I love them

Carrier Command: Gaea Mission, although suffering from some game-crippling bugs, has such an easy and fun concept of being able to quickly transition from a top down strategy game to a first/third person shooter.

ArmA also has the same concept, but again the poorly developed AI and under developed high command system leave lots to desire.

I'd love to see hybrid using the IrisZoom engine (Wargame European Escalation, RUSE). Beautiful engine and good AI.

Anyone else enjoy hybrids, or have good recommendations ?

Battlestations Pacific is the best IMO. Strategy game, but you can take direct control of fighters, bombers, torpedo bombers, battleships, subs, transports, PT boats, drop paratroopers...brilliant game. It's not a flight sim and not intended to be, it's a strategy game at heart. Watch your landing ships and see the troops unload and start fighting to take an island. Battlestations Midway is good too, but I like BSP for the island capture game type. Set it with no respawning ammo and no timer and a game could last anywhere from 20 minutes to 4 hours.
You can play the entire game from the strategy map, all from in the action, or both.

I actually own it, but I've only played it a short bit. The campaign is very gamey. In the fist naval combat mission I,m pretty sure I sunk 1/3 of the Japanese navy

Quite true.

Though you are going to be hard pressed to find a game that combines FPS and RTS that isn't.

Pacific Storm: Allies was built along those lines, though slightly more realistic that Battlestations

BSP has some great missions, but as with pretty much every game, the first missions are tutorial. It shines in Island Capture, but also has some other good game types you can play vs humans or AI.
Besides, a realistic game with subs would probably have you spending weeks at sea just to sink some supply ships. Not that fun. LOL

Indeed I really CAN enjoy this hybrid. I have looked at both series mentioned and never pulled the trigger. I could not tell how game like they where.... Personally I like the more SIM end of things on this one.

I always wanted to see SABOW go more this way with other playable stuff besides tanks. A legit strat game/vehicle sim with some elements of fps would be grand. Not ARMA for this....

I think I will try demos for mentioned titles to see if i can stand them....if to unrealisic.

Warning: even I didn't like the BSP demo. Made it seem like it was supposed to be an arcade flight game. Better would be to look up gameplay videos on youtube showing the command map as well as the observe or control view.

No one plays the Battlestation games though, so no matter how good they are you'll not find a game online.

It's got AI of varying levels. You can also play it as co-op in addition to MP. Haven't tried online in a while, but if it's not COD, MP usually dies in a few weeks in any game these days.

I loved Battlestations Midway when it first came out. Pacific, not so much. Maybe I was just tired of it by that time.