Guns guns guns!! Let’s talk about them, shall we? Not only do you get the delicious Rhinemetall 120mm smoothbore to play with, but you get a 7.62 coaxial machine gun and the TC gets a .50 cal loaded with depleted uranium SLAP rounds that carry some serious punch.

Now if you’ve been playing the various M1 tank sims, you’ve probably noticed that gunnery for the main gun is rather strange. Each simulation seems to have a different interpretation of how the gunnery process works. The original M1 had a "lase and blaze" procedure – where the fire-control computer handled superelevation, but you still had to lead manually. iM1A2 uses a "lase-lase-blaze" procedure for shooting at moving targets. The computer would calculate lead on a moving target based on successive ranging lases and compensate accordingly.

M1TP2 uses the "lase-track-blaze" method. This method is easier than the original’s but harder than iM1A2’s. The way it works is that you lase the target for range, keep the sight centered on the target so the turret rotates at the exact same speed that the enemy unit is crossing your field of vision, perhaps add a second lase to refine the range estimate, then fire. Alternatively, you could simply both lase and track continuously. It works either way.

M1TP2’s method takes some getting used to. Getting your initial range estimate isn’t a big deal. The trick is keeping the sight perfectly centered on the moving target until you fire. If the sight drifts to the front or rear of the target, the shot will probably go wide. The way the joystick response is built into the game, tracking certain targets accurately can be very difficult. Having a customizable response curve similar to the one implemented in Jane’s F-15 would have a welcome addition.

However, Tim Goodlett from MPS informed us that the way joystick response was done is meant to model the real tracking characteristics and turret governor of the real thing. The real M1’s turret apparently has difficulty tracking laterally fast moving targets far away and up close, and this does indeed manifest itself in the gameplay for the gunner’s seat as well. (Ed: In spite of this, some kind of fix is on the way.

Aside from the technical aspects, the actual gameplay experience of working the gunner’s seat is very rewarding. The quality of the terrain engine in the game makes it easier to understand what is going on, and so far, no "flying tanks" have been discovered. Firing the gun causes the tube to recoil sharply back and momentarily obscure your vision from the smoke and blast, but afterwards you are greeted to the sight of the shell gracefully arcing its way towards the target. It will kick up a dust plume if it misses – and bonus again due to the way terrain is depicted, if you have a good view of the ground around the target you’ll be able to intuitively understand exactly where the shell landed in relation to your mark.

It can be very difficult to spot distant targets against the ground texture – although using the thermal sights are quite helpful here. A nice feature that helps you optimize your vision through the sights is that you can adjust the contrast of the sight as if you were passing various filters over it. If the targeting laser or computer gets damaged, range can be manually entered or you can switch to the auxiliary sight – which incidentally, has incredibly well done range estimation and bullet drop compensation stadia marks built into the sighting reticles – making it perhaps the most useful auxiliary sight put into a tank simulation. It’s extremely difficult to hit a moving target with it, but stationary targets are still fair game out to 3000 meters.

As is proper, sabot rounds fly quickly in a flat trajectory to the target, making them very forgiving against fast moving targets. HEAT rounds fly in a slow and high lobbed trajectory – meaning that at long range, the target really had better be stationary. STAFF rounds are modeled with a cool "lightning strike" effect – simulating the downward firing subprojectile striking down at the target’s top armor. (A mild annoyance here is that the animation for the subprojectile animation always looks like it’s detonating 10 meters **above** where you could clearly see the shell terminate it’s flight). Another nice touch is that MPAT rounds can be set to detonate in a proximity-fused method or by direct impact – depending on whether you’re after helicopters, ground vehicles, or infantry.

For the record, there are some minor problems with the gunner’s seat. With my test system’s Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback stick, the button assigned as the laser does not operate. The joystick’s button assigned to activate thermal vision rapidly flickers the view between thermal and visual sight. Also, under certain conditions, hull-down vehicles or helicopters cannot be ranged accurately with the laser even if you have a good line of sight – although this issue is much more subtle than in say, iM1A2 , it still hasn’t been completely eliminated.

Also, the laser seems completely unaffected by smoke in it’s current incarnation. Finally, if you switch out of the gunner’s seat for even a moment, the AI will take over and usually switch targets, change the loaded ammo type, and so on – which is a hassle if you only wanted to glance at something quickly in the TC’s position or chase view.

Damage modeling is convincing. If you strike the target just right, you’ll be rewarded with a nasty sounding **thump** and the sight of the target bursting into flames, flinging bits of debris, and wafting a column of smoke into the sky. These columns are visible for a very long distance, and after a big battle the field can look like quite a mess. Sometimes even the turret will be blown clear off of the hull.

In fact, as you drive by wrecked vehicles, you may be in for quite a shock as you’ll hear another explosion come from that direction – although it probably is nothing more than secondary explosions from ammo cooking off in the burning vehicle. In other, non-critical hits, the shell may have struck rounded turret face or glacis plate at an odd angle and merely deflected off in a flash of sparks – merely rocking the target by it’s impact (However, this "rocking under impact effect" is sometimes overdone – you can swing a tank back and forth by bouncing .50 cal bullets off of it’s armor.)

