Harold Jones Posted October 19, 2018 Share Posted October 19, 2018 This looks like it might interest some here. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/10/19/armored-brigade-preview/ Armored Brigade, a real-time wargame that invites comparisons with Combat Mission and Close Combat but is very much its own animal, is now less than a month away from a Matrix Store release (Steam and GOG releases are being considered). The preview code suggests the publishers of this gem are on the verge of delivering another Cold War winner, albeit a Cold War winner vulnerable to criticism in certain areas. https://youtu.be/XWONTj0P_JU Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolas93TS Posted October 20, 2018 Share Posted October 20, 2018 Well, there is a tanknetter among the developers 🙃 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Werb Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 It looks great. I'm a bit dubious to say the least about the viability of GWOT style air strikes in a general European war though. It's a bit like watching a successful 1944 raid on London mounted by Zepellins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolas93TS Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 While the clear trend since the Gulf War is that precision-guided weapons represent a steadily increasing percentage of munitions delivered (about 8% in Iraq, 30% in Kosovo,and 60% in Afghanistan) CAS sorties in game are usually strafing and rocket runs, with "dumb" bombs (iron, cluster or napalm) being dropped from a low altitude. Considering that even small conflicts today drain Western stocks considerably, and Soviet stock of guided weapons were not that small at all, that says a lot about what their expected use ratio would be in conventional wide war. In 1980s, Soviets expected to use their KAB-1500 (Su-24) and KAB-500 (Su-24, Su-17M4 and MiG-27K) guided bombs primarily on bridges, lesson learned from Vietnam, as bridges turned out to be notably hard to hit and destroy with conventional bombing. Tactical missiles (Kh-23/25/29) would be used in attack sorties on high-value airports and command centres, and most Soviet aircraft could carry them. Pretty much everything else was to be attacked with "dumb" bombs and rockets. Another factor that often troubles Cold War wargamers is actual availability of CAS sorties. One of the commanding commanding officers of NORTHAG used to say that the job of the air force was to keep the enemy air force off his troops and stop the enemy’s second echelon of reserves from linking up with their front echelon. This meant that any army had to accept that at least for the first few days of a conflict the only friendly aircraft they would see would be passing through their area at high speed on their way to and from targets beyond the battle area. The air commanders would have been far more concerned about achieving air superiority and interdicting follow-on forces than flying close support for ground forces. The Soviets had long viewed air-power's primary responsibility as the deep fight, not as flying front-line fire support (they viewed close support as a mission for helicopters more so than fixed-wing.) The US joined them in this view with the advent of Air-Land Battle doctrine and its new emphasis on attacking the enemy simultaneously throughout the full operational depth of the theater, as opposed to Active Defense with its focus on the main battle area. Even dedicated CAS platforms like Harrier (and to a lesser degree A-10) were really intended to attack the follow-on echelon in its assembly areas or on the march. Troops already deployed into attack formation would be much less rewarding and more dangerous targets. Not to mention the likely issues with fratricide when operating close to friendly lines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Galbraith Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 Sounds like a great project Nikolas. I hope it satisfies my BAOR itch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Werb Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 No, I didn't mean that guided weapons should be more represented in the game - I meant that tactical aircraft tooling around at medium altitude dropping LGBs and A-10s using 30mm on individual tanks would have proven archaic an extremely hazardous and short-lived occupation against Warsaw Pact air defences. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolas93TS Posted October 24, 2018 Share Posted October 24, 2018 Sounds like a great project Nikolas. I hope it satisfies my BAOR itch. Well, we had to put British faction in first release to redeem ourselves for using title spelling loathsome to native speakers of Commonwealth English. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Galbraith Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 Do we get a free U with the commonwealth edition? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harold Jones Posted October 25, 2018 Author Share Posted October 25, 2018 Do we get a free U with the commonwealth edition? You have to provide your own, the title is fitted for but not with... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolas93TS Posted November 14, 2018 Share Posted November 14, 2018 Less than 24 hours left to the release! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunday Posted November 14, 2018 Share Posted November 14, 2018 Well, there is a tanknetter among the developers Great! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Galbraith Posted November 15, 2018 Share Posted November 15, 2018 Will it be on steam? I noticed they put TOAW IV up on steam recently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Der Zeitgeist Posted November 15, 2018 Share Posted November 15, 2018 I'm thinking about getting this, too. But after my recent bad experiences with Matrix releases, I'm probably waiting until it's available on Steam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skywalkre Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 I'm thinking about getting this, too. But after my recent bad experiences with Matrix releases, I'm probably waiting until it's available on Steam. OOC, what bad experiences were those? I've had my eye on a few products of theirs over the years but the high prices have always kept me away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Der Zeitgeist Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 (edited) I'm thinking about getting this, too. But after my recent bad experiences with Matrix releases, I'm probably waiting until it's available on Steam. OOC, what bad experiences were those? I've had my eye on a few products of theirs over the years but the high prices have always kept me away. Put shortly, it is the release of games in a state that would normally be called beta or early access, as full price or massively overprized products, combined with developers who are oftentimes unable to cope with any kind of criticism and a totally fanatical fanbase that tries to shield the developers from said criticism. It was mostly two games in recent years. One was Command: Modern Air / Naval Operations (CMANO), and the other was TOAW4. As a longtime Harpoon player, I was really looking forward to CMANO when it released in 2014, but as it turned out, a ton of features the developers spent years advertising and hyping on their own homepage either weren't implemented, were just implemented as placeholders, or aren't really working even today (mostly concerning things like mine warfare, hundreds of placeholder units without detailed stats and the braindead AI that relies completely on scripting). And for an asking price of 80 bucks, that was pretty disappointing to me. The thing that then