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Greetings again, dear ladies and gentlemen!
And as you may have noticed
we keep demonstrating the “Iron Front: Liberation 1944” game.
Today’s topic will be the armored forces and
and a detailed overview of machines of World War 2, available in the game.
All in all, in Iron Front game the battle tanks can be set in three categories.
There are
Medium tanks
Heavy tanks
and self-propelled guns – SPG.
Let’s see what they have.
Here are soviet tanks.
T-34/76 – A soviet tank, 1943 year modification.
It’s armed with F-34 76-mm gun.
Easily recognized by the six-edges turret and commander’s turret.
Not very well armored, but pretty fast.
By the historical moment that is presented in the game
that tank was already old, and was being partially replaced with the T-34/85 tank.
T-34/85 – The further modification of the T-34/76.
The main structure stayed the same
however was a new, powerful 85mm gun attached
and fully redesigned the turret.
JS-2 - “Josef Stalin”.
Heavy breakthrough tank.
One of the combat battle machines in the game.
Armed with 122-mm gun, it’s capable to destroy any tank of german Panzerwaffe.
However, the disadvantage of such a gun is a very slow and complicated reloading.
SU-85 – A medium soviet SPG
armed with 85-mm gun, designed on the T-34 tank chassis.
Thanks to it’s low profile, it’s the perfect vehicle for ambushes.
Now, let’s see the german tanks.
Panzerkampfwagen IV – A medium german tank.
The most massively-produced german tank.
The game features the modification with the anti-cumulative armor plates.
A serious enemy for the T-34 soviet tank.
Panzerkapmfwagen V – More known as “Panther”.
A medium for german and heavy for soviet classifications tank.
Planned to replace the Panzerkampfwagen IV
it’s the most balanced tank in the game and a very deadly enemy.
Panzerkampfwagen IV-B – “King Tiger”.
The name talks for itself.
Very heavy, very armored and armed, very immobile and very unreliable.
A mad creation of a german genius.
Firstly appeared dirrectly durning the historical moment, represented in the game
Armed with 88-mm gun
it’s capable to fight any soviet tank, and only JS-2 can cause troubles.
Sturmgeschutz III – Or just “Stug III”.
A medium self-propelled gun, based on Panzer III tank
featured in the game in two variants – with and without armor shields.
Like SU-85, it’s perfectly suitable for ambushes
however, due to not very strong gun
can’t always destroy the target with the first shot, and usually traits the position.
Seems like it’s all the tanks, featured in the game.
Looks like they are not a lot. But let’s try to look closer.
Not far from us there is a T-34/76 with 71 number.
By the way, all the numbers in the game are always different
you will never meet two different tanks.
That little detail, of course, makes a good plus to the game.
Let’s see.
It’s not hard to see that there are many new seats in the tank.
Among the known seats of driver, gunner and commander
there are seats for loader, radio-machinegunner and tank riders.
However, it’s not really fun being a loader.
The developers didn’t make any actions for him, so usually it’s better for a AI to sit at his place.
It’s needed, though – when there is a loader in the tank
the reloading speed rice up, important in bloody tank battles.
Let’s take his seat.
One of the specialties of the T-34/76 is the fact that the commander
among his primary task, has also the duty of the gunner.
Of course, it makes the tank control harder.
It should be noticed, that there are no hard-made interiors
which are drawn as real copies of the real sights, as the developers ensure us.
Such simple way was in all arma series.
One of the new features is the so called, “Tank compass”
in the right top edge showing schematically our combat vehicle.
A real helper for the tankman, it’s mostly similar to the OA one.
However, in Iron Front, among the general situation of the tank,
we can see the broken parts and the quality of damage.
Also on compass there is a speedometer
fuel meter, azimuth, the direction of the commanders view
and the loading scale of the main gun.
Now, let’s see the distance scale.
There was done a big step towards that way, the scopes of all the tanks are interactive
if you will hold Ctrl and roll the mouse wheel or use the PgUp and PgDown keys
you can set the needed distance of fire.
The scopes are totally corrected and are like the real ones.
