IL-2 Sturmovik: Tank Crew - Clash at Prokhorovka

[demjansk1942]

Good comments, I wonder if someone has any information from Rudel in his books?  I have them on the shelf, maybe look later.

Interesting, I play Battlefield 5, get killed by a me109, quite easily but that game is totally unrealistic

[Gusington]

Interesting content Des. For more info what books would recommend? I am a casual WWII ETO armor dork. Very interested in the rockets. I have not read or learned much on their use in ground attack in WWII. Would love to learn more.

I would love to get this game as well but it looks fairly complex and would take me a long time to learn. What would you say about that? I haven't played any tank sim in a really long time but I miss it and love the subject.

[Skoop]

Rudel with his 37mm cannon mounted on each wing of his stuka firing tungsten AP, scored the most ground kills.  There was a reason why he was shot down so many times, flying low and slow to get those cannon on target was extremely dangerous but effective.

[demjansk1942]

Agree skopp he was one weapon, I like having him in panzer Corp

[Destraex]

Interesting content Des. For more info what books would recommend? I am a casual WWII ETO armor dork. Very interested in the rockets. I have not read or learned much on their use in ground attack in WWII. Would love to learn more.

I would love to get this game as well but it looks fairly complex and would take me a long time to learn. What would you say about that? I haven't played any tank sim in a really long time but I miss it and love the subject.

The only book I have that references this sort of thing is "How to kill a panther, by Craig Moore". It only has about 3 pages on the tests done on the Panther from the video I linked. I don't know of any books that concentrate on ww2 tank hunting aircraft that used rockets specifically.

In the words of Sir Henry Tizard with regard to bomb aircraft as anti tank platforms:

"it soon became apparent that guns and their contemporary ammunition were only capable of dealing with soft-skinned and lightly armoured vehicles and that the weight of effort required to damage a tank with conventional bombs was far too great."

https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/documents/Research/RAF-Historical-Society-Journals/Journal_45_Seminar_conventional_weapons.pdf

Here is another few videos by the same author on GUN armed tank hunting aircraft as well as rocket armed if you are interested in those. This guy is great as a source as he actually goes into the german archives which I think is fairly hard to do and reads the actual reports. So we get German language reports translated and filtered for his English videos. Unfortunately he does not speak russian I don't think, so he cannot do the same for their archives on this stuff.

[Destraex]

Interesting content Des. For more info what books would recommend? I am a casual WWII ETO armor dork. Very interested in the rockets. I have not read or learned much on their use in ground attack in WWII. Would love to learn more.

I would love to get this game as well but it looks fairly complex and would take me a long time to learn. What would you say about that? I haven't played any tank sim in a really long time but I miss it and love the subject.

As to your question about the complexity of the stand alone il2 tank crew module. Because we are dealing with a tank simulation, it's very simple really. A little like playing world of tanks except you have to aim properly with a realistic sight.

General Gameplay:
So basically it's WASD for moving and the mouse for turning the turret and firing. Apart from that changing stations is ctrl-C. that's 99% of your in game controls right there. Those controls are the same as playing a first person shooter like Call of Duty, just slower.

Startup:
When you start the game, you start in the drivers seat and press E to start the engine. Ctrl-C to change to the next station, the gunners station. Press T to unlock the travel lock on the main gun and SHift-T to lean into the gunsight to see the reticle. Ctrl-C to change to the next station, the commanders station. Press right alt-c to open the hatch and turn out. OK startup is done for mine. You're ready to go.

General Movement
I just use WASD to drive from the commanders station, the driver takes care of gear changes so I do not have to do a thing. Ctrl-5 to switch to commanders binoculars every now and then to take a closer look at things. I press alt-c to turn in and shift 1 (or is it 2) to switch to gunner station on contact. I have scroll set to zoom more to the sight. You can adjust the German sight triangle up down left and right but I generally just have my mouse set to adjust up and down for range and use the smaller triangles for lead without adjusting the sight left and right.
Oh and I have my HOTAS throttle set to movement so I can relax during long drives on multiplayer servers and just make left and right adjustments as needed. Sometimes I read something else outside the game when long straight stretches allow lol.

Pretty Easy for a Simulator:
As you can see. The basics are pretty easy for a simulator. Not much is too complex in what is essentially a driving sim. I mean their are tonnes of views like zooming to the copula windows inside the commanders copula and looking out the side window as the driver and perhaps even opening it if you want. Firing flares from the commanders flare gun and such. But none of these are necessary. You are basically left to concentrate on gunnery skill and tactics. As it should be.

Did I mention that if you own il2 BOS you can crew tanks without owning the module. You just need somebody that does own the module to allow you to be part of his\her crew.

