Halftrack gunners...

[Wodin]

Anyone else feel they get picked off just abit to quickly?

[GhostRider3/3]

Yep...I always thought they should be able to suppress areas with their MG's but they always get sniped.. LOL, tanks commanders as well, but thats just life.

I will never send in Armor without infantry rolling with them.. however even Armored car commanders in turrets always take a lucky hit from sometimes over 300m... thats a heck of a marksmen taking out a small half head silhouette in a moving armored target.

Anyways.. I have fun anyways, but yeah its sometimes anoying that every single commander is a casualty.

[c3k]

Most of the hits my paras in my aar have been getting against Bil's mgers have been flank shots. Fwiw.

[BletchleyGeek]

Anyone else feel they get picked off just abit to quickly?

What Ken says. I try always very hard to make sure my HT's are offering their front to the enemy and I try to keep them at a distance. Both of which quite often are at odds with what I need to do, by the way.

They're certainly not some kind of cheap MG-equipped tankettes.

[Erwin]

Agreed, they need to be used at a distance. They are not tanks or even AC's. Many CM2 maps are small, but in most cases one can get enough distance to keep the gunners relatively safe while they provide suppressive fire.

[GhostRider3/3]

Aye.. my new tactic with HT/s is point at enemy.. conduct (Brief Target Area) at possible building windows, hedges to suppress those blasted snipers.

I have to say the US.. M2 (.50 cal) is bloody devestating.. and I have not even got to the AA HT's yet. Those tracks can take out German HT, AC, and disabled two PZII recon tanks... it was completely upsetting..

[Fenris]

Not done it for a while but I try and wait right up until the infantry start their attack before bringing out HTs to support them or even just after. As seems apparent using them on their own draws lots of return fire which is often fatal. Maybe gunners and TC's get taken out too easily, hard to really say to be honest with only anecdotal evidence.

-F

[GJR144]

I also think they are too easily knocked out. Like flies. If this would be correctly modelled the OKW's advice of the correct use of the 251/1 would have not been that way:

http://youtu.be/L32rban714c?t=2m07s

[slysniper]

Not done it for a while but I try and wait right up until the infantry start their attack before bringing out HTs to support them or even just after. As seems apparent using them on their own draws lots of return fire which is often fatal. Maybe gunners and TC's get taken out too easily, hard to really say to be honest with only anecdotal evidence.

-F

My way of using them also. Wait, let the infantry reveal enemy locations, then slide the track into place and pre assign area fire. They do pretty good if you limit their view to only one or a few enemy locations and get them firing first. They then can win the supression war. Everything else I have tried leads to dead men in the HT. But this tactic works even up close and personnal. but with hedgerows going away and more open ground in the future. The Ht will become even less effective as any type of support.

[db_zero]

I've seen players who use them like tanks. I see them as mobile coffins. As the old saying goes the armor does a great job of stopping bullets-once they penetrate and start rattling around the compartment.

I generally use them as taxis to get infantry near where I want them-but as far away from potential harm, then dismount. If I have any doubts I use scouts first to recon the area or draw fire. Best to use your infantry to keep the enemy occupied and then if feasible use the MG's on the tracks to inflict suppression or death.

I've seen a few instances where opponents use tracks and jeeps as sacrificial lambs to draw fire.

[Vinnart]

YES, especially if behind a shield! I would think they would actually be a harder, smaller target if behind a shield exposing mainly the head vs. a troop on the ground who may have no cover and be exposing more of the body.

The best way to keep them a alive though is to keep them as far back as possible using the range of the MG.

[db_zero]

A track at 300 yards is a big target. Don't think you would have to hit the gunner or shield to be effective. Just spray the track and let the penetrating bullets ricochet around the compartment. At 300 yards I would suspect the .30 cal, 7.92 and certainly a 50 cal from MG's could easily penetrate the thin armor on a track. I'll let the experts confirm or deny that. The 30-06 from a Grand at 300 meters-not sure either. The 9mm/45ACP and 30 cal from a M1 Carbine probably not at 300 yards.

I've also noticed that if at the later stage of a battle, if you've demoralized the enemy you can be quite aggressive with tracks and let their machine guns go to town on the enemy infantry with less risk. Its really at the beginning of a battle when the enemy is fresh and aggressive that tracks really suffer.

