While I have touched upon the subject of how to use your available supporting artillery to its best effect several times in this article, its proper employment is crucial to your success as an Ami tanker, and it certainly merits a section of its own. As the briefing does not provide you with details of how many strike ‘packages’ you will receive nor of what caliber, your first move at the very beginning of any mission should be to go to the map screen and click upon the "Support" tab. Remember, here the game pauses, (in single-player), so you may take your time to assess what artillery is available and how this will effect your basic plan of defense or attack.

        While mortars may be effective against lightly-armored, open-topped German assault guns, they should be saved for use against suspected anti-tank positions (just over a river crossing, road junctions, etc.) and/or troops in the open. The beauty of your divisional mortar strike packages is – while they may be weak – you will usually be granted a fair number of them. Notice how I mentioned that mortars may be used effectively against suspected enemy AT-gun positions – once you have actually made contact with an AT-gun, the time is past to call in artillery. Here you should seek to knock the gun out with HE or machine-gun fire. (Be sure and give the bow gunner (radio-op) fires at will command (CTRL - /) when you start a scenario.) Even if you have mortared a suspected enemy AT-gun position, realize that – as mortars are the weakest artillery in your arsenal – they do not always successfully knock-out a gun or infantry position, even if you have correctly divined the enemies location and ordered the strike directly upon it. Thus, as always, approach with extreme caution! (Remember Top Sergeant KrappO’s advice: "creep and peep.") Still, a mortar strike will always partially denude an area of cover, (trees and bushes), making it considerably more likely that your platoon will spot the gun early.

        Another virtue of mortars, as well as 75mm strikes, is that you may use them to deliver smoke, while saving your precious tank-killing 105 and 155mm artillery packages. Make smoke a part of your game plan. Dropped in the path of an approaching enemy, it can compel him to halt, while it screens your platoon as you maneuver into hull-down positions. Need to cross a stretch of open terrain free of defilade? The smokescreen is your savior! Also, on those missions where you must defend a vulnerable unit from rapidly advancing panzers, order a smoke strike that will "splash" between the attacking enemy and the friendly unit. In some scenarios where so tasked, you may simply not be able to reach a position to defend the unit in time to prevent its destruction! Yet a well-timed and placed smokescreen will temporarily halt the enemy advance, or compel the enemy to go around the screen, buying the precious time for you to maneuver your tanks to where you can effectively defend the vulnerable friendly position, or grant the unit a safe retreat.

        Finally, as noted by Teut Weideman, lead-designer and CEO of Wings Simulations, realize that smoke can be used offensively as well. Direct artillery-delivered smoke directly onto an enemy tank platoon, and you have temporarily blinded and paralyzed it! Now use this time to maneuver into a flanking position! If you have time, leave a couple of wingman in cover to the front of the enemy platoon, while you maneuver your tank and the remaining two into cover and on the enemies flank. (There is no law against a second smoke strike if necessary.) This is not always an easy feat, but if you can pull it off, after the smoke clears the Tigers or Panthers will find themselves with no direction where they may turn their heavily armored front sections without exposing their flanks to hostile fire. (The two tanks you have left in your original position will turn their facings to match yours, but not to worry. Upon sighting the enemy they will turn to face him.) In one scenario, by using several smoke strikes to delay the seemingly unstoppable advance by a Tiger platoon, I was able to set up an ambush with tanks on either side of the road the Tigers were approaching along. With my platoon split onto opposite sides of the road, and in excellent cover, the advancing panzers failed to spot me until it was too late. (Use the "CTRL-X", "cease fire" command, and have you’re fingers on CTRL-F ("fire at will") as you wait to spring the trap.) Faced with Shermans on both flanks, and at close range, my platoon quickly brewed up the two lead tanks, then made short work of the remaining two, as they retreated - presenting my platoon with point-blank rear and flank shots. Thus, I was able to wipe out a whole platoon of the 60-ton monsters without even suffering any damage or casualties, and this with only Sherman M4A1s armed with the peashooter 75mm gun.

        The 75mm H.E. strikes are more powerful than mortar H.E. and are quite effective against lightly-armored German S.P. guns, and (to a lesser degree) the earlier model Panzer IVs – yet are generally useless against Panthers and Tigers. If you are quite lucky, a 75mm strike against the tougher enemy tanks just might knock out one tank - provided its crew has both the misfortune to be hit almost directly just as the first wave of the barrage lands, and to have buttoned-up slowly. One small and fleeting tactical advantage gained from such a strike is that in forcing the Germans to close their hatches their visibility will be temporarily decreased. Still, remember that (especially in the later Jerry tanks) interior vision is vastly superior to that of a Sherman, and they will very likely unbutton just as soon as the strike lifts! Save your 75s and mortars for the delivery of smoke or against soft targets.

