Stefan Hundhammer

Then by all means get SB Pro PE. You'll be on the receiving end of that "blowing away" business in a hurry.

To knock out some vision blocks and the thermal imager, for example. The most sophisticated tank becomes pretty useless if its crew can't see anything and thus can't shoot. I read more than once that the USMC trains their riflemen to lay down M-16 fire on those sensitive parts of tanks to disable them. You won't get a kill that way, but you can take a tank out of the battle by simply turning it blind. I don't know if that is modelled in BoF, though. BoF Infantry tends to have lots of RPGs - you typically never life long enough to see if their rifle fire alone can do you any harm.

Right, that's very good news! But for most of us, it looks like it's time to blow the dust off the BoF CDs and re-read the manual... ;-}

Time is passing by. The elders of you might remember that once upon a time there was this promise about a patch to fix the major (freezing) and minor (coax reloading etc.) issues with BoF - but where is it? I'd like to see it before I die of old age... Worse, there hasn't even been any kind of update about the current state of affairs. Battlefront is seriously testing our patience here.

Some real tanker please correct me if I am wrong, but what I read so far HEAT is normally used against APCs, i.e., soft-skinned targets - because HEAT simply does not have the punch AP (aka SABOT) has. OTOH since SABOT rounds use kinetic energy only (they are basically sub-caliber arrow-like metal rods) from a certain distance on HEAT might be able to outperform them - friction in the air takes some of the energy. The effect of HEAT rounds does not deteriorate with distance - they are a shaped charge that explodes upon impact on target. References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEAT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabot As for "wasting rounds on helos", I think in real life every tanker will do his damnedest to get one of those things out of the air before it starts killing THEM - (attack) helos are just about the worst threat any tank has to fear. If you have to suspect the helo spotted you, better begin pumping metal into the air as long as you still can...

Nice try.

klugman, no offense, but an overclocked machine is not a basis to prove _anything_ . Everybody should know that overclocking is something to do at one's own risk. It is no use blaming anybody for any crash with an overclocked machine. Everything can happen on such a machine. Even if you think it is running smoothly and stable, any appllication that causes CPU load or uses lots of memory or that causes I/O load or that extensively uses the graphics card's or the sound card's HW acceleration can be that little drop of water that makes the barrel overflow. Been there, done that - on the receiving end as a Linux system programmer, working on bug reports why Linux was so unstable on their machines while their Windows had run so well. People tend not to believe that there are differences how software uses hardware. This is why we dumped all bug reports from people with overclocked machines. Those bug reports are simply worthless. An overclocked machine may break down at any moment whithout any special reason. We are not talking about crashes due to hardware that is inherently instable all by itself. We are not talking about bluescreens or crash to desktop. Most of us are talking about a situation where all of a sudden T72's display doesn't move any more - your tank and the whole sim world is stuck. Sound is playing, but there is no reaction to mouse, keyboard or joystick events. You can switch to the Windows desktop with Alt-Tab. You can open the Windows task manager with Ctrl-Alt-Del. It shows T72 running normally (not as "not responding" or anything). You can switch back to T72. The screen goes black for a moment, then you see that message "restoring graphics resources". But the sim world and your tank is still stuck (with the sound playing). My machine is NOT overclocked. It runs rock-solid on both Windows and Linux. Yet I experience that freezing problem. HW specs: P4-2.8 HT Asus PC800 Motherboard 512 MB RAM ATI Radeon 9600 Pro Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS (exchanged for previous SB Live! 5.1 Digital 4 weeks ago - same problem with freezing) Win XP Home SP2 No virus scanner or firewall SW active (no modem etc. for Win) No additional SW active at the same time as T72 (only default Win XP services) latest ATI and SB drivers turning down SB HW acceleration did not help one bit fiddling with T72 config options (gras etc.) did not help, either

You can try to tweak your systems forever - this will not help you a bit. It will only contribute to your system's utter ruination. My system runs perfectly stable with any other game - no bluescreens, no sudden reboots, no crazy effects. Even "Lock On" (a.k.a. LOMAC) runs without crashing it (since its latest patch, of course). It is BoF's fault, not the system's. How else could we be able to Alt-Tab back and forth between the Win task manager and BoF? How else could that "restoring graphics resource" message appear each time we Alt-Tab back to BoF? Please be reasonable. Don't fiddle with memory timings etc.; don't move back to older driver versions or whatever. You might as well throw a black cat over your left shoulder at full moon for the very same effect. No, that's not quite true: That black cat won't ruin your systems beyond sanity. That's about the only difference.

More tech specs: P4 2.8 GHz HT 512 MB RAM ATI Radeon 9600 Pro Audigy 2 ZS latest drivers, in particular for graphics and sound card not overclocked no bluescreens, no random system crashes, HW is absolutely rock-solid stable Alt-Tab works as it should when the games locks up, even all graphics parameters are restored allright (gamma etc.) Game can be killed with the Win process manager process manager lists game as "running", not as "not responding" just a wild guess: can it have something to to with hyperthreading - subtle timing or deadlock problems? If I can do anything to narrow down the problem, please tell me. I don have some experience in that area - I earn my living as a (Linux) system programmer.

BTW of course all drivers are up to date, I have Win-XP Home SP2 and got rid of that XP firewall and virus scanner (Win no phone home here - only penguins are allowed to use the phone...). I can kill the process from the process manager allright, so this time it's not a Windows problem, it is that game. Definitely. Any playing sound keeps playing, too. And when I Alt-Tab back and forth, I even get that "restoring graphics resources" message, but as soon as I see my tank again, nothing happens any more - no mouse action, no reaction to key presses, no reaction to joystick movement.

BTW of course all drivers are up to date, I have Win-XP Home SP2 and got rid of that XP firewall and virus scanner (Win no phone home here - only penguins are allowed to use the phone...). I can kill the process from the process manager allright, so this time it's not a Windows problem, it is that game. Definitely. Any playing sound keeps playing, too. And when I Alt-Tab back and forth, I even get that "restoring graphics resources" message, but as soon as I see my tank again, nothing happens any more - no mouse action, no reaction to key presses, no reaction to joystick movement.

I read some comments about intermittent freezes of that program. It happens to me, too - and boy, this really sucks since there is no way to save within a mission, so when it happens, you have to do it all over again. :-( And adding insult to injury, the game statistics count that as a failed mission. Come on, guys, ever heard of incrementing a counter AFTER an action has been performed?! Any hints about workarounds for that freeze phenomenon - other than putting the game aside and hope that an upcoming patch will fix it?

I read some comments about intermittent freezes of that program. It happens to me, too - and boy, this really sucks since there is no way to save within a mission, so when it happens, you have to do it all over again. :-( And adding insult to injury, the game statistics count that as a failed mission. Come on, guys, ever heard of incrementing a counter AFTER an action has been performed?! Any hints about workarounds for that freeze phenomenon - other than putting the game aside and hope that an upcoming patch will fix it?

I read through some threads here about how to command attached units, but somehow I don't quite get it. How does it work? I can set one waypoint on the map. How do I tell my units which one is to move there? Or is it really just ONE command ("one size fits all"?) for all units, including my AI driver? (Sometimes I am tempted to order him out of the tank and shoot him with the main gun BTW - he is so stupid...) I can't quite believe that. It cannot possibliy be THAT simplistic. There must be some way to select a unit and then tell it what to do. I mean, come on, decade-year-old games like Operation Flashpoint had really cool maps and ways to move your units around on the battlefield. I must be missing something here. Or don't I? Unfortunately, the manual is not very helpful, either. Is there some online tutorial or something? This sim could be so great, but it's the little things that can drive you crazy.

Uh - six, care to enlighten us what this is all about?!

Hm - so I don't seem to be the only one, but still I'd like to be able to zoom as TC. No zoom makes the TC position pretty useless IMHO. Any comment from anybody from Battlefront?!

They should probably behave somewhat different when driving - but vastly different? I don't know. Look here: http://www.battletanks.com/t34_85.htm T34-85: 500 hp, 34 mph, 32 tons http://www.battletanks.com/t-72.htm T72: 840 hp, 50 mph, 48.9 tons So the T72's advantage in having a more powerful engine is offset by its heavier weight. Maybe in BoF the T34's top speed is just modeled too high?! So the comparision would be more the DC-3 Gooney Bird vs. a C-130 Hercules...

Uh - yes, that's what I mean: There should be a lot of 250 rounds boxes, not just one. Or is there some way to reload the coax magazine as well? IIRC hitting "R" when I run out of coax ammo didn't help me any.

Isn't the amount of ammo for the coax MG awfully low? I can recall real-life tankers telling stories of how an M1A1 tank typically carries something in the order of 10000 rounds of 7.62 ammo. Agreed, there have to be tradeoffs for realism vs. balanced gameplay, but I really wonder if those Balkans on Fire coax MGs are not downgraded way too much by this.

I don't seem to be able to hit a barn door with the coax MG of any of the tanks. All I ever manage to do is trial and error - walk the tracers to the target. I tried using the "P" ammo type and the laser range finder as well as manual mode - no difference. How is the coax scale in the gunsight supposed to work? What do I use as the aiming reference? Is the coax also slightly offset to the left or to the right as it used to be in Panzer Elite? Confused...

Hi all! The manual and the controls setup mention "view zoom in / zoom out" commands for the tank commander as well as for the gunner - mouse wheel up / down and Num+ / Num- by default. It works for me for the gunner for the T-34 and for the T-72, but I never even once managed to change the tank commander's zoom level - and yes, I was using the TC's vision blocks view (looking very much like the gunner's view, the one with circle and scales). What's wrong?