Some tanks, like the german “Panthers”
have a very well-qualified optics with increasment of the view
allowing to open “sniper” fire on the enemy tanks.
Let’s try to do some shots.
At the moment we are in a really weak combat vehicle, so we will choose as our opponent that Panzer IV.
The distance there is not long, so for the old gun of T-34/76 there will be no serious problem against such enemy.
Armor pierced!
In the certain situation, the shell went through 80-mm armor
and as said in the manual, detonated the ammunition storage, or maybe burned the fuel
resulting in opened hatches due to high pressure.
Yeah… Poor crewmen.
All in all, it must be noticed that the whole tanks gameplay totally differs from the arma-2 one.
If in earlier versions of the arma we had accumulative system, in that game there was done a step forward.
Any tank in the game is aparted by critical elements
mechanics, systems, crew seats
so the hit of that or another element can damage or destroy the whole tank, or kill the crew.
When firing a shell, the game, in the best traditions of wargames, counts such parameters like
the caliber and the mass of the shell, speed of shell
type of shell (armor-piercing, cumulative, explosive etc)
the material and angle of the armor plate, it’s thickness and it’s material, it’s quality.
The point is that all the tank shells are in three kinds:
Armor Piercing – the typical shell to engage armored vehicles.
The damage depends by the power of the shell mostly.
Armor Piercing discarding sabot – a shell of lower caliber then the gun itself with a head from a very strong material.
Has higher armor-piercing capabilities thanks to high starting speed
but due to bad aerodynamic the effective range of such shell is not more then 300 – 500 meters.
High-Explosive and Shrapnel – those shells are well made against infantry and other low-armored vehicles
against buildings, fortifications, clearing of minefields etc.
It’s almost useless against tanks, although if hit directly in vulnerable zones, like hatches and the engine ventilation, it can destroy the enemy tank.
Exception is about the JS-2 HE shell
which is capable to tear tanks in pieces thanks to the large caliber.
The proper usage of the various types of shells is a must of a successful battle.
Let’s pick a heavier target, like a standing not far away Panther.
As you can see, it’s not possible to penetrate the Panther’s front, although it’s armor thickness is also 80-mm.
The armor is on slope of 55 degrees, resulting to almost double strength.
In that case, we will try to halt it.
We will aim in the track.
For such a gun like our one, it will be easier then to penetrate the armor.
Too easy, isn’t it?
You must remember, that in a real battle the enemy will not stand still
and especially will not wait till you will get a good aim.
Also, Panther is a serious enemy
equipped with awesome optics, fine armored defense and usually capable to open fire from really far distances
on which our T-34/76 tank almost has no chance.
The total opposite of the T-34/76 is the heavy breakthrough JS-2 tank.
The kinetic power of the 122-mm shell is capable to penetrate sometimes the whole tank
or either to destroy elements of the attachment of the turret.
By the way, there are interesting the breakable armor shields.
They are to thin, they are mostly single-use, but they can save the vehicle from cumulative shells.
Anyway, the main medium tank of the Red Army in 1944 was the T-34/85!
Totally redesigned turret, it has a 85-mm gun inside
and the perfect mobility and speed of the vehicle allows to perform fast assaults and deep operations at the enemy rears
and for such operations we will have the help of…
The tank riders!
T-34 like any other tank in the game, can carry an infantry group.
Which can be very useful in deep assaults and cleaning of captured points, villages etc.
As it can be seen, the bots on the armor are no more totally static like in earlier versions of the game
now it looks more alive, they react by the situation, they jump from the tank when they are under fire
and they can seriously help you in fights with enemy infantry.
Not only with shells and bullets we can fight the enemy!
Such a heavy machine can really smash the enemy guns and seriously damage the enemy car columns!
We have a Panther coming from the east. Let's try to engage them.
Being on march, the commander can use binocular to spot the enemy and coordinate the actions of the vehicle.
The enemy is defeated, seems like our review of the armored forces of the game has came to the end.
Unfortunately there is still much that have not shown yet.
However, the game will be on stores at the end of may, the publisher in the Europe is Deep Silver
And soon you will be able to see by yourself the game.
See you on battlefields of Iron Front!