        Your 105mm and 155mm artillery packages should be used with great care! Don’t squander them, unless you feel that you have a good chance of directing them onto the enemy, and use them only on the toughest targets. (This need not necessarily mean only the deadliest German tanks – against a village infested with Jerry Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck crews, and well-placed AT-guns, heavy artillery can be devastating. Know that an undetected infantry AT team, in an urban environment, is every bit as deadly as any panzer.) Accurate 105mm strikes are generally quite effective against Stug IIIs, and Panzer IIIs and IVs, but are considerably less effective against Panthers and Tigers. A 105mm strike has a good chance of knocking out one of these fearsome tanks, and two with a fair bit of luck, but is unlikely to stop a platoon of the German’s "Heavyweights." Use available 105 strikes to ‘soften-up’ the deadlier enemy tank platoons – don’t depend on them to destroy them. However 155mm strikes can devastate anything the enemy can put on the battlefield. If you can spot a Heavy German tank platoon before it is able to spot you, and call in a 155mm strike, you can usually expect to knock out at least two enemy tanks, which will compel the remainder to withdraw. (While the Panther was ‘officially’ a medium tank, treat it with no less respect than a Tiger.)

        When approaching a town that you highly expect contains a strong German defense, (especially if you lack infantry support,) stop your advance before you leave covering terrain and come into the possible fields of fire of any enemy AT-guns present. (If the town is the mission’s objective, expect a strong German defense.) Before you make a ‘painfully’ slow advance towards and into the town, you can make the task of securing it much easier, by using a technique I call "crack and crush." (You did save some heavy artillery for the taking of the main objective, didn’t you?) Order the heaviest artillery strike available to you on the edges of the town that face the approaches, for here is where the defenders are most likely to be positioned. Now, ‘close’ the map, and wait about 7-10 seconds while scanning the terrain in front of you for any enemy movements. (Which you should always do whenever you stop.) Now, got to the Map Screen, and call in a lighter (preferably 75mm – but mortars will do) artillery strike upon the very same spot which you ordered the first. (Be careful not to accidentally move the square marking the initial strike – doing so will start the 30-odd second countdown until splash time all over again. Zoom way in if you need to.)

        How is this effective? Simple: the first heavy-artillery strike will shatter the buildings of the town that provide the concealment and cover for infantry and AT-guns eagerly waiting to ambush you, and may flush some of them out. Crack! The second strike – coming right on the heels of the heavier first strike – will now land on a much softer target, hitting infantry in the now shattered buildings that initially provided them with excellent protection, completing the destruction of some of the damaged buildings, and hopefully mopping-up any surviving AT-guns. Even if these two successive strikes fail to destroy all of the Jerries’ guns, they will now be much more visible as you "creep and peep" your way into town. If the town is large, and you have the artillery, repeat this process for the other side of the town. Otherwise, let the supporting platoons point the way to any remaining German positions. Also, after you have cautiously ‘sanitized’ one-half of the town, you have in essence breached the enemy’s defensive perimeter! While you should continue to advance with great caution, (10% throttle is plenty fast) the taking of the rest of the town is now a far less dangerous task.

        I can not emphasize this enough: whether attacking or defending, winning or losing as the Yanks depends almost solely upon one thing: that you spot the enemy first. If you are caught by a panzer platoon in the open, you may well be able to move to cover quickly while calling in a heavy artillery strike, but you will lose tanks, and most importantly, irreplaceable crews. Given that in so many ways the cards are stacked against you, you must make maximum use of the advantages you do have. Yet you will nearly always be unable to make use of these advantages if you are forced to simply go toe-to-toe with the Germans. Successful spotting is vital because it grants you, an American tank platoon commander, the element so vital to your success: the initiative. With the initiative, you see those advancing Tigers as they come over the hill, call in a heavy artillery strike while one of your experienced gunners firing from his hull-down tank sends an AP round through a Tiger’s flank. It takes time for even these experienced German panzer crewman to spot your covered positions, which lie in front of higher-terrain, which further masks your platoon, while the Tigers in motion are easily spotted by you and your crews. Perhaps it is later in the War, and you now have 76mm guns with special AP, and a lucky shot brews up another of the feared heavy tanks. Now the Germans have spotted you, but their powerful 88mm rounds – rounds that will light up anyone of your tanks – bounce off the terrain that masks all but the turrets of your tanks. The veteran gunners adjust fire, and are about to zero in on your platoon, but this has taken time, and you have set matters so that time is entirely on your side. Time enough for the shells of the 155mm strike you ordered in with the deadly precision granted by your direct view of the enemy position to land! Yet another Tiger brews up like the finest German lager. The remaining Tiger hastily moves to retreat, dangerously exposing his vulnerable rear quarter. Whether or not your gunners connect, the Jerry attack has been routed.

