Reichenberg

It is pretty short for the L70. And I stand corrected. Here is a picture of the Panzerjäger IV with muzzle brake..... and what looks like the L48 to me. I always thought that the Stug IVs had the L48 and the 2 variants of the Panzerjäger IV came only with the L70 without muzzle brake. Uwe edited for typos [ December 10, 2006, 08:05 AM: Message edited by: Reichenberg ]

Good point with the size comparison. It is clearly a Panzerjäger IV, just a bit too small.... Looking at the Panzerjäger IV in that picture (and I am nut sure if it is my eyesight or if the picture is too blurry): Is that a muzzle brake on the L70?? So far I have only seen pictures of the PzIV/70 without a muzzle brake..... Uwe

I am a little bit surprised that there is no further info of the announced demo..... Ok, ACG has not asked for it specifically, but if there is the demo still planned, I would have expected Battlefront to take advantage of the free publicity - Maybe there is none. Time will tell. Uwe

There is a new interview up on Armchair General about ToW. They talk about the main focus of their recent work: What will not be implemented in the release version: How they want to place it between CoH and CM (from a CM point of view): About the system specs: Where ToW stood and about the changes to that position: And finally (drumroll...) the release and pre-order date: Pretty exciting news. Mortars in, (more?) realisitc engagement ranges, no heavy bombers in CAS, hopefully ToW is out by end of January. Just no entering buildings and no word on their plans about the mission and scenario editor. Uwe

Thanks for posting your impressions here - seems that Officers is not exactly the impressive game (from a CM point of view) that it could have been...... Too bad. Here is another opinion of the demo on Armchair General. Uwe

I just saw that the demo for Officers is available since yesterday - even though their webside seems to be down for the last few days. Here is the link: http://www.gamershell.com/download_16732.shtml Unfortunately my rig is too slow for such a recent game and I only wanted to get a new one when ToW comes out. (Probably next year in March then ) Maybe someone of you out there is interested in Officers too and they can post some of their impressions of the demo version. I am still debating for myself if Officers has the potential to be a good wargame or just another RTS clickfest - at least when they started they had something else in mind than the typical clickfest. Uwe

I would give them $39,90 and nothing significantly more for the game..... no matter if it is Christmas this year or next year. As long as it is mostly bug free and -battlefrontish- realistic. Everything else after I have played the demo. Uwe

Just imagine the nightmare of animating all the soldiers you need for dismounting the 88 and make it ready to fire - it was possible to fire it from the trailer but was not the common way for doing so (probably reduced life time of the trailer). And then the same animations for 7 soldiers instead of 8, and for 6 instead of 8, and for 5 instead of 8, and for 4 instead of 8, and for 3 instead of 8, and for 2 instead of 8...... and 1 soldier would just be busy for the length of a scenario to fire the first shot..... Sheesh - they kept small 2 and 3 men mortars out in the first place because of to many animations involved and this guy asks for the 88 Uwe

I think for the "standard" 14yrs old RTS kid ToW will be competing with CoH and will most likely loose on that field. On the other hand you have the hardcore grogs who will compare it to CM and for THEM ToW will most likely loose there too. But is that all the crowd out there?? There were all the (similar to CM) hardcore grogs that played Close Combat because it was a RTS game. There are all the not-so-hardcore-grogs who are just going for some easy entainment. And there will be some RTS players drawn deeper into the more "realisitc" field of wargames. I guess there will be a market for such a game in the size of the typical Battlefront market share, maybe even bigger. An interesting article on Armchair General states some sales figures of the serious wargame market: Conquest of the Aegan - 3000 copies CM-series - "well over one hundred thousand copies" (I guess all three games together) With these sales figures in the back of my head I guess ToW is able to sell pretty well out there. I do not know how often the Il2 Sturmovik series sold but with 1C choosing battlefront as the publisher for ToW they knew that battlefront does not have the potential to market a product like CDV, ubisoft or codemasters could. At the end all comes down to the sales numbers. Hopefully they can sell enough copies of ToW fulfill there expectations and to make working on the series like they did with 1C and with CM wortwhile. Uwe

Wego happens with CM:SF. As a long time CM player myself I have to choose between modern war wego or WW2 RTS (hopefully on the realisitc side)..... and for me personally I had not to think long where I see myself in the future. Not with SF! I have no interest whatsoever in modern warfare.... I hope that all the valid points you have mentioned (...doesn't allow infantry to enter buildings, no scenario or map editors...) and some more will be fixed either before the release, in a patch or for a second game in a series of ToW games. With seeing the dedication of battlefront, of 1C with Il2 Sturmovik and of the peolpe here on the board I am confident that we will get there!! Uwe

