[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Deamon

Oh btw is the M60A3 actually manable ?

-> see stickied SBP resource thread

Besides that an armour simulation isn't quite an armour simulation without infantry.

See eSims own product identification in thre stickied SBP resourece thread. That says what the focus is.

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 )

You have never tried to breach a minefield under fire, and then get the leading tank taken out in the middle of the passage. That is what emerges you into things. And what the sim can already do.

Or a bridging assault, although not before now the feature was fully functional.

And like in reality it is better not to try any of these things, if possible, due to the risks involved.

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.

Anything else...?

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...

The infantry in the future will stay much like it is, the AI handling its reaction to standard orders or enemy actions just will improve. What you want surpasses even ArmA, and you want a massive second focus on playing from infantry'S position. But that is not what SBP is there for.

Squads now are split in heavy and light sections. Both can act independently from their transport unit. There is a single soldier FO unit. There are 3 men teams for TOW, HMG, MMG, 4mm greande launcher.

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.

I recall that - it was a simple board post of Ssnake saying that they have some relief from military ocntreacts two or three years ago to extend that timeframe to a one year period to focus a bit more on what many players in the forum posted.

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.

They have just increased the team and the people need to be payed on a monthly basis. They can live from working on military contracts. They can not live from skipping them and doing game stuff exclusively. The SBP you can buy, costs 100 dollars. The licence the military must buy per smallest number of seat-licence, costs 18.000 dollars. Go figure. SBP is a niche product, and tank games in general have their greatest times since M1TP2 behind them, it seems. Not even the WWII games are asked for in great numbers. and WWII is more popular than modern war in tank games. Never understood the reason, but that'S how it is.

And that means what ?

That for most of your specialised and detailed demands you probably can wait forever.

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.

Do though plan to ever complete in this life, or will it be just in thy next one?

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.

You want a completely new theme of simulation in equal detail being put into it! In principle SBP and ArmA married. This has been suggested in board messages over the years. And has been slammed every time, as far as I am aware of such debates. The focus is gunnery training, TC command training, unit interaqction in small units, best platoon level. Live with it. Everythinbg else that already is there, or will be there, already is BONUS.

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.

If you do not go for it after a 5 year wait, a solid community on display, several major upgrades illustrating how much the sim already has expanded, then simple truth is you never will. I think you simply have too high, too perfectionistr expectations. And beyond a certain altitude at which they fly, you never get down to the ground again.

The price. I assume you have bought games at times. Currently, new releases cost 40-50 euros for PC. If you have bought one game per year to play it for one year , you would have spend 250 euros. SBP could be had for 80 Euros at the lowest end of the price range. It equals the price of two normal games. Just that you get something that if the matter is of ionterest to you will keep you hooked not for one year, but for many years.

Seen that way, SBP is not expoensive, but a smile-.price offer. Even more so compared to the military the military which must spend this money to get some features unlocked (limit on map sizes, instructur console, digital map options).

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.

I feel misunderstood now even more.

Not at all. But you sit and wait since 5 years and refuse to play SBP since some specialised details you want are not there. You invest your energy on focussing on those 1% that are not there and deny the shining 99% that are available. Sorry, but that is not clever. In five years, I must have turned several dozen people into customers , first by my review, and then by my board presence here; in the first year, I even got emails by them telling me in private again how much they like the sim. In these five years I have read just 2 or 3 people at the eSim board who refused the sim over claims of noit liking it. That ratio makes it the by far best rated sim I ever heared of in the whole history of computer games - and I'm with computer games since all beginning on.

I'm getting a bit tired of writing in circles around you. I answered your questions where I could. I told you you miss out on something great. I gave you the math over the price. The stickied resource thread is there. You are free to decide any way you want. But if you ask me over what to do, buy it or not, I say: don'T. Because I think you simply never will be satisfied and instead focus more on what is not there instead of what is there. That you have invested 5 years into a wait that most likely never will see full completion, while in five years the price for getting what is there would have relativised itself very much, says something.

Whatever, good luck.