        Now, imagine this same situation, but as a meeting engagement in the open, as your oh-so-visible tanks run smack into the advancing Tigers, for you have advanced rapidly and rashly to contact with the enemy. Not a pretty thought, is it?

        Where to begin? Well, when Wings was developing PE, they were going to configure it as an IPX compatible game. Somewhere along the line they dropped IPX and went with a TCP/IP format. That's where the problem began. At the same time the fellows at SimHq or Kali set up a Chat server for PE. Guess what? They configured it for IPX support by checking the box that says: "Needs Winsock Support." Also, you may have noticed that the "apply" button did not work - it was grayed out because the host (SimHq or Kali) originally set it up and only they can change it. What does that mean? It means that all the settings we have been fooling with for 6 months have been for nothing, because the game defaults to the Host's (Kali's) config settings every time you click on the PE icon! What irony! I knew PE did not need Winsock support or extra packets or drop packets or any of that bull, so I went about figuring out how to create a new Icon for PE. It WORKS! Ok, now you're panting and beads of sweat are breaking out, .so here's how to create a brand new PE Icon that you can "apply" settings to. Go to Kali. In the chat room, browse to the top toolbar and select VIEW, select GAMES RESOURCES, select "GAMES", then select ADD CUSTOM GAME at this time the config box opens up... call the game PANZER ELITE and then browse to your Panzer elite folder and click on the PE exe (Icon). DO NOT ADD the icon in config! You will have a nice '?' mark for an icon now, and this is correct. Also, in the maps block, browse to: "C:/programs/Pysgnosis/PanzerElite/scenarios" and click on it to add it to the block. This will allow the game to load faster and quit faster. Finish configuring PE in the box, set extra packets to "0". (Select: "uses safe disc protection" if you have version 2.0 of Kali in the special tab.) Make sure NO boxes are checked! The last thing you want is dropped packets or to have Kali drop packets to speed up the game. Hit the OK button and there you have it. a QUESTION MARK (?) Icon at the bottom of your chat screen that will launch right into PE without Winsock support and with out extra packets..! Try it guys. Let me know how it works for you, I played a 1 vs. 2 against players in Scandinavia, on a 56K modem, with full wings and arty and smoke in every map, with not one problem!! Heinz and Erwin thanks for helping beta test this icon. Please remember: all players must have decent PE files i.e. uniform patches/updates in order to get the full benefit of this configuration! "Let the games begin" KrappO Post Script: Once the game is launching without problems, you can change the "?" Icon to whatever you personally prefer by clicking the change button under the icon and browsing to a suitable .ico file. I use the 1st Cav Icon, because it looks pretty....<G> You may select any .ico file in your Kali image folder to use instead of the "?" icon you created.

        Let me express my heartfelt thanks (in no order of importance!) to the people whose help was nothing short of indispensable in the writing of this article:

        Quite probably the classiest guy in the PC game business! A very busy man, Teut nonetheless took the time to answer a multitude of my questions in detail, as well as providing some of the more helpful tips and effective strategies which I included the preceding article. The data for the charts demonstrating the superior buttoned-up visibility of the Tiger over the Sherman came from Teut, as well as some invaluable information on the sophisticated AI spotting routines contained within Panzer Elite. To cover everything that lies ‘under the hood’ of this landmark simulation is beyond the scope of this article, but let me just say: these fellows did their homework!

Paul "Top Sgt." Chasse of the Ist Armored Cavalry

        Besides being the best ‘virtual tanker’ ever to venture onto the net, Paul is also one fine human being. (I had the honor of ‘commanding’ the second platoon in a 2 vs. 2 P.E. multi-player game – or, rather, watching in awe as Paul brewed-up about six Tigers single-handedly!) Part of the crack online tankers of the "Ist Cavalry", It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that Paul is the Godfather of Multi-payer Panzer Elite Thanks to his ingenuity and painstaking trial and error, Paul came upon a formula for tweaking Kali for optimal Panzer Elite play. Previously, two-player head-to-head games over Kali failed with a frequency that drove a lot of potential online tankers away in frustration. After Paul made his ‘research’ public, you now see 2 vs. 2 player ‘team’ games on Kali, with Battle.com or Roger Wilco running entirely smoothly and stabile!

        Let me end by offering my sincere thanks to Jack and the crew for giving me the chance to be a part of this excellent new web site: Tanksim.com!