I suspect you'd need to ask those who made the mods in the first place.

Doubt if eSim carries archive copies of mods made by 3rd parties for what they'd probably consider prehistoric software.

I mean Microsoft doesn't carry "mods" for Windows 3.1 does it?

If you look at this site:
http://www.steelbeasts.com/Downloads

They still have mods, missions, maps. etc for the old SB,
however I can not find snow mods, night mods and desert mods there.

Well again this is where people who make the mods put them.

If they didn't upload them or they have disappeared at some point then they are probably gone.

What you can find is probably all there is.

Again not surprising for what is a game over 10yrs old now?

Besides, many of these early mods have been made obsolescent by new features in SB Pro PE that the old Steel Beasts Gold simply didn't have or couldn't do for technological limitations. Even if they were still around, they wouldn't work with SB Pro PE.

If you want snow or desert, just pick the proper terrain theme in the mission editor ("Map" menu).
If you want darkness, change the time of day ("Options").


It has always been our policy that we do not guarantee longevity to mods. They may work with a specific version but may no longer work after an upgrade. We cannot refuse the introduction of new vehicle models, technologies, or features just so we don't invalidate a certain mod. If we did, we would essentially stagnate our own software development.

Hi Gibsonm and Ssnake,

Thanks for the replies.

What is the maximum range for m1a1 using sabot?
Is it possible to hit target at more than 4000m?

About 4,000m but whether you hit anything or not is up to you skill as a gunner.



See above.

Also depends on which ammunition you fire M829A1 or M829A2 or M829A3.

Hitting a stationary target beyond 4000m is quite possible. IDENTIFYING it correctly is quite another issue in real life. For example, if you index HEAT and enter a manual range of 3,200m, the superelevation is identical as for a sabot round out to about 5,000m (this is from memory and to illustrate the principle; I'd have to look up the exact figures if you wanted to follow the procedure to the letter).

So, it's quite possible to devise a table of equivalent ranges between HEAT and sabot (which only works one way in favor of the faster round with the flatter trajectory, of course).

So, with the laser range finder you get the true range beyond 4,000m. You'd then look up the closest match in "HEAT range", enter that range manually, and index the "wrong" ammo type before taking aim and firing. Needless to say, this is a much slower procedure and works only for static gunnery from a stationary position, against targets that aren't too heavily armored (IFVs, infantry behind cover, side and rear of tanks). Also, it only makes sense if you have a substantial ammo surplus and if closing the distance is not an option (for whatever reason).

In short: While possible, it makes sense only in a narrow spectrum of circumstances.

on old sb, I find it is quite difficult to hit target over 4000m.
is it easier on the sb pro pe?
or is it better to get nearer before I shoot?

Well I don't know about "easier".

Certainly other vehicles are modelled such as the M1A2 SEP with its up to x50 Gunner's sight so seeing/detecting a target is "easier" if you use that vehicle.

Whether you want to open an engagement at 4,000m or wait until your fire is more effective, is a different issue.

Don't forget that for each vehicle there is a maximum range for which the ballistic computer will actually calculate a solution (typically 4,000m; some exceptions like the M1A2, Challenger 2, and some Leopard 2A6 variants offer firing solutions out to 5,000 or 6,000m respectively).

Again, the longer the range, the bigger the compounded error for each shot.

• Natural shot dispersion is typically 0.2 mil; at 6,000m range that's a circle of 2.4m around the aiming point where 68% of all shots fired will land; 3.6m diameter for 95% of all rounds (one in twenty won't be within that circle), 4.8m for 99.7% of all rounds. In other words, even if you make no mistake at all and have the target perfectly lined up, and if the target is fully exposed, one in about 15 shots will miss the target just because of the natural shot dispersion (since a tank sized target is only about 2.5m high, and 3.5m wide). No gunnery skill can compensate for this.
• Aiming error will further contribute to misses. A 0.1 mil aiming error isn't out of the ordinary, but at 6,000m range that's more than half a meter above, below, or off to the side of a target. All of a sudden you don't miss with one out of fifteen on a fully exposed tank front, but one out of nine shots just because of this seemingly innocuous deviation.
• Don't get me started on moving targets, or shooting at that range from a moving platform, or even both. It would require luck or exceptional skill to reduce the aiming error to less than 0.2 mil (more than one meter deviation from the ideal aiming point at 5,000m or more).
• Crosswind will make the round drift left or right, and knowing exactly how strong the crosswind is across the entire flight trajectory is impossible. Again, it requires a lot of skill to get the crosswind component right to about +/- 1m/s unless you have a crosswind sensor on your vehicle, and even then YOUR local wind is not necessarily representative for the round's crosswind while flying

You get best chances for first-round hit (and kill) results at 3,000m range or less. When I started as a tank soldier in the late 1980s we still trained for ranges less than 2,500m (not the least because it was all done with live rounds, and the practice sabot becomes unstable beyond 1,800m by design so that beyond that range for a tank turret sized target the shot deviation exceeds that of the target size, which makes it difficult to give feedback to the gunner whether he did everything right or not).
When Operation Desert Storm was over it didn't take long before the training range was increased to about 3,000m, but this coincided with the introduction of virtual gunnery simulators. In other words, gunnery training became so cheap that you could actually AFFORD to train at ranges where gunners will miss more often and you can let them miss as often as necessary before they get the hang of it.

Steel Beasts allows you just that - to repeat, if that's what you want, gunnery practice over extreme engagement distances until you become somewhat proficient with it. Notice however that all multiplayer game results suggest that in a confrontation (when the targets shoot back, especially if manned by human opponents), gunnery accuracy dramatically goes down in comparison to training situations where the targets don't shoot at you.
At the same time however extreme range engagements are often practiced against sentries, especially if they are well visible on a ridge line. Typically however these are static engagements (neither shooter nor target is moving), and typically the target isn't aware of the shooter's presence. Sometimes players don't even realize that they are under fire until after the first hit, and then the question is whether your armor was strong enough to survive the first impact.

Hi Gibsonm and Ssnake,

Thanks for the explanations.

Another question:
I find it is rather hard to add "lead" to target that moving toward my tank.
I find the movement of GPS recticle is very minimal,
Is it possible to do it?

Well if by "toward" you mean direct at you, then this makes sense.

The target will just appear to get bigger, it wont move left or right.

So you don't need to apply lead.

Also the flat trajectory of the APFSDS rounds means you probably don't need to re lase either.

The above all assumes you and the target are on flat ground.

Why would you add "lead"?
What's changing most is the range, not the angular position. Depending on rnage and ammunition you need not change anything if you fire quickly after establishing the range (aka. "laze and blaze"). At 50km/h, typically the highest practical velocity of land targets, a vehicle covers a distance of 14 meters per second. Assuming a time of flight of two seconds the range therefore changes by less than 30 meters which is irrelevant for any 120mm munition at ranges with a time of flight of two seconds or less.

The only case where this is becoming relevant are HEAT and HESH engagements at ranges above 2,500m (or 1,500m, respectively). HESH is notoriously fickle and best employed against stationary targets (or ranges under 1,500m). HEAT shouldn't be used against moving targets at ranges above 2,500m, in principle. There may be occasions where you could successfully violate the standard procedures; with sufficient experience you may discover such cases. But the standards have been established to maximize the effect that you can have with a limited amount of ammunition.

Long range precision gunnery is possible of course, even against moving targets, but you need to be particularly careful with the procedures. What works well on a gunnery range will turn out much harder in combat (that's why I think that gunnery ranges are vital in training, but still of limited use).

As a rule of thumb however, aiming a bit lower can help in those long range engagements with targets moving towards you at high speed. At least the Leopard 2 as well as the T-72 will compensate for your own movement, in case you were wondering. The Leopard 1 does not. Not sure about the M1 or Challenger.

I guess I should add that I am at the top of the hill and the target is under me.
So when the target moves toward me, on my gps, I see it getting slightly lower and lower.

Currently, I have problem with tactics201 mission.
My tank is killed by the enemy very often,
and I can not see where he is.
How do you suppose to play this one?
Can you give me some hints?

Well, whenever you shoot uphill or downhill, aim for the lower edge of a target.



While I'm not familiar with the scenario, I can but recommend that you use the AAR playback to figure out from where you got shot. Set a checkmark to the "Events" category and fast-forward. It'll stop whenever someone got hurt, and then you can see how it happened. Switch to the 3D world view for a better impression of how it was during the mission.

thanks Ssnake.

is it possible to use or convert these sb gold scenarios into sb pro pe?

You can simply open them; of course the map files must exist. SB1 height maps had the file suffix *.RAW. They just need to be renamed to *.hgt to be used by SB Pro PE (and be moved in the %ProgramData%\eSim Games\maps\height folder). Terrain maps in SB Gold ALSO had the *.raw file suffix; they are however all much smaller than the height maps. Rename them to *.TER and move them to %ProgramData%\eSim Games\maps\terrain for continued use.

Note that there's at least one thing where SB Pro PE works distinctly different from SB Gold. In SB Gold water terrain tiles could be traversed if they were adjacent to land terrain tiles. In other words, 25m wide rivers were no problem at all. Depending on conditions, in SB Pro PE even a three meter wide creek can be impassable, and a 25m wide river is almost guaranteed to block movement.

SB Gold scenarios that rely on the game mechanism/rule that water can be forded if adjacent to land may no longer work as vehicles programmed to follow such movement routes may actually drown in the water. In these cases the scenario must be modified.

There may be other cases which I no longer remember, but at least this one is definitely a known issue and needs to be kept in mind.

thanks Ssnake for the explanation.
I remember watching 2a4 in some tv program,
and it has some kind of snorkel so that the tanks can go into shallow river.

are these going to be modelled in sb pro pe?

Typically we define an air intake point that reflects the typical configuration of a vehicle, which is just 80cm water depth for the M1, to name a different example. US Marine Corps M1s can be fitted with a snorkel, but we don't model that since it's something available ONLY for the USMC and it requires a bit more elaborate preparation.

The Leo 2 can ford water depths of 2.25m both in real life and in Steel Beasts, using the commander's hatch as the air intake point. This can be done with minimal preparation (rubber caps on gun, coax, and auxiliary sight; pneumatic seal for the turret ring, hydraulic seal for engine, and putting the short folding cylinder on the commander's hatch), so we show no modification of the tank model itself and simplify permit any immediate fording up to that depth. It's a simplification, sure ... but the main focus of SB Pro is the tactical aspect, not so much the minutiae of every single crew procedure. It's got to remain somewhat manageable, after all.