Do any of you guys know of any good tank-sims(Or atleast semi-sim) games with dynamic campaigns(Maybe something like the one in M1 Tank Platoon 2 from MicroProse), I am looking for, preferably atleast, WW2 based ones, with the ability to play Soviet tankists(I wanna blow up some Third Reich scum to the March of the Tankists, a classic soviet march song from WW2!

Thanks for any help!

I-Panzer44

One of the best Campaign Systems ever for a WW2 Tank Sim.

http://tanksim.com/reviews/i_panzer.htm

Too bad the rest of the game was horrible.

Graphics, pathfinding, AI abilities, no multiplayer. It had potential but was a buggy mess if I ever saw one.

Good dynamic campaigns in WW2 Tank simulations is hard to find. I don't realy know one that is truly dynamic that I can recommend, particularly one that simulates the Russian side of the war.

Nope, and there may not be any for a long time. Most of the sims (especially armor sims) seem to be coming from Russia/FSU developers, and if the recent past is any indication, they mostly prefer scripted single-player missions over dynamic campaigns.

There has never been a commercial tank sim or ground combat sim with a dynamic campaign generator- if by 'dynamic' you would point to something which persists in real time like Falcon or EECH, there is nothing comparable for ground simulations- neither M1TP2 nor iPanzer '44 fit the bill. Even these games don't quite paint an accurate picture of the ground perspective, but you won't notice their glossing over things from an airborne perspective.

There are insurmountable technical hurdles that do not translate over to ground simulations; they are not analogous to flight simulations- ground combat is inherently unsuitable for a computer generated and managed campaign, unless you want an arcade romp with gross concessions. There are questions of accurate ORBAT and deployment levels, which no simulation would probably achieve on something other than a bank of networked supercomputers, and even techniques for programming aritificial intelligence couldn't possibly be any better than your standard RTS game computer opponent- and that is my final understatement for the year. Ifgame designers have a diffcult time programming units which manuver in 2 dimensions and universally must resort to cheats, shortcuts and exploitations of game rules and mechanics, think of the astronomical chore facing a sim programmer in that his units will have to move in three dimensions- and no, flight sims are not analogous because they maneuver units in 3 dimensions.

A situation where computer units must negotiate complex terrain relief cope with all kinds of variables to affect some appearance of intelligent behavior doesn't compare well to units flying in straight lines essentially empty space. Just try to get a computer to learn and understand that a bridge is an important landmark- computers can't think, and they aren't intuitive, so they won't reason that. Nor can they rely on past experience, intuition, extrasensory data nor anything else to regard dangerous-looking situations or locations which might be likely staging areas for enemy ambush and so forth.

Thanks for all the answers, and I presume your right Devil M, atleast if we want a totally realistic dynamic campaign for a ground combat sim, it'll be very hard because I assume we'd have to simulate the entire command structure properly etc.

Apparently though, Game2 from Bohemia will feature a FULLY dynamic war campaign, but we will see how that turns out.

You know, I actually tend to disagree with this. I think that a dynamic campaign is possible with an armored simulation, if it is done right. I'll use a helicopter simulation, Longbow2, as an example of how it could be done.

LB2 had one of the better dynamic campaigns produced. If you adapted the campaign style of LB2 to allow for individuals to take command of a platoon of tanks (as opposed to a pair of Longbows) on missions it would be very doable. Give the gamer an opportunity to select from the various types of missions that would be going on at a particular time. Once that mission is done allow the player to jump back to the main screen to watch the entire battle progress. You could limit involvement to a brigade sized unit in a larger overall campaign.

It would be hard, but not impossible. If it can be done with a helicopter simulation it could be done with armor. I guess the thing would be to do it, and if it would be popular enough to warrent the effort.

But dont forget Battleground Europe aka WWIIOL, it has a Full Dynamic Campaign and simulates Panzer-Warfare.. just only for MP.

True, I played a trial about a month ago of it, cant say I liked it, just too few people spread over a too large area imo.

Sure you could do it- just as you could pit a domesticated housecat against a Bengal Tiger. We can do many things irrespective of the product of our efforts. Unfortunately, Longbow doesn't approach the kind of terrain resolution of anything necessary for a realistic tank sim- and computer technology has only just recently in the last few years offered gamers the technology to generate graphics that are anywhere near convincing enough for ground combat- where flight sims can elicit oohs and aahs with individually rendered trees, ground sims are only now getting the needed CPU cycles necessary for individual leaves on the trees. Insofar as ground units are concerned, flight sims generally just regard them as targets, so maneuver warfare is something that is unnecessary and neglected- it doesn't work to say that 'if it can be done for Longbow, it can be done for armor sims' any more than to say 'if it can be done for nukes, it can be done for blowguns and slingshots.' The requirements are too dissimilar for a common solution.

