Mortarman Deke

Hi mmalias, Personally, I've found that the move to hull down command doesn't work unless you have an available hull down position right behind you. In my personnal experience I've never used that command in battle. I've stuck to the Driver and Gunner positions ran them manually. I leave the Commander postion to AI. The best way to take cover is to take over the Driver position and do the manuevering manually. The thing is you are giving orders to AI crew members, and the decisions that the AI crew makes are not necessarily going to be the best decisions nor are all aspects of the current situation taken into account before executing commands. The bottom line is if you give a command and it is not followed or executed properly, take over and correct to your liking. My advice, take care of the driving yourself, periodically stop to scan as the Gunner, and never wait for your Commander to spot the enemy targets. All of your enemys are going to be visible from the Gunner's postion long before your Commander is going to identify them. Especially if you use the night/thermal vision.

Hi mmalias, Sounds like you just need some time to get more familiar with this game. The shooting training mission is really just target practice & the B-11 antitank gun is never manned, nor do the vehicles & infantry shoot back. It's just uncomplicated target practice. This convoy training mission you speak of sounds like the T-55A mission where you escort a couple trucks and an MTLB. What you need to understand is in this game you can play these missions on your own terms. Leave your convoy and take your T-55A into the mountains off to your left as the Driver of the tank. Command your convoy to head to the south side of the town you start in and have them remain there until called for. ( in other words have them head the opposite direction that you are facing when you begin and then stay put). Head into the mountains as the driver of the tank and allow your AI crew to engage the numerous RPG Gunners distributed on the north side of the town. Continue north in the mountains and engage the few enemy Sherman tanks and MTLB from long range as the Gunner using your night vision/thermal vision to see through the fog. Command your convoy to move north along the road to the fork in the road. Next approach the river with your T-55A. Opposite the river you will have to contend with at least one additional infantry squad, and I recommend that you try your best to find them as the Gunner before you cross the river, and blast them with OFS shells (HE Fragmentation) from long range. As a starting player my advice is when in doubt stay in the Driver's postion and let your AI crew do the shooting. When you take postion of the Gunner or Commander, guess what, you have an AI Driver and that AI Driver will make driving decisions at times just like your AI Gunner and Commander make the decision to shoot without you telling them. Give it time and you will love this game too.

Hi Folks, It looks like you can change your tank type in the mission editor cache file. How do I do it using the mission editor?

T-72 Balkans on Fire has to be one of the most entertaining and challenging games I've encountered. I was playing the Besieged campaign mission again last night in which your tank is a T-55A, and in an all out blitz the two waves of enemy forces attacked at the same time! The T-34/85, MTLB & Infantry squad approached from my force's left flank and the pair of enemy T-55A's attacked us on our position's direct front all at once. It was intense! One of the T-55A's knocked my tank out with a BKS shot through my turret roof - right after I knocked out the T-34/85 and their enemy RPG Gunner. My attached RPG Gunner took out one of the T-55A's, but the other T-55A managed to dodge and knock out my attached B-11 anti-tank gun & crew and the enemy force ended up winning the battle, but it was great. The re-positioning of enemy forces each time these missions are played has added a lot of life to this great game for me. It does result in some frustration at times, but it helps keep the challenges of these missions fresh.

Click on "user mission" in the game menu. A file open window will pop up. Navigate into your T-72 Balkans on Fire file in this little window and then select the CACHE file. The extra missions are in the CACHE file. The missions are all *.ca files.

You're welcome LMP. The downside of keeping the hatches open is basically what I said earlier about raising your silhouette. When the hatches are open they do present more of a target for your enemies. Leaving the hatches open also appears to expose your tanks delicate internal systems and crew to well placed explosions outside of your tank. In my experience I did score a destruction shot on the enemy T-55 in the Oil Storage Facility mission when one of my BKS shells hit one of the T-55's open hatches and exploded over the turret. It was the darndest thing... Seeing that big white "destruction shot" vector only sticking through an open turret hatch and nothing else during the post mission fly-through.

Hi Senior Vargas, I'm not sure if I can help you with this one, but I know that my new Dell XPS computer has some issues when I play the Column mission and the Meeting Engagement mission. There's so many vehicles movign around in those missions that my new PC has issues running it all. My previous PC had a great capacity for games, but the hardware was old, so even with the latest drivers it still couldn't run this game.

Hi vw4758, First of all you need to eyeball the range when in the gunner position. Especially if you are shooting at enemy vehicles that can't see you yet. Due to haze, and fog the laser range finders in the T-72 and newer T-55 usually don't work. To manually input range hit the keys Ctrl and W together. Use the U key to increase the range of the main gun and the I key to decrease the range of the main gun. All range scales are in Meters. There are four different sights in the T-72, and three of them have a an IR/night vision option. They are: d = BPS K = BKS O = OFS The P on the right side of each adjustable sight picture(looks like a big "n") is the coaxial machine gun scale. In the T-55 there is only one sight with (with an IR/night vision option) the BPS scale is on the upper left of the gunner sight, and the OFS and BKS are on the upper right. The center scale is for the coaxial machine gun. Once you hit Ctrl W in the T-55 gunner mode and hit the U and or I keys you will see a horizontal line that goes all the way across the gunners sight that moves up and down the three main gun shell types' scales. Adjust the range for which ever shell type you are using. With the T-34 I usually just use the center Machine Gun scale to fire all the round types when I adjust the range myself. I don't use the T-34 much though. For all armored vehicles use the BPS shell if you are estimating the range on your own. The BPS shell has a very flat trajectory, while the OFS and BKS shells are lobbed at their targets. In other words you need an exact range. The advantage of using the OFS and BKS shells is that you can shoot at enemy vehicles while hidden behind hills or burms.

