Developer Diary, Part 113 - Discussion

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

As you can see from the DD that adding these tanks has IMPROVED our aircraft damage model and they have no negative impact on development of our planes. As has been said by Han, this is a bit of an experiment that we think will add some excitement and new elements to gameplay without hurting our air simulation. We've been sitting on this tech for a long time so we could focus on the air simulation which will always be our main focus.

 

If server operators don't like the tanks they can omit them. Very simple. Maybe there will be tank only servers, who knows? Let's see what the community likes and doesn't like. If you don't like the tanks, just focus on the airplanes. I think the BF-110 and the Ju-88 are going to be awesome additions.

 

The 1C-777 team has been cranking out a lot lately and PWCG is also maturing rapidly headed for version 1 release which adds some really awesome SP fun. There is a lot to be happy about in Sturmovik land headed into this year's holidays. I am looking forward to what we can do in 2016. If you like BOS/BOM tell your friends who have straggled to join the fun. As with ROF this team has taken a good product that was BOS and is molding into an amazing product. This takes time, money and hard work.

 

Jason

Agreed, and if tanks aren't using as many resources will we be able to expand player slots to accommodate them if necessary? (eg. They are wildly popular on combined arms servers.)

[StG77_Kondor]

For those interested. Combat strength on the evening of 1st October 1942 for the 24. Panzer-Division:

• 8 x Panzer II
• 12 x Panzer III lg (Long barrel - Ausf J/L)
• 2 x Panzer III kz (Short barrel)
• 3 x Panzer IV lg
• 2 Panzer IV kz

The majority of tanks were actually in the rear being repaired/undergoing maintenance. What I wanted to show was that, in the case of the 24. Panzer-Division, most of it's Panzer-Regiments consisted of Panzer III's over the IV in this time period.

I highly recommend the book 'Death of the Leaping Horseman' by Jason D. Mark. At 3000m over Stalingrad worrying about Yaks and Messers, we can easily forget about the absolute meat grinder below us. The author has several other books about Stalingrad that should be in everyone's library - some will cost you though!

[RoteDreizehn]

well explained - interesting , thanks

 

As you can see from the DD that adding these tanks has IMPROVED our aircraft damage model and they have no negative impact on development of our planes. As has been said by Han, this is a bit of an experiment that we think will add some excitement and new elements to gameplay without hurting our air simulation. We've been sitting on this tech for a long time so we could focus on the air simulation which will always be our main focus.

 

If server operators don't like the tanks they can omit them. Very simple. Maybe there will be tank only servers, who knows? Let's see what the community likes and doesn't like. If you don't like the tanks, just focus on the airplanes. I think the BF-110 and the Ju-88 are going to be awesome additions.

 

The 1C-777 team has been cranking out a lot lately and PWCG is also maturing rapidly headed for version 1 release which adds some really awesome SP fun. There is a lot to be happy about in Sturmovik land headed into this year's holidays. I am looking forward to what we can do in 2016. If you like BOS/BOM tell your friends who have straggled to join the fun. As with ROF this team has taken a good product that was BOS and is molding into an amazing product. This takes time, money and hard work.

 

Jason

[SCG_Tzigy]

I like tanks.

 

Especially at dawn or dusk when beautifully lit by exploding internal ammo, caused by my 37mm ...

 

I have a need.... the need for..

 

for the occasional turret flying high into sky....that would be great...

[VBF-12_Snake9]

 

 

this is a bit of an experiment

 

 

Can we experiment with trim on axis please.  It's been two years.  

[No.401_Alpine]

 

 

airdoc' timestamp='1447341071' post='302866'] combined air-ground warfare + increased number of players in MP = win

+1

[LLv44_Mprhead]

I take back anything negative I've said about having tanks in the game....that video looks amazing

I have not been too thrilled about tanks, but that video was cool...

[gx007]

I definitely support the introduction of tanks. I have many of the armor sims to date. This most enjoyable was RO1 and RO2 especially the combined arms maps. 

 

Greg

[Urra]

As an airfield is for aircraft, then what goes with a tank? What will their distribution point be on a multiplayer map?

[74_jim_nihilist]

How are they going to get the tanks to fly?

Is this a joke? Of course tanks can fly. Ask the Russians...

 

http://www.damninteresting.com/its-a-plane-its-a-tank-its-both/

[beepee]

Thanks for a great dev diary.

 

 

 

We've been sitting on this tech for a long time so we could focus on the air simulation which will always be our main focus.

 

Good to hear that the main focus will remain on the air simulation.

 

I think the idea of a kickstarter type scenario for those that want to fund further tank development within the series is the way to go.

 

That way, you will avoid any futile arguments between the pro-aircraft and pro-tankers about resources etc etc.

 

I personally won't use the tanks all that much (I will from time to time) but I am very happy that there will be human controlled tanks to bomb.

 

I can't wait for the 110 and the Ju-88.

 

Cheers.

Edited November 13, 2015 by beepee

[Phantom-103]

Whao!!!! Great Update!!!

The Sounds in the video are Amazing!! My Immersion meter has gone Ballistic

 

Bring on The Wehrmacht

Edited November 13, 2015 by Phantom-103

[Nil]

Couldn't, in my own choice, care less about the tanks, and that's from a 3 year 'subscriber' of Steel-beasts pro.. But at the same time I think it's an excellent idea! And it will bring more pleasure trying to destroy tanks!

[Jaws2002]

I like tank games quite a bit.

 

 IF you decide to go along with this, I'd be interested.

    One thing I have to mention, if you decide to make a tank module. A lot of the sounds, specially low caliber rounds hitting the armor need to be completely overhauled. Right now it sounds like  shooting an old  bucket.

 

Anyway, it looks cool and the atmosphere is there.

 

Thanks for the update.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Jaws2002

[VR-DriftaholiC]

So the armor penetration/thickness/angle calculations will be applied to planes like the IL-2 for example? 

[pilotpierre]

Not normally a blower of smoke up people's backsides, but Devs and Jason, I've huffed and puffed and it should be coming out of your ears by now. Bloody well done on all fronts, air and ground.

[BomberBrent]

My only question is will we be seeing all crew positions like in Red Orchestra 2 (excluding the loader)?

[unreasonable]

I am well aware of numbers and percentages. What I was commenting on was the actual 1 v 1 engagement. The 50 mm gun and relatively thin armor of the (infantry support) Panzer III will make this a less than competitive fight by any reasonable measure. Even with the upgraded gun the Panzer III had to outmaneuver the T-34 and set up ambushes to have any chance of success - usually short range shots into the side. The long barrel 75mm gun of the Panzer IV would at least make this an interesting fight. The 76mm gun and good to excellent armor of the T-34 will make this a pretty lopsided fight in most instances - particularly in a frontal engagement.

 

FTR: I almost never complain about balance in the air for this sim but this is clearly a lopsided fight if the balistics and DM is correct for the AFV's. If we want tanker boys to explore our flight sim, making it slaughter for one side is hardly the way to go about it. What fun is that?

 

Sorry if this has already been covered, but the Pzkw IV only started to get a long barreled version in 1942 and even then in rather small numbers, so it was present in the Stalingrad offensive but during the Moscow offensive and subsequent retreat all Pzkw IVs - which were originally designated as an infantry support tank while the Pzkw III was not - would have had the very short barreled, low velocity 75mm gun useless against all but the thinnest armour. (I am fairly sure they had no HEAT round either, at least at this date, but even if they did they would only have carried 4-5 rounds). 

 

Actually the whole premise of tank vs tank battles as an analogue to fighter duels is a little incorrect tactically, although it did happen especially later in the war, but both sides preferred to use AT guns against tanks and tanks against infantry, and unit tactics become even more crucial.

