My SPMBT comments

[rfisher]

It's funny that Doom was the first computer game I ever played, and Steel Panthers was the second. I've carried on playing all the types of games that came after Doom, quite happily too, but they always get played once then deleted.
Steel Panthers, in one form or another, has always been on my hard drive. Perfect. Or nearly any way...
Here's some things that I think I'd like to see in the game and why.

On long campaigns, it would be great if you could choose your stance eg. 'Defend' and have more delays and defends, or 'Assault' and have more assaults and advances with a few defends against what would represent counter-attacks.

When attacking in a long campaign, it would be great to choose visibility. Otherwise, all those points spent on vision enhanced units are fairly redundant!

I love placing objective hexes in long campaigns to better customise each map, but I would love it if you could also do something with the deployment zones. eg when defending, it would be great to be assaulted from 360 degrees!

This is really for infantry, but I'd love it if there was a quick easy way of giving a unit extra ammo (eg 4 extra milan missiles?). This is because I always find units like anti-tank infantry run out very quickly on a defend mission. I know you can buy ammo dumps, but they are big targets in game terms, and are, relativly, too cheap for what I'm suggesting. I'd like this to represent extra ammo they are carrying, or pre-prepared little ammo drops.

I love reading the replies on this forum, as you're obviously all smart guys, so I'm looking forward to reading why these ideas are all dumb!

Thanks

[DRG]

rfisher said:
When attacking in a long campaign, it would be great to choose visibility. Otherwise, all those points spent on vision enhanced units are fairly redundant!

The vision for the game can be changed in the same place you change the objective hexes.....Click on "View Map" then click on the binocular button

rfisher said:

This is really for infantry, but I'd love it if there was a quick easy way of giving a unit extra ammo (eg 4 extra milan missiles?). This is because I always find units like anti-tank infantry run out very quickly on a defend mission. I know you can buy ammo dumps, but they are big targets in game terms, and are, relativly, too cheap for what I'm suggesting. I'd like this to represent extra ammo they are carrying, or pre-prepared little ammo drops.

Buy ammo trucks or better still armoured APC ammo carriers. That's what they're for. You can move them where you need them or start shutttling the ATGM teams back to a "depot" area" to re-arm then move them forward again.

Don

[pdoktar]

You can go to mobhack and make new units to oobs, copying say a milan team and changing the ammo loadout to maybe 10 missiles, rename it maybe milan+ or milan10 or whatever, THEN run it through the cost calculator and CHANGE it´s cost to what it suggests.

Now you can choose which milan team to use and pay real price for the extra missiles. Remember to not put your eggs in one basket though.

Don´t you think it adds some realism or whatever insight to the game by going with what the game sets you in visibility and v-hex placement or game lenght. Think it as an command from above to attack just now and in the set time, to be able to proceed/support other imaginary attacks/defends/delays going on somewhere else. No Battalion or Brigade commander has the final word to wait for the night or rain storm to use your better vision capabilities.

"There are lives and objectives, even the whole war, at stake. You are ordered to clear the enemy resistance in your sector that the 2nd Battalion can avoid being enveloped."
-Brigade General Imaginary Commander, 1st armored brigade

[rfisher]

Thanks for the replies chaps. Very useful stuff (I can't believe I didn't know about the binocular button!)

Another thought that struck me the other day is this;
shouldn't the OOB be a little more creative with the truth to allow for what a country would buy if it was involved in a serious war. For instance, I read the other day that the British Army was about to buy a bunch of APCs and patrol vehicles like ones used more commonly in the US Army due to the circumstances of its deployments.
I also saw on a website once (Vickers possibly), a light tank with the Sabre/Scorpion/Scimitar sort of chasis, but instead of a gun on the turret it had a couple of missile launchers! Isn't there a situation where the British Army would have ordered a bunch of those? My point being, a lot of the battles we set up for ourselves in SPMBT are fictional (WWIII etc) so why shouldn't the OOB be a little fictional?

[pdoktar]

Make it a fictional one. Modern wars might be so fast that countries don´t have time to purchase new units before being overrun at least maybe.

Up-armour kits etc. can be fitted and new experimental ammo used etc, but fielding a new unit and weapon system might take months to arrive in numbers, and field testing might disprove it or whatever.

[PatG]

pdoktar said:
Make it a fictional one. .....

The Mobhack and the Manage OOB tools let you add fictional or projected kit to an OOB, store it in Game Data\OOBs\Custom OOBs\ and swap in or out as required without affecting the stock OOB.

[Ike]

pdoktar said:
Make it a fictional one. Modern wars might be so fast that countries don´t have time to purchase new units before being overrun at least maybe.

I'm not sure but I would think any new units coming up in modern wars are actually units being mobilized, reservist being called up etc. Not like actually manufacturing equiptment or training people.

I quess there are lots of exceptions though. Vietnam, Iran-vs-Iraq, where you have years long wars.

[rfisher]

Any fictional units would definatly need to be marked as such, so you can choose to use them or not as suits your game. I mention it because although I do use the OOB editor (though I must admit I really don't understand how to save changes; I can make it work, but only after I press save in every screen and drop down menu I can find, and go through an awful lot of error-type messages when loading it up!) I really want the clever people to do the work! While my curiosity let me find the picture of the Sabre type tank with the missile launchers, I wouldn't have a clue as to what they actually are; Milan, Hellfire, TOW? While I do want to play with some fictional units like this, I do still want them to be 'real' fictional! And I ain't that clever.

[Irinami]

Guess. Look at what ATGM the country in question uses during the date in question. Or go to FAS.org and look it up.

I really miss SP:WAW's ability to choose which nation's OOB you were using when buying/upgrading core units. I want some lend-lease US tanks in '56!