Hello and welcome back to another Forgotten Hope 2 update.

We'd like to extend a big thank you to all of our fans who voted for us in this year's ModDB's Mod of the Year awards. Thanks to you all we have once again made it to an honourable mention in the Player's Choice category.

So with this final little Christmas present, we'd like to wish you all the best and to see you in the New Year!

That's all for this week, but be sure to come back next time for another update. Until then, feel free to visit our Discord, our public forums, our Twitter, our subreddit, and/or Facebook pages to discuss this update and other news.

Hello and welcome back to another Forgotten Hope 2 update.

Seasons Greetings to all of our fans! As 2020 draws to a close we have one final present to show you, and it's a big one. When you play Forgotten Hope 2, you inevitable spend most of your time with your trusty rifle, and for France that rifle is the Berthier.

The Berthier Mousqueton began as a replacement for the single shot blackpowder Gras carbines that the French cavalry were still issued with in 1890, four years after the introduction of the modern Lebel rifle. Attempts to design a Lebel carbine had not progressed well, and a design by Emile Berthier was chosen instead. This original carbine had a 3 shot Mannlicher magazine and was produced in 2 main variants: the model 1890 for the cavalry and the model 1892 for the artillery. The artillery carbine would prove to be a very handy weapon in the confines of trench warfare, and was issued much more widely than originally intended.

Alongside the carbines, in 1902 and 1907 longer rifle length versions of the Berthier were made for Indochinese and Senegalese soldiers respectively. When production of the Lebel was unable to keep up with the sudden demand of the First World War, the Senegalese rifle was modified to the 1907-15 pattern and put into widespread production. This update was minimal - the bolt handle was straightened and the muzzle was changed to accept the Lebel bayonet.

Experience during the First World War showed that a number of improvements were needed to the Berthiers, and this culminated in the M16 models. These featured a new 5 round capacity magazine that brought the rifle to parity with other rifles of the day, a dust cover that closed off the large hole in the magazine floor plate, an upper hand guard and a thick front sight post for quicker target acquisition. This post has a thin groove cut into it for more precise long range shooting. The 1892 artillery carbine was the first to switch to M16 production, with the 1907-15 rifle following after the war. Almost all of the existing Berthiers would be retrofitted with the M16 upgrades as well. Converted rifles and carbines would be marked 1907-15 M16 and 1892 M16 respectively, while new production of both were just M16.

After the First World War, the French military decided that they needed to replace the obsolete 8mm Lebel cartridge. The replacement was ready by 1924 in time for the new light machinegun (with a 1929 update), and focus turned towards infantry rifles. In parallel with a new design that would become the MAS 36, a conversion was also made of 1907-15 Berthier rifles to the new cartridge. This conversion used a more conventional 5 round box magazine fed with stripper clips and had a shorter barrel, but kept a lot of the other original features of the Berthier. These rifles were the model 1907-15 M34.

In May of 1940, the M16 Berthier was still the most numerous rifle in the French inventory. It would serve alongside the M16 Mousqueton as the primary arm of most of the conscripted army, with the 1907-15 M34 serving mostly with the professional units. The Berthier rifle was also capable of launching the Viven-Bessières rifle grenades and could be fitted with the APX21 scope as a sniper rifle - though it was not the preferred rifle for either of these tasks. All three of our Berthiers were made by Seth Soldier.

That's all for this year, but be sure to come back next year for more. Until then, feel free to visit our Discord, our public forums, our Twitter, our subreddit, and/or Facebook pages to discuss this update and other news.

Hello and welcome back to another Forgotten Hope 2 update.

Today marks the eve of Forgotten Hope 2's 13th birthday: version 2.0 was released on Friday 14th December 2007. Since then we have also managed to have 13 major updates, and we are still here working away at number 14 for you.

In other good news, we'd like to thank all of you who voted for us in the first round of ModDB's Mod of the Year awards. We have successfully made it into the second round, and would appreciate your votes once again.

So with all of that out of the way, today we thought we'd show you yet another weapon that you will be able to use against the incoming panzers in France.

France was one of the major users of the tank in the First World War, and while the Germans never were able to catch up some thought was still put towards developing something that infantry in the front line could use to defeat attacking tanks. Two ideas would be prototyped, a 13mm anti-tank rifle and a high velocity 17mm gun that could use the mount of the existing SA 16 37mm infantry support gun. The armistice put an end to this experimenting, but the idea of a high velocity low calibre gun remained.

In 1926, Hotchkiss presented the army with a 25mm anti-tank gun on a light portable carriage. It would take until 1934 after extensive trials and the threat of German rearmament before it would be adopted as the SA 34. It was a very small and portable gun, weighing only 490 kg total, and could easily be manhandled by its 6 man crew into all sorts of unusual positions. The 25×193.5mmR ammunition was potent, and could easily deal with any German tank in 1940 out to 500 metres or more. There was only solid shot available, either with or without tracer. The main downside of this low weight was fragility - it could not be towed at more than 15 km/h.

There would be a couple of variants made: the shorter barrel SA 35 for mounting in vehicles and an even lighter weight SA 37. In total, about 6000 were made, of which 300 were traded to the BEF in 1939 in exchange for Boys anti-tank rifles. Finland also ordered 50 during the Winter War, though only 20 arrived in time to be used. They would buy 200 more from the Germans before the Continuation War. They would continue to serve with various Axis powers and the Free French up until about 1943, at which point they were generally discarded as being totally outclassed by newer tank armour. Our SA 34 was made by Seth Soldier.

Finally today we can show off another render featuring more of the little miscellaneous statics that will really help to bring our French maps to life. CptBocquier made the 25mm ammunition and boxes and converted Kraetzer's UE into a static, while Seth soldier made the 7.5mm ammunition boxes and the SA34 gun.

That's all for this week, but be sure to come back next time for another update. Until then, feel free to visit our Discord, our public forums, our Twitter, our subreddit, and/or Facebook pages to discuss this update and other news.