sonarman

That's very good news indeed, Thanks Moon. @ Phil It's a good game, but I think it it could still be a great one if the Subsim mod teams latch on to it, this expansion & Battlefront's willingness to continue with the project are a great first step the mooted mission editor would also be a great boost for the title. Let's hope that sales are enough to encourage Akella to continue with their line of naval games. With what looks like the sad demise of Ubi's Silent Hunter series they may indeed have a virtual monopoly in first person naval simulation gaming. Nice to see you are also in Ayr, a very small world indeed! You can find a lot of discussion on the game over at subsim.com

The silence is deafening... C'mon Moon, package the South Gambit expansion with the mission editor that we are all still waiting on and then we wil have to buy it. In addition don't lock it up too much and you can catch sales from all those who bought the Australian version too... easy money. But sooner rather than later please! And for your next trick... it looks like Ubi may be about to drop the Silent Hunter series, you could discuss the possibility with Akellla to use the Storm engine for a WWII sub simulator & capture the market.

I see that the South Gambit expansion for PT-Boats has now been released in Russia. Any chance of Battlefront releasing this in "the West"?

Great thanks for that will finally be able to get passed that damned rocket boats/airbase mission now.

Thanks for that Martin, I appreciate it is late in the day for changes, perhaps for the mission disc which I hope will also be available from Battlefront? I do have faith in Battlefront as a publisher both in the quality of your responses here and through the way you handled both Dangerous Waters and in particular Theatre of War where you proved your committment to the user base through the megapatches. And I do think that in Battlefront, Akella has finally found the best military sim oriented publisher to help steer it' s development of naval sims through the "challenging waters" of the West. On the plus side the game is very good graphically, the models are superb,missions are quite challenging and playable from both sides. Perhaps best of all Akella has shown great foresight in leaving the files as open as possible for modders who are already "sharpening their tools" in preparation for the release.

Yes, I hope Battlefront has actually played the game it is about to publish and read the Russian reviews thoroughly, Google does have a translate function you know! Also be sure to check out the forums over at Subsim.com (the largest naval simulation gaming site on the web) where we have been following this sim since day one almost six? years ago. The game does have its shortcomings, which would not really be that hard to overcome (better sea response / more dynamic elements in missions, less arcade looking HUD, mission editor). I only say this as I want this to be just the first of a series of WWII naval games from Akella/Battlefront and I think the publisher & developer should take careful heed of any criticism from past releases. With a little bit of care and attention they could be receiving the 350K+ sales that each of the Silent Hunter series has attained. Please don't rush the release, strange to say that on a game which has been in development for six years, but the hurdles now are small ones, please take your time and give the game the quality release it so richly deserves.

Check out this earlier post by Nokturnal for more info on the "South Gambit" expansion.

Based upon what I have seen and heard of the Russian version and the version I own & have personally played (Australian). I would say that the sea is actually pretty flat in most missions, indeed the sim was quite widely criticised for this on it's Russian release. I would say it does not really compare to the height of waves in the the likes of the Silent Hunter series. I am hoping that for the Battlefront release the developers will tweak the sea & boat physics a bit.

I have seem some very nice coastline now in a couple of episode 4 missions in the Barents Sea. I assumed that the devs had perhaps stripped out the coastline to improve framerates on lower end PCs as many of the pre-release screenshots did feature coastline, however those missions actually run quite quickly even on my old rig. Perhaps due to the scale of the scenario/engagements they simply did not consider it that important to include a lot of coastline. The game is not really like the SH series, it feels more like a fusion between Fleet Command, Enigma Rising Tide & Fighting Steel. Not a bad thing though. The screenshots of the South Gambit addon seem to feature more coastline so it could be that the devs have realised that we would like more land. It does not look like Ubisoft will be giving us a surface sim anytime soon they have just recently stated that "Our focus is to create the perfect German submarine experience, with the highest detail current technology allows in real time. Silent Hunter is not about surface ships, is not about strategic decisions" so this is probably our best bet in terms of a surface game at the moment and with good sales and its open modding structure this sim has plenty of potential for expansion and future development.

Another request would be to make the rather arcadey looking on screen radar/ message panel optional, preferably in the options screen with an ingame shifted keystroke to toggle its visibility. It's not actually needed as the the user can still get most of its functionality on the tac-map screen and it does rather take away from the realistic atmosphere.

Check out my post over at subsim.com to see some night shots from the game. Note that they were made on my aging system (XP/DX9/AGP/GeForce7800GS) so will give you guys with older systems an idea of how good the game still looks on those machines.

Over at subsim.com the first mods are starting to appear for the game (note these mods have been created by those who have the Russian, German or Australian release, the Battlefront release is not yet available. ) First up is Midniite1977's mod slightly changing the look of the RN Hats in the game Whilst Sergbuto has some screenshots of an upcoming sub mod for the game

It's not really comparable to SH in terms of simulation due to the shortness of the scenarios and the fact you re controlling multiple units including larger ships like destroyers and cruisers etc in third person. If I were to describe it based on previous games I would say it feels like a cross between the point and click tactical level play of Janes Fleet Command and the more sim-lite experience in Enigma Rising Tide.

