Panzer Elite's new Shermans!

[33LIMA 972]

'We're the D-Day Dodgers, in sunny Ital-ee...'

 

 

It's an eloquent testimony to both exceptional design and the skill of its mod community, that Panzer Elite, first released in 1999, is still one of the best tank simulators you can play, sixteen years later. Sims like WW2 Battle Tanks (despite the awful AI) and Steel Fury (the only other WW2 tanksim in the same class as PE) can boast much better graphics and some other points of superiority. But good old PE still beats them all, in some important fields. Not the least of these are decent representation of both radio and intercom traffic; very good platoon command and control facilities; and a superb, linked set of single player campaigns, which enables you to start in Tunisia, move on to Italy and then finish off in Normandy, fighting for either the US Army or the Wehrmacht. And that's before the modders added France 1940, Libya 1941-2 and the Eastern Front, plus new playable nationalities like the British and  Red Armies.

 

Modder Slomo's Panzer Pack 2x (PP2x) has recently been enhanced by the addition of a vehicle update, which you can get along with the mod itself, via the links here, on the PE Development Group PP2x subforum. The update adds new M4 Shermans, which have 3-d wheels and suspension and better animation, including tank commander figures which can close hatches. There are 75 and 76mm-gunned versions and if you want something that will keep out more of the German weapons, there's a 'Jumbo' M4A3E2 heavy version, too.

 

 

 

 

The 'x' in 'PP2x' signifies that the mod uses Brit44 Aldo's new PE executable, whose latest version adds smoother movement of vehicles to the other improvements, the most significant of which is probably proper 'time of flight' and ballistic trajectories, so that you can see your tracers arc towards the enemy, and more to the point, see their tracers arecing towards you! It's hard to over-state the improvement this mod brings to PE.

 

Anyhow, to try out the Shermans, I decided to join 'the D-day Dodgers', as the Allied troops in Italy sardonically referred to themselves. You can start off a PE campaign in any of the three 'sub-campaigns' (as well as playing any individual campaign mission, via the 'Single Mission' option) so you don't have to play all the way through the Tunisia segment, if you want to begin 'in sunny Ital-ee'. As I did.

 

In fact, the first missions are on Sicily, where the British and Americans first landed. As usual in PE, you start at a nice rendering of your platoon waiting to move up, here set in a typical Italian plaza. PE often starts you with a mix of vehicles for your platoon, but here, I have already replaced an M5 light tank and an M10 tank destroyer with Shermans. I chose a mix of the round-hulled M4A1 and the original M4, which would have been found in the same units as they had the same engine. Seventy-six millimetre-gunned versions didn't arrive until Normandy, so we've all got 75s, as you can see. The little white dog visible between the water trough and the right-hand Sherman is fully-animated! Truly, they don't make sims like this any more.

 

 

At this screen you can do things like check out your crew skills and move people around; add any available modifications to your tanks (like in some cases radios, or extra armour) and adjust your ammo supply. When you're ready, you click on the trestle table (behind the two and a half ton truck) and that starts the briefing (or more accurately, your orders) for the mission. So that's waht we'll look at, next.

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

Bring on the Shermans!

 

Panzer Elite is pretty well unique amongst sims in that it provides by far the most realistic 'briefing' for the player. When you kick it off, you are taken to an map. A suitably-accented voice-over describes the tactical situation, including the disposition and actions of friendly forces and the expected dispositions and actions of the enemy. You are then given your own tasks. This is a quite decent representation of the process of 'oral orders' and is how it works in real life, nowadays as well as in WW2. When the briefing's done you can read a summary, view specific objectives, check the weather forecast and see what artillery support is available.

 

Unfortunately, these tools - the animated map and the verbal 'briefing' - are not as well utlised as they could and should be. The player is given his orders alone, whereas in real life, he and the other participating platoon commanders would all be sitting in on the same session (or 'Orders Group'). And in PE, the person giving you the briefing - in the US missions, anyway - calls you 'sir': in real life you get your orders from your boss, absolutely not from a subordinate. And the missions themselves often seem a bit disorganised, with platoons moving hither and thither, often rather widely spaced and with little apparent effort at co-ordination. Most PE missions - offensive ones, anyway - feel like a rather lonely advance to contact. All that said, they are still pretty good and within the sim's conventions and limitations, they offer players an exceptional experience of not just operating their own tank, but also playing the role of a tank platoon commander.

