Landships II

Open beta testing begins this Thrusday, 27 January. This means all you have to do is download the client and can start playing in minutes!

Happy tanking!

Hello,

I've checked out this game over the last week or so and find it to be great fun, though quite challenging.  It falls somewhere between arcade game and simulation, as the tanks and their capabilities are accurately replicated, but there are a number of concessions made to allow a single person to operate each tank - and there is no attempt to sort the tanks in a particular battle by nationality or period.  The result of this is that you have German, Soviet, and American tanks from different times all operating with or against one another in a single battle.  You tell who is on your team and who is on the opposition force by the small green or red dot that appears above each vehicle.  On occasion the developers organise special historical battles where tanks are sorted by period and nationality.  It is not clear if this will remain only a special event arrangement or if this will be a regular option once the game is released to retail (the game is in the final stages of open beta testing right now.)  The business model for this online game is for it to be free, but you can pay for special gold credits that will let you buy equipment without having to slog through battles to earn it.  Money will NOT let you buy experience points though, meaning that you will not be able to buy your way to the top without having slogged out a number of battles in weaker tanks on your way up through each nation's research and development tree.  You can also use real money to organize platoons of up to three tanks that will play in the same battles together, so you can play alongside your friends.  Similarly you can pay to engage in an even larger "clan" organization whose battle results are recorded on a world map a-la the old boardgame Risk.  The object being world domination.

You start off with several slow, poorly armed interwar tanks and gradually build up their crew experience and credits in order to buy newer, better, and more powerful tanks.  Individual battles are limited to 15 minutes.  You play on one of about 12 very well-rendered WWII battlefields of about 1km x 1km.  Some of the more open battlfeilds are a bit larger, with 24km x 24km open desert being the theoretical upper size limit.  (More battlefields are in development.)  There are two teams in each battle with the game deciding which team you are on.  The game is structured so that there is a bell curve distribution of tanks in any particular battle.  About 1/2 the time you are playing with and against a team composed mainly of tanks with approximately your strength and experience, but with a few more powerful tanks and a few weaker "cannon fodder" tossed in the mix.  About 1/4 of the time you are one of the more powerfull tanks in the battle and about 1/4 of the time you are one of the cannon fodder.  Of course when you first start out, you are in the weakest tanks and there is no one weaker to toss in to even out the distributution.  You are the cannon fodder! 

Not only can you move up to better tanks, you can also use your experience and credits to improve each tank.  The base model tank is the vehicle at its earliest stage of development.  You can earn/buy your way to bigger guns, better radios (which allow you to automatically relay the position of your tank as well as any visible enemy tanks via a small map in the corner of the screen), and things like auto loaders, camoflague nets, better optics, and etc.  Again, the developers make the effort to only allow options that did historically become available for the particular model of tank. 

There are currently several pre-WWII tanks and tracked/motorised artillery vehicles available from Germany, the USSR, and the USA.  The developers promise that French tanks, including the Renault FT-17 series, will be added soon with British tanks to follow. 

I think the FT is the only WWI era tank to make it into the game so far.  The game's focus period is 1930-1950, but they have added a few vehicles from just outside of this range to help even out the representation from each country.  The FT's occassional operational use in WWII and the lack of French late-war tanks appear to have led them to include it on the entry-level tier for French tanks.  - I am looking forward to trying it out although I have few illusions as to how it stacks up against a King Tiger!

MarkV