The Road to Forgotten Hope 2.5 Part 1

Hello and welcome back to another Forgotten Hope 2 update.

It has been quite a while since we have had the pleasure to write a Road to... news update, and we'd like to thank all of our fans for continuing to support us over the last year and a half. We think that version 2.5 is the most polished release we've made to date. There have been uncountable numbers of small bugs squashed and there is barely any vehicle, weapon or map that hasn't seen some improvements.

We'd like to extend a big thank you to all our fans for their continued support and of course for playing our mod, to our betatesters for their dedication to improving our work, to our developers for the time and effort they put in to make things happen, and to Fluestertuete for providing the web hosting that makes this all possible.

We'd also like to extend a special thank you to Archimonday and Harmonikator for their work on new animations, Hybrid and Kubador for their work on new sounds, Matt Baker for his work on new textures, Gavrant for his single handed mission to squash every last imperfection, and Jan Kurator for his single handed mission to give Gavrant more work. Finally, we'd like to thank the teams at WAW, Forgotten Honor and [762] for keeping our community together.

Now, perhaps the most important change in 2.5 considering recent events is we will be changing over to a new master server. This change is in fact the trigger for this release - we had originally intended to polish out the last few rough imperfections - but we decided that getting everyone playing again outweighed the benefits of this final work.

Because of this rather unusual situation we have found ourselves in we cannot give you an exact time for the release, but we are aiming to get everything ready for Monday (8th) evening. Just as soon as we know when the exact time is we'll let you know as well.

The KV-1 heavy tank had suffered from low mobility, greater cost and yet the same armament as the T-34 medium tanks. While the KV-1S solved some of these issues, it got rid of the thick armour that was the KV-1's main advantage. The introduction of the Tiger spurred the design of a new heavy tank, to be armed with the 85mm gun from the SU-85 tank destroyer.

With first the stopgap KV-85 and then the production IS-1, the Red Army found itself with a capable heavy tank that could take on the German Tigers on a more even footing. With the switch to the T-34-85 the situation again returned to a heavy and medium tank with the same armament. The decision was taken to up-gun the IS to either the D-10 100mm or the A-19 122m. While the D-10 had the better armour penetration ability, the A-19 won the competition with its larger high explosive shell and ready availability.

The IS-2 started production in November 1943, and would feature prominently in the Soviet offensives of 1944 and 45. It had the armour to stand toe to toe with most German tanks, and the gun to match. It wasn't perfect though: the two part ammunition led to long reload times and a low capacity of 28 rounds, while the engine guzzled fuel and mechanical reliability was low. There was an improvement made to the hull armour in mid 1944 along with an improved gun. Our IS-2 was made by Rad for the original Forgotten Hope, with Toddel and Matt Baker providing the update to FH2 standards.

The Red Army had been formed following the 1917 revolution, and was almost immediately called into fighting both the Polish-Soviet War and the Russian Civil War. Any lessons learned from these conflicts were brushed aside in the 1937-39 Great Purge, which saw great numbers of competent officers removed from their posts. The poor leadership in the wake of this lead to the crushing losses suffered in the Winter War and Operation Barbarossa.

Lessons were soon learned, and the Red Army was soon an effective fighting force again. Over 34 million men would serve in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, and over 11 million of those were killed or captured. Our Soviet playermodels were made by Pointblank86, and are seen in the render armed with the Mosin Nagant, PPSh and DP made by Seth Soldier.

That's all for today, but be sure to come back tomorrow for another update. Until then, feel free to visit our IRC channel, our public forums, and/or our Twitter and Facebook pages to discuss this update and other news.