 

Given their expertise and what we have seen in the videos, the team can clearly make a great tank/ground war sim at the individual vehicle level and I would buy it as an add-on etc.  My reservation is whether it should be on the same map as the air sim. It will need a level of detail in ground objects, cover etc that is simply not needed for an air sim, and I would very much regret it if the maps were made smaller to accommodate this: they are already on the small side given the ranges and speeds of the aircraft. Since it looks like this new thrust is going ahead, we shall see!

[Feathered_IV]

Fantastic update.  Very excited to get to grips with the new tanks and 110.  Loved the video and had to laugh to see the animation of the armoured car driver running away.  He looks exactly like a small child who has just done something naughty. 

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Unreasonable, re-read my post again. My argument is strictly about playability. The Panzer III is going to be outclassed. I guess it's fair though, BOS opened with the F4 vs LaGG 3.

 

*rant over

[sallee]

Hello sallee!

Hello, Arthur!

[Blooddawn1942]

Never I've been so proud to be a fellow citizen of Sturmovik-land!

Splendid times!!

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

http://www.wwiivehicles.com/germany/guns/50-mm.asp

 

This penetration table /bottom one) shows that the PzKpfw.III has a fair chance against the T-34 up to 500m. Sure if you shoot the well sloped frontal armour thinngs might look terrible. With little aiming though it should be possible.

 

Also there's this

 

 

 

[Boomerang]

Impressive update, as always.

[DD_Arthur]

but both sides preferred to use AT guns against tanks and tanks against infantry,

 

 

Thats a very good point.  Logically, we should really have useable anti tank guns too.

[LLv24_Zami]

So the armor penetration/thickness/angle calculations will be applied to planes like the IL-2 for example? 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/19289-developer-diary-part-113-discussion/?p=302887

[LLv24_Zami]

http://www.wwiivehicles.com/germany/guns/50-mm.asp

 

This penetration table /bottom one) shows that the PzKpfw.III has a fair chance against the T-34 up to 500m. Sure if you shoot the well sloped frontal armour thinngs might look terrible. With little aiming though it should be possible.

 

Yes, it was the 37mm gun which was unable to penetrate T-34 practically at any range. The 37mm was the main AT gun in Wehrmacht when starting Barbarossa and unbeatable T-34 legend was born. I think that is confusing people sometimes. But the 50mm gun has a fair chance for penetration as you said.

[=FB=LOFT]

Dear friends, it looks like the tanks announce caused too much fuss. Please don't imagine anything redundant. We don't make a killer of popular MMO tank games (we don't know how to do it and our game is about completely different things), we work in different genres and for different playbases. Don't imagine anything impossible so you won't be dissapointed by the game not meeting your expectations.

 

We just added controllable tanks to IL-2. There are several interesting things, for example you can feel the enourmous size of the map, see what tank engagements looked like, this differs from most other tank games enormously. They differ like avia sim differs from a game about shooting planes. Distances are long, you can't see anything, etc. This kind of game can't be really popular. We didn't want to make tanks to reap $$$ from players. In the first place, we wanted to show how tank engagements really looked like for those who are interested in this. It's like a documentary, not a blockbuster.

Engine created for avia sim imposes many restrictions for tank simulation, limiting its visual epicness. Content looks less detailed (it was created to look good at a distance), trees seem too big and they don't fall, fences are ethereal - these are big no-noes for a good mass market game. We created tanks so you could experience how it was from the other side of IL-2 aiming reticle, from the point of view of its main target. It gives a whole new meaning to watching a dogfight, knowing that if a fighter loses it, then a survived Strurmovik will toast you and there is very little you can do about this. And of course it is exciting to know that all these things are controlled by real people.

