[JScones]

Originally Posted by Hitman

I have played Panzer Commander, iPanzer44 (Man, what a disaster of a game!) and the very best classic Panzer Elite (In which I didn't like the menu system). My question is:

How would you judge SF AI when comparing to those games? Where would it be in the list?

My current rating would be:

1.- Panzer Elite
2.- Panzer Commander
3.- iPanzer44 (Broken AI in fact)

Where would you place SF's AI in that list?

I've spent many, many, many hours playing both Panzer Elite (with Ostpak mod) and Panzer Commander.

What is refreshing in Steel Fury is that I don't see friendly tanks zipping in front of me when I fire, or getting stuck beside me, or exposing themselves when trying to get into a formation, as I did in Panzer Elite. This doesn't mean that they don't sometimes do odd things in Steel Fury, it's just that to me they are not as obvious (or dumb) as they were in Panzer Elite.

Re enemy AI, that's harder for me to comment on. I've seen dumb things in both games, but nothing in Steel Fury to want me to go back to Panzer Elite.

Originally Posted by Mikhayl

I really hope modding will take off, when a few mission designers will have a good grasp of the editor and if we can add playable units (converted AI units & new models), there's potentially hours and hours of gameplay on various theaters.

That'd be cool. I really liked the Ostpak mod created for Panzer Elite. That extended the game to pretty much the whole war.

Originally Posted by Mikhayl

And with kind of a "Tank Commander" support app it'll be the icing on the cake

I spent last night investigating the files and how this may be possible. It'd take a bit of work due to the way Steel Fury works. That is, you don't actually have a Tank Commander in Steel Fury, just a profile. You can chop and change careers as you like with this profile.

Also, it seems that if you (unsuccessfully) attempt the same mission over and over, your statistics for each attempt cumulate. I don't like that; in a linear sense, if I attempt mission three 6 times and only complete it on the sixth, then only the statistics from the sixth (successful) attempt should be counted. This aggregation would need to be undone in order to maintain an accurate career profile.

I guess once a new career is started, the third party application could remove all other campaigns and missions from the game list (for the life of the campaign only of course) to "force" a linear career. Still early pondering days though. I'm drafting a list of questions to ask over at the lighthouse forum; I'll see where that takes me.