any more russian opinions ?

[Max WARRIOR]

I think when English version going to be released, 1C make patch for russian version in order to have similar game, compatible in multiplayer and future patches. That usual practice.

[track]

According to the Russian site there seems to be also the issue of the game sucking raw computing power like a vacuum.

[Max WARRIOR]

99% of this peoples, who say about bugs with performance\video\sound, have slow computer or curved setting of drivers\systems.

[Daimyo]

No problem guys, after waiting so long for this game it's nice to finally try it out.

Now I have completed 4 missions in german campaign (1 in Poland which AAR was posted, 1 in France where I had to cross a river and take a village and 2 in Russia near Moscow). In these missions infantry was present and quite a bit of strategy was required to defeat the enemy. For example in first mission against soviets, I destroyed soviet infantry in the trenches and rushed with my tanks and infantry to the train station I had to take. Soviets counterattacked with 2 T-34s, some BT-7s and infantry and destroyed my entire force (1 Pz.IV, 2 Pz.IIIs, 3 38(t)s and 2 infantry squads). I received my reinforcements and successfully destroyed their tanks without losing too many of mine but again rushed to the train station and got destroyed by 57 mm guns and ground attack planes. When I replayed the mission, before soviet counterattack I retreated my infantry to the trenches and used my tanks more wisely and didn't even need the reinforcements.

So far the key to success is to send the infantry near some bushes to inspect enemy defences and then use the tanks to shoot at enemy guns from a distance. Enemy counterattacks usually fail as my tanks take care of enemy tanks and infantry without any cover.

I've noticed that sometimes enemy tanks just stand and do nothing while mine are shooting at them. That should be fixed. Also so far I do not see any point in using artillery or airstrikes as they are very ineffective. It's a bad idea to order tanks move in formation with infantry as tanks have trouble navigating between soldiers and as a result everybody moves very slowly. Also about the speed, some tanks start to move at a high speed from the start, which is not very realistic. And one note from the first mission I played. Tiger, Panther and Jagdtiger move very quickly in cross country (40 km/h or so) and it looks very unrealistic. When I ordered a Jagdpanther, a Tiger II and a Jagdtiger move to a point around 300 m away, Jagdtiger was the quickest to arrive and others arrived like 6 secs later. Heaviest piece of armour shouldn't be so quick.. So speeds are not very realistic, I hope BFC will fix that..

[track]

"No problem guys, after waiting so long for this game it's nice to finally try it out."

Have you already encountered soft vehicles and "less glorious" AFVs? How do they work in the game?

[M Hofbauer]

Thanks for sharing with us Daimyo!

I am sure everybody here feels like that when i say your reports are very much appreciated!

Keep it coming!

[Reichenberg]

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

[cinacchi]

Greetings Daymo,

thanks for sharing infos with us. I have a question, maybe you can help. Is there in the russian version any XML editor to set your forces (i know that there is not yet a full editors, but rumors said that already from the beginning should be there a XML editor to set the compposition of your forces).

thanks in advance,

***Luke

[Daimyo]

Originally posted by track:

Have you already encountered soft vehicles and "less glorious" AFVs? How do they work in the game?

Trucks can be used to quickly bring troops to the front. Halftracks can be used for that too and their MGs are quite effective against infantry. Armored cars can be brought up to take care of enemy gun crews, infantry and light tanks, though they are not accurate from a far distance. Mission I'm playing now has Sd.kz.7 with either 2 cm or 3.7 cm FlaK. At least the 2 cm version was effective against soviet ground attack planes. In the same mission I encountered a bug with PaK.38. For some reason the crew refused to shoot at enemy tank, despite it being 100 metres away. When they finally started shooting at it, the gun barrel was turned to the right, so all the shots missed, though the "Attack" arrow was pointing to the tank. I'm having difficulty completing this mission, because it's difficult to destroy KV1s with Pz.IIIs and Pz.IVs with short barelled guns. Also it doesn't end even if all of my soldiers are dead.. :confused:

Originally posted by Reichenberg:

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

It's more of a problem with cooperation between a number of tanks or tanks with infantry. Units find their way to their objective pretty well, if it's not in a village, but there were no battles in the village itself yet. As I said if you select more than 3 tanks and order them to move in a tight formation, then they wait for one other to get up to speed and therefore the whole formation moves slowly. But normally you don't get like a dozen of tanks, so no problems. Also in the campaign every mission was with combined arms. It's a better feeling, when the mision has some infantry. So the first mission I wrote about maybe was an exception.

Originally posted by cinacchi:

Is there in the russian version any XML editor to set your forces (i know that there is not yet a full editors, but rumors said that already from the beginning should be there a XML editor to set the compposition of your forces).

thanks in advance,

***Luke

No, I didn't notice anything like that. By the way, all the data like models, textures, sounds and maps are stored in big .SFS files in the root folder of the game. I heard that IL-2 files were stored in similar files and that they were coded?

SdKfz 7/1 firing at soviet ground attack plane

Pz.IIIs firing at storming soviets..

..who get destroyed

Defences at the village

Disabled KV-1

[ November 11, 2006, 07:56 AM: Message edited by: Daimyo ]

[Reichenberg]

Thanks for your fast reply..... If only BFC would be have as responsive as you

Originally posted by Daimyo:

As I said if you select more than 3 tanks and order them to move in a tight formation, then they wait for one other to get up to speed and therefore the whole formation moves slowly.

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

[track]

Trucks can be used to quickly bring troops to the front. Halftracks can be used for that too and their MGs are quite effective against infantry. Armored cars can be brought up to take care of enemy gun crews, infantry and light tanks, though they are not accurate from a far distance.

Begins to sound a lot a better:) If there is actually more infantry around than a few odd soldiers of some fire team. Can you transport troops on top of a tank (as riders)?

How is the game running? Frame rates etc.? IL2 at least runs decently on a few years old computer.

[track]

Looking at the screen shots... Only if this game had a decent map and scenario editor...

It would make a lot of WWII gamers extremely happy.

[Lanzfeld]

Yeah the maps look way too open....but we talked about this before.

[track]

"Yeah the maps look way too open....but we talked about this before".

The editor is next to impossible to make if the

enemy actions are scripted. "Design your own" missions would require first person shooter type editing.

[Daimyo]

Originally posted by track:

If there is actually more infantry around than a few odd soldiers of some fire team. Can you transport troops on top of a tank (as riders)?

There's at least 2 obligatory infantry squads (you can't remove them from initial forces, and it has a red title "Blocked" on it) in "combined arms" maps and there was 1 in Prokhorovka. You can't transport troops on tanks, but they would be killed instantly by enemy MG fire, because tanks not only shoot at enemy tanks from their main guns but from MG's also.

One thing I forgot to mention is it's always good to have some infantry at the front, because tanks can't see very well, so they do not always spot enemies. In the Stalingrad mission I had 2 tanks and no infantry at one moment and they could not see any enemies. Just as one of the tank crews climbed out of their tank 1 enemy squad and 2 tanks appeared 500 m away.

Originally posted by track:

How is the game running? Frame rates etc.? IL2 at least runs decently on a few years old computer.

On my PC it runs really bad. 10-15 FPS at best. But it depends on the map and number of units. On a smaller map it runs decent, but now I just played Prokhorovka map and it was terrible. I noticed that during the setup phase before the battle framerate is very good. I guess this is because tanks are not animated then. When playing smoke comes from the engines, when tanks move they leave trails on the grass and even bits of soil come off the tracks. Also everything is much more detailed when you zoom in. The problem is that when you zoom out, you get no detail and no FPS either.

I have one more thing to say about campaign mode. When playing for germans you get 1 mission in Poland, 1 in France, then 2 near Moscow, 1 near Stalingrad, then 1 in Prokhorovka and the next mission I'll play will take place in March 1944. I don't know if it's such a good idea to pick some battles from all the war and just put them into 1 campaign..

[track]

On my PC it runs really bad. 10-15 FPS at best.

Your computer specs????

[Daimyo]

Athlon 3200+, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9800Pro.

[patboy]

Hi Daimyo,

Thanks for your feedback, please, could you post some Polish campaign screenshots "german panzers" I would like check somethings.

Thanks

Pat

[track]

Athlon 3200+, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9800Pro.

Maybe it is designed for a SLI-machine;)

Should run decently on an average computer or a lot of gamers are getting frustrated out there.

[Daimyo]

Originally posted by patboy:

Hi Daimyo,

Thanks for your feedback, please, could you post some Polish campaign screenshots "german panzers" I would like check somethings.

Thanks

Pat

Here's the first polish mission:

[sebastian]

Originally posted by Daimyo:

In the Stalingrad mission I had 2 tanks and no infantry at one moment and they could not see any enemies. Just as one of the tank crews climbed out of their tank 1 enemy squad and 2 tanks appeared 500 m away.

So you cannot simply order the tank commander to unbutton and look around? You have to extract the entire tank crew, to spot enemies?

[Daimyo]

Of course, it's no CM. Well at least if you don't have some infantrymen, you should order one of the crewmen to have a look around for a good view.

[patboy]

Daimyo, thanks that's obviously what I thought, German panzers are not shown with their historical markings! Thanks again.

Pat

[Reichenberg]

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

[Daimyo]

Soldiers can either be in a tank or on the ground. Nothing in between. A tank can see enemies if they are close to it and enemies a bit farther from it if they are in front of it. Also there's the "Attack ground" function, so if you see only smoke from guns but not them themselves, you can shoot around that point with some success. But this function does not always work because line of sight is blocked and it's very difficult to determine when a tank can see the target (in CM you could press L key to know that)..