Someone FRAPS'd the panzercolumn to Champion I posted pics of to the screenshot thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOZoqJQYaTA&

New dev update is up. 1.30 will be in testing early in March and then the Unity engine upgrade will follow into testing in April. Lots of good stuff going in.

I've heard that the Axis wins the campaign almost every time. Is that true?

If I heard right, the campaign 50 win was the first one in 4-5 campaigns.

During the first 5 to 6 years of the game, the Axis side won 2/3 of the campaigns. After that there was a period of rough equality and once the game designers implemented TO&E's the Allies started winning most of the campaigns.

The Axis side has recently endured alot of upheaval in the high Command. Many good officers left the high command, some even joining the Allied High Command. After enduring the worst CinC in the history of the game (Gaspipe) and the subsequent lowpoint in morale, we rebounded under our new CinC Toro15 for the win of Campaign 50.

Ah yes, Toro15 was an excellent CinC. Tho, not THAT good that we got this stupid spaniard campaign #50 ribbon that looks more like an soccer flag than an army ribbon. :har:

A few questions.

Is this game like Warbirds with more ground units and a command structure?

Is there alot of time "sitting around" ? That is a game killer for me. I left EVE Online because of how many ops ended up in some camping instead of fighting.

After doing a bit more research I think I am willing to give this a try in a month or so.

To tell the truth I miss the days of Warbirds. But the new warbirds seems "off" and the Dawn of Aces part of it is nonexistant.

That "Fight for control of the base" feel is just not there with IL-2 1946 and there seems to be absolutely no servers with Carrier vs Carrier gameplay.

I tried Pacific Storm Allies but the game is horrible with its battles. Even to the extent where submarines can easily shoot down a whole airgroup. And trying to play them manually is a lagfest. Torpedo planes drop from WAY too high and the torpedoes are slow as hell and only seem to hit if the target is stationary.

I just tried Red Orchestra which sucked badly in my view. I have never seen a game with such horrid nade and rifle physics. I'm waiting for a mod that MAY make things better but when I think a mod for Half Life (Day of Defeat) beats it in the physics department. I think youve got a game of fail in my view.

Maybe I am asking too much but I remember Warbirds with its software rendered graphics beating the hell out of these games with its gameplay. I hope this game can do the same.

I wouldnt advice on getting WWIIOL for the airwar stuff. It's pretty bad if you ask me. I've been playing WWII flightsims for 8-9 years, WWIIOL takes all that you've learned about the different planes, puts them into a paper bag with a smelly dog's poo, lights the bag on fire and drops it to your doorsteps. The planes handle very differently and they dont have the advantages they had in real life. The german side planes are so poorly done against the allied planes that I've completely stopped flying in WWIIOL. Good example being something I spotted in th forums: 109 having the speed & altitude advantages over 2 allied Havocs, the 109 dived and peppered the Havoc that was flying abit higher than the other and in the end, the Havoc that had every disadvantage managed to somehow get on the 109's 6 and shoot it down.

Also, the german aircraft weapons are very weak. Whereas a Hurricane can take you down with it's MGs, firing a short 1-2 second burst, your 20mm is like throwing snowballs against a steeldoor.

That's exactly why I stopped played WW2OL all those years ago. Between them caving to allied whining all the time and our equipment not performing as it should, It's a wonder we were kicking the allied side's butt each and every time back in the day (personally I chalk it up to better players on the German side as the allies seemed to have the problem of having lots of l33t sp34k kids playing).

As for the devs caving here is a classic example. The 'glass gun char' whine from the allies. Back in the day the char was a near unstoppable killing machine, even if you got up point blank with a panzer 3 and shot at all its weak points it would still usually live and keep going. They even use to survive stuka dive bomb attacks and I can remember seeing them still going after several 88 rounds hit them. The only ways we could stop them (other then with 88s set up was to basicly try to disable the tracks and/or shoot out the main guns, which would cause them to despawn. Anyhow the allies were whining up and down the forums about the char guns being made out of glass (even though it often took 3 or 4 shots to take out the guns and at close range), and complaining that axis guns never got taken out (utter nonsense, ours could be destroyed too, it was just rare as our tanks usualy wouldn't survive long enough for it to happen). Anyhow the devs eventualy gave in to the ceaseless whining (the forums were litteraly plastered with allied whining) and made the char's guns (and only the char's guns) invulnerable to damage.

We delt with it by switching to heavy 88 use to counter the chars and their now utter invulnerability to our tanks and still beat the allies, and they found yet more stuff to whine about.

The whining has pretty much stopped now, of course there's 1 or 2 threads going on at any given time, but it's nothing like it was back then when I first subscribed.

The armor is still unbalanced, PzIVG usually takes 2-3 hits and it goes KABOOM, whereas Sherman for example can withstand hits to it's turret, sides and back with only losing maybe a driver or something like that. Tiger is a joke, it's big, it's vulnerable and it's slow. Also, it's tracks are made out of paper, you always get your tracks blown off.

The allied Panhards are still too tough, one would imagine that few shots of 75mm AP rounds would do some big damage to it, my average is 3 rounds per Pan before it's out.

Luckily the german ATGs are pretty good and most of the times very effective against the Allied armor, but especially early in the war, they are useless against anything heavier than a Panhard. Which then causes the early battles being 30 allied tanks rolling into a city with us just watching them go as we have nothing to fight them with.

Only german tank that can really take and give punishment is the Stug3G, but of course, CRS have messed it up too as it has no machinegun(s) to kill the sappers that get me every farking time.

Panhards... what you mean the stupid little armored cars with like 2cm of armor? They are taking 3 75mm rounds to kill on average?!? A .50 cal M2 BMG should cut them to shreds.

Gee I wonder why the whining has stopped then. Sounds like the allies have all the advantages. Though I'm surprised they haven't tried to get the german AT guns nerfed too.

As for early war, did they take away the 88 or something? As that was the only piece of equipment worth anything back when i played (i stoped a few months after the blenheim came out)

Yeh, I mean exactly those little tossers. What I find strange is that the german light ATG (37mm I think it was) could kill the Pan's crew with one shot to the front armor, but if you try that with a 75mm, it still can fight. Sometimes, they go out with one shot, but most of the times they need 2-3 before they stop.

No, the 88s are still there, but they arent the most excellent choice when it comes to defending. Sure they pack the firepower, but without infantry support they get mowed down very quickly.

Well ya they do certainly need infantry support & some tanks (its also annoying that you cant defend from infantry at all when using one). The other annoying thing is of course they still lack the ballistic shield that they should have which would offer some protection. We use to use 88's extensively both offensively and defensively to great effect when combined with tank and infantry support. Also unfortunately there is no way to camouflage it like you could in reality and the terrain usually doesn't let it be used like it should (long range attacks from concealment). I guess you cant take the road wheels of it either still which made it difficult to use due to the bouncing and makes it more visible.

Aaaaw crap! The campaign #51 is going great... for the allies that is. The axis has been pushed waaaay to the east. :nope:

On the bright side, we had a nice textbook town capture last night when we captured St.Truiden in 10-15min, then moved all the tanks and anti-tank guns towards the allied Firebase, camping it totally.

I would've wanted to see the face of the 3 unfortunate allied players who spawned tanks to the FB, we had 4 of our tanks parked 30m from the spawnpoint and behind them some 6-9 anti-tank guns all with their barrels pointing towards the tent where the vehicles spawn. So, when enemy tank spawned it was greeted with 10-13 AP shells in the first 2 seconds of it's short life. :har: