Well, we’ve had the time to test out the patch for M1TP2 and make some final assessments. I’ll cover what’s changed, what hasn’t, and how it affects the overall gameplay experience. The short version is that the patch delivers pretty much as expected. Let’s cover the specifics, though.

The TC’s "Outside Hatch" position finally realizes its potential – and in grand style. Before, you had no frame of reference as to what direction you were pointing. Now you can see the entire turret underneath you. Technically it’s difficult to see most of the front of the turret from this vantage point (unless you’ve depressed the .50’s barrel all the way down), but you have more than enough reference features to know which way you’re facing.

Now if your only concern is weapon efficiency, you can leave the gun stabilized, and it will behave very similar to the way it did before the patch. But if you really want to get a sense of immersion, hit the "K" key to destabilize the gun and you’ll be in for quite an experience. The gun’s barrel will tend to deviate by a very small amount after each shot, not enough to have much affect at say 300 meters, but at around 1000 meters being accurate while blasting away is appropriately difficult – and this is if your turret and tank are stationary. In a moving battle, things get really wild. You can totally see the tank and turret bumping and rolling beneath you. Then just try to keep the muzzle on target the next time your Abrams hits a sharp bump at top speed. You’ll really lose control of the gun for a moment there.

When the gunner rotates the turret to engage a new target, it also throws your aim way off. Better be careful how you aim that thing if there are any friendly vehicles around. An occasional annoyance here is that sometimes the gunner will constantly switch back and forth between a couple different targets if they’re starting to disappear behind a terrain feature – making it unnecessarily hard to use the .50 in those cases as the turret keeps on moving back and forth. Enemy tanks also don’t rock and roll back and forth anymore when you hit them with the .50 cal. Enemy aircraft seem to be more resistant against damage from the .50 as well.

Then of course, there are the "new" options for this position: the binocular view and the night vision goggles. The addition of binoculars helps improve the commander’s situational awareness greatly, and the NVG’s help you use the .50 cal more effectively at night. These aren’t the same as thermal sights, though – so putting them on in the daytime isn’t going to be a good idea! You can use either binocs or NVG’s, not both at the same time. Similarly, you can fire the gun while using NVG’s, but not while using binocs. The only real complaint here is that panning your binoculars around is limited to the same range of motion as the .50 itself. In other words, in certain hull-down conditions, you may not be able to aim the binoculars low enough to look downslope. This can be an irritation.

A couple last notes about this position. If you’re in this position while under fire, you (the commander) might indeed get hit and killed. If so, the gun and your view will seem to "slump over" and no longer be controllable – much better than the gun merely not firing when you pull the trigger. Also, it can be pretty wild when you and the gunner are both engaging the same group of targets. Seeing the main gun fire while you’re blazing away is quite an experience.

Now the commander’s position can be a real asset! Not only do the gunner and loader obey your orders about ammo type and whom to engage, but the TC announces targets properly, too. The previous problem mentioned about the endless "Gunner. Tank. Designate" response to hitting the designate button has been cured. If you aim at empty sky and try to designate, nothing will happen anymore. Furthermore, the TC now has a full vocabulary of target type announcements, including "BMP", "Vehicle", "Helo" and "Troops".

Issues that are still present are that the CITV joystick panning is such that it’s difficult to make precise adjustments, and the IVIS display still shows you much more territory to the east and west than it does to the north and south. The best solution for players on these issues is to use the CITV only for it’s intended hunter-killer role, and to flip frequently to the strategy map to check for contacts instead of relying on the IVIS. A word of advice to would-be TC’s: how long it takes your gunner to hit a target – especially a moving target, is in direct relationship to his skill. You’d be well advised to cherry-pick the best gunner in the platoon for your tank if you want to make good use of the hunter-killer ability.

Lots of smoke in the game now, too. Friendly and enemy units will sometimes pop smoke as a "panic reaction" if they get hit, to buy them time until their allies can eliminate the threat. However, this means that you’ll occasionally see units popping smoke at potentially awkward times – like when they’re advancing. At least both sides are using it now, although I have to admit that the way iM1A2’s AI for popping smoke seems more logical – perhaps whether a unit uses smoke as a reactive or a preventive measure should be a factor in the skill of the vehicle’s crew. This is a minor point, though. Artillery smoke makes its appearance in the high-detail setting version. In our beta version of the patch, arty smoke is fairly weak in its thickness and effect, but Tim Goodlett tells us that it’s been beefed up for the release patch.

Speaking of artillery, enemy artillery is now a serious threat. Before, you could pretty much ignore whatever the enemy threw at you – which always seemed to be standard high-explosive (great against wiping out your infantry but not very useful against tanks). It seems that you’re much more likely to get hit with deadlier artillery volleys now – including top-attack munitions. Mostly they will do peripheral damage, like knocking out your optics and such, but I did lose my #4 tank to a top-attack round during one volley. All those delicate external optics and such are also much more likely to get damaged now by the autocannons of a BMP or AAA gun. Their guns aren’t likely to kill you, but they can make you more vulnerable to someone else – just like the manual says.

Click to continue . . .

Another view of the outside hatch. Click for larger

While there may not be a driver, and the "Turn Right/Left" commands only work in fairly large increments, the team has finally implemented a "Hull to Gun" or "Come to this heading" command, finally allowing you to fine tune your driving.

Joystick controls have been fixed. The thermal sights don’t flicker on and off anymore. The laser designation button works. The hat works at selecting ammo. The joystick responsiveness has been tweaked a little to give you a little finer control from the gunner’s position when engaging moving targets.

As far as ammo selection goes, the whole issue with the "battlecarry" round has been fixed. You can switch to the coax gun and blaze away at soft vehicles or troops. While you’re doing this, the currently loaded round is indicated by a dimmed indicator for that type of ammo. Switch back to that round and the loader will promptly cry out "Up!". You’re back in business without restarting the loading procedure.

The commander’s vision blocks are pretty much unchanged. The team at MPS deemed that making big changes here wasn’t worth the time and space it would take to do it. By hitting the "G" key, your view will line up with the main gun, so players have at least some reference.

Other changes include making it easier to improve your crew’s quality through promotions and medals. Helicopters from opposing sides will engage each other as well as enemy ground units. Hitting "L" in the map screen will delineate the map contours better to help you read the terrain features better. Finally, multiplayer games should now work better.

A couple of potentially serious bugs still persist. While the game is running in Glide mode, Windows 95 is (of course) still running in the background. The game blanks out a roughly 1280x1024 section of the Windows desktop to prevent you from accidentally starting another program with the mouse. However, for those of you running higher desktop resolutions on a 19 or 21-inch monitor it is possible to move your mouse outside of this blanked region and accidentally click on one of your desktop windows. When this happens, Win95 will try to seize control back from the game and it will unceremoniously dump you back to the desktop with a fault.

This became evident on the test system because the 3dfx card and the 2d card are each hooked up to separate monitors – so it’s possible to see what Windows is doing in the background. The best workaround for this is to not use your mouse for view panning or aiming, and close all your windows before starting the game. Hopefully the team at MPS will develop a solution for this problem soon – although only players with desktop resolutions over 1280x1024 are likely to be affected.

The other bug that comes to mind is in the strategy map screen. As it turns out, the clickable area of the strategy map actually overlaps with the buttons on the bottom menu bar. This means that it is entirely possible – and in the heat of battle, pretty common – to accidentally set a waypoint at the bottom of the map AND switch to the next platoon simultaneously. This means that you have a platoon with a bad waypoint setting – probably at a critical time – and you’ll probably have to toggle through all your other platoons before you can fix the first one. Apparently the amount of work necessary to fix this is beyond the scope of the patch, and will be addressed in the upgrade.

While I can appreciate that it might be a difficult problem to solve, hopefully the team will consider releasing a patch to cure that problem at some point without forcing the player to buy the upgrade – since it can be a serious source of frustration. Best workaround here is to totally avoid using the "Platoon" or "Vehicle" menu-bar button, and instead stick to the keyboard "F11" or "Shift-F11" shortcuts.

What’s the final verdict? It’s not a perfect game. Specifically, the strategy map – while very advanced – still suffers from interface problems that can be a real frustration. The features the map offers are good, but it could use a thorough reworking, which may happen in a future expansion. It especially could use a "Plan while paused" mode to allow the player to make better use of friendly units and to reduce the consequences of a mis-click or other momentary error.

Having said that however, the team has indeed delivered on their promises, added a few extra features, and done it all within a reasonable time frame. No tank simulation has ever provided this degree of immersion or excitement, nor have any raised the bar in as many areas. The patch fixes the worst game problems, improves the already awesome commander’s gun position, gives us the best CITV simulation ever put into a tank game, and generally makes the game more accessible to a wider variety of players. M1 Tank Platoon 2 gives Microprose a repeat victory in setting the standard for modern-day armor simulations. Add to that the possibility for a series of expansions, and one can see that Microprose has a very good chance to make M1TP2 into the Falcon 3.0 of armored warfare.

RATINGS  (Post Patch):

• GAMEPLAY: 90
• GRAPHICS: 100
• SOUND: 85
• INTELLIGENCE/AI: 80
• USER INTERFACE/MISSION PLANNER: 65
• FUN FACTOR: 95
• LEARNING CURVE: 4 hours
• OVERALL: 90
• "CORE": 60

If I receive the complete list today I'll post it today. But there are a few surprises here according to Microprose, in the form of requested features that they weren't sure they could squeeze in. Good news! Finally, if you need a TM configuration click HERE

Download The Battle of 73 Easting, but from the Iraqi side! No changes in force levels have been made. By John Sponauer. Place in your \Battles\Gulf directory. See Johns M1 TP2 Hacking Page to discover how to edit and create your own missions.