31st Normandy mod -WW2

[Enigma85 2]

Continuing on with my modeling rampage, here's a Supermarine Spitfire mk XIV:

[im g]http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k285/wa_roush/spitf1.jpg[/img]

[im g]http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k285/wa_roush/spitf2.jpg[/img]

[im g]http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k285/wa_roush/spitf3.jpg[/img]

Want to say thanks to Enigma for doing a great job on the textures!

you Welcome,

Glad to be able to work on a ww2 project.

More work from me soon hopefully

Very nice work on the Spitfire Rip and Enigma

Really looking forward to the release and future progressions

Thanks Mate,

Good to hear from you again.

Love your recent screen shots they look amazing.

Congrats on SOTW at AA.info

[AEA 0]

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD

And so soon it will be out.

Its just too good to be true.

[Tomahawk1 0]

im tellin' ya, the spitfire looks fantastic! but, i dunno, the panzer just needs more work done, hard to explain, it just doesn't please me as much as it could

[Enigma85 2]

im tellin' ya, the spitfire looks fantastic! but, i dunno, the panzer just needs more work done, hard to explain, it just doesn't please me as much as it could

if you talking about the panther you'll be pleased to know that I'm working on it now

[belgerot 33]

I'd consider the model as in-progress. Is there any chance we can see more angle views, especially of the turret? Something does seem a bit off about it.

[ShrubMiK 0]

Let me be clear - I'm not criticising the state of the models/skins, or the damage models, or anything at the moment. I realise it is (or rather, soon will be) a beta and I too would rather see something come out early which can be improved upon incrementally, rather than wait 3 years for the final perfect version which might or might not ever appear.

And I certainly don't want to appear to be ungrateful to people who put in a lot of time producing goodies for me to play with, at no cost.

But I also don't think it is too early to express an opinion on how I would ultimately like to see it developed. Too late to express an opinion after all the decisions have been taken and all the work done, after all.

And I have to say the expressed idea that "balance" is crucial and can only be achieved by making sure that there is some sort of reasonable balance between individual units on either side is worrying me. If we end up with a mod in which a force of 10 shermans has a 50-50 chance of coming out on top against 10 panthers, it's not going to WW2, and it is not going to be ArmA, IMO.

I'm not against artificially balanced games on principle - I'm a big fan of Battlefield2 for example, but what I play ArmA for is a more realistic experience which challenges me in a different way.

Just my personal opinion, of course.

[eble 3]

Quote[/b] ]If we end up with a mod in which a force of 10 shermans has a 50-50 chance of coming out on top against 10 panthers, it's not going to WW2, and it is not going to be ArmA, IMO.

If that happens in game 1 x panthers goes and takes on shermans other 9 guys go for a cup of tea, come back a few minutes later no more shermans.

I'll sure it will be more balanced than in real life for gameplay sakes, i'd hate to see shermans 1 shotting a panther.

Southy

[AEA 0]

yes, a sherman shouldnt have a chance.

[Enigma85 2]

well to be honest a Sherman did have a chance in packs.

they would use there speed to flank round the back and hit them in the weakest part of the Armour.

The tiger and panther had slower turning turrets then the sherman they couldn't draw a bead on the rear attacking tanks quick enough.

This however did prove costly as and losing tanks was quite common

the up gunned Sherman firefly

could compete with the germans due to the 17lb'r being able to pack a punch to even the heaviest of German tanks.

when a pack 3 shermans + 1 firefly met the German tanks they would stand a chance in toe to toe action thanks to the penetration power of the firefly.

The Germans soon discovering this made firefly's there top targets and wiped them out of the battle ASAP.

leaving the other shermans to fend for themselves.

I do agree with what you say though.

Earlier model shermans shouldn't be able to compete 1 on 1 with panthers,tigers etc....

but in packs I'd like to see some kind of balance against the german tanks due to slower turning radius,top speed,turret rotation etc...

[rip31st 98]

OK well here's the revamped panther, thanks to Enigma's fine work. Just got done mapping it.

enjoy!

[Tomahawk1 0]

yeah, the panther does look much better now. If you're going to include the fighting in germany to this mod, ur gonna have make winter buildings and tanks with snow on em and winter camo german tanks (as far as i know, the allied forces didn't use a winter camo that much)

yeah, and about that shermans vs panther friendly arguing going on here: you need 5 shermans to take out one tiger/panther then they would have more that fifty fifty chance

shermans were worse that german armour but they defeated the german armour by their superior numbers

(sherman tank was totally a "FAIL")

[rip31st 98]

Does sherman include the firefly as in fail or is that a separate issue?

[juliusN 0]

Sherman is better than PzIV and 4 shermans together should be stronger than one panther. When faced with a tiger or even king tiger,i think americans will call air support but not send out their shermans.

[ShrubMiK 0]

My preference would be to provide the option for overall balance in MP scenarios by providing later Allied tanks, even where in reality they arrived too late to fight. Comet is reasonably equivalent to Panther, Pershing is reasonably equivalent to Tiger I, Centurion (if you want to go that far out of historical timelines) is reasonably equivalent King Tiger.

That would give the best of both worlds - if you want one-for-one balance you play with all the tanks, If you want greater historical realism you play only with those which were available in the field mid-late 1944 and accept that overall balance can only be achieved with numerical advantage.

>If you're going to include the fighting in germany to this mod, ur gonna have make winter buildings

That would be nice. Although strictly speaking this is "Normandy" mod so by definition covers June/July/Aug 1944 only

I wouldn't say sherman was a "fail" - it had many deficiencies compared to more modern designs, but OTOH it could be mass produced and was quite reliable. And as somebody (Stalin?) once said, "quantity has a quality all of its own".

Firefly was very much a compromise - it gave the Sherman a needed big improvement in anti-tank capability, but at the cost of decreasing anti-infantry/anti-AT gun capability (less effective HE ammo for the 17pdr). And it still had relatively weak armour compared to the better German tanks. And the size of the gun was difficult to fit onto a relatively small chassis, which led to compromises in the turret design, and less ammunition capacity.

Comet was an improvement on Firefly, the 17pdr was scaled down a little to fit it on the chassis (which was basically an improvement of Cromwell), and it was a pretty good all round tank. As I said earlier, would be nice to have it in there as an option in the mod, but historically it didn't start to arrive in the field until end of 1944.

If you are interested I can point you at a pretty good site with huge amounts of armour thickness data for all WW2 vehicles, and armour pentration at various ranges for all guns and ammunition types.

Or if you want something less technical, certain published tabletop wargames rules (e.g. the Wargames Research Group ones) are good - i.e. let somebody else do all the hard research and evaluation for you

But when it comes down to it I realise that it is impossible to accurately model all of the real life characteristics of these tanks and guns in ArmA. What I'm looking for is a reasonable modelling of the overall strength of the units - i.e. if 1 Panther can defeat several Shermans in most situations (i.e. not ambushed at close range), it will feel "right".

[juliusN 0]

Sherman is reliable and easy to produce and it has the mechanism which can stablize the gun.So sherman shoots accurately. In fact US army's advantage lay on it's air force.To keep the balance,just give americans more fighters and bombers.

[Enigma85 2]

right,

I'm sure the balancing in the final will be good a mix between game play and realism.

this discussion could go for another 2 pages back and forth about which tank should do what and which side should have the advantage in what areas.

but it's not really going to achieve anything at the minute.

Wait til the 15th.

download the beta.

play it,make a list of what you think could be better and what could be changed.

and post it here.

I'm sure Rip will take everything into consideration and make changes to balance the game play whilst keeping it fun and as realistic as possible.

lets try and keep the discussion on mod progress for the meanwhile?

it's not long to the beta

then you can fill the thread full of suggestions lol

[Col. Faulkner 0]

 When faced with a tiger or even king tiger,i think americans will call air support but not send out their shermans.

Well if you're going to be strictly authentic the Yanks

rarely faced Panthers or Tigers in Europe, and US doctrine

dictated that tanks weren't supposed to fight other tanks

anyway. It'll need to be British and Canadian 75mm Shermans

and Fireflies taking on the big panzers. I do hope they'll model

the Firefly and it's armament authentically (within the

considerable ArmA game limitations, of course). It'd be very

cool indeed to have some British Shermans in the game for a

change.

@Rip31st: I'll get on with the PIAT I promised you at the

weekend. Have you done any more work on the British and/or

Commonwealth infantrymen?

[Tomahawk1 0]

once again, enigma said it all

[rip31st 98]

Shrub - Post a link to your data which will be considered.

Faulk - That would be cool to have the firefly or even a cromwell. I do have a firefly in work & Cromwell. Only inf anti-tank is the bazooka atm so if you're willing to donate the PIAT I would be more then happy to put it in the mod. As for the brits, those have been in work for some time. I will see if I can get more info on them today.

[archsceptic 21]

Have you considered importing some armour from ofp as a short cut to reaching your goals? for example T_Roc has posted some nice tanks for ofp for example on this page:

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....st=1770

I especially like his E8 Sherman. It's a shame really that there are some great addons for ofp that are not being used as much as they should because the engine is virtually obsolete.

