How do you feel about TOW today?

[TAC101]

I am teetering on the edge of purchasing TOW and I need a push or a pull to safety.

What is you opinion on the state of the game today? Pros, cons, and anything else you can add to help me in my final decision.

Thank you!

[winqvist]

Idiotic infantry when acting on their own, when commanded by a player there are huge variety of things to do with them. Modelling seems to be good, graphics are real eyecandy. Russian infantry have too many automatic weapons and propably at-grenades compared to the historic facts -> Unrealistically high firepower.

Overall, good, challenging and fun game to play.

Ps. Russian campaing has a scenario called "surrounded". That is propably the best wargame scenario what I have ever played, yet.

[Stoppelhopser]

Have you played the latest demo?

Then read some old posts from last April, when the game came out. Then play a second time. Best way to form an opinion.

I found it does not captivate me and mostly stopped playing after just about two months but this is subjective.

As I am also one of the poor beings waiting til eternity for the Kalypso (publisher in europe) patch I would say, if you buy - buy direct from BFC.

[TAC101]

Originally posted by Stoppelhopser:

Have you played the latest demo?

Then read some old posts from last April, when the game came out. Then play a second time. Best way to form an opinion.

I found it does not captivate me and mostly stopped playing after just about two months but this is subjective.

As I am also one of the poor beings waiting til eternity for the Kalypso (publisher in europe) patch I would say, if you buy - buy direct from BFC.

Actually I have played the demo and I like what I seen. However I am still undecided and when looking at past comments in the forum opinions seem to be split right down the middle.

I am just curious what people think now after a few patches.

[SG1]

My advice would be to go for it. Provided your system supports the game you should not regret it.

I did and enjoy it all the way.

A fair amount of the negative comments are based on comparisons with other games by players who are used to something different. The usual complaint therefore goes "I used to do this or that move successfully, it's not the case anymore with TOW, that sucks".

Once you have bought it, read the manual and understand the various functions. And most of all : recce and sound use of ground !

And last but not least, NEVER forget this is a EUR 40.-- PC-game and NOT a million-budget full shebang military simulation requiring some industrial or research Cray super-calculator.

[redbear]

TOW start as an RTS game them move to wargame but i think it is in the middle. in this case you don't have to use brute force to win, in this case you have to use proper tactics to win.

The scenarios are difficult but fun too once you understand the game mechanics. do not compare this game to CM they are totally different thing.

The problem most of the people complain is micromanaging you have to baby sit your infantry and your tanks. especially your tnak you have to give them the hold order to keep them in place, they like to go charging to the front.

Multiplayer is find but personally i don't like it all the scenarios you have to choose from a pool of forces, you dont buy them.

In overall i recommend the game it is fun this is a brain game.

[bazacop]

the main thing i dont like about the game is that it doesnt have a dynamic campaign in which if u win the battles it matters in the next mission i like to no if i have done the right tactics and defeated my foe that i would be rewarded by moving the front

there all like individal battles i dont like that

[himmelstoss]

all in all i love it, but....for some reason i stopped playing.

there are still allot of things that just straight piss me off. like it seems the allies are always way overpowered in terms of hit and miss etc.

than the mp is very week in terms of server stability.

than do i have the feeling that its dead in the water and the developers are not caring about it anymore to press ahead with updates nor do i see any add-on coming in the near future.

i am playing PanzerCommad: Kharkov right now and i must say playing it already more than i have ever tow, even though it just came out two days ago (matrix games).

there is just something that does not jive in tow.

but again i still love it for what it is i guess...wired really....

best,

himmelstoss

[Mukavamedia]

I think TOW has a big potential to become "the wargame", but I think it is not ready yet.

[theBrit]

Its probably best you give it a miss...and check out TOW2 when it comes.

[TAC101]

Thanks for the advice! I think I'll hold off and see how the expansion is received by the community.

-TAC101

[Timber]

How is the game in terms of realistic armor penetration figures ? I'm asking as a screenshot shows the 75mm KwK40 L/48 only penetrating 48mm of armor at 2,000m. In reality it would pierce 64mm of 260 BHN armor angled at 30 degrees at that distance.. (According to Bird & Livingston)

Haven't bought the game yet as I want to make sure it's as realistic as the Combat Mission series in this regard. Would be great with those excellent graphics and damage models

[433tom]

Great graphics, but the biggest letdown for me is that you can't enter buildings. The other problem is you have to micromanage your units or they will eventually run towards the enemy and commit suicide. Which makes the game almost unplayable when you have a lot of Units on the screen. TOW has the potential to be one one of the best wargames, but IMO falls far short at the moment.