 

Here are our dispositions for this mission, in green; the 'X' marks my on platoon's starting location. We're defending the US bridgehead at the town of Gela, in southern Sicily. Apart from scattered infantry units in a wide arc to the west and north, our forces seem to consist of a group of tank platoons.

 

 

One of the nice things about the PE campaign missions is that they follow the course of a series of real battles from each campaign, fought on maps which are decent representations of the ground at the time. This mission replicates one day in the Battle of Gela, 11 July 1943, when German armoued units, including some Tiger tanks, made a sustained effort to crush the US beachead there. In re-fighting this battle, we have been told that the Germans are expected to mount concentric attacks on Gela from north, north-west and west. My platoon is ordered to make what is described rather oddly as a recce, just inland from the coast, to the west-north-west. Not for us, the luxury of finding fire positions from which we can wait for the enemy to come to us. It's implied (but not really made clear) that the other tank platoons will also move out, later. I decided I would move only slowly, from fire psoition to fire position, to avoid getting too far out in front. And I would edge northwards towards the others, for better mutual support...I so hoped.

 

 

As usual, the PE briefing lets you see the specific goals which determine mission failure or success, as well as 'bonus' or secondary goals which I believe can result in medals or experience being won. This is uesful, if not entirely realistic, not least as it displayes the actual names and presence of units that you are not going to know so much about. Incidentally, in stock PE, all units are pretty anonymous, even though their missions closely follow real ones.

 

 

I rarely bother swapping my crew around in PE and on this mission, I forgot to check out what extras I might be able to add to my tanks, which was not a good thing. But I was keen to see the new Shermans in action; so after a quick review of the objectives, I kicked off the operation. I quickly got my tanks into line abreast formation  - I have a full-strength platoon of five - facing the enemy. Halted again, I checked out the immediate locality, before moving off again.

 

 

Ahead of us lay a road through some scattered buildings, on the northern outskirts of Gela. I called my platoon into column and drove on through, intending to deploy again on the far side. After playing a lot of Steel Fury, it's a pleasure to be able to take advantage again of Panzer Elite's much superior command and control facilities. You can do so much more, and all of it via hotkeys, though there so many key commands that it takes a while to remember them all again.

 

 

Calling up the map, I checked out our side's dispositions; you can see friendly forces in green (spotted enemies appear blue) with their names as text labels. My tanks are the yellow symbols, making their way in column up the road. In game, in modded PE, the map appears rather small, but you still have all the control of the stock sim's map, including options to configure the display, check your orders and progress and call up artillery support - if you have any. And we do on this mission, in the form of a limited number of HE or smoke 'shoots' from 105mm howitzers. Sadly, we have none of the naval gunfire support that drenched the German and Italian defenders, in the real Battle of Gela.

 

 

Once out into the open again, I gave the order for wedge formation. As anyone who's read the handbooks, played the sims or done the training for real will know, for both infantry and tanks, this is a good formation for an advance, giving decent observation and fields of fire to both flanks, as well as straight ahead. Whether every army used every formation or not, it's good to have the full range of options PE allows, which includes the ability to close up or spread out. Your AI 'wingmen' can dilly-dally a bit sometimes, especially if there are obstacles about - in the screenie below, only one of the two tanks on my right has so far made it into position. But generally, they keep up quite well and with the mods, their turrets aren't all rigidly stuck facing straight ahead.

 

 

Soon enough, we were formed up and en route, giving me a bit of time to admire the improvements wrought by Slomo to these staple PE tanks, which includes external stowage as well as 3-d suspensions.

 

 

But I wasn't here for the sight-seeing. Up ahead somewhere, the Germans were said to be coming, and we had been flung out to meet them, Tigers and all. With a long ridge between me and the coast to my left, I felt reasonably secure on that flank. Ahead and right were the arcs we most needed to watch. I rolled forward, seeking a suitable fire position from which to halt and observe before making my next bound, with my turret turned slightly right, about as ready as I could be for whatever it was lay out there.

