Stoppelhopser

After a bit more than a week with the full game I have to say that it grows on me. Certainly not as bad as many made it. Requires a slightly different gameplay down low than other titles IMHO. Of course there are still some annoyances, these have all been written about in the past. There was a first patch in summer which improved gameplay somewhat. We are also promised at least another patch but its been so for a while now.

A belated thank you for the video tutorials from a brand new player. They are very accessible even for non native speakers and are a fundamental help to understand the editor. Maybe you could do to another one or two on odds and ends or things you found out in the mean time? Anyway, thanks again.

I also have the same bizarre phenomena as BAT502 on my system, so thanks for the tip Gnasher.

Ah, "Hold" for AFV and "Hold fire" for the infantry is worth gold. Thanks gentlemen. Also padlocking on the unit with "Enter" carefully moving forward. Handling is soo much better now. R33GZ: I can't yet find the LOS-tool in my copy of 1.7.0.68. I liked the screenshots of this feature and look forward to it. I finished the first german mission in Poland with very light casualties by using pincer movement and combined weapon tactics. Good mission for my taste. But got stopped at Dunkirk like so many others. I think most casual players will be put off by this "mission from hell". I think another polish mission and a further first french mission should have been inserted in between to get the player more familiar with the game handling . Of course there are also many good points. As someone who also builds scale models I love the vehicle visuals. Also the detailed damage model and the animations. French tanks being slow etc are very nice touches. I also had a brave tank man who lost his mount pick up hand grenades and destroy a 75mm crew before he was mown down. Will try to win Dunkirk over the weekend with the help of the posting in the tactical forum. One last thing: I'd like to suggest a model of the french 25mm AT gun for the add-on or as a mod. This was available in big numbers and despite the small calibre very hard hitting and the main AT weapon, with the 47mm AT gun not available in big numbers. Should not be too hard to build as a 3D model, too.

Weissmann: Thank your for mentioning. I'm not yet through the manual and I guess playing tactical PC games for 1o years has made me a bit high nosed not to work properly through the manual first. I will try hard and dig deeper. Sneaksie: Yes, german version. Will take more time and form a more qualified opinion and let you know in a few days. Will also try the mission builder myself to see what lies in there. I have of course also seen good things by the AI and so far had hardly a problem with AFV wayfinding (you know the surprises CC vehicle AI could play on an unsuspecting gamer sending off his tanks in a decisive situation :eek: ). Thank you for continuing support. If I like something I can be a very loyal customer. I have bought all the Il2 products by 1C:Maddox team and have been a fan from 2001 due to their cummunication with the target community.

So, this was my first evening with the full game. Full points for package and presentation. Graphics are lovely and the attention to detail is deep and to my taste. But... I have two questions. Do the people who made the missions hate the players? Are there any missions included which can be fought and won with sound tactics instead of hindsight and rehearsing for the 10th time? Are all missions of the fight first wave, loose many of your own, get more units, enemy counter attacks with even more, your tanks are gone soon and you can watch the enemy tanks wipe out your infantry to the last ? Playing some late single missions as allied I have seen more german tanks than my grandfathers Paul and Heinrich in the real war... My real and pressing question however: How can I stop my tanks from wandering off? I know about the defend button (shield like graphic) But after setting this, when they encounter an enemy they still wander off and I try frantically to use the stop button on them. They come back to the location if they survive so it feels more like a rallying point to me. I lost many, many tanks today for this most annoying behavior. Herding my sisters small children some years ago was easier than to keep a platoon of TOW tanks together. There seems to be a tendency to run off and close up to about 75-150 meters. As a CinC "I" want my tanks and self propelled guns to watch the firing lanes "I" assign, and not them looking for more action and get blasted in the flank or leaving their comrades flank open. I can understand moving a few meters like the infantry sometimes do, but charging off like cavalry into a melee I hate. At least this single thing was handled better in the ancient Close Combat engine.

Good news Jmayer. Today an unfriendly postman brought my german edition 1.7.0.68. As I'm not the multiplayer type I am more interested in "other fixes", some of which Sneaksie mentioned.

Tomorrow we might know more if someone picks it up early. I have to wait til next week when the money comes in

Good post Manx. Chasing the health bar hyper click customers is not the right way for this product.

Would be good thing in the longer run if the team can find time for that. Not a lot of people can afford MAX, but there is the free "Gmax" which comes with Microsoft Flight simulations and the free "Blender" and "Wings3D" among others. "Blender" is very capable nowadays. If for example .obj format could be converted into TOW models one day that would provide an impetus to modding.

Nidan1:

Flanker15 and nachinus already laid down my 3 points. My point 3.5: Enemy surrendering and or retreating, making a stand, retreat further etc pp. Battles not lasting to either last cowboy or indian . Maybe a trigger with a little randomness like : If casualties >50% chance for retreat 75%, if casualties >75% chance for retreat 90%. A morale factor for the battle group so to speak. "Seeing neighbouring platoons wiped out = bad juju = less enthusiasm to attack ...

