A few questions...

[Grimdaddy]

Firstly, I love this game. I was getting the freezing bug a lot (I know, that is a support issue), but disabling grass seemed to fix it for the most part. On to the questions:

1. The T-55 range finder does not seem to function on the first campaign mission it is available in - is this intentional? It only returns readings of max range and 370 meters respectively. This was no problem, as I enjoyed using the manual range finder, but I was curious as to why this happened. Is there a setting I would need to enable?

2. Enemy vehicles flip over a lot, and then I dont get to shoot them. This makes me sad - do I need to enable "Right vehicle", or "Global Realism" to get this to stop happening?

3. What exactly does Global Realism do? The manual was a bit vague, so I was curious as to what precisely this affects.

4. Is there a way to identify targets from the gunner position, or just the commander position? It says in the manual to zoom in to ID, but it does not seem to work for me.

5. Is there a way to disable the Driver AI when I am giving him simple commands like "forward" and such? I love playing the other positions, but I do not really like to drive myself around - but the driver refuses to follow orders and causes me many unneccesary exposures. If there were a way to get him to stop "thinking" about my orders and just follow them, that would be really great.

Thanks again for a great game. I had been waiting on it for some time, as there has not be a good tank sim in quite a while. This one certainly qualifies.

[Grimdaddy]

Wow. Well, I hope that someone can eventually answer at least one of the questions at some point.

A comment was made in another thread about people who did not care for the AI driver possibly being people who are not commited to learning the sim. This is not at all the case for me, and I very much enjoyed driving the tank at the beginning of the game. However, now that I am deeper in the game, I wish to focus on deeper parts of the sim and the experience, without also driving the tank about.

This was the reason for my question as relates to the AI driver, and there was no other.

Thanks for any response.

[Moon]

Hi Grimdaddy, sorry, I must have missed your post initially.

1. Hmm, I cannot duplicate this to be honest, although this is the second time now that somebody is reporting this. Could it be that you are trying to laze a target that is very close to the 370 meters range? Anything below that range will appear as max range, so if the target is moving in and out, this behavior could be explained.

2. I have never seen an enemy vehicle flip over to be honest. "Right vehicle" turns flipped over units after a certain time automatically, but I believe that it only applies to the player tank.

3. I don't know more than what is in the manual about this. Will try to get one of the guys from the dev team to clarify.

4. I think you refer to the correct firing procedure as explained in the game manual? If so, then ID'ing is a process done by the player, not the game. In other words, the manual reminds you to first make sure that you are firing at an enemy before opening fire. If you are playing with higher realism options on, targets won't get automatically highlighted and since both the good and the bad guys can drive the same equipment, identification can be important.

5. The Driver AI will always try to move around obstacles, like rocks, trees, buildings, escarpments and so on. No way to disable that. With a little experience you get used to that, though.

By the way, my comment about people not committed to learning the sim was just a bit of venting frustration about some "complaints" posted here in the past days, and not at all directed at you. Good and legitimate questions overall. Glad you like it.

Martin

[JudoHedgehog]

In the SimHQ review of the russian version it's said that you get tanks that are broken in some of the earlier campaign missions. This is related to the "Use Career" realism option. The problem is when it is on no one tells you what is broken on the tank. Like in your first campaign mission with the T-72 only the manual gunnery sights are available, you can't even get to the normal sight. And in the first 2 T-55 missions your range finder does not work. This should either be explained in the mission briefing or the diary as it's very confusing without having read the old simhq review.

http://www.simhq.com/_land/armor_006a.html

[Grimdaddy]

Thanks very much for your responses, guys. I had suspected that perhaps since the tank was a "hand-me-down" that it may not be in full working order, but as Judo mentioned the mission and diary made no mention of faulty equipment, which was confusing. However, I should mention that the T-55 was fully operational for me in its second mission, "Commando" - but sadly I have yet to pass it after 18 tries because of freezing.

To answer Moons question, I was lazing the stationary artillery in the first T-55 mission, and could not get a proper reading. I just shot them with a High-Ex shell though, so that was no real problem. Oh, and they were about 900m out from my position at the time.

On the flipping, I have had the Sherman from mission one flip, and also a few AFVs. Actually, I think one of them was allied to me, but the poor buggers wrecked. It is not a huge problem at all, just one that I wanted to fix if possible.

Thanks for trying to obtain info on the Global Realism option. I love the game, and want to get as much out of it as possible.

Thanks again for your help, folks.

[JudoHedgehog]

I don't know 100% if that made it to the english version but it would explain the lack of systems in some of the missions.