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

Contact!

 

Our five Shermans moved on steadily, over the undulating terrain, which provided fairly decent cover, provided you stayed off the road and put up with the reduced speed. I was tempted to organise my tanks into two half platoons or sections so that one could cover while the other moved, which Panzer Elite will let you do. However, I decided - as I usually do in PE - to keep the platoon together. If you send your PE 'wingmen' ahead, they're liable to halt in exposed positions. So instead, I usually move the platoon in bounds, from cover to cover, and trying to halt in a position - like a fold in the ground - that will provide cover not just for my own tank, but for the whole platoon. Whichever way you do it, PE lets you switch to any tank in your platoon so you always have a way of fine tuning positions...if the enemy will let you.

 

Leapfrogging is also much slower, and I was already moving slowly enough, halting in cover at frequent intervals. If and when we did hit contact, I reckoned it'd be better to have all of us in a compact group, for better mutual support. And so it came to pass, for when one of my 'wingmen' called in an enemy target - a good demonstration of the sim's capabilities, where your platoon is really a co-operating team, not just a bunch of silent, individual bots -  I was able to get my gun onto him quickly. Hitting him was another matter. All I could see was a sand-coloured shape, flitting between a stand of typical Italian poplars, off to our right. I jumped to the gunner's sight - in PE, you can also stay at the tank commander's station and designate targets by mouse-click - and fired at what I could see. It wasn't much, but it was enough. There were two of them, armoured cars I though, and between us, we quickly got both of them. A radio message from somewhere or other told us that enemies were retreating so it seemed that there were more of them and the survivors had wisely decided that tangling with tanks was not in their job description. If I had left the text display panel on screen, I would have got further details than in the simulated radio message, but I tend to leave such things turned off.

 

 

We moved off again to the next cover. And once again, my platoon-mates reported another contact, to our left, this time. I swung my turret around onto the indicated bearing - PE uses the clock code for this, and gives a range as well and again, the text display may also state the type of target, if that had been recognised. It's really quite a thorough tank sim, is Panzer Elite.

 

 

This time, it was real trouble - panzers. Seemed like we had now run into the enemy counterattack, coming the other way - a meeting engagement, in the venacular. Two of my Shermans opened fire immediately.  Turning my platoon into the threat - my usual Immediate Action in such circumstances - went by the wayside. Quick shooting seemed more important, so that's what I did, letting my two shooters get on with it and joining in myself.

 

Once again, I couldn't see much of the targets due to intervening foliage and the lie of the land. I resisted the temptation to advance for a better view, figuring that would work both ways. The enemy tanks turned towards us and halted to shoot. They were Panzer IIIs or IVs, at least two of them. Under fire from at least three Shermans, one of them was soon burning.

 

 

At that point, I got a bit of a fright. Amongst the other Panzers, I saw the unmistakeable shape of a Tiger! I laid my gun onto him and let him have two quick rounds, aiming for his turret ring. But he motored on out of sight. Wasting no time, I switched targets to a Panzer IV which was swapping rounds with my platoon-mates. He didn't last long; he started smoking then suddenly, an internal explosion sent his turret flying.

 

 

The Tiger seemed to have pulled back, for he was no-where to be seen and the shooting died away. Taking no chances, I rolled forward just far enough to get a better line of sight over to my left. This revealed what was left of our two victims, but happily, no sign of the Tiger. It's a very welcome feature that PE is good at platoon communications, because you have five crews looking for targets - and more to the point, indicating them to you, on the radio or the intercom. For now the airwaves stayed silent, so I felt reasonably sure the Tiger had pulled back.

 

 

Our next move brought our earlier victims into sight, just to our right front. There were indeed armoured cars, seemingly the command version of the big Sdkfz 222 8-wheeled job, no threat for a medium tank.

 

 

So far, so good. Two German platoons defeated and a Tiger apparently put to flight! Not a bad day's work, thus far anyway. Especially as I like to bring all the boys home afterwards, rather than use them as cannon-fodder. I like to think that the boys believe I'm a decent officer who cares about his men and not a Kamikaze, a glory boy or a full-on f***ing f***wit (to borrow Sgt Wells's pithy observation in 'Dog Soldiers').

 

Whether that would continue, remained to be seen.

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

Sicily by Sherman, part the next

 

It was at this point that I realised that we hadn't been the only unit engaged with the Germans. In the heat of the recent action, I had been only vaguely aware that there had been other traffic on the radio net, that didn't directly concern me there and then. But looking left, I could now see burning vehicles on the skyline - the remains of 'Combat Group Dirty Boys', as they had been marked on the map. I could only guess that they must have been victims of the mixed Panzer platoon we had bumped into, knocked out after they had foolishly skylined themselves.

 

 

A look at my map confirmed their identity; alas, the Dirty Boys were no more. Incidentally, while we're looking at the map, I will mention that PE is a bit inconsistent in its terms for units. Some are described, correctly, as platoons, but other apparently platoon-sized units are labelled 'Combat Groups', which suggests a much larger force. Anyhow, the map showed that we were now well out in front of our own defensive positions, indicated on the map by Combat Groups Walter, Smith and Neil, which appeared from the map markings to be infantry supported by anti-tank guns.

 

 

The tank platoons behind seemed to have no intention of joining us, which re-inforced my determination not to play the hero. Instead, I made another cautious bound forward, steering around the right-hand edge of some slightly higher ground and aiming for a low crest which I could see in front, between us and a stream.

 

 

At this point, a target was reported on our right, about 1500 metres away. This turned out to be more Panzers, of which I could see only one, who looked to be a Mark III. I lobbed a round at him as he flitted in and out of some distant trees, but missed. Damn! We were being outflanked. But I needn't have worried. It seemed that those other US tankers had decided to earn their pay, after all. Scanning through the gunsight, pillars of smoke marked out the scene of the action. Seemingly I could carry on, secure in the knowledge that this second German thrust had been blunted. So far, our trusty Shermans were giving Jerry a good old beating, assisted by the fact that he seemed to be just as bad at us, of arranging matters so that tank platoons advanced to as to be capable of supporting one another and at least, maintaining interlocking fields of fire. So far, the enemy had just been feeding Oxo Cubes to the lion, one at a time. as a British General described later operations at Arnhem.

 

 

As my turret crew reloaded another armour-piercing round, I jumped to the commander's position and started scanning ahead again, through the binoculars. This gave me a slighty greater zoom and a slightly higher viewpoint, all the better to see Tigers and suchlike. As I scanned, the radio announced that somebody else had spotted some Germans, who were retreating. I called up the text message panel to get the full details and was delighted to see that our erstwhile foe, the Tiger, had apparently decided to continue with his withdrawal.

 

 

The same message log confirmed we were credited with a secondary mission goal. I called up the map and selected the 'objectives' tab to confirm this, which you can see on the right-hand page in the map display, below. It's not entirely realistic that you can get this sort of real-time, in-mission confirmation of which target enemies you have destroyed. But it's typical of the thoroughness of Teut Weidenberger and the team at Wings Simulations, who really have packed into Panzer Elite more features than a thing with an awful lot of features; with Teutonic thoroughness you might say if you will forgive the pun.

 

 

And another thing: the PE AI doesn't always pick bad fire positions, in case you got the wrong idea, from what I said earlier; as you can see from this view of one of my platoon-mates. This hull-down Sherman is a cast-hulled M4A1 like my own, with one of at least two different tank commander figures visible. This one has a radio mike in one hand, another variant holds a pair of binos.

 

 

At about this time, another radio message announced that other friendly tank platoons were advancing again, which a glance at the map confirmed - depending on the game settings you have applied, friendly units (who would be able to report their position by radio) can be displayed on your map, along with spotted (or all, or no) enemies.

 

OK, good. Soon we would have company. And this time, it wouldn't be the enemy. I decided to wait for some friendly forces to draw level, so that we could all advance together. After a short wait, I was able to make out the first Shermans, moving up on our right.