We didn't spend time to invent a special balanced gameplay that would make playing in a tank interesting or rewarding, we decided to show you the WWII era warfare from another perspective. So I'm asking politely, dear customers, don't add excess hype to the mix. These are just tanks, yes, they are realistic, yes, they can move on 120+ thousands of square kilometers, yes, they have physics and interiors, yes, it is scary, etc. But this is not a game to play holding a beer by any means. This is freaking hardcore.

[LLv24_Zami]

Loft, that makes perfectly sense to me. And that`s the way I was understanding the tanks in BoS. Because the technology was there already, it is good thing to have them. 

 

And of course a little fuss was expected when you started to talk about tanks 

[CheeseGromit]

Dear friends, it looks like the tanks announce caused too much fuss.

 

Does this mean people were too excited or too upset?

[SYN_Vander]

Thanks for the update Loft. Indeed, players shouldn't expect to get a full fledged tank-sim all of a sudden,

I also thinks adding tanks (or other human controlled vehicles) will be very interesting since they open up more interesting game-play objectives. On online servers it's mostly about planes trying to shoot each other down, while in reality of course the planes were there to support the ground war. Having human controlled tanks will give land-based objectives more purpose...nobody cares for AI!

 

Will we ever get the option to jump into an AI controlled vehicle (or plane) and then take-over? as opposed to spawning in. It would make for much more interesting scenarios!

Edited November 13, 2015 by SYN_Vander

[johncage]

Hey Han !!! Are we going to have a fixed foward firing 20mm cannon  on Ju88 ???

 

Or maybe a solid nose full of guns as unlock ???

 

Something  to hunt trains and ships 

 

agreed no stupid tanks.

 

just ju-88 c variant

[150GCT_Veltro]

My two cents.

 

1C - 777 = Business company

 

They have an amazing engine with the best physic we have ever seen in a flight sim and not only.

 

They MUST do it, because they MUST improve their business: more options, a bigger market, more customers, more money, more budget, more human resources, more projects, more modules, ecc. ecc....and....

 

...more aircrafts. They could cover Ju-52 development with......Panther and Tiger sales for ex.

 

[=FB=LOFT]

Does this mean people were too excited or too upset?

 

Both things happen, depends on.... And both are not really good

[Reflected]

Thanks for the deeper explanation about tanks. Now I'm not afraid they will stand in the way of making this an even better flight sim & developing new theaters, aircrafts.

 

On the other hand I see now how they can a) attract more customers and b) how they can make online gameplay much more interesting and fun. WW2 air combat wasn't about blond knights duelling brave Ivans. It will help put everything into perspective.

 

RoF online missions became much more interesting when photo recon and artillery spotting became possible. Those guys were winning the battle, all the rest is just an effort to protect/ kill them.

 

Something similar in BoS might be possible now.

 

This being said I don't think I'll sacrifice a lot of stick time for double-stick time, but I hope others will

[Klaue]

My two cents.

 

1C - 777 = Business company

 

They have an amazing engine with the best physic we have ever seen in a flight sim and not only.

 

They MUST do it, because they MUST improve their business: more options, a bigger market, more customers, more money, more budget, more human resources, more projects, more modules, ecc. ecc....and....

 

...more aircrafts. They could cover Ju-52 development with......Panther and Tiger sales for ex.

 

 

+1

[TWC_Ace]

 

Dear friends, it looks like the tanks announce caused too much fuss. Please don't imagine anything redundant. We don't make a killer of popular MMO tank games (we don't know how to do it and our game is about completely different things), we work in different genres and for different playbases. Don't imagine anything impossible so you won't be dissapointed by the game not meeting your expectations.

 

We just added controllable tanks to IL-2. There are several interesting things, for example you can feel the enourmous size of the map, see what tank engagements looked like, this differs from most other tank games enormously. They differ like avia sim differs from a game about shooting planes. Distances are long, you can't see anything, etc. This kind of game can't be really popular. We didn't want to make tanks to reap $$$ from players. In the first place, we wanted to show how tank engagements really looked like for those who are interested in this. It's like a documentary, not a blockbuster.