Perhaps if the contested map contained data content commeasurate with 1980s computer simulations, you could have a chance- essentially flat, uninteresting terrain with a few polygon structures. Consider this: when was the last time you played a strategy wargame which played a game according to the combat theories and doctrine of a recognized faction? The only ones which might achieve this are the wargames which are either scripted or contain a very limited scope- i.e., those which model a very specific historical battle. Those games which ship with an AI opponent that are supposed to theoretically fight any kind of battle, for example, The Operational Art of War, simply cannot provide that kind of detail.

The problem is that computers simply cannot think- they cannot invent even the most rudimentary battle plans; you may as well get a serving of yogurt to plan its moves, simply because that would be no worse. A progammer must code a jack of all trades strategy suitable for any terrain, under any circumstance, against a human opponent who can think and react in real time- imagine a basketball coach developing his game plan against a live opponent before the big game, but a plan which he can not modify on the fly. He must essentially fight an opponent in a different concept of space and time, and only then hypothetically.

To be sure, there's no precedent for it- developers had promised and attempted something like it in the past, only to finally come to grips with what they were attemtpting when reality finally set in; this is no mere coincidence.

You aren't getting my point though. It is possible to get a tank simulation and a dynamic campaign. It doesn't require that much thought. In LB2 you flew one mission, the computer flew the others at the same time and then calculated the results and then generated the next set of missions. Falcon 4.0 did the same thing.

For that matter so did BOB II and so on. It is certainly a possiblity that the game could reliably render a certain area of the battlefield for individuals to jump into. Yes, LB2 is an outdated game but you yourself just admitted that todays computers could create a fairly realistic battlefield. There is no reason that a campaign engine couldn't be created to use something like AA or SB Pro's terrain and graphics to create a genuine battlefield.

In reality, the only truly dynamic WW2 ground combat simulation right now is Battleground Europe (AKA WW2 Online) but there are limitations with that. At the same time, it is a true dynamic campaign, one that changes constantly and is never really played the same way every time.

You said that it is technically impossible. I say it is possible, and actually doable. Now making a game that would make enough of a profit to warrent putting in the effort may be another discussion.

I understand your point, but I am prepared to argue that it can't be done to that extent that it would be satisfactory: pointing to Longbow as a kind of template further cements my prejudice that much more. The best you can get are human opponents- everyone is unanimous about that. Again though, developing a computer regimen without the benefit of foresight to be played against human opponents is a very tall order- it's difficult enough to plan contigencies as it is. It is something entirely different to get a computer to do it. I'm sure you are aware of the axiomatic principles which say that no plan survives contact with the enemy. Well, what does the computer do when its instructions fall apart?- it cannot think, so it cannot fill in the gaps, or intuit the intention of the programmers. It cannot treat some suspicious areas with prejudice, thinking that it would be prime location for an ambush. Computers tend to look rather stupid in most situations- funneling forces into kill sacks, getting caught in decision loops, bunching up and creating traffic jams or dithering in the face of an ambiguous threats, or they may simply inexplicably sit there, doing nothing at all. I've seen this enough times in every kind of wargame- I doubt that someone will now come along and achieve a breakthrough now.

What would happen is that some players will feel that the generic, rather stupid behavior of ground units in EECH or M1TP2 is adequate for their needs- good for them. They won't care no matter how much you would argue that these games are essentially arcade shoot-em ups with very poor depictions of the ground forces. For some of us, we've seen this enough times to recognize where we are limited insofar as getting machines to behave as we want. We recognize either the multiplayer arena or human created scripts in the single player campaigns are the best we can expect. Seriously- most people would scoff if someone claimed to have developed a cyborg companion who can mimic human behavior to the extent that it is more or less convincing- this is not so much different with a combat simulation.

There's a mission for Armed Assault played heavily on MP servers called Evolution. It's a battle to take over every city on the map one at a time. It's infantry based, but once you have a high enough rank you can use tanks, including abandoned enemy ones that can be repaired and reused. It's as dynamic as they get, although it still has the same repetition issues WWIIOL has/had.



The Jedi Master