 

 

Another unit, closer in, was a pair of M7 'Priest' SP 105mm howitzers. They really would have been better staying to the rear and sticking to indirect fire, being much too lightly armoured to act as assault guns. These two are orignal PE models, and while they lack the detail of the new Shermans, they feature a reasonably accurate MTO sand and green camouflage, the new M4s so far only having an Olive Drab finish.

 

 

Anyhow, I certainly wasn't going to be goaded into racing the M7s. But I wasn't going to sit back and let them get shot to pieces, either. Off we went again, shadowing the M7s. If they hapened to flush out some Germans under our guns, well, I wouldn't get too upset.

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

The final phase...

 

 

At last, our platoon was moving forward not on its own, but as part of a larger force, comprising three platoons of Shermans and a pair of 105mm SP guns. Which was just as well, because I didn’t much like the look of the ground we had to cross next – and it turned out to be worse than it looked. We sat tight for a while while I had a good look, before deciding on my next move.

 

 

Ahead of us was a shallow depression, a wide area of slightly lower terrain overlooked by higher ground maybe a thousand metres to our front; not unlike a giant saucer. The bowl of the saucer was broken ground but it seemed to afford little cover, from any enemies perched on its far rim. And as we crossed, out platoon’s wedge formation was soon disrupted, as first one tank then another got held up on obstacles, like the streams which snaked across out line of advance. Had our platoon still been on its own, I would have veered left or right in search of better cover, or started moving tactically, with half the platoon covering while the other half moved ahead.

My own tank was still descending into the depression when a radio report announced an enemy tank, spotted up ahead. Fortunately I was amongst a belt of trees which provided some concealment. Here I halted, to see what I could see. I use the ‘show spotted enemies’ option so the contact was marked up on my map, but edging forward, I could only see the straggling group of buildings around the stretch of road where the enemy had been seen. From what I’d seen and heard, I came to the conclusion that this was likely the Tiger tank reported in the area earlier.

In real life, whoever was in command of our force would have made a plan to deal with this threat and then communicated this to me and the other platoon commanders, in the form of new orders over the radio. Current tanksims simply don’t have this sort of higher-commander AI, beyond whatever might be scripted into the mission. Steel Armor: Blaze of War and I believe Steel Beasts cope with this by letting you assume the force commander role and rescript the mission on the fly, as it were, before stepping back to command your chosen platoon. In sims like PE and SF, all you can do is carry on. PE gives you an option you don’t get in SF, though, and it was that card that I now chose to play. I would call in a shoot from our supporting artillery.

In this mission, IIRC I had two shoots available from a battery of 105mm howizters. One-five-fives would have been better for dealing with tanks, especially a Tiger, but beggars can’t be choosers. This is WW2 so you have no fancy options like cluster munitions or top attack weapons. From the map’s support tab, I selected HE for the fire mission (smoke being the only alternative) and when the target box appeared, mouse-dragged it on top of the marker denoting the enemy tank. Fortunately, the target didn’t move, while I waited for the rounds to arrive. There’s a delay but there’s no need or facility to adjust fire; the shoot generally seems to arrive not too far from where you’ve indicated.

While the rounds were in the air, I decided to call in my second shoot on the same target, while he was obliging enough to sit in one place. I suspect he was lining up to engage the other Shermans. At any rate, nosing forward to get a better view of the results of the strike, I saw a lot of white smoke in the target area, which made me wonder if in my haste I had selected smoke for the first strike.

 

 

But no, it was just the PP2-x effects. This was confirmed when my second strike, falling slightly further left, produced the same white smoke but this time, also a column of dark smoke from a stricken enemy vehicle. At this point, a couple of M4s trundled in from the right, just short of the target area, giving me an anxious few seconds. If my strikes had left some enemies un- clobbered, in halting to call in the artillery I was now too far behind the other M4s to help them. But I needn’t have worried. The Shermans rolled on, unmolested . Got him just in time, it seemed.

