Forgotten Hope 2 is an award-winning World War II modification for Battlefield 2TM and is based on the original Forgotten Hope, a modification for Battlefield 1942TM, one of the most popular multiplayer games ever. Battlefield 1942TM featured land, sea and air combat in a way never before seen. It was the goal of the development team to maximize the game experience by adding both a realistic and enjoyable gameplay to FH and now to FH2.
The concept of an armoured vehicle dedicated to the role of destroying tanks had first been realised by the Germans as the Panzerjäger I. While this vehicle proved the concept, it was quickly getting long in the tooth, especially when compared to the towed PaK 40 anti-tank cannons that were starting to appear at the front through 1942. The hasty rush to get this gun into a similar armoured self propelled mount lead to the Marder series of vehicles, before finally settling on upgunning the StuG.
The 7.5 cm L/48 armed StuGs were an instant success: cheap and quick to manufacture and very effective on the battlefield in their new anti-tank role. With this in mind, the requirements for new design of StuG were issued in September of 1942: thicker armour, lower height and mounting the new 7.5 cm L/70 gun. Several designs were submitted, with that by Vomag being accepted. It was based on the Panzer IV hull, modified with a low armoured casemate and sloped frontal armour. The L/70 gun was needed to arm the new Panther tanks, and so the first production of the new vehicles were armed with the older L/48.
Production started in December 1943, several months behind schedule, and would continue until November the following year, when all production had switched to the L/70 armed variant. By Mid spring of 1944, the design had been changed to eliminate the difficult to use left-hand machinegun port, and experiments had shown that the muzzle brake was not required to deal with the recoil and so was removed from production. Somewhere in the region of 800 were produced, and ours was made by Matt Baker from Omni and AceS's Jagdpanzer IV/70.