Halibutt and his toys

[Halibutt]

I had a quick peek into what HBalck did. It's a pity: he's got great 3D models, and splendid icons. Plus his collection covers most of Polish 1939 equipment. Too bad he'll never release the icons to the public...

Anyway, here's one of the icons his collection doesn't have: the "samochód półgąsienicowy wz. 34" - halftrack mark 1934. It's basically the Polski Fiat 621L on Citroen-Kegresse halftrack. The conversion was created in 1934 and several hundred were built in different version, ranging from engineering vehicles, lorries and ambulance to fire engines. A special case was a shortened version dubbed C4P used as a medium artillery tractor for 75 mm guns and 40 mm Bofors. I'll make that tractor separately.

The model is based on the one made by Major Pain for Blitzkrieg (though modified by me and mostly re-skinned).
Cheers

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wz 34 halibutt BigIcon.png (72.42 KiB) Viewed 8378 times

wz 34 halftrack

wz 34 halftrack halibutt.png (16.73 KiB) Viewed 8378 times

[rezaf]

I had a quick peek into what HBalck did. It's a pity: he's got great 3D models, and splendid icons. Plus his collection covers most of Polish 1939 equipment. Too bad he'll never release the icons to the public...

Actually, HBalck continues posting stuff to this very day on the Matrix forums. You can find a lot of downloads in his thread there.
He only recently started posting new models again after discontinuing the unit mod earlier following threats to do so unless folks played multiplayer games with him...

Personality opinions aside, my main criticism of his generally excellent work is that it doesn't blend in well with the vanilla icons. So you either replace ALL units with his icons (which in turns means you got to wait before they're all done), mix with vanilla-look graphics or don't use his stuff at all.
_____
rezaf

[Halibutt]

Actually, HBalck continues posting stuff to this very day on the Matrix forums. You can find a lot of downloads in his thread there.

"1st - Its forbidden to modified my units and upload it with other camo or mix with other units etc. ! "

On a lighter note, here's a C4P artillery tractor, and I actually believe it's more accurate than the C4P in HBalck's pack As I mentioned in my previous post, it was basically a shortened version of the wz. 34 halftrack (and the Polski Fiat 621L truck), with enough cargo space for a couple of ammo crates and the gun crew. The model is from Blitzkrieg, by Major Pain, though I fiddled with it a little.

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C4P halibutt BigIcon.png (63.83 KiB) Viewed 8364 times

C4P artillery tractor

C4P halibutt.png (15.15 KiB) Viewed 8364 times

[T2_2112]

Personality opinions aside, my main criticism of his generally excellent work is that it doesn't blend in well with the vanilla icons. So you either replace ALL units with his icons (which in turns means you got to wait before they're all done), mix with vanilla-look graphics or don't use his stuff at all.
_____
rezaf

There no change we can use his icons

"1st - Its forbidden to modified my units and upload it with other camo or mix with other units etc. ! "

[Halibutt]

I know we already have an excellent Polski Fiat 621L truck by Gary Childress, but since I'm doing all the derivatives, why not do the vanilla version as well. Not that it's better than Gary's, but this one has the merit of not having the Air Force checkerboard on the doors.

Again, a slightly modified Blitzkrieg model by Major Pain.

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Polski Fiat 621L BigIcon.png (67.5 KiB) Viewed 8354 times

Polski Fiat 621L

Polski_Fiat_621L halibutt.png (15.03 KiB) Viewed 8354 times

[Halibutt]

In Gary's Workshop thread I mentioned an often overlooked fact that in most WWII games the trucks and lorries look way too perfect. One of the reasons is that in reality barely any army (except perhaps for the British and the American) had enough lorries of its own. The Hollywood perspective is distorted, as a car or a truck was still a rare view in most areas of the world back in the 1930s. In Poland for instance in 1937 there were over 34 million people and only 37,5 thousand motor vehicles of all types, that is roughly one for every 1000 inhabitants. By 1939 there were only 9,5 "cargo motor vehicles" registered in Poland. Because of that a large part of Polish, French, Dutch or Yugoslav army trucks were in fact civilian vehicles confiscated by the army during the mobilisation. Sometimes such vehicles were speedily painted over, though in many cases they served with their original liveries still on them as there was no time to paint them.

Here's one of them: the huge Mercedes 3000 truck of the Haberbusch i Schiele company, the largest brewery of Poland. The cab was speedily-painted green, but the sphinx logo of the brewery is still visible. Also, the tarpaulin still bears the brewery's logo and the registration mark is still civilian (not that you could tell such details by looking at the icon, but the registration is there ).

The icon is based on Mercedes LG 3000 3D model by J. Wallace from 3D Warehouse.

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Mercedes 3000 haberbusch BigIcon.png (217.82 KiB) Viewed 8320 times

Mercedes 3000 Haberbusch i Schiele

Mercedes LG 3000 halibutt.png (30.23 KiB) Viewed 8320 times

[Halibutt]

And another goodie unseen in the world of Panzer Corps: a truck-mounted 60'' anti-aircraft searchlight. Historically most AA searchlights were towed rather than truck-mounted, but since there was already a nice SketchUp model by Proffi available, why complicate things. I think the unit could be provided with the "radar" trait, thus giving some int bonus to surrounding air units. I know the truck is originally an Autocar Dispatch Model SA (aka ZIS-5), but it's close enough to Polski Fiat 621

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Polski_Fiat_621L reflektor bigicon.png (133.53 KiB) Viewed 8315 times

PF 621 w/AA searchlight

Polski_Fiat_621L reflektor halibutt.png (16.39 KiB) Viewed 8315 times

[GaryChildress]

Awesome stuff Halibutt!

I really like the new transports and trucks!

[Halibutt]

Ok, my Polish transport collection is growing larger with every day but there is still one unit missing. It's lacking in the vanilla game, it's not in any mods so far (except for H. Balck's), yet it's really crucial. What I have in mind is the C2P artillery tractor. C2P stands for Ciągnik Dwutonowy Polski, or "Tractor, 2-tonne, Polish" in military lingo.

It was a light tractor, basically an open-topped TKS tankette. It had the same 46hp engine and the same tiny dimensions. In practice it meant that a two-seater tankette had now to accommodate four soldiers (driver and three artillerymen). Yet, quite surprisingly, it proved an excellent design: it had a low silhouette and although it was a little cramped, it could tow the 37mm Bofors AT gun to position without being noticed by the enemy. Plus it was relatively fast: with full compliment and a two-ton trailer it could still drive 40 km/h across the countryside. Quite a feat for such a little toy. Interestingly, some of them were captured by the Germans who used this little thing in the Wehrmach until the very end of the war. Plus, one of the very few surviving pieces was left by the Germans in Norway. One of the local farmers took it and used it successfully for several decades as an agricultural tractor, a snowplow and prime mower.

The icon is partly based on this TKS 3D model by Maquinart. Basically I borrowed the undercarriage and built the rest of the model. I tried skinning it to the typical Polish tri-colour camo of the epoch, but the icon is pretty tiny and it didn't look good, so I painted it to standard green instead.

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C2P halibutt BigIcon.png (20.28 KiB) Viewed 8264 times

C2P artillery tractor

C2P halibutt.png (11.43 KiB) Viewed 8264 times

[Halibutt]

Since I did the C2P tractor based on TKS tankette, why not do another version of the TKS itself? The model is by Maquinart (see the link in my previous post). Perhaps I'll try to skin it with Camo Sprayshop some time in the future.

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TKS halibutt BigIcon.png (20.49 KiB) Viewed 8264 times

TKS tankette

TKS halibutt.png (14.04 KiB) Viewed 8264 times

EDIT/ List in the first post updated.

[Halibutt]

And probably the last of my tankette series. It's the late TKS armed with a quick-firing 20mm FK gun (or "heaviest machine gun" as it was referred to back then). 110 tankettes (both TK-3 and TKS) were to be upgraded to this standard by the end of December 1939, plus 40 more of both types by February 1940. However, the war started earlier and only a handful took part in the fights. To good effect BTW, the 20mm gun was still enough to knock-out most German tanks in 1939. BTW, the upgraded TKS did not have any special name back then, which is why it's known under a variety of names, mostly it's referred to as TKS 20mm, to distinguish it from the MG-armed version.

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TKS 20mm BigIcon.png (20.12 KiB) Viewed 8219 times

TKS 20mm

TKS 20mm halibutt.png (14.25 KiB) Viewed 8219 times

There's two more I'd like to see in-game, but I'm afraid I won't have the time to prepare them: TKD (TK-1 + 47mm Pocisk AT) and TKS-D (TKS+37mm Bofors AT).

[Razz1]

I like several of the icons, especially the last one.

However, no Polish flags.

[Halibutt]

I like several of the icons, especially the last one.

However, no Polish flags.

One day I'll add this to my signature: no Polish flags and checkerboards because there were none. Using them is completely, utterly non-historical.

Historically the checkerboard of the Polish Air Force was used by... you guessed it, the air forces. To mark planes. Not tanks, not lorries. The land forces did not have their equivalent of Balkenkreuz and did not mark their vehicles with high-visibility red and white target practice marks, it would make setting up an ambush really hard, don't you think? Plus, even the insignia that were there (colour rectangle marking the platoon leader tank, small unit insignia near the bumper and so on) were removed before the war to make the job of German and Soviet spies a little more difficult.

Since in-game you always know which unit is yours and which belongs to the enemy, I decided not to add the non-historical insignia to tanks and lorries. I wonder what was the first game to add the checkerboard to Polish tanks and lorries. Since then much time might have passed since apparently people start to expect them to be there. Strange, since the Allies at the start of WWII did not use such markings. Even the Soviets did not use their red star initially. People do not expect Matildas or Crusaders to bear RAF roundels, do they.

[rezaf]

Since in-game you always know which unit is yours and which belongs to the enemy, I decided not to add the non-historical insignia to tanks and lorries.

But that's the whole point of the unhistorical insignia - to make it easier for the player to see on a glance which unit belongs to whom. Without CLEAR separation, such as with base color (if you only use vanilla coloring and no modded camo-icons), there's only the insignia and the shield below the unit to make the separation. Depending on terrain type and unit coloring, any camouflage paint might well do it's job too well and make it harder for the player to spot/distinct the unit on the map.

After you posted a large array of hypothetical Polish units, isn't it a bit late to hop on the "but...but...but... it's ahistorical" train? Just sayin'...
_____
rezaf

[Tarrak]

Before you both start a "war" here just an idea. How about creating one set of icons in the historical version without the markings and another one with them. Offer them both to download and everyone can pick the ones he likes. That is of course if Halibutt is willing to do all the extra work.

[Halibutt]

After you posted a large array of hypothetical Polish units, isn't it a bit late to hop on the "but...but...but... it's ahistorical" train? Just sayin'...

Touché

Before you both start a "war" here just an idea. How about creating one set of icons in the historical version without the markings and another one with them. Offer them both to download and everyone can pick the ones he likes. That is of course if Halibutt is willing to do all the extra work.

No worries, nothing to wage a war about here

As to adding checkerboards - no chance. It's too much work to re-do the icons I already did and I'm not skilled enough to add the checkerboard in 2D by hand (others are free to do so should anyone want it). However, Rezaf has a point about the color scheme. In my mod it's pretty much "the green units versus the grey units", but I was planning to prepare masks for Camo Sprayshop for skinning the icons further (applying the standard Polish 3-colour camo for instance). That way everyone could ask for any camo they wanted and skinning the units would take no time.

BTW, any help in preparing Camo Sprayshop masks would be highly appreciated.

[Halibutt]

I know we already have a vanilla PZL.37B Los bomber, we also have an excellent icon by Bebro, but this one has a merit of being in the correct colour. Plus it has the correct escadrille insignia of the 212th Bomber Escadrille.

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PZL 37B BigIcon.png (124.53 KiB) Viewed 8123 times

PZL.37B Łoś

PZL 37B halibutt.png (42.19 KiB) Viewed 8123 times

[Halibutt]

And probably the last of Polish bombers - and the least-known. In the summer of 1938 Poland bought a batch of six CANT Z.506 Airone floatplane bombers/torpedo bombers. All were to be delivered by the end of July 1939, however the Italians had some problems and the first of them arrived in Poland on August 27, 1939, only a couple of days before the war started. It was armed with Italian MGs, there was no time to rearm it with Polish weapons or paint it in either the typical Polish scheme or with a newly-designed light-blue scheme invented for Polish floatplanes, so it remained in the most bizarre camo ever: it was all-silver, with huge (2x2 metres!) checkerboards painted on the wings by the Italians.

Anyway, the first CANT was destroyed while refuelling near Parczew. Another CANT was delivered to Polish pilots already after the start of hostilities and Poland proposed to the RAF that a small unit of five Polish floatplanes be created and rebased to Malta, but they weren't interested, so the remaining planes were sold back to the Italians and pressed into service with the Regia Marina.

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Cant Z506 Airone BigIcon.png (31.65 KiB) Viewed 8122 times

CANT Z.506 Airone

CANT Z506 Airone halibutt.png (47.74 KiB) Viewed 8122 times

[T2_2112]

Very nice CANT Z.506 Airone

[Razz1]

I knew the Polish had float planes but didn't see a need for it. However, I just realized it's great for the Danzig 1939 campaign. The first map can use it.

Thanks.