Panzer Commander style tank sims on the horizon?

[Galland]

I've played Panzer Commander untill I'm just about sick of it. It's my favorite (and only) WW2 tank simulator, but it's an old game made back when Quake2 was king and people still used Voodoo2 cards. The graphics are primative by today's standards- as is the game play. Aren't we about due for another good WW2 tank sim?

Galland

[ksbearski]

Have you tried "Panzer Elite".? I have it and Panzer Commander and where the graphics are concerned, there is no comparison. Theres also a couple recent ones floating around, "Tiger Claws" I think is one of them. I think they are more arcade in nature, but I could be wrong.

Barry

[stormcaller]

I used to Play lots of Panzer Commander on Mplayer. There a few guys modified it so that each player could have aplatoon of 5 tanks. That extended the life of the game and was quite fun...until. Guys found was to make other modifcations and cheat. They redefined gun and armor values. Soon you got people rigging a game so that there Sherman 75 becaame a low yield nuclear weapon and had speed that would put a Ferrari to shame. im not exagerating either. it was just stupid. I tried the orginal Panzer elite and found many quirks. Also the graphics for me made aiming difficult. They remade the game and called Gold editon or something. But I havent tried that one. As far as the other sims after those two they have all been Space Invaders like. Steel Beasts is great for modern tanks but you can only play the Leapoard 2 and M1A1. Infantry and Air support is barely represented. Thats the biggst bef I have with all tank sims they lack in combined arms modeling.

[Keith Heitmann]

Supposedly there is a new "super" Steel Beasts in the works. The finished game, when it is finally released, is rumored to be in the $120 range. They also have a SB Pro version that adds a bit more to the original SB game. I have only played the original SB demo and that was fun for a while.

Another game to check out is the Combat Mission series. Again I have only played 2 of the demos and they were fun for while. I played the demo to Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin and Combat Missin Afrika Korps, which I think I had the most fun with. I even made a few graphic mods for the game using the demo files and posted them on the Combat Mission Database website for download. I kind of like the CM format, in that it is turn based for issuing orders, but once the game is started the units carry out those orders without pause for one minute until the next order phase comes up.

[stormcaller]

I had CM 1 and 2 and they were fun for awile but I found to many flaws and inaccuracys in the game. Also the lack of concistancy from release to release is a real killer for me. They do make nice paint jobs for the tank and some great maps. The system itself though is to lacking.

[Keith Heitmann]

I sort of like the "lack of virtual control" that CM has once the orders phase is over. Hard to cheat in a system like that when playing online, and it kind of gives you a taste of what a commander might go through while running a battle. In some games you have too much control over what is occurring on the map every moment of the battle.

[stormcaller]

That is cool, And it works in sometimes but not always. My favorite example of it working is a scenario converted from ASL. Peiper in the battle of the bulge at Chaumont. I had panzer 4's and SS infantryadvancing down this road. the TV was opend up even withsmall arms fire bouning of the hull. an eltie crew of the SS. unphased by the small arms fire the Panzer continues to send the lightly armed infantry scrambling. Then you can hear the distanct sound of a American .50 opening up on the Panzers. As soon as the panzer commander saw that he button's up and the main gun starts pounding HE into the MG gun nest. The SS infantry are pone and static until the 50 cal is neutrilized, then they promptly rise and continue to advance. This was all in one turn without me touching anything. Rare to see in PC wargames. But I just found to many quirks in the system. Also I prefer the larger games and the system is limited. No matter how much RAM you pack into your PC that program will choke on the larger scenarios.

[Keith Heitmann]

Computer games have come a very long way, but they still aren't perfect. They still can't get things to work in a truly random fashion. No matter how they program it it the program still produces patterns. With faster CPUs coming out games will get much smoother and bigger.

I run a P4 3Ghz computer with 1GB of RAM and a top end video card. Yet a game like Children of the Nile can choke it if the city I build becomes too large. The system will tend to bog down and run in fits and starts. Most of my older games, will run extremely smoothly, even my FPS games. But give it a game that has to keep track of as much as it has to in CotN and it will surely bog.

It will be interesting to see how realistic wargames will become in the next few years. Hey, when they get to CGI graphic realism that runs on most computers smoothly they'll really have something.