The demo is actually not the best to show off TOW. The defence scenario from the tutorial has put of more than one prospecting customer, be sure. "Seelow heights" ran abysmal on my and two other machines of friends. So of us three, one mate bought it. He went through the German campaign and since then it catches dust, not interested in the editor or other campaigns. The other lost interest from the demo gameplay. I was on the fence. I am quite sure to pick up this title soon though, like to play with the editor and try a few own ideas but there are some things in gameplay that I don't care much for. I accept however I can't get everything I like in life. Anyhow, it's good to hear there is more content coming and Sneaksies presence here is also a good thing.

Zamo is right. Sinsheim is a travesty show. Some technically doubtful restaurations with sometimes grotesque paint jobs from hell. For example: Vehicles found in Europe with about 30 percent real paint still intact "restored" and painted as African theatre vehicles and totally destroying the historical relation. Best to be avoided.

Thanks for answering Sneakie and congratulations. Its a good thing to know you are aware of the CC series ...

I don't fully agree with Bloodstar44. However, he HAS a point. Maybe people here in europe are different but most don't want to play with the same troops they see in news every evening where real people lie in their blood... Gaming is about escapism, too. Is that hard to understand ? The few people I know which are into tactical games are all uneasy with the setting and would have loved a WW2 or Korea setting. Or a napoleonic or Independence War Realtime/WEGO, like I want . That does not mean that I don't support the realtime feature and the new engine. They can't come out with the old engine in 2007 and think they will earn money. They have to look into the future. I will buy this title eventually. Though I will be the only one of my friends.

Excellent idea bus. "We are under heavy fire" und "Geht in Deckung" I remember well. This is more intense and helps the player to keep awareness. My backup copy of the old CC2 is marked November 1997. So I suggest that the TOW team gets a copy and studies it well. Graphics nowadays are much much better. But, playing through the big campaign of CC2 Arnhem this spring I have to say that together with the CM series this is still my scale of measure for a tactical game. In the campaign it matters which area you support and how you fight effects the course of things. This could be done 10 years ago and ran well on a P133. I look forward to the next patch and if I see some progress will buy the end of October shop release here in germany.

Knaust1: There is a program called FRAPS around. You can measure fps and capture video from games with it. The demo is free to download.

Not to dilute the thread but I agree with FinnN. CC2 had the best campaign for me. Second best to me was CC5. The last one had the best vehicle pathfinding, too.

Destraex: is that a mod for CC5? I don't remember a Caen setting ... After the recent big disappointment with TOW I again installed CC2 and played through the grand campaign and now do the same for CC4, though I don't like that part as much as the others. The graphics may be dated, sometimes the landscape is hard to judge well and some of the pathfinding and vehicle damage seems odd (just had a Puma AC 5cm round bouncing off a Stuart's side armor at 250m, of course the Stuart hit with the first shot with it's 37mm) but I still love the general concept. Together with CM it's my first choice.

*writes MrSpkr's name on a artillery round* Congratulations to the new laptop, however.

Stimme zu. Faires, informiertes und sinnvolles preview wie man es sonst eigentlich nie zu sehen oder lesen bekommt.

Well, I see a very distinctive difference between 30 and 60 fps in for example "Il2-1946", the famous flight sim by 1C and most other games I own. Its also good to have reserves when more hectic scenes come into mind. Flying around with 30 fps over the grass means 11 fps over cities with AAA fire. Thats not playable anymore for a flight sim for example. Sure a tactical game can be well enjoyable with 15-20 fps. But I get down to 4 fps WITH tweaking done in the Seelow demo mission, which is why I still haven't bought it and will wait for more optimisation. Saw the full game on a friends machine, 3.2 CPU, GF 7800GS, 1GB RAM, slightly better than mine in CPU and GPU and performance was very chokey while Medieval Total War 2 runs massive battles slick even with shader 3 enabled. Computer games also don't have motion blur like videos and TV, don't forget that.

I am a little surprised about all the discussion of the men inside the house. Even we at the German Air Force in the eighties with just a basic 6 week infantry training used standard gestures and kept totally quiet in the field. Also seems to a layman like me like some angles were not that well covered and a sniper working from another roof would have got at least one of them. On the other hand it all went well and these are much more experienced soldiers than I ever was and certainly know how to act right.

Oudy, I can not offer hard data, but its right the gun breech is turned to the left (just building a 1/48 Tamiya Firefly model and have found pictures from the interior of the real thing). Also the 17pdr round is longer than the 75mm round. Remember, the co driver position was deleted and a ammunition rack built in there. So I would say its hardly possible to reload as fast as a normal Sherman. By how much I don't know however.