I did a bit of re-texturing work on "PRIME's" Sherman pack ( http://ofp.gamepark.cz/news/pics2/IGNShermans1.jpg ) to make a British Firefly - I could dig them out and send them to you if you want. I'm pretty sure the original author of the Sherman pack gave his permission for them to be used without his future consent for whatever purposes.

[ShrubMiK 0]

There are quite a lot of sites with armour data and gun penetration data around...some of them are very dubious, with limited data, and no notes on where they got the data from. Sometimes they say they have "calculated", but don't say how.

This one struck as looking a more comprehensive, scientific and trustworthy than the rest I've seen:

http://gva.freeweb.hu/index.html

Oh, note that it doesn't seem to list turret and hull armour together for a given vehicle...you need to toggle between them using a not-very-obvious button above the top of the table.

[rip31st 98]

Have you considered importing some armour from ofp as a short cut to reaching your goals? for example T_Roc has posted some nice tanks for ofp for example on this page:

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....st=1770

I especially like his E8 Sherman. It's a shame really that there are some great addons for ofp that are not being used as much as they should because the engine is virtually obsolete.

I did a bit of re-texturing work on "PRIME's" Sherman pack ( http://ofp.gamepark.cz/news/pics2/IGNShermans1.jpg ) to make a British Firefly - I could dig them out and send them to you if you want. I'm pretty sure the original author of the Sherman pack gave his permission for them to be used without his future consent for whatever purposes.

The problem with importing #1 is permissions. Just because it's there to download, doesn't mean you can use it.

#2. It was made for OFP, not for ArmA. BIS has strict rules regarding the conversion of OFP material to ArmA. I'm not going there.

#3. There are some in this community that choose not to share or help, and yes it is a shame. As you can see I'm very open about my work and have a policy that states anyone can use my work anywhere for any reason OR modify it.

Some modders out there believe they are above the rest when it comes to snubbing their noses at lower quality work because theirs is better. That's fine, we don't care. It's too bad they are unwilling to be as open as I am. It's like a top secret project to them and they will only be sharing with the few they consider let using it.

Otherwise this show would have been on the road already. But I'm trying my hardest to make this happen. It won't be perfect, there will be bugs, there will be performance issues with the equipment in respect to their real world stats and date. But that is what a beta is all about. We will find them and fix them

PLUS were working on a ton of content that includes MANY...and I mean many more vehicles. Oh and maps.

[rip31st 98]

There are quite a lot of sites with armour data and gun penetration data around...some of them are very dubious, with limited data, and no notes on where they got the data from. Sometimes they say they have "calculated", but don't say how.

This one struck as looking a more comprehensive, scientific and trustworthy than the rest I've seen:

http://gva.freeweb.hu/index.html

Oh, note that it doesn't seem to list turret and hull armour together for a given vehicle...you need to toggle between them using a not-very-obvious button above the top of the table.

Very good site. Just peeked at it breifly. Maybe we can use this data as a baseline and go from there. I was also directed towards a site today via PM that leads me to data on Allied shell types. All good info.

Thanks!

[Aqu 0]

The bad thing is that Arma vehicles and weapons do not use armor thickness, so converting that data into Arma in a scientific way is bit hard. You coud try think some sort of conversion functions to make it easier. E.g deflecting=50/sqrt(caliber(mm))

When making a normandy map, you should remember the typical landscape, bocage. It must be bit painful to add all those hedgerows in such a big map. But it is important to generate proper feeling and those hedgerows gave a big advantage to defender and made movements harder.

[rip31st 98]

The bad thing is that Arma vehicles and weapons do not use armor thickness, so converting that data into Arma in a scientific way is bit hard. You coud try think some sort of conversion functions to make it easier. E.g deflecting=50/sqrt(caliber(mm))

When making a normandy map, you should remember the typical landscape, bocage. It must be bit painful to add all those hedgerows in such a big map. But it is important to generate proper feeling and those hedgerows gave a big advantage to defender and made movements harder.

There is a deflection value. There is also a way to add values to specific components of the damage model. Hence the flat tires on the HMMV's. There are also ways to add the amount of damage a direct hit causes a model.

The hedgerows my friend were localized. You won't find them everywhere. But where you do find them, you will find them difficult to get through - as infantry of course.

It's been the philosophy from the start improvements in the condition of the map itself and models can/will be implemented, but not before feedback is received. OF course that all starts after Oct. 15th. That said don't keep pushing the cart way out infront of the horse. Let the beta fall where it may, then go from there.

Lots of great ideas to think about.

Here's something to chew on.

In this mod, there will be gliders. Those gliders will carry troops, guns and equipment. Those gliders can be towed.