[Deamon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I don't "tell". It's a fact I state. From the player sales they cannot live.

With "tell" i meant you don't need to comment that. Besides that i see i posted that sentece incomplete, i meant to say: "Now don't tell me that the military is the actual customer of eSim and that they catter only their demands and that this is a tank simulator in the first place, BECAUSE I KNOW ALL THAT!"

Besides that an armour simulation isn't quite an armour simulation without infantry. I also feel i have to clarify what i am talking about when i am speaking of infantry improvements. For the most part i am actually quite satisfied with the infantry the way it was in SB, i could work around some limitations alright but there remains a small rest of inabilities of the infantry that just drives me nuts, ruined the experience for me time and again and that prevented it to be a really usefull tool. Which are:

*The inability to crawl and stay low when i say to stay low.
*The inability to stay upright(while not moving). I would like to have the option to lay, crouch or stay upright, so that i can control the exposure of the soldier over the cover.
*The inability to shoot from a standing and crouching position.
*The inability to stay right where i want them to stay, they always run unauthorized for cover and screw up my ambush set ups.
* Throwing handgrandes, even if there is no visual contact to the enemy, just trow grenades as far as possible into the direction that i want it to. So that i can take out enemy soldiers on the other side of the road without storming over the ridge commiting suicide. It should also be able to engage enemy infantry with RPG's and ATGM's.(although in SBP that should be possbile already when controlling an ATGM manually )
*The inability to charge forward while the other half of the squad provides coverinng fire. ( Although that one was fixed in SBP already ? )
*The inability to split the team down to individual soldiers. I am tired of being forced to sacrifice the whole squad while trying to take a peak over that hill.(I am not sure if my memory seves me right but i think it was possible in SBP already at list split the squad into 2 groups which would mean to me a lot already ).
*Missing options for setting formations and formation spacing. While at it it should also be possible to change the facing of the fomation by simple looking into the direction you want the formation to face to and press a key.
*It should be possible to load an infantry squad into any vehicle and not just the one to which it belongs. ( Although i think that is already possible in SBP )
*Infantry squads should act completely independently from the IFV when i seperate them from it. In SB when i send the IFV elsewhere it suddenly stops and waits till the squad has mounted the IFV again, which wouldn't occure only when the IFV is far away from the squad. ( Although Sky indicated that this already has been fixed in SBP ).
*And in the context of SBP engaging low and slow flying air targets in close proximity. Is that actually possible already ? BTW does SBP features manpads yet ?
*All vehicles should actually have a crew that can dismount from the vehicle and continue on foot. So that i can disembark one crew member and let him run up the hill and take a peek over the edge with a binocular so that i do not need to expose the IFV and get blow away or just to avoid detection. Also in case the vehicle gets lost and the crew survives being able to continue the mission. This feature would be very high on my priority list and would also allow some hilarious rescue missions when a vehicle gets immobilized and you attempt then to rescue the crew under fire.( I think this are the little things that would make a big difference immersion wise ) For that matter the AI should be able to use the vehicle as cover and eventually disembark on the opposite side of the vehicle from where the fire is comming from, if possible. And while at it the infantry should have the general ability to use vehicles as cover and also move with them over open areas while using it as cover in a very tight formation spacing which is a common practice in reality. Also pop up over the endge of a vehicle and fire, provided the vehicle is not too high of course. I also would have almost said that it should be possible to mount the infantry ONTOP of a vehicle so that when a squad looses its IFV you just mount them ontop of that M1 and get out of there(you know the drill ? On the BTR you are saver than inside ) but in order not to enrage Sky too much i won't That stuff would certainly allow some hilarious and realistic missions.
*Another thing that i am not going to say is that i hope to see flamethrowers and Handflampatronen some day. That would be very handy in sticky situations.

I think that would be it for me. I am wondering how much of this was already implemented in SBP ? ( This is the actual reason why i post the list here ) But that they switched to 3D infantry kind of suggests to me major infantry improvements in the near future. Also that one scene in the video here...



...where you see that one biker drop that one insergent with the RPG at the bridge. This is just the kind of stuff that i look for.

I really hope they will fix that in the near future cause with this additional abilites the game would get a whole new dimension. Sky are you testing the new release already ?

And Sky pleeeeeaaaaase don't post comments about that that you have posted already above.

