it doesn't really help too much (been there done that - making the student funds stretch to cover all the needed things is hard enough without an expensive hobby like computers...), the $125 price is only for the first (independent) license, additional licenses to run from the same USB dongle and hosted over your network are much less - ISTR them being $25, but I don't actually have any for ProPE.

So long as you don't require two independently mobile copies the total price is therefore only ~$150, which although spendy, isn't much more than two copies of a 'normal' premium title...

T-72 Iron Warriors
 

I purchased this game a year ago on Steam and it never worked... I couldn't get it to start-up. I asked Steam for help, that was a lot like talking to a brick wall. So I wrote it off. It was only $5 after all.

Then today, I read somewhere that it was a problem with the Divx drivers. I checked the Microsoft compatibility website, and sure enough, I had old Divx drivers installed. I went to the Divx website and downloaded the latest driver package, 7.0, and then tried the program again (after a reboot naturally).

IT WORKS!!

It works well. I am running Vista 64 Ultimate and with the correct Divx codec loaded, it runs quite well.

Also, on another note, when I upgraded from my old Windows 9x system to my Vista 64 system, I had to give up Armored Fist 3... the downloadable demo worked, but my old CD wouldn't install. I bought a new disc, same story... the installer crapped out. So I gave Steam another shot, and picked up Armored Fist 3 from them... IT WORKS!! The graphics are kind of blocky, but I love this game. Without the download, I would have had to give up this game.

I don't care what I've heard about Steam (mostly bad), I am a happy camper now!

By the way, thanks to advice I got in this forum, I am also running Steel Fury under Vista 64 with no problems... kind of strange keyboard command interface, and a weak engine in the training tank... but it runs with Vista 64 quite nicely. Thank you to everyone here that helped me make that purchase!

T-72 Iron Warriors question
 

Now that I've finally got this game running... I noticed that it apparantly has no joystick support!! Am I missing something?

If this is true, the game is much more difficult to play.
:D

you don'tneed a joystick... but this game is very hard to play just in normal difficulty. what i do is i set the difficulty to high, then i go to "the configurator" which should be in the game folder under programs, in the start menu, and i set the allied AI to 5.0 and the enemy also to 5.0, turn on highlight target and turn on the waypoints just to save me the time to look up the map (standard for high difficulty is 3.0 to allied and 8.0 to the enemy which makes mission number 3 next to impossible and forces you to man all stations manually for any effectiveness). even normal setting are extremely hard and luck is always a big factor in my short experience.

One annoying bug i seem to have discovered was that my tank seems to turn AWAY from a target when i issued the order face the target. I could be wrong though. It only happened to me once. Off to play now :)

me too, me too
 

Hi,
Finally someone with similar problems. (Though right now I can only use my laptop with a 32Mb graphics card, so my problem is T72 does not even start...) The laptop situation will be resolved by Christmas the latest.

Maybe we can work stuff out together. My greatest problem so far was
1. the different ammo... The manual does not say which russian word means what ammo.
2. second (maybe third) mission: the AT guns always take me out, like a charm. I guess I have no idea about how to shoot them first.
(Tried crawling over the hilltop behind the first one, but it just swung around, and boom...) I can take tanks out relatively well (sometimes they take me out), I have problems with coordinating with others, and of course, those little crawling maggots with their RPGs...
So I need some help with tactics. The problem is (or not really problem, but a factor) that I only have time to be a casual player -it worked out with IL-2, but I'm afraid that it might not be a very viable option. (Or I'm just a natural flyer, and not very good at enemies I can't see...)
Provided you're still playing the game, and did not switch to SBP after all this peer pressure :P

I have no idea what values you have presented for the various ammunition natures in game:

However -

BM9/12/15/22/32/42 is APFSDS type ammunition
BK12/18 is HEAT
OF19 is Frag-HE
9M112/9M119 are Tube launched ATGM

for the 2A46/2A46M gun fitted to the T72.
BM9/12/15 are steel rounds with minimal or no hard penetrating core.
BM22 is a hard cored round with a substantial steel sheath.
BM32 is a monobloc DU round.
BM42 is a longer monobloc WHA round.

Just tot up how much money you have "wasted" in buying a game and only then finding out that you wasted your money.I bet it comes to more than $125!Why not go halves with your brother and get an additional license as suggested?Or try E Bay or the Steel Beasts site,sometimes there is a cheap copy going on there.I must say at this juncture that for me it was the best $125 i EVER spent!Ok,SB Pro PE might not have the eye candy that some games have but for sheer immersion and lastability its second to none and the modding community is alive and well.My advice is to save any change in a big Jar and before you know it youll have the required cash.