 

 

By the miracle of PE’s ‘objectives’ tab on the map screen, which lets you view your progress against all mission objectives in real time, I suspected that this target might be the one I needed, to complete my appointed ‘kill list’, which accounted for my secondary objectives. But no - some portion of Zug (platoon) Falke still needed our attention. And there was still the matter of my primary objective: to prevent our bridgehead being over-run. And it was less clear what I needed to do now, to achieve that objective.

 

 

Emboldened by the visible destruction of the enemy up ahead and the survival of the Shermans, I lost no time in emerging from the scant cover of the trees and making another bound forward, into the wide depression to our front.

 

 

 

As it turned out, the answer to the question 'What do I need to do to win?' was ‘nothing’: I now got the ‘mission completed’ message. This also meant I had achieved my ‘bonus’ objective, of at least 60% of the platoon surviving. This is all a bit ‘gamey’. But apart from air combat sims, where mission success can be neatly resolved in terms of survival and kill,  many games seem to struggle with generating a sensible ‘win/lose’ answer.  At least, in PE the victory conditions are there for you to see, any time you want to see them.  

 

 

I could have driven on up to see what the damage was up ahead, but I decided not to push my luck. I’d already taken enough of a chance, pushing out ahead of most of the other US armour to confront an incoming enemy attack.

Here’s the results screen. As with the ‘briefing’, the narrative is spoken as well as typed up for you, and once again, the speaker is calling you ‘Sir’, when he should be your boss. I don’t think I’ll be able to tell him much that will be of use, in combating Tiger tanks. My recipe was rapid application of massed fires, killing his lighter supporting tanks and spooking the Tiger. Then dropping a lot of arty on him, once he’d gone to ground. And moving cautiously, preferably bringing lots of friends with me.

 

 

Don’t ask me what the ‘Hidden’ goal was, that I missed: it was, well, hidden. You can see that mission success has earned us some credits, in terms of improved 'crew ratings', which means skill improvements, which will affect things like gunnery accuracy of the speed of reloading or spotting enemies.

This was a fairly typical sort of Panzer Elite mission, my main criticism of this being that the friendly and/or enemy units tend to be rather scattered and un-coordinated, instead of operating as a coherent company group, working together to the sort of plan a real-life company commander would create, for a given mission. The positive side of this is that you have plenty of scope to manoeuvre and manage your platoon, using PE’s outstanding command and control facilities. While AI units mightn’t be scripted to co-operate much with you, there’s nothing to stop you creating and taking opportunities to co-ordinate your movements with them. Individual tank AI that was a bit smarter about ‘action on halts’ and use of cover, would help; but then, the conscript armies of WW2 weren’t perfect either, witness Ken Tout’s description in ‘Tank!’ of a Panzer IV commander who took his tank onto a Normandy skyline, with predictable results.

Anyhow, this mission was played to put Slomo’s new Shermans through their paces and it seems apt to finish with a visual comparison of stock and modded Shermans, in this case the cast-hulled M4A1 I operated on this mission. As you can see, the vanilla one has no ‘unbuttoned’ tank commander and is generally rather crude. Textures are low resolution, the distinctive slope to the upper rear of the turret is missing and the suspension is completely two-dimensional. The new version is streets ahead. And it’s just one of a full range of Shermans now available for the PP2x mod.
 

 

As a footnote, Panzer Elite is still available, cheaply, via GoG, here. While this comes with the original mods (as released with Panzer Elite Special Edition, aka PESE) and is still very playable, these days the PE-x executable is probably de rigueur. So the main options are (either or both of!) PP2x or PE3. PP2x has many improvements including some re-worked vehicles, now including Shermans, but isn’t compatible with the original mods which added nationalities, theatres and campaigns. PE3, available here, isn’t adapted for the latest PE-x but includes much of the content (including the extra nationalities, theatres and campaigns) of the original mods and more besides; vehicles generally have the relatively basic 3d models but have much better textures, seen below on a T-34-76 in a PE3 Ostpak mission.

 

 

Whichever mod or mods you choose and despite the dated graphics and animations, PE is still a ‘must have’ sim, for simmers with an interest in the WW2 era.