So far they exclusively buy it for tanker training. I am not in eSim'S heads and paper stuff and so do not know what is going on. But in 2006 when I put together an itnerview with their technical director I asked him about the dfistant future. And in 2006 he said that their competence lies in the field of tanks and mechanised warfare. It is here where the sim can compete with the rivalling products the military buys in form of hardware cabin simulatores for millions of dollars, and SBP competes successfully there due to its aggressive pricing. But this argument is not existent anymore when the focus shifts on infantry games, since here other software producers already have established themselves.

2006 ? That is 5 years old news. I remember a statement, don't know where i read it, in an interview or something that eSim annonced(or at least intended to announce) to their military customers to reserve one year(i don't remember which it was supposed to be) to cater the demands of private customers. And in that context, while it is true that they cannot survive from private customers alone the private customers are still there regardless and i am wondering at this point for what percentage of the revenue do the private customers account because if it is significant they can be actually expected to cater the needs of them as well accordingly.

You can. And do. Some vehicles have shorter legs than others. And fueltanks can be perforated in battle. All of a sudden those fuel tankers and engineer units, CS trucks and Bergepanzer and ambulances make sense.

I see. For that it obviously makes sense.

Short attack of megalomania, eh?

Oh you bought into that ? HAHA gotcha! That was meant to be a provocation, since you didn't seem to count me to the community. Unless of course your definition of communit excludes the SB community of which i am still an avid member. As a matter of fact SB is one of the games that i play the most, if you care to know and i am very much into armour.

You are just one person, and even an outsider not knowing the sim. The community is the dominant majority over you. And for soem strange reason in five years I have not heared them saying what you said. That'S what makes you an outsider with a minority opinion.

And that means what ?

And what the developer thinks about how he should do things you can see in the results of how he actually does handle things, and designs features.

This is only one way of interpreting what that means. It could just as well mean that he simple didn't knew it better at that time.

Maybe. Or yours is a minority opinion.

Since i run my own development for over 8 years now i can testify that as a developer(coder in particular) you always have a thousand things on your mind that are all somehow obvious and you go so fast from one issue to another that in the heat of the battle various other obvious ideas simple go unnoticed. It's like a bunch of enemies shooting at you from 10 different positions in all the heat and noise you won't be able to keep track of all of them because you are overwhelmed.

Try to become a bit more open-minded. You have so specific demands and expectations that you probbaly will wait for years and years and still do not get what you want.

I am not sure what open minded means here but besides my wishlist for improved infantry my demands are really just minor improvements to the editor.

All the while you are missing stuff that is very good already and is praised by many. The more your focus gets "tunnelised" or fixiated on specific demands, the less likely it is your desires will get fulfilled. You wait - but what did you get in the end? Nothing. You want to play huge scenarios, but have no ida how big the ones can get you alkready can do with SBP - I played some scenarios that took me breaks and several hpours over the day, due to my style of playing and wanting to avoid losses as much as possible.

Frankly i feel misunderstood by you. I certainly do have an idea how large the scenarios can get and i suppose there is no saving feature yet ? I play SB for years now and played all available scenarios. I would have gotten into SBP already if it wouldn't be so expensive so i sit, wait and watch for the right moment to strike. It's just a question of time till i will. Right now i am 50:50. The reason why i am posting here now is simple because i try to figure out if it's ripe for me already.

Also i don't feel that i am "tunnelising" at all. I am very enthusiastic about the progress made so far and expressed that here on several occasions it's just that i have the desires that i have. Besides the lacking infantry simulation there are only a few minor things that annoy me. Things that would be easy to implement and make the life of a scenario designer a hell of a lot easier. I played all the scenarios out there for SB and in the end started to make my own but quickely had to realize that the SB editor missed a few very essencial features that i would need to implement my ideas.

A scenario designed with any of the options you outlined above, would not make a dramatic difference in final effect.

To me it would.

But sitting five years just to see some incredibly specific demands in desiogn getting fulfilled and over that denying all the cream that already is available - to me that is an extremely strange choice somebody could make.

I feel misunderstood now even more.

But of course, you are free to decide the way you want. My advise after these two days of talking would be: forget about SBP, and never think of it again. Because I think you will never be satisfied, honestly. So just move on and enjoy yourself better that way.

My advice would be don't take what i say too personally, lol.