Hi there tonyuk,
I didn't have great impressions of this game after I played the demo mission. I was playing as the Russians on a defensive mission with no or little anti tank weapons and got my ass rolled!
Some months later, I ended up buying the full game as it came up on a crazy special deal of $5! When I actually started playing again, I started playing as the Germans, who are on the offensive and have better equipped platoons. This enabled me to understand the game much better and I realised that this game was actually quite good and I became addicted.
I used to play the original Close Combat and A Bridge Too Far, both which I have played to death and love, so this always sets the standard for fun realistic WWII RTS for me.
I have played TOW 2 and have tried playing that many times, but I find that really frustrating and found it had really poor pathfinding and a bad interface among other things.
On the other hand, I have had a really great experience with Actung Panzer Kharkov (APK) 1943.
Vehicles go backwards
Vehicles in APK will reverse if you select a waypoint very close and behind their location, which is what I generally want it to do, if you want it to turn around, you first select the rotate command (V or R shortcut key, one is for deployment, the other is while the game is in play and I forget which is which) and then it will go forward where you want it to. Also be careful of having the 'road' and 'fast movement' icon selected before moving them. Fast movement on vehicles immediately turns on their headlights, not great when you want to sneak around! The road icon will ensure the vehicle follows the roads to your waypoint, which I find really useful, but not so great when you want to take a shortcut, so you need to remember to turn it off as well.
Getting stuck in trees or large bushes.
I noticed some of my vehicles would become immobilised, as I would like to sneak around in the forests and they would get stuck in the trees. I then looked into the game manual a bit more and discovered that this is quite intentional and realistic behavior, where you can't just send them into thick forests and always expect them to navigate successfully, they really need to follow roadways or only travel through only lightly wooded areas.
I think I patched to the latest on Gamersgate.
I got mine through GameStop and have version 5.17
Cannot find a save button
You cannot save in the middle of a mission. Your game is automatically saved when in the strategic map, you just go back to the menu or exit the game. I did find this a little frustrating, especially when I accidentally made a move and couldn't undo it or reload from previous, but I just learned to live with it. It does prevent you from the temptation of just reloading a mission result that you didn't like, which I kind of like, as it forces you to live with the results, good or bad!
I have turned off nightime battles but in game it is nightime
I have never turned these off, so not sure about this one.
Anyway to improve FPS, I am already playing on balanced video but FPS no more than 30
I don't think I get any more than 30 either, I might try fiddling with my graphics and see if it goes up, but maybe this is the max?
Thought I would give the original game a shot first, or should I buy APOS and byepass the original
I would definitely give the original a go! I'm planning on finishing all of the campaigns in this one and then buying APOS.
One of my biggest grievances with this game is it's lack of multi-player support, that would bring so much fun and re-playability into it!
I hope you are able to turn your bad experience around like I did!