Engine created for avia sim imposes many restrictions for tank simulation, limiting its visual epicness. Content looks less detailed (it was created to look good at a distance), trees seem too big and they don't fall, fences are ethereal - these are big no-noes for a good mass market game. We created tanks so you could experience how it was from the other side of IL-2 aiming reticle, from the point of view of its main target. It gives a whole new meaning to watching a dogfight, knowing that if a fighter loses it, then a survived Strurmovik will toast you and there is very little you can do about this. And of course it is exciting to know that all these things are controlled by real people.

We didn't spend time to invent a special balanced gameplay that would make playing in a tank interesting or rewarding, we decided to show you the WWII era warfare from another perspective. So I'm asking politely, dear customers, don't add excess hype to the mix. These are just tanks, yes, they are realistic, yes, they can move on 120+ thousands of square kilometers, yes, they have physics and interiors, yes, it is scary, etc. But this is not a game to play holding a beer by any means. This is freaking hardcore.

 

 

Please dont get discouraged by some posts here. I think many here, though aviation fans, are also fans of evrything from WW2...tanks, ships. Personaly I would support tanks and ships in the quality level of your flight sims. The only problem I can see (at least for flight simmers) would be that your team is rather small and if we want to see more planes and theatres of operations you would probably need to "slow down" the development of tanks or vice versa.

Keep up the good work you have my support!

Edited November 13, 2015 by blackram

[Voidhunger]

Ohh no! Please start another project. Hire new people, make a kickstarter campaign. We tank simers needs a new 2016 realistic ww2 tank sim.

[Brano]

T-34 in game is 1942 production of Stalingrad Tractor Factory (STZ) with 76.2mm/L42.5 F-34 gun.

 

http://www.o5m6.de/t34_76_stz.html

 

EDIT:

Nice website about tanks and guns,lots of charts and penetration tables,pics from testgrounds etc.

 

http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2013/05/f-34-vs-german-tanks.html

Edited November 13, 2015 by Brano

[I./JG1_Baron]

 

Dear friends, it looks like the tanks announce caused too much fuss. Please don't imagine anything redundant. We don't make a killer of popular MMO tank games (we don't know how to do it and our game is about completely different things), we work in different genres and for different playbases. Don't imagine anything impossible so you won't be dissapointed by the game not meeting your expectations.

 

We just added controllable tanks to IL-2. There are several interesting things, for example you can feel the enourmous size of the map, see what tank engagements looked like, this differs from most other tank games enormously. They differ like avia sim differs from a game about shooting planes. Distances are long, you can't see anything, etc. This kind of game can't be really popular. We didn't want to make tanks to reap $$$ from players. In the first place, we wanted to show how tank engagements really looked like for those who are interested in this. It's like a documentary, not a blockbuster.

Engine created for avia sim imposes many restrictions for tank simulation, limiting its visual epicness. Content looks less detailed (it was created to look good at a distance), trees seem too big and they don't fall, fences are ethereal - these are big no-noes for a good mass market game. We created tanks so you could experience how it was from the other side of IL-2 aiming reticle, from the point of view of its main target. It gives a whole new meaning to watching a dogfight, knowing that if a fighter loses it, then a survived Strurmovik will toast you and there is very little you can do about this. And of course it is exciting to know that all these things are controlled by real people.

We didn't spend time to invent a special balanced gameplay that would make playing in a tank interesting or rewarding, we decided to show you the WWII era warfare from another perspective. So I'm asking politely, dear customers, don't add excess hype to the mix. These are just tanks, yes, they are realistic, yes, they can move on 120+ thousands of square kilometers, yes, they have physics and interiors, yes, it is scary, etc. But this is not a game to play holding a beer by any means. This is freaking hardcore.

 

 

I am very glad you explained your intentions with tanks. Initially I had my doubts about how it will look IL2 with them, but now I began to enjoy them.