Click to continue . . .

Where you hit the tank also makes a difference, both in distance and hit location. The game notes whether you’ve scored a hit on the hull or turret, and also notes what side they were hit on – this affects the amount of armor facing the shell as well as the potential for reactive armor to fling an armor plate directly back into the striking shell as a first-line defense. The behavior differences between the various ammunition types are modeled convincingly as well. Sabot rounds lose a lot of their kinetic energy – and therefore killing power – the further they fly downrange, so when you’re facing the front armor of a tank, you may find sabot useless distances over three kilometers.

Also, sabot ammo tends to punch straight through both sides of lightly armored vehicles such as APC’s without doing any terminal damage. It can kill APC’s easily - just not consistently - and the game shows it. HEAT rounds, on the other hand, are only marginally effective against the reactive armor on most Russian tanks, but are just as effective at any range, making them an interesting choice for flanking or rear sneak attacks, or effective APC/infantry stoppers.

The enemy of course, is trying to bag you as well, and they’ll work at that with a variety of weapons. If you keep the slanty side of your tank facing the enemy, no gun in their inventory seems to be able to knock out your Abrams at anything except very close range, but you still need to keep moving if you aren’t in a safe position so to protect your engine, tracks, and other vulnerable equipment. Your biggest threat comes from ATGM missiles launched through gun tubes, dismounted infantry, or APC’s.

These optically guided missiles are something else. When you hear the scream of a rocket launch, you’re likely to see a shower of smoke for a moment, then nothing more than a speck in the distance, but inexorably closing – wavering back and forth as the gunner tries to refine his optical lock on you. What’s very impressive is that you have several valid options of defeating the missile. You can drive evasively and make yourself a difficult target. You can turn on the smoke generators and back into your own smoke.

You can also pop smoke and change position behind the curtain it creates so the gunner aims at the wrong spot. Ducking behind a tree or ridgeline works. The "Nerves of Steel" set may race to try to kill the launching vehicle before the missile gets too close. Even just hosing down the enemy with some form of gunfire might distract him enough to cause a miss. This shows a really good depth and flexibility of gameplay considerations – and does indeed make it feel like a human gunner is trying to get you rather than "a missile has locked on and is tracking".

Now that we’ve looked so closely at the big gun, how about the others? When it comes to 7.62mm guns in the real M1, the gunner and the loader can have all the fun. In M1TP2, the gunner’s coaxial machine gun is heavily stocked with ammo, and is very effective at cleaning up wayward infantry. Since it’s inline with the main gun, getting a ranging with the laser seems to help superelevate the gun properly and rain bullets from pretty good distances – considering the tiny caliber of the weapon, anyhow.

One problem here is in switching between coax and the "carry round" (The round currently loaded in the main gun’s breech). Even if you switch back to the exact type of round as is in the breech, you hear the loader changing ammo types and have to wait for the whole loading process to complete. Also, since on the external tank model the loader clearly has a gun of his own, it would be nice to be able to tell him to use it when he’s not immediately needed for his other duties. The lack of it isn’t a detriment to gameplay, but it would have been nice to see, all the same.

The TC’s hatch-open gun is one heck of a lot of fun. You get a fully 3D polygonal Ma Deuce at your disposal. In a small concession to gameplay, Sgt. Dubose informed us that it is assumed that all the TC’s .50’s are armed with the heavy-hitting SLAP rounds, so that you have a better chance defending yourself against the heavily-armored Su-25 Frogfoot, which is a mean enough customer already.

Tank sims were traditionally very weak in implementing this gun, but in M1TP2, I guarantee that you will use it nearly every chance you get. The gun has a hefty sound to it, befitting the giant shells it fires. It kicks up a tremendous amount a dirt wherever it hits, making it easy and quite a lot of fun to walk your rounds right into that group of unwary BMP’s that you just surprised.

There are a few valid complaints about this position. First, you have no frame of reference for understanding which direction the gun is facing with respect to the hull or the turret, and since the gun doesn’t automatically align with the CITV or the main gun, it may take a good amount of rotation to bring this gun to bear – but how do you know when you’re facing the right way? It’s not as easy as it looks.

Furthermore, the manual promises binocular sights and night-vision sights, but neither one of these are present at this point, being relegated to the patch. Finally, it’s really hard to make out any units on the battlefield from this position. You have this narrow strip of horizon where enemy vehicles may appear, and you’re in 640x480 resolution. Most likely any enemy vehicle will be only a few pixels unless it’s very close. Fortunately, all these issues will be addressed in some fashion or other by the patch the M1TP2 team is working on, and the "coolness potential" of the TC’s gun will be fully realized.

Download Saitek configuration files for M1TP2 compliments of Eric Tripke.
Download Thrustmaster configuration files for M1TP2 compliments of Cowboy.

Go to Part III