That's very good news!! - I was quite concerned about the force combination posted by Daimyo. A totally wild mix of German AFVs attacking together. Uwe

Thanks for the sign of life - at least CM:C is still on track and moving..... Uwe

German fan site and here is the link to the screenshots I guess it is the most complete collection of all the WW2 RTS - Battlefield Command - Wartime Command - WW2 RTS - Theatre of war screenshots that were ever released. But we all know that there were some features in the game that were kicked out, others came in and hopefully some more will be added right now. So a screenshot does not say anything about the content of the actual game. Uwe

It is a Dutch Fokker G.I from Anthony Fokkers Airplane company (the one who designed the famous Fokker E and DR series of WWI). It flew first in March 37 and delivery of the 36 build serial production samples began in 38. It had: 2 Bristol Mercury VIII engines of 830HP each wingspan of 17,18m length of 11,51m weight empty of 3325kg weight loaded of 4800kg high speed of 472km/h in 4250m height max. height of 9300m duration of 1510km 9 7,8mm machine guns 400kg of maximum bomb load crew of 3 At the German invasion of the low countries 23 G.I where in service but did not play a major role during the fighting. I can only imagine the butcher fest 10 of them would have had with an unprotected flight of German Do17s or He111s. Most of them got destroyed on the ground. The Germans used the ones that were still flyable after the invasion for training purposes. (all data from Kenneth Munson, Aircraft of WWII) Hope that helps a bit. Uwe

Hopefully Battlefront takes all the time they need to bring the game to a standard that will please most people here. Listening to Daimyos reports -thanks again for sharing with us- I assume the Russian version would not be well appreciated here with the crowd. If it is going to be next year spring or summer, fine with me.... I prefer to have a good game I will play for some years in 8 months from now than a sh!tty one before Christmas that will not see New Years Eve on my HD. Uwe

But CoH had probably the budget that 1C hoped to get during the codemasters days.... After codemasters jumped off -I guess- the budgeting of ToW took a different turn. Uwe

Does that mean there is nothing in between a tank with the commander buttoned and the tank commander standing outside of the tank??? I would expect some kind of "unbutton" move or something like "commander spotting around" or alike..... This "one crewman having a look around", does that mean this crewman is standing beside or on top of the tank after you have ordered him to do so? Uwe

Thanks for your fast reply..... If only BFC would be have as responsive as you Would that not be what you expect?? When you give some tanks a formation order that they take that formation and the slowest tank in the formation gives the speed for that formation. Otherwise they could not keep that formation and would leave the slowest tank behind. Some goes for a combined comand to tanks with infantry. I would expect the tanks to cruise along at the speed of the infantry. Uwe

Daimyo, thanks for your info about the Russian version..... I guess it is putting some pressure on BFC to share some more info about the international version with us. So far it leaves a bit of a split feeling in my guts. There are quite some negative points in there (amount of tanks, tank speed...) but most of them seem to be tweaked easily with just sme different numbers or scenarion design: Hopefully BFC is looking after that. On the other hand the pathfinding problems Daimyo mentioned have the potential to be more of an issue - but that's just my guess and I hope I'll get corrected by BFC and it is easy to fix (if it actually is an issue). Daimyo, maybe you can go into more detail about the pathfinding later on?? Thanks in advance Uwe

Nearly right You have just missed in this thread that Moon made his statement last year in October Uwe

IIRC the first vid is already from quite a while ago - from the prebattlefront era. So maybe there are some changes to the actual release version. But thanks for posting it anyways. With all the new interest in ToW showing up over here there will be quite a few people who have not seen it yet. Uwe

The Officers demo will be out first.... The 3 posts Nikodem had in the last 2 months over there sounded more convincing than the 2 posts Megakill had at the same time period here Uwe

As nice as it would be to have that feature......it will not be in the release version. They are thinking to release an enhanced scenario editor after the game release. Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no final word about a map editor yet. Because maps are supposed to be not as "simplified" as they were in CM - map making is not that simple either.... Uwe

And what's with recrewing shot down planes and flying off with them?? Even if it takes another 3 months to implement that feature I want that in...... or maybe planes are like flying buildings and can not be entered??? :confused: Uwe

There will be a mission editor - as editing xml files is the way to handle it in ToW. So you can change forces, settings and so on..... Although there will be no map editior included. Battlefront and 1C are thinking to include a full editor (not only xml) in an add on. This way editing scenarios is easier and more self explanatory. But I am not sure, if a map editior will be included then. Uwe