really drove me away from that game was the behavior of the developers and their most loyal fans on the Matrix forum. I spent the first few months after release trying to document bugs, especially incomplete placeholder units and nonworking AI behavior. The problem now was other players in these forum threads constantly playing down each and every issue with the game as well as the developers demanding proof of bugs and other issues before even considering fixing something. So everytime you found some problem in the game, you'd have to spend days or even weeks having longwinded discussions with the rabid fanbase and the developers before anyone even acknowledged there was a problem. At some point, I just went away because I don't have time arguing with people about a PC game and working as an unpaid beta tester after spending 80 bucks on an unfinished game. In all these years, I have never seen a crazier gaming community than with CMANO. I mean, at some point it got so bad that a forum user, not affiliated with the developers, offered me money as a "refund". He actually paid me the price of the game on release in exchange for the license key. He said he wanted to clear that sale with the developers, so that they could then remove the key from my account. Now, years later, the key is, of course, still in my account, and I'm pretty sure he paid me money to simply stop me from writing about the game on the forums. The other game is TOAW4, which I wrote about in the respective thread here on the forum. To put it short: Incomplete manual, reused scenarios from TOAW3 (or even earlier) where they didn't even take time to modify the scenario descriptions from the old versions, reusing the complete readme file from TOAW3 without even taking the time to modify the included links to the product page, and the list goes on. Oh, and almost a year after release I still didn't have working game music and I'm pretty sure the game still crashes when I try to pick a scenario because the game can't deal with folder structures for non-english language versions of Windows. So I'll probably simply buy any future Matrix releases on Steam to be able to refund them if any problems occur that the developers are unable or unwilling to fix. Edited November 16, 2018 by Der Zeitgeist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Galbraith Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 You want working game music in TOAW4? It was the first thing I turned off. The TOAW3 manual is in fact mostly adequate, the main amendments they put in a seperate PDF they create with every update. It would have been nice to have had new scenarios, but im working on one based on NATO in the Baltic. With a but of luck I might get my finger out and finish it soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Der Zeitgeist Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 (edited) The TOAW3 manual is in fact mostly adequate, the main amendments they put in a seperate PDF they create with every update. They may be adequate for people who are familiar with TOAW. To this day, I still haven't understood the precise meaning of all those unit stats like proficiency, readiness, morale and quality. When I asked the developers after release, it turns out even they don't really understand what these stats are. Edited November 16, 2018 by Der Zeitgeist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Galbraith Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 Well, Ive been playing TOAW for nigh on 20 years, so I kind of take all that stuff for granted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Der Zeitgeist Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 Well, Ive been playing TOAW for nigh on 20 years, so I kind of take all that stuff for granted. And here we have the exact reason why Wargaming is still in its current, sad niche and isn't able to aquire new and younger customers. If everyone is just content with the stuff we get from publishers like Matrix, the genre will continue to be stuck with game design from the late 70s and horrible UIs from the mid 90s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harold Jones Posted November 16, 2018 Author Share Posted November 16, 2018 Post release continuation of the pre-release review from the topic post https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/11/16/armored-brigade-review-part-2/ TLDR solid release, wishes there were a campaign mode, modding is easy, helicopter command kind of fiddly. I'm on the fence, mostly because my interest in playing war games on the PC is not what it was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Galbraith Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 Shame about the campaign, but I like the idea of an editable database. I can put in stuff that interests me like 'Jagdchieftain' or MBT80. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RETAC21 Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 The TOAW3 manual is in fact mostly adequate, the main amendments they put in a seperate PDF they create with every update. They may be adequate for people who are familiar with TOAW. To this day, I still haven't understood the precise meaning of all those unit stats like proficiency, readiness, morale and quality. When I asked the developers after release, it turns out even they don't really understand what these stats are. TOAW 4 has been developed by 2 guys, one of which has learned the ropes as he went to get the TOAW-3 he wanted, unfortunately it was hyped as something new but it's just a modernised (in terms of programming) TOAW-3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolas93TS Posted November 17, 2018 Share Posted November 17, 2018 We planned the campaign for the release, but it turned out to be a far more time demanding endeavour than we initially planned (the idea is to have branching dynamic campaign rather than usual linear style) and we risked slipping into 2019. So, campaign feature will follow soon (likely in next 6 months). Our main programmer and game creator is quality control freak so nothing is left to a chance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolas93TS Posted November 17, 2018 Share Posted November 17, 2018 As for helicopter command, it is actually based on actual combat practice. The issue is players are used to games where ground commander can move helicopter around the map like they are ground units (alla Steel Panthers) but that don't bode well with historically accurate practices. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Galbraith Posted November 17, 2018 Share Posted November 17, 2018 The TOAW3 manual is in fact mostly adequate, the main amendments they put in a seperate PDF they create with every update. They may be adequate for people who are familiar with TOAW. To this day, I still haven't understood the precise meaning of all those unit stats like proficiency, readiness, morale and quality. When I asked the developers after release, it turns out even they don't really understand what these stats are. TOAW 4 has been developed by 2 guys, one of which has learned the ropes as he went to get the TOAW-3 he wanted, unfortunately it was hyped as something new but it's just a modernised (in terms of programming) TOAW-3. I can understand why, they want to keep the ball rolling. And as far as a damaged equipment pile, and an improvement to naval combat, there is a fairly signfiicant step forward. Not that significant considering it took 20 years to do it, but still... If you want ideas for campaigns, do ask here. I came up with some ideas for an abortive campaign for SB that never saw the light of day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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