Hello everybody,

Today we'd like to dedicate our Dev Blog to the tank part of our sim. We attempt not only to create the authentic visual models of the tanks and model their movement, armament, and damage realistically. We also want to create an interesting gameplay, based on historical events, as usual, that will not only entertain you for some time but let you experience what a real tank warfare in a meeting engagement situation was like.

The air part of our sim started at the great battle of WWII that changed its course and the course of world history, the Battle of Stalingrad. Following this principle, we start the tank part with one of the key tank battles on the Eastern front that decided the entire 1943 campaign - Prokhorovka.

Beginning the campaign development for "Tank Crew – Clash at Prokhorovka" we faced the fact that a usual, common for flight sims approach just won't work - its unlikely that any single tank crew in July 1943 survived several large-scale engagements in a row (especially a Soviet one) and participated in all key points of the large Prokhorovka battle we'd like to reconstruct in our scenarios.

Therefore we have decided not to link the scenarios with a personal story of one of the tank crewmen, but concentrate on creating a coherent story about July 6 -17 engagements. The mission briefings will include first-person remarks, but there will be several plot lines. This will allow you to experience the battle of Prokhorovka from several locations and command 2-3 different combat vehicles in the course of one campaign.

"Breaking point"

 (tentative title)
Soviet campaign

This campaign will be dedicated to the heroic deed of Soviet tankmen of Rotmistrov 5th Guards Tank Army that disrupted the German offensive at the center of the southern part of the Kursk salient at the cost of their lives. The massive, but poorly prepared counterblow on July 12th stopped the German advance and eventually pushed them back to their initial positions. The later missions of the campaign will cover the subsequent, less known stage of the battle of Kursk on July 13th - 15th at the interfluve of Donets river.

Timeframe: July 6th - 15th, 1943.
Controllable tanks: T-34-76 mod. 1943, KV-1s
Duration: 10 missions
Average playing time: 5 hours

"Last chance"

 (tentative title)
German campaign

This campaign will tell about the operations of the tank units of Army Group South during Operation Citadel. Having breached two army defense lines, German forces reached Prokhorovka as early as at the evening of July 6th and were close to capturing this key area. However, instead of continuing their advance they were forced to defend against numerous Soviet counterstrikes that culminated in the massive battle on July 12th. The second part of the campaign will be dedicated to German attempts to encircle and destroy Soviet 48th Corps at interfluve of Donets river and the forced retreat of the German 2nd Tank Corps to initial positions when the entire offensive failed.

Timeframe:  July 6th - 17th, 1943.
Controllable tanks:  PzKpfw III Ausf.M, PzKpfw IV Ausf.G, PzKpfw VI Ausf.H1 "Tiger"
Duration: 10 missions
Average playing time: 5 hours 

To make our feature about Tank Crew – Clash at Prokhorovka more visual, we can show you several WIP screenshots of the new tanks made by our partners - Digital Forms. They are planned to be released in Early Access early next year:

- T-34-76 mod. 1943 produced by Nizhny Tagyl tank factory #183 in name of Communist International ("Uralvagonzavod") and 

- Panzerkampfwagen IV (Sd.Kfz.161) Asufuehrung G produced by Nibelungenwerke of St. Valentin

To accompany them, here are WIP screenshots of Prokhorovka map being developed by our mapping team. The new landscape scaling tech has been developed specially for this map - by reducing the total size of the map from 400x400 km to 100x100km we were able to make its heightmap 16 times more detailed. The detailed area of the Prokhorovka map is still in development, but other parts of this map are more polished. We'd like to note that it is suitable not only for tank engagements, but also for aerial ones and, of course, for joint multiplayer battles that unfold both on the ground and in the air simultaneously. To illustrate this, today we can show you the views of Belgorod that is also there:

Aaand we are delighted to present you the finished tankmen models. We still need to animate an each crew member in each player controllable tank in the sim, but now you can already see how they will look: