TFS 5.0 Tank battle test Cruiser MK IVA v PzKpfw III

[ATAG_Pattle]

One of our TFS team has put together a WIP Tank battle scenario, showing landscape undulations.

 

This is an oasis environment... not full desert.

 

Paint schemes of playable  PzKpfw III and Cruiser MK IVA tanks. 

 

Damage model textures

 

Featuring Flak37 and QF 3-inch 20 CWT artillery pieces.

 

Undulating landscape

 

The North Africa map  is still in Alpha. It does not include the new cloud systems and weather,  or other details such as rock formations or rocky abuttments, distance views, etc. etc. which will be seen in the final version.

 

Some are holdovers from CoD and will almost certainly be different in TF 5.0 such as grass/dust etc.

 

 

For TF 5.0 there will be some small changes to the vehicles... we plan to add another position the player can use to drive the vehicle... option to go from the driver's perspective to the commanders perspective.  This is more realistic... the commander controlled the movement of the vehicle... and this will give the player a better view of the battlefield. There will be the potential for multiple main gun positions in a tank and, the use of more historical gunsights, with zoom for the gunsights being changed to more accurate reflect the actual vehicles.  We may also add opening hatches and views for button down.  There will be no interior 3D work... when inside the tank and buttoned up the player sees a main gun/MG gunsight view or potentially a cupola or hatch slit view but no details of the interior.

 

All of the various bugs with certain vehicles will be fixed, so all the vehicles are usable and the view positions are correct.

 

Obviously we plan to add new vehicles for the North Africa environment, which should include:

 

- 1941-42 model Pz Mk III/IV including long 50mm model Mk IIIJ.

- 1941-42 model British Cruiser tanks

-  US M3 Stuart

-  US M3 Grant Tank

-  Italian M-13/40

-  Italian M-11/39

-  Italian Semovente Self Propelled Gun

 

Various other vehicles and artillery pieces from both sides.

 

We would like to add a human model for the commander when hatch open/unbuttoned... and this model would be subject to being hit and killed by fire with the result this position can no longer be selected.

 

We would also like to introduce multiple vehicle spawns in Multiplayer so that a player can spawn in as a commander of a platoon of 4 tanks... with the option for the player to control the movement and fire of the tanks in his platoon in the same way a flight leader controls his flight.

 

Would also like to introduce the remote control of artillery batteries... so they fire indirectly on the command of a player in a vehicle when he goes through a spotting procedure.

 

We hope to have all Anti-Tank and Artillery pieces as mannable with gunsights.

[Blitzen]

Fun for a ( very preliminary) comparison with Tank Crew over at Great Battles...?

Always fun to see these updates!

[Semor76]

Nice,nice. Good to see you guys making progress.

 

The ground/vehicle fire & smoke objects looks way better compared to the (cheap) ones we still have in BoX.

[Missionbug]

Thank you very much for the film Pattle, really appreciated, looking great.

 

 

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[Enceladus828]

18 hours ago, ATAG_Pattle said:

playable  PzKpfw III and Cruiser MK IVA tanks. 

Just one thing to ask: Will there be “cockpits” to these tanks, or will they be controlled from the outside, For Now?

 

Thanks. 

Keep up the great work. This is amazing ? 

[ATAG_Pattle]

They will be the same as you currently see in Cliffs.

 

Cheers,

 

Pattle

[Buzzsaw]

8 hours ago, ATAG_Pattle said:

They will be the same as you currently see in Cliffs.

 

Cheers,

 

Pattle

There will be some small changes to the vehicles... we plan to add another position the player can use to drive the vehicle... option to go from the driver's perspective to the commanders perspective.  This is more realistic... the commander controlled the movement of the vehicle... and this will give the player a better view of the battlefield. There will be the potential for multiple main gun positions in a tank and, the use of more historical gunsights, with zoom for the gunsights being changed to more accurate reflect the actual vehicles.  We may also add opening hatches and views for button down.  There will be no interior 3D work... when inside the tank and buttoned up the player sees a main gun/MG gunsight view or potentially a cupola or hatch slit view but no details of the interior.

 

All of the various bugs with certain vehicles will be fixed, so all the vehicles are usable and the view positions are correct.

 

Obviously we plan to add new vehicles for the North Africa environment, which should include:

 

- 1941-42 model Pz Mk III/IV including long 50mm model Mk IIIJ.

- 1941-42 model British Cruiser tanks

-  US M3 Stuart

-  US M3 Grant Tank

-  Italian M-13/40

-  Italian M-11/39

-  Italian Semovente Self Propelled Gun

 

Various other vehicles and artillery pieces from both sides.

 

We would like to add a human model for the commander when hatch open/unbuttoned... and this model would be subject to being hit and killed by fire with the result this position can no longer be selected.

 

We would also like to introduce multiple vehicle spawns in Multiplayer so that a player can spawn in as a commander of a platoon of 4 tanks... with the option for the player to control the movement and fire of the tanks in his platoon in the same way a flight leader controls his flight.

 

Would also like to introduce the remote control of artillery batteries... so they fire indirectly on the command of a player in a vehicle when he goes through a spotting procedure.

 

We hope to have all Anti-Tank and Artillery pieces as mannable with gunsights.

[SquashmanMikeEH]

Quote

There will be some small changes to the vehicles... we plan to add another position the player can use to drive the vehicle... option to go from the driver's perspective to the commanders perspective.  This is more realistic... the commander controlled the movement of the vehicle... and this will give the player a better view of the battlefield. There will be the potential for multiple main gun positions in a tank and, the use of more historical gunsights, with zoom for the gunsights being changed to more accurate reflect the actual vehicles.  We may also add opening hatches and views for button down.  There will be no interior 3D work... when inside the tank and buttoned up the player sees a main gun/MG gunsight view or potentially a cupola or hatch slit view but no details of the interior.