[Wodin]

Well it was mainly sten guns taking out my gunners within a minute every time..from a reasonable distance for a Sten aswell. These pixeltruppen will be great in a Zombie apocalypse, headshots all round. Just seems abit to quick against every halftrack.

[GJR144]

db zero,

please watch the video i provided. The SPWs were expected to move through enemy infantry. They obviously are not easily penetrated (a truck would be much cheaper) and the gunner is quite well shielded and a tiny target.

Any aiming infantry against the SPW must expose the full head, while the gunner in the HT from the front is only exposed with a small portion of his head.

And when the vehicle is moving, it gets even harder to hit the small area.

It's only a feeling, but my impression is, that gunners in SPWs are not much more protected than the crew of unarmored and unshielded vehicles like Jeeps.

Would be an interesting test.

[MikeyD]

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that US half-tracks were supposed to disembark passengers some 900m (yards?) from the forward like on contact. Softskins like trucks were twice that distance. 6-12mm armor is weak no matter how you cut it. BT fast tanks had equivalent armor and were mocked for being papier-mâché tanks. I believe it was suggested M18 Hellcat be adapted to light tank duties but its 13mm armor proved too vulnerable to small arms fire. Stuart armor is 25mm

[LukeFF]

I also think they are too easily knocked out. Like flies. If this would be correctly modelled the OKW's advice of the correct use of the 251/1 would have not been that way:

http://youtu.be/L32rban714c?t=2m07s

Training films / manuals and reality are two entirely different things.

[MikeyD]

The nice thing about CM is you can actually test out tactical concepts to see if they hold up. If a particular tactic refuses to 'work' during gameplay perhaps its not a flaw in the game engine but a flaw in the theory. Reminds me of when they sealed-up and armored-over the infantry gun ports on Bradley and LAV-25. Fighting from within the vehicle sounded great in theory... back in the early 1980s.

[Michael Emrys]

...tanks commanders as well...

Being an exposed TC was always a dangerous proposition, and some of them did get killed. But then thousands who did survived and some of them survived because they were able to spot a threat that could have destroyed the tank with them in it. So it was always a trade-off. The smart (and/or lucky) ones knew when it was time to pull in their heads and close the hatch and when it was time to open the hatch and look around. Does CM accurately portray the risk-benefit ratio? I honestly don't know. Maybe the reason TCs get knocked off at the rate they do in CM is because we are exposing them at shorter ranges to small arms fire than discrete TCs would. I do think if they are getting regularly popped at ranges of 300+ m that might be exaggerating the risk a bit. Getting popped at ranges of over 500 m might be exaggerating a lot. So tell me, guys, at what ranges are your exposed TCs getting their brains blown out?

Michael

[Oddball_E8]

Being an exposed TC was always a dangerous proposition, and some of them did get killed. But then thousands who did survived and some of them survived because they were able to spot a threat that could have destroyed the tank with them in it. So it was always a trade-off. The smart (and/or lucky) ones knew when it was time to pull in their heads and close the hatch and when it was time to open the hatch and look around. Does CM accurately portray the risk-benefit ratio? I honestly don't know. Maybe the reason TCs get knocked off at the rate they do in CM is because we are exposing them at shorter ranges to small arms fire than discrete TCs would. I do think if they are getting regularly popped at ranges of 300+ m that might be exaggerating the risk a bit. Getting popped at ranges of over 500 m might be exaggerating a lot. So tell me, guys, at what ranges are your exposed TCs getting their brains blown out?

Michael

All I know is that more than once (well almost every time to be honest) my TC's stay unbuttoned after a burst of gunfire has riccocheted off their turret.

This is often the last bad decision they make.

A TC should button up the second he comes under direct small arms fire.

[Karabekian]

I believe it is due to the player we have so many casualties on tank crews, just as is the case with half tracks. The pixelmann could not possibly know that it is driving towards a threat and as such, it is you who should take the precaution of buttoning up or keeping your men out of harm.

Whenever there is a dangerous area within 300 meters, button. I believe they would have done it in reality too. This way I have few casualties in tank crews, and also have to (I think) realistically rely on other units to spot for them.

[Killkess]

A track at 300 yards is a big target. Don't think you would have to hit the gunner or shield to be effective. Just spray the track and let the penetrating bullets ricochet around the compartment. At 300 yards I would suspect the .30 cal, 7.92 and certainly a 50 cal from MG's could easily penetrate the thin armor on a track. I'll let the experts confirm or deny that. The 30-06 from a Grand at 300 meters-not sