The last few weeks I was looking at tank sims placed in WW2 and although you can find some uncut diamonds that get a lot better with some mods("Steel Fury" with the SPM as best example), there is nothing compared to "Rise of Flight" in the tank sim market.

So I wonder if the way "Rise of Flight" went is a way to give the community what it would like to have, a Grade A tank sim based in World War 2.

Personally I think so, RoF started out with much less compared to where it is now and it has been made clear that it would have died long ago without the continuous cash flow by new planes, field mods, etc. that supports the developer.

This could also work for a tanks sim letting the player buy tanks, minor enhancements(like RoFs field mods), skins, etc. for it would make a more or less constant cash flow.
Further it could help to expand this sim from its initially small covered area(few tanks, landscapes, locations etc.) to other areas.
At start the Russian campaign(late 1942 to early 1943) would suit best as initial battle ground for the sim and this could be expanded into a Poland campaign where early German and Russian tanks and also Polish tanks could be covered, going on to the West with the 1940 campaign covering French & British tanks, onto the African theater with Italian tanks, on to the Italian Theater 1943-44 and later a 1944-45 campaign in the West, finishing with a 1945 End of the Reich expansion.

The main problem I see is the initial "resistance" that has to be overcome to get this show rolling, there has to be simply a lot more in compared to with what RoF started, not only the tanks have to be covered, but also trucks & prime movers for PaK, artillery & FlaK and those units them self of course, APCs for infantry & infantry itself, and aircraft, not to speak of a really good sim itself regarding all the physics(ballistic, damage model, etc.) that have to be covered.
So a lot money has to flow into it for a long while till a good starting point is reached from where the jump-off can be done.

Personally this is the only way I see how the community can get a sim that evolves into the best(hopefully) WW2 tank sim ever.


How does the community think about this?

I have no idea if it would work with the community being as fickle as it is, but I would certainly buy into it.

I do not think the community is as fickle as before. The problem is what engine will you use, and what tools are required for the 3D artists. So far no engine has met the requirements of the artist, scriptor, MP, and physics in one package.

I'd like to bet the Soeldner game engine could do it.

I think it could work. Alternately, Kickstarter.com might help (or could help for the initial investment). I'd certainly invest an undue amount of money for a tank game with a good single-player component to it.

I think for a tank game to be successful, though, it would first and foremost have to be NW Europe in '44, focusing on the Sherman, Panther and Tiger. At least it does if you want it to succeed in America/Western Europe. You can expand from there.

Well the advantage of the Russian theater would that they also have Western tanks coming in over the Lend-Lease deal.
And the Russians have also some very good tanks.
Not sure how the community would react if you start of in a theater that as mostly weak allied tanks compared the german tanks and also take the allied air superiority into account that gives German armored units a hard time.

They'd react as every other community would - they'd buy it and complain that you didn't include D-Day, then you'd have to tell them how 90% of the DD tanks sank before reaching the beach and that makes D-Day not fun as a game, and then they'd try to mod it anyways.

Fact of the matter is, and I'm sure nearly every WWII ground sim dev can back me up on this, Americans like playing Americans. Red Orchestra took years to get the kind of following it had before RO2 came out (not sure if they were able to keep that following). Making a WWII sim without Shermans is like making a modern tank sim without Abrams - doomed to mediocrity in the biggest game market in the world no matter how good the game is. And if you make a WWII tank sim that doesn't feature Panthers and Tigers for the Germans out of the box, you're dooming yourself even more. You need to build a core community with NW Europe '44-'45 (be in Normandy or the Bulge as your setting, or both) and expand from there.

Unless you want a niche game.

And don't count on sales in Europe or Russia - piracy will take a big chunk outta them.