The Commando Mission is pretty fun. The first thing to do after you start the tank is chamber a BPS round right away, then head for the commando team. Once you have the "meeting" head back toward the checkpoint where you started. About half way there the three T-34's will tend to come out of the trees from the direction of the village. Go ahead and switch to the gunner position and take them out. You can also keep driving and let the AI crew in your turret take out the T-34's. If you hit the T-34's in the hull directly below their turrets it tends to cook off their ammo loads, and burn out the tanks. Once they are dead keep heading for the checkpoint. Go over the crest of the hill that the checkpoint is on and keep going until you get to the paved roadway. Hang a left on the roadway and head over to the big hill at the far southeast corner of the map. Once you get to the hill turn left off the paved road and head up towards the top of the big hill. When you get to the top you will see the two T-55's parked to your north about 1.5 to 2 kilometers to your north. Back down out of sight, make sure you have a BPS round chambered, then pop back up, line up a shot at one of the T-55's and take the shot. After you take the shot drop out of sight. Repeat these steps until you take out the enemy T-55's. One or both of them may be out of sight when you first pop up. You may have to work your way down the north side of the hill until you can start to see them in the gunner's sight. Don't wait for the tank commander to spot them. Find them from the gunner postion and knock them out before they can see you. To do this you will need to adjust your main gun's range manually because you may be only able to barely see the enemy T-55 due to the distance and haze. After you knock out the enemy T-55's head north to the next paved road, and turn left toward the village. The jeep will be travelling on this road. Blow it away with an OFS shell. Head into and through the village, staying on the paved road and take the road all the way back to the valley where you met up with the 3 person commando team. Knock out the enemy's MTLB and infantry squad. The biggest threat at this point is the enemy RPG gunner. After he's dead the remaining enemy forces are screwed. Mop them up and head back to the check point.

Hi LMP, Keeping the hatches open will help your crew survive a penetration by a BKS shell or RPG hit. The open hatches help vent the penetrating explosion. Keeping them open doesn't guarantee survival, but it can help. Personally I usually keep them closed to keep my tank's silloette as low as possible.

Hey Sgt Bilko, Don't let the game get you down. Here is what I noticed... Constant movement is way better than a solid hull down position. Stay on the move, turn frequently, stop only to fire, then get back in gear and take off immedeately! Also, All the enemy vehicles are on the map somewhere from the very start to bitter end of each mission. If you sneak around you can kill the enemy IFV's and AFV's before they deploy. The Commando mission is a good example of this. You can knock out the enemy T-55's if you stay far south and head to the mountain in the southeast part of the map. Go to the top of the mountain and pick them off while they are parked. They will shoot back so try to do a hot postion/cold postion tactic by popping up to the top of the hill, line up a shot, fire, and duck back down to the south side of the mountain. Keep doing this until you take them out. In other missions like Farms, for instance, don't engage any enemy units at all, sneak/skirt past the whole area to the east then head west around the north side of the map and pick off the Officer from long range. Another secret for foggy missions/areas - day or night - use the night vision to scan around a lot and you can literally see the enemy before they can see you. This works with tall grass too. Another tip is MTLB's and Shturm-S's can be taken out with OFS (HE fragmentation) shells, so if possible try to lob OFS shells at them indirectly from behind hills and knock them out that way. Also, be patient with yourself. Everytime you play any of the missions the enemy units will be distributed differently at the start, and you will have good days and bad days when you play the game simply because of this. This is a great game, just give yourself some time to get used to it.

I have to say this is a great game! I've cleared all the campaign missions, and I've noticed a few things throughout the game play. It seems that enemy weapons systems have varying effects depending on the mission I'm playing. Some missions my T-72 gets openned up like a sardine can by a T-55 and on others it shrugs off horrific hits. Is this effect variance really happening or is it just my perception? Enemy T-72's seem to be nearly impervious compared to my T-72. Aren't the enemy ones T-72M's or Yugoslavian M-84's? How is it that they fair better under fire than a T-72B? The enemy T-55's are lethal in the Commando, Cemetary, and Convoy missions and less effective on the other missions. The SU-100's are lethal in Crossroad and Farms and less effective on the other missions. The RPG Gunners have a significant effect on my T-55 in the Breakthrough mission and less of an effect on my T-55 and T-72 in other missions. Also, in the final mission, Assault, I'm starting to have RPG Gunners placed way too close to my formation. They attack my T-72 and my IFV's (MTLB & Shturm-S) before we are even starting our engines. Basically I'm stuck having to start out the mission with a tread blown off and my IFV's destroyed or disabled. Finally, I've run into situations where I couldn't clear missions. I would repel assaults and or complete the other objectives, and yet I don't get a declaration of "victory". At this point getting a mission victory is no longer a necessity since I cleared all the missions, but I'm still stuck in the mission without getting any statistics about the battle. This is indeed a great game. I love it! Way to go to everyone that was involved in its creation. Mortarman Deke