M1 Tank Platoon II  Part IV   By Neil Mouneimne
	So far we've covered a lot of ground in M1 Tank Platoon II, a simulation that has more depth than anything we have yet seen in this genre, especially because it integrates action and intelligence never yet attempted in an armor simulation. The integration of troop control and the tactical dimension of troops and artillery and air support is quite well done. And graphically, while weak in a few areas, its very involving. However, we haven't yet RATED the game. We decided to take the unusual step of waiting because Microprose got on the bit immediately with work on a patch, and have also taken unusual care in communicating with waiting gamers on the development of that patch. We really want to applaud their responsible and rapid response. The bugs that are present are annoying, to be sure, but Microprose had not only promised to kill them in short order, they have also added some highly requested features. We will post an update on the patch mid week and we will also rate this game along our established scale. Now back to the review! In addition to the areas mentioned to date nnother area that is disappointing is the driver’s position – or more precisely, the total lack of a driver’s position. Microprose seems to have decided that since the real action is between the TC and gunner, the driving is best left to the AI whenever possible and they have simplified the manual driving options. In all fairness, the AI driver is relatively competent at finding positions to place itself in, but tends to temporarily face your rear armor towards the enemy more often than a commander would normally do, and naturally the AI can’t quite guess your intentions. What do you do? Your other option is to drive the tank manually, but unfortunately, manual steering is done in 30 degree increments. This aspect isn’t a deal-breaker, but some players will certainly miss the direct control and entertainment value of manual driving. (I mean, how much fun is it to try to run over enemy infantry by shouting "Turn Right! Turn Left! at your driver?") Seriously though, a good terrain engine like this deserves giving the player the option of hopping in the driver’s seat if he so chooses. Speaking of options, M1TP2 is surprisingly short on them. In most of the favored sims these days, you have a tremendous degree of latitude as to exactly how you want things to work – to really customize the game to your taste. When you consider that M1TP2 was released simultaneously with Jane’s F-15, the amount that you can personalize the game is unbelievably limited by comparison. As I mentioned before, you shouldn’t be able to change the terrain detail in a tank sim, but perhaps giving the player’s choices on things like, say - whether or not you get to have SLAP ammo in the TC’s guns and whether or not your units will engage soft targets with the main gun at close range - would be nice in letting the players have more say in the behavior of their game. The strategy map is very potent, but it seems to take the hands of a surgeon to use it most effectively. Here you can control any unit’s or platoon’s standing orders, call in support strikes, plan your moves, or just take a quick look at your overall situation. The options here are actually very good – better than any previous game of the genre by quite a bit. You can assign waypoints, formations, standing orders, engagement procedures, assembly areas, and even what direction the units should face to watch for the enemy. The trick is that it’s much too easy to accidentally muck up your previous waypoints in the heat of battle and have an entire platoon turn exactly the wrong way at the wrong time. You have to have a steady hand to make the right mouse clicks – something you really don’t have time for if you’re trying to keep your own platoon safe in the middle of a pitched battle. Perhaps some simple keyboard shortcuts in the planner or the ability to radio orders to the other platoons without using the planner would help. Even a Jane’s F-15 style "plan while paused" mode could help prevent a mis-click from spelling disaster. Having said that, the great flexibility of the strategic map is very much a welcome feature. The campaign system is very reminiscent of iM1A2’s pseudo-dynamic campaign. All the missions fall under one of several generic categories, but generally tend to play out more or less the same way – the main difference is whether the enemy will wait for you to come to them or if they’ll aggressively hunt for you. Your success or failure will move the local battlefront forward or back. The advantage here is the lack of canned missions that get old so easily. The downside is that there really isn’t much variety to the missions at all. The makeup of your forces, enemy forces, and supporting units will all change, but it basically boils down to "kill the enemy armor with minimal casualties". It would have been much nicer to design in a greater variety of missions – things like attacking entrenched infantry, assaulting a defended airport, perhaps even clashes that require infantry platoons such as urban combat or extreme terrain. Nevertheless, the existing campaign is far better than a series of canned missions in offering replayability, and the different terrain types in the various campaign areas helps change strategies, as well. So what is the deal with the infantry? Well, simply put, M1TP2 has the best infantry put into an armored combat sim to date. iM1A2 represented infantry in a fairly comical way by having them represented as a cardboard-cutout sign that tips over when you shoot it. Click to continue . . .		Fortunately, M1TP2 does an infinitely better job. At the stopping point, APC’s will open their loading doors, and a five or six man unit will disembark and form a firing line alongside their vehicle – usually four riflemen and someone with a shoulder mounted SAM or ATGM. Each man is individually animated, and the way they embark, disembark, or go prone is pretty impressive – especially when viewing from few kilometers away through magnification. As is appropriate, infantry are difficult to see, unless the APC next to them tips you off to their position. I’ve lost a platoon to infantry that – by coincidence or by design – were hiding among the buildings of a village without any enemy vehicles around to give away their presence. Click for a larger image. You have to wonder what the value of plain old riflemen is, though. They can’t be expected to damage hardly anything except other infantry. They can’t get close enough to enemy mechanized infantry without getting cut to pieces by the APC’s autocannon or an artillery strike, and with the exception of that one previously mentioned event, I haven’t seen enemy infantry without an APC escort. I’ve heard that they are useful as forward observers as the enemy is less likely to spot infantry units. If for no other reason, it seems that riflemen are present for the sake of authenticity, which is well and good, but it would be nicer if there were scenarios in which they could be put to better use than as expendable scouts. In the meantime, any soldier toting a missile is a genuine threat. The AI is a weird mix of very good and not so good. The game states that the Russian (or Russian-trained) forces follow their particular military doctrine of maneuver warfare. Indeed, it does seem that way. You will find that the longer you stay in one place, the more organized and effective enemy units become – to the point where avoiding getting flanked becomes nearly impossible. There is some degree of self-preservation AI built into the system. If you start accurately raining shells onto an enemy platoon the survivors will sometimes pack up and get the heck out of there before you come up with their number. Even enemy AAA vehicles will fire on you relentlessly, if only to buy time for other units to retaliate. Eventually you learn that the best method of survival is to not give the enemy time to coordinate their attacks, which makes perfect sense. You end up playing a kind of hit-and-run game, which if done properly, can ruin any well-laid plan. One nice feature of the AI is that it’s not omniscient. In far too many games to count, the enemy always knows where you are by merely sneaking a peek at the computer’s records of your coordinates. Those AI systems literally cheat. M1TP2’s AI is much more human than that. It bases its estimates of your location based on where you were last seen. For example, in one mission I was holed up trying to simply face off with any unit that approached – and I was paying the price for it. I finally took my two remaining tanks and skedaddled forward through a depression that hid us from view, then eventually I made an abrupt left. As soon as I crested the rise, what did I see but at least three full platoons of mechanized infantry all disembarked – all guns and firing lines facing my old position – about 90 degrees the wrong way! Suddenly, the gunner on a BMP spots me, and his turret rotates to face us. Too late – we both commenced rapid fire and the scene before us broke in total chaos as some units tried to redeploy, other units tried to engage us directly, and yet others just turned around and ran. Just an incredible massacre, but everything that happened made good sense, which is far more intriguing than artificially skilled or cheating enemies. It has the human element to it. Speaking of which, don’t get too close to the coordinates where you call in an airstrike. Fratricide is entirely possible if you get sloppy! The downside of the AI is that it’s not always making good sense. Sometimes units will engage with the wrong weapon. I stumbled into three platoons of enemy tanks who all had me by surprise, but they simply refused to engage with anything other than their machine guns. Sometimes the enemy simply won’t fire on you when you know they should be. The other tanks in your platoon frequently waste precious main gun ammunition when they could just as effectively use the commander’s .50 or even the coaxial machine gun. The system which gunners and loaders employ to choose what ammo to use is based on range – when perhaps the appropriateness of the target type would be a better choice. As it is you have to order tank platoons to hold fire if you don’t want them wasting STAFF and MPAT rounds at long range, especially when you might need them later for particularly difficult tanks or helicopters. (The best workaround for this is simply to wait until you get to a closer range before clearing your platoon to fire – but the ideal solution would have been to develop some way of setting the policy for what kind of conditions merit using what kind of ammo.) So how does it all boil down into gameplay? As long as you stay out of the TC’s seat and can forgive the other bugs (at least until the patch arrives), M1TP2 is the best tank simulation ever made for a home computer. Take the beautifully detailed units, the stunning terrain engine, the thoughtful sound effects, the flexible strategy map, the good parts of the enemy AI, and the quality gunnery model and what you have is nothing less than a step forward in the evolution of armored combat simulations. This is not to disregard the seriousness of the bugs in the game. They are a real problem. However, Microprose’s willingness to take responsibility for the problems and responsiveness in developing a patch to fix them makes this writer willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt. Whether this faith was indeed justified will be seen after we get the patch, when we’ll post an update and our final ratings. Go to the Patch Update
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