@Broadsword - re geographical locations The game as release in Australia consists of 6 episodes 1 Naval Academy: 3 missions playable as Royal Navy 2 Exercises at Weser: 5 missions playable as German or Royal Navy 3 The English Channel:5 missions playable as German vs Royal Navy 4 Cold Waters (Baltic Sea) 5 missions playable as USSR 5 Land In sight 5 missions playable as Germany or USSR 6.Bonus Episode consisting of 4 missions Note that although the some of the episodes have geographical titles there is little or no actual coastline in the game (as far as I have seen so far and I'm on mission 3 of Episode 3) most missions consist only of open sea or open sea with a couple of nameless small islands. The "South Gambit" screens and video suggest we will we will see some actual coastline incorporated in the addon when it appears, hopefully Battlefront will be publishing that too? @Narses - re mission editor As it stands the game has no editor at present, hopefully Akella will put one out at some point but the mission scripts are in a very open and easy to edit format so the talented modders over at the likes of Subsim.com or marinesims.de will no doubt put together a nice editor at some point. You can put together multiplayer matches against bots but there is no access to the higher tactical functions in this mode it is more of a "deathmatch" style approach.

Hi Butch, sounds like a dream setup you have, unfortunately the highest listed resolutions on the options screen of teh currently released Australian version are 1600x1200 and 1680x1050. It may be worth adding your resolution as a request to my suggestions post on the forum. Who knows, with luck Akella will pick up on it for the Battlefront release, add it to a patch or implement it as a feature of the forthcoming addon "South Gambit".

Rutube has a video of this forthcoming addon

Note these obsevations are made on the recently released Australian edition of teh game and in no way reflect the quality of the forthcoming Battlefront release which hopefully will have all of these issues attended to. Localisation & naval terminology On playing the Australian release for a few days I'd suggest Battlefront be more careful in their localisation than the Australian publishers were, frequently the mission descriptions are badly translated and confusing. The in game text still says things like the "destroyer is sinked" rather than "sunk", depth charges are listed in the game tooltips as "deep bombs", the narrator refers to putting your ships into "line formation" while the buttons tooltips are labelled "frontal" , "wake" and "all-round". On the key command screen ships are referred to as "actors". Audio crew speech files It would also be nice to have the "static" audio files translated into English this was done only for the main audio narration and key mission messages in the Australian release and its a bit weird to be on a British boat whilst your fellow crew members babbling away in Russian. Test more thoroughly on DX9 systems It would seem a few users over at Subsim.com (including me) with older DX9 cards have been having some problems running the game specifically if they raise or change the graphics settings from the popup menu just after launch. The option for dynamic shadows in the popup seems to be reversed ie setting them "off" in the popup menu turns them on in the game and vice versa. Bug in tactical map There seems to be a bug in the tactical map which occasionaly prevents the user from moving the red waypoints they have assigned.

A further and important suggestion would be to fix/explain the goals better in mission 4. Both the German players at Marinesims.de and the guys over at at Subsim.com who have been playing the imported Australian version have been having problems with this particular mission.

I have been following this game for a long time and posting about it over on subsim.com and on he sadly defunct Akella forum for the game. My suggestions to Battlefront/Akella on the game would be... Try to bring back as many of the simulation elements as possible to the game especially the boat's physical response to the water. Re-introduce real world geography and ports instead of the generic approach. Have the "South Gambit" addon for sale within a few weeks of the game's release/include it with the game Introduce a dynamic campaign engine (long the staple of the Silent Hunter series) or alternatively create a scenario builder for the game asap. Drop Starforce in favour of any other protection system, it has become a pariah in the naval sim community since it's inclusion in Silent Hunter III including it in this release would be a very bad thing for sales of the game. Make the game as moddable as possible, open the formats of the 3d models. Modding teams such as those at Subsim.com have added many excellent things to the "Silent Hunter" series and doubtless extended the shelf life and interest in those games which have now as a series sold over 1.5 million copies. Announce and develop a Pacific theatre add-on ASAP In the future re-use the engine for a game along the lines of the classic Microprose "Task Force 1942" This is even today sighted by many as the best naval fleet simulation title and they are crying out for a remake with today's graphics. I think that PT-boats went a little "off mission" in it's long development but has great potential especially now Akella's naval simulation expertise is partnered with Battlefront's great customer service and publishing ethos. Be sure to check out the PT-Boats forum at Subsim.com where there are many comments/previews/reviews of this long awaited title

I dont think it's a case of an "arcade steamroller" rather that the simulation elements have been "muted" to a degree to give the player access to a higher level of command ie while you control the PT-Boats in first person you can now also control destroyers and other large ships from a third person viewpoint.

I don't think the game is pitched at the same strategic level as Harpoon, the engagements will generally be smaller scale tactical battles. The player can use a tactical map similar to that found in SSI's "Fighting Steel".