[Cleft_Asunder]

QUICKLY ABOUT TANKS:
I have to say since you implimented AFV's into the game that the only sound judgment I can make about this feature is that once I confront an AFV in Allied Assault I will most likely be dissapointed. Why you ask? Frankly because I've been a 'Combat Mission Beyond overlord' (CMBO, greatest wargame ever made) veteran for about a year now so I can tell you the armor thickness, slope, armament, muzzel velocity, horsepower, top speed of a Jagdpanzer or most tanks right off the top of my head. The result of so much knowleadge gained from playing this game only leads me to suspect that the tank accuracy in Allied Assault due to the actual scope of the game (which is squad based fighting) will be... hmmm, how can I put this... sub-par.

Allied Assault always seems to create an image in my head of a U.S. bazooka team firing off their first bazooka round directly into the front turret plating of a Tiger II and knocking it out. You see the irony of the situation is that a bazooka round amounts to roughly 90mm max armor penatration at 100meters which is not suitable for punching a hole through 185mm (DOUBLE!) 10 degree curved armor of a Tiger II.

Now that that's out of the way what I REALLY want to get to is analyzing what the AA team meant when they said that "realism" is being implimented into the game. There's two types of "realism" I'm thinking of right now, number one is:

TYPE 1: The type of realism where I am able to, within the game, grab a Colt .45 1911 from my ally who is handing it to me, fire off all the rounds from my magazine at the enemy and then have to manually reload my magazine one bullet at a time or any other magazine one bullet at a time. Another example would be if I push an MG42 to the point where the muzzel is about to melt and I have to change it, or the gun jams and I am forced to repair it or abandon it. I can already tell you that these are clearly out of the scope of Allied Assault for many important reasons, not particularly techonological limitations. Another example would be if I fire a Panzerschrek (~170mm penetration at 100mm) at the side lower hull of whatever type Sherman is being implamented into the game, the Sherman will be knocked out, no if's and's or but's. Realistically there are instances where Shermans absorbed high armor penetrating rounds but these are very rare so I expect a KO.

TYPE 2: The second type would be what AA is ACTUALLY doing. We have weapons with an infinite amount of magazines/clips, magazines are automatically replenished as they are put away. Ballistic trajectories have been unrealisticly tweaked (read bullets will never be subject to the laws of gravity after being fired, no curve will take place, only a straight travel path until an object is hit). Surviving the Omaha beach landing with rather little effort is a new one on me . I'm sure a hitpoint based system is being implemented for the armored units instead of what I mentioned above, that is armor thickness ect.(sigh). Various other things I can't think of, off to the conclusion.

So Allied Assault is aiming for the later, TYPE 2, a more fun filled game were an eye wont get sand in it and turn the screen half black (har har). Saving Private Ryan went for realism but it also went for "hollywood", there were incaccuracies that were intentional, the movie was only realistic in that it created a CLOSE image of what the war was like. It's the same in games, We can create a game based on world war II and be extremely carefull on detail, however it wont make it the real deal, only the actual war itself was realistic. If the game was made using method TYPE 1 it will only frustrate most gamers, and there's more headache than payoff when implementing so much detail. Allied Assault doesn't do TYPE 1 nor does it want to.

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In the name of Allah.