 

Thanks Buzzsaw and the whole team for this incredible dedication.

Is there a chance you will be doing something similar for the ships and naval units in the future ? - if so, this would, in my opinion, make it the leader of all the top flight sims and offer unrivalled player experience, which would not be available elsewhere.

 

Edited July 22, 2019 by SquashmanMikeEH
spelling

[Buzzsaw]

6 hours ago, SquashmanMikeEH said:

 

Thanks Buzzsaw and the whole team for this incredible dedication.

Is there a chance you will be doing something similar for the ships and naval units in the future ? - if so, this would, in my opinion, make it the leader of all the top flight sims and offer unrivalled player experience, which would not be available elsewhere.

 

We are also hoping to have the ships controllable by humans... not just the AAA guns.

 

So the human commander would be able to control the speed and direction of the ship.  The view position would be a "God's View"... approximately in the area of the bridge although not inside... we will not be modeling the bridge interiors or any cabins/etc.... this is a flight sim.  But the "God's View" would be appropriate to reflect the spotting capabilities of a ship's crew... in reality there were dozen of officers and ratings with binoculars in multiple positions all over the ship communicating with the bridge and reporting sightings etc.

 

Several players could control a ship.... but only the light AAA guns would be directly mannable... the main guns require too complex a set of models to replicate the complex rangefinders/radar and other details properly.  Instead we would like to allow the player on the bridge to be able to designate a target, either a ship or a ground target, (the player pulls up a map and picks from targets) ...and then the main guns would fire at that target.  If no target is designated, the guns will fire at the nearest target, be it aircraft/ship/land.  Main guns will not fire at aircraft.

 

The idea of these changes and the changes on the vehicles is to allow an integrated Air/Sea/Land battle with the emphasis on aircraft.

 

As people may be aware, ships played a large part in the North Africa campaign, first real use of them in shore bombardment, harbour defense, etc.

 

Wait for our update on ships... likely in a month or two.

 

All of this is conditional on our coders getting the work done for the release... may come later in a patch.

[InProgress]

4 hours ago, Buzzsaw said:

AAA guns

I have question about these. I am sure it's going to get improved because crosshair on these is kind of bad and does not work well. But are you going to add option to set up timer on heavy AAA so you are going to choose when shell will detonate? Is there going to be ammo limit since you can fire them forever now (if you waste it all you could get resupply but it would take some time) and when you hold fire you can just spam shells without any reload so it would be nice to see this fixed.

 

Also will textures of AAA improve? Now it looks quite meh. And is there going to be a full crew on them? Now there is just 1 guy (you) sitting there.

 

 

oh and btw, will there be improvment in their accuracity? It's very rare for them to shoot down anything. While heavy AAA doing area fire is really cool, medium and light aaa is really bad. You can take something slow like ju87 and fly really low around the enemy airfield and it's not really that dangerous. It takes quite a bit of time before they get lucky hit.

Edited July 23, 2019 by InProgress

[danielprates]

The animated exhaust on the english tank is a very nice touch.

[Buzzsaw]

10 hours ago, InProgress said:

I have question about these. I am sure it's going to get improved because crosshair on these is kind of bad and does not work well. But are you going to add option to set up timer on heavy AAA so you are going to choose when shell will detonate? Is there going to be ammo limit since you can fire them forever now (if you waste it all you could get resupply but it would take some time) and when you hold fire you can just spam shells without any reload so it would be nice to see this fixed.

 

Also will textures of AAA improve? Now it looks quite meh. And is there going to be a full crew on them? Now there is just 1 guy (you) sitting there.

 

 

oh and btw, will there be improvment in their accuracity? It's very rare for them to shoot down anything. While heavy AAA doing area fire is really cool, medium and light aaa is really bad. You can take something slow like ju87 and fly really low around the enemy airfield and it's not really that dangerous. It takes quite a bit of time before they get lucky hit.

It depends on what experience setting you use.

[SquashmanMikeEH]

14 hours ago, Buzzsaw said:

We are also hoping to have the ships controllable by humans... not just the AAA guns.

 

So the human commander would be able to control the speed and direction of the ship.  The view position would be a "God's View"... approximately in the area of the bridge although not inside... we will not be modeling the bridge interiors or any cabins/etc.... this is a flight sim.  But the "God's View" would be appropriate to reflect the spotting capabilities of a ship's crew... in reality there were dozen of officers and ratings with binoculars in multiple positions all over the ship communicating with the bridge and reporting sightings etc.

 

Several players could control a ship.... but only the light AAA guns would be directly mannable... the main guns require too complex a set of models to replicate the complex rangefinders/radar and other details properly.  Instead we would like to allow the player on the bridge to be able to designate a target, either a ship or a ground target, (the player pulls up a map and picks from targets) ...and then the main guns would fire at that target.  If no target is designated, the guns will fire at the nearest target, be it aircraft/ship/land.  Main guns will not fire at aircraft.

 

The idea of these changes and the changes on the vehicles is to allow an integrated Air/Sea/Land battle with the emphasis on aircraft.

 

As people may be aware, ships played a large part in the North Africa campaign, first real use of them in shore bombardment, harbour defense, etc.

 

Wait for our update on ships... likely in a month or two.

 

All of this is conditional on our coders getting the work done for the release... may come later in a patch.

 

Sounds like the perfect balance - and a very absorbing and unique player experience too.

Looking forward to the updates

Edited July 23, 2019 by SquashmanMikeEH
spelling