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01-06-11, 03:26 PM
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Planesman
 Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Belfast, NI
Posts: 199
Downloads: 27
Uploads: 0
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Much the same with EAW. Il2 I have played a lot [offline, not into MP] in all its successive variants and I still hate its improved but still small-scale and utterly soul-less campaigns, its truly horrible external engine sounds and its frustratingly game-killer 'uber' AI gunners. Rowan's BoB [1 or 2] and Microprose's B17 Mighty Eighth I still rate as much the best pre-jet-age combat flight sims you can play today - now, those ARE sims, whose less serious shortcomings you can more readily forgive. Modded CFS2 maybe next, then modded EAW or modded RB3d, then modded CFS3. CFS3/OFF [WW1] looks like a really good bet, I helped Winding Man with some of the early research for that but my always-budget hardware didn't cope well with the freeware version and while my kit is slightly less budget nowadays, I haven't invested in the payware OFF yet. The Third Wire stuff like First Eagles and WoV is fun for a blast now and then but they all have soul-less, un-immersive campaigns [Yankee Air Pirates might be an improvement?] and even the WW1 planes explode like arcade targets. Rise of Flight looks good but the substance seems rather limited - after RB3d levels of flyables, a Camel, D7 and SPAD (and Dr1 at extra cost] are really big step in the wrong direction, no way compensating for the eye candy. I would not write off PE, even without time of flight - which it now has - and even in comparison with current tanksims. The PE tanks still tend to jerk about like they are made of cardboard on uneven terrain and the graphics are inferior even modded but good graphics do not a good sim make, nor does a lack of the latest eye candy make a bad one. PE still has many of the other elements that DO make a good [tank] sim. Elements that more modern games do less well. In SF42, the gunner sight view jerks not much better than PE's when you move, much as you'd expect if you were staring down a magnified sight in an unstabilised mount in a vehicle with basic suspension moving cross-country. For that matter, there is much more to tanksims than gunnery, popular tho that is. I prefer to play as TC and troop/platoon commander and if the sim lets you do that effectively, then that's a big plus. PE and SB are two of the few sims that reasonably realistically simulate the TC and troop commander roles. I loved M1TP2 but you really HAD to play as from the gunner role [when you weren't at the Ivis screen 'watching little red and blue dots shoot pixels at one another' as one reviewer put it, and trying to stop the horrible uber artillery killing your light forces while killing the enemy's with yours]. SF42 seems to work best that way too, played as gunner but with the magical ability to give TC orders to your driver - fun but not so good as a simulation. I have yet to force myself to play SF42 from the TC position alone, maybe it is actually quite good at doing that, but the lack of simulated radio traffic apart from the canned and repetitive chatter, and the reliance on dropping out of the 3d world to the 2d map to exercise control of your troop/platoon, seem to make SF42, despite the fact that's the role it casts you in, a much inferior simulator to PE of the platoon/troop commander role. In that role, SF42 is much better than TvT, but PE is much, much better than either. Original SB was best in every technical respect - at least when they finally modelled the 'moving reticle' - but the canned missions and lack of most of the features that made RB3D, EAW, F4, Mig Alley, BoB or B17-2 great sims, limited its appeal for me, and I daresay SB Pro PE would be the same. The empahsis on max fidelity with the M1 and Leo and the consequent certainty you were never gonna get even a basic playable Chieftain, Centurion or T72, to me was devotion taken to too much an extreme - I'm more of a survey sim person I guess, variety the spice of life and all that. Anyway, like great graphics, technical perfection isn't everything. The tanksim you chose depends on what you value most. For me, it's SF42 first, PE a very close second, SB third. TvT [which I also have] is so very limited as to be of similarly limited value even to a big Tiger fan like me, with the Zeewolf mod a WiP. T72 BoF/IW I also have but while I like T72s like TvT it's really rather severely limited as a tanksim - you just play your own tank in canned missions, no radio no comand and control, no nuthin'. Others will differ. Last edited by 33lima; 01-06-11 at 04:17 PM. |
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01-06-11, 06:56 PM
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Soaring
 Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: the mental asylum named Germany
Posts: 40,604
Downloads: 9
Uploads: 0
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Second, have you ever taken the time to check the number of playable vehicles and tanks in SBP-PE? Do you know that all other vehicles, including the Chally, four versions of the T-72, and several tanks now from the 50s and 60s, can be controlled at least from the outside view? And that some of them, namely the T72, are on the to do-list to be added interior playability? Quote:
Not a survey sim...?  I tend to think of SBPPE as the Falcon 4 of tank sims. Third, on the extreme devotion, you know that eSim is no gaming company, and that the sales to private customers make much less than 10% of their income (their own info), and that the sim is in the state it is in because their real paying customers - the military - ordered it that way and demanded it to have these and no other contents? Extreme devotion for the M1 and Leo has little to do with it. It's just that their important customers wanted these. And they modelled them - as competently as they try to model all other vehicles as well. You can see that there are polenty of vehciles with full interiors and fulöl playability so that you can set up full battle without any Leopards and Abrams involved.  I do not want to missionise or convert you, but somehow I think that maybe you just do not know SBP-PE well enough.
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If you feel nuts, consult an expert. |
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01-06-11, 11:17 PM
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Machinist's Mate
 Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 121
Downloads: 0
Uploads: 0
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As for the game itself, I recall that the mission design could be somewhat, shall we say, "crappy". One mission in particular (in North Africa) involved a nasty artillery barrage guaranteed to destroy (not disable) your entire tank platoon. Seems it was triggered off by driving your tank over a particular spot on the map... After a few tries, I wised up enough to make a detour, not a very large one, off the road, to continue... and voila, Mission accomplished...  There was a later 'Mission Impossible' in Normandy which literally stopped my campaign in its tracks. Just not possible to survive that one  PE disappeared off my HD some time after that... Last edited by Kyth; 01-07-11 at 01:12 AM. |
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01-08-11, 12:58 AM
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#4 |
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Grey Wolf
 Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 897
Downloads: 0
Uploads: 0
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SIM no more!
OK to sum up:
1) Best, no contest, tank sim available SB.Downside expensive to purchase and not recommended unless you plan on playing it seriously and dedicate yourself to it for years to come. 2) Best WWII title currently available SF.Downside no MP, and AI is iconsistent. 3) Tvst( stock game) not recommended buggy, scripted and even MP is shaky. 4)TvsT Kursk ZeeWolf mod. Much improved but expensive and work in progress 5) PE, OK for beginners with lots of mods but dated in every aspect and AI is primitive. 6) T72 BoF or Iron Warriors(depends where you buy it).Cheap and not too difficult but limited replay, dated graphics and not very immersive. That's it! Otherwise you hava other games but they're either first shooters ARMA and ARMA II, Red Orchestra or rts of the Achtung Panzer Kharkov 1943 type, Men of War, Soldiers Heroes of WWII, Codename Panzers , Theatre of War etc |
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