What does it have over World of Tanks and War Thunder Tanks?
There are a few single player tank simulators on the market that would probably be ok like Steel Armor: Blaze of War or Steel Beasts Pro PE, but I do not know of any current ww2 Tank Simulators apart from il2 Tank Crew. World of Tanks and War Thunder tanks are grindy games that make you play "matches" against ahistorical match ups with no relation to reality of ww2 combat. You are simply rolling around on your own and playing as an individual sniper trying to achieve points for what is essentially an online sport.

il2 Tank Crew on the other hand offers old school simulation and has the advantages of:
* Huge maps made for aircraft to fight on.
* Single player short campaigns that have supporting weapons and objectives. You are part of an army and attacking like a real army.
* Map Editor and an array of player made missions to download. The ability to make your own missions.
* Concentration on the Kursk period. So no mixed experimental tanks and modern vs early tank matches like in war thunder.
* The ability to co-operate with a fully fleshed out flight simulation community in multiplayer. A lot of multiplayer servers have tank spawns near (15mins) the front.
* 10 tanks to concentrate on that are done fairly well. People complain about the price, but it's on special at 50% off and when you divide by the number of tanks and compare to other simulators..... well: T-34-76, KV-1s. M4A2 "Sherman", SU-122, SU-152, PzKpfw III Ausf.M, PzKpfw IV Ausf.G, PzKpfw V Ausf.D "Panther". PzKpfw VI Ausf.H1 "Tiger" and Sd. Kfz. 184 "Ferdinand".

What does il2 Tank Crew lack:
* Infantry apart from a few soldiers and support vehicle crew. The devs announced infantry in some form years ago but nothing has been seen yet and I am not confident any solution they do have when it finally arrives will be any good.
* It is a small community mostly made up of flyboys who play tanks occasionally. But does have some hard core tankers.
* I suspect because tank crew is a 3rd party module of a flight sim, that it is second fiddle to the main game. However they have released two anti aircraft vehicles and two new collectors vehicles have been announced. So it's not completely dead.
* It does not have the greatest graphics. A good map can make the tanks look amazing but then some maps have them looking strangely horrible. Not sure why, it's like they are sometimes drawn as map assets at low res. Most of the time they look great though... just not cutting edge.

What is the next best thing?
I think Post Scriptum tank play would be the next best thing. But the maps are small and the game is multiplayer only.

[Gusington]

Wow, above and beyond the call of duty on the last two posts, Des, thank you very much. And I do own Battle of Stalingrad! The one thing holding me back here is the 80.00 price point. But the next time it goes on sale I'm in, it's been way too long for me. And never, actually, if I count WWII armor.

I am going to do some further research on WWII tank busting aviation and rockets specifically. There's got to be something.

[Destraex]

You're welcome mate. I am off work with a broken toe for the next few days so have had some time to post a little less off the cuff.
By the way 53 minutes ago;

"Attention Pilots and Tankers,
The weather is changing in Moscow and Las Vegas, and that means it's time to fire up Sturmovik for some cozy aerial combat action! So we have brought back the IL-2 Promo Codes for a limited time! They are good only in the Official IL-2 Webstore!
The codes are good through Nov. 23rd, 2021.
We have put two unique codes in your IL-2 User Account profile.
They are good for 50% Off all products except - C-47, BON, FC2 and Dover series products."

[Gusington]

^Quite enticing...I like to have my IL2 stuff in Steam, though. Winter sales are just around the corner. Thinking of Flying Circus as well.

[SirAndrewD]

^Quite enticing...I like to have my IL2 stuff in Steam, though. Winter sales are just around the corner. Thinking of Flying Circus as well.

If you like MP get Flying Circus and vol II.  It's amazing.

It's even better in VR.

[Gusington]

^I am not an MPer. Worth it for SP?

[SirAndrewD]

^I am not an MPer. Worth it for SP?

Not yet.  FC II will have an SP career mode on release but it hasn't been implemented. 

Flying Circus has a couple of fun canned campaigns but they're not a lot of time investment.

If you're getting it now you're getting it for MP and early access to the new crates. 

[Gusington]

^Thanks. I'll wait for that SP career mode.

[Skoop]

The IL2 engine recently released the advanced quick mission builder.  The idea was to creat a bridge between the full editor and the quick mission system.  It's built off the original campaign engine that the community wanted replaced with the current career system.  It seems that tank crew can be used with the advanced mission builder to increase more sp content for tank crew.

I actually really like the tank crew addition, I agree with des, it's the best representation of WWII tanks at the moment.  We could use more content though, the career mode would be fun in the tanks.

I had a pretty focused run of doing tanks in hell let loose, and if you get a good crew in your tank it's epic.  If you try to solo the tank or have idiots on board it's a nitemare.  This made me revisit tank crew and just love being able to have the choice of diving with wasd keys while operating the gun or have multi crew players, not just be stuck with multi crew..  I really wish this had been implemented in HLL or post scriptum.

Also the German gun sights have keys for adjusting the sights for range, that little extra bit realism is really cool.  Makes distance shooting very enjoyable.

[Grim.Reaper]

^Thanks. I'll wait for that SP career mode.

Or just go with Wolff:)