[LeLynx]

Originally posted by 433tom:

Great graphics, but the biggest letdown for me is that you can't enter buildings. The other problem is you have to micromanage your units or they will eventually run towards the enemy and commit suicide. Which makes the game almost unplayable when you have a lot of Units on the screen. TOW has the potential to be one one of the best wargames, but IMO falls far short at the moment.

:confused: I have no problem to manage my units, just press the "hold position button" :cool: . I don't like missions with too much units.

[Sfox28]

Ditto, ditto, ditto! It needs some real changes and something to put some life into a real campaign!

[SlapHappy]

I've tinkered as much with this game as much as probably all but a couple of people that frequent this board (minus the JSH guys who I don't think show up here). There are only a couple of MAJOR problems which I dislike. Unfortunately these problems are deal killers for me at this stage of play.

1) Lack of a fundamental TAC-AI. Specifically for infantry. This really shows this game's lineage as an RTS. The only feel I have for infantry self-preservation is that they tend to crawl into trenches if they are nearby. Other than that I can't think of anything they can do that doesn't have to be micro-managed by the player. The really frustrating thing is I believe all the parameters are viewable to the user with the modding tools to manipulate troop behavior, but I haven't been able to fully wrap my head around how they interact with one another. As it stands infantry seem to be best suited to getting themselves killed. Therefore infantry on infantry battles are pretty uninteresting - Something I haven't found to be true in CMSF which has a much superior infantry model (in my opinion).

2) 360 degree vision from vehicles. I really hate this one. I figured out a long time ago how to manipulate the spotting ranges around a tank, but I don't see any way to decrease visibility around the back and sides without heavily decreasing visibility from the front as well. In other words, I can't change them non-linearly. This makes tank killing almost impossible without ridiculously toning down their visible range from the front of the vehicle vs. infantry.

3) non-enterable buildings. Yeah, this one stinks , but if 1 and 2 could be fixed I'd at least be more likely to want to boot up TOW again and maybe tinker with the map editor.

4) Terrain issues. Specifically the "park-like" trees in the game. Where i think they went wrong here was the actual design concept. Instead of individual trees as objects, they should have made tree and bush "areas" which represented a larger number of trees and bushes not just a single plant. It's nice that the way they did it allows you to knock down trees in a graphically convincing way in the game engine, but at too high of a cost in game limitations. Unless you limit the map size substantially it's very difficult to include the amount of greenery you may desire for any particular scenario (without potentially making the game unstable). This has some very dire effects on LOS and gameplay.

[433tom]

Slapheppy. Actually the infantry isn't too bad as long as your not facing tanks. I created a small scenario with nothing other than an american infantry squad aganst a german infantry squad and it plays pretty well. To me, the biggest problem is the LOS for the tanks. It makes infantry pretty much useless.

As for tanks and trees. I think they run over the trees a bit to often.

[SlapHappy]

I think infantry kill each other too easily....especially at some fairly significant ranges. They also need better ability to use/locate defensive terrain and cover by themselves without too much fiddling.

That's just me, though

Surrender AI would be nice, too!

[SlapHappy]

Also, read this article and see if it doesn't back up everything I mentioned above -

http://www.angelfire.com/art/enchanter/range.html

[433tom]

Hey, I agree with you. But to me the infantry is at least playable as long there are no tanks involved. Once tanks are involved, its just a matter of time until they get killed. That was my only point.

[HKLE]

Hi folks

I am not the micromanagement guy either. But I REALLY like the possibility to "sit" on the selected unit (e.g. a tank) by pressing the "enter" key and accompany it through the woods. It gives a whole other impression.

Of course, by selecting other units, you are able to do micromanagement in a different way. Well - I do not like too many units myself, so the editor, which came with the patch, was crucial for me.

For me, this behaviour of the game replaces former Panzer games like Panzer Elite etc very effectively.

[Miguel B.]

Well, after a long absence I continue to feel cheated by Kalypso. I figured if I waited a couple of months, the new patch should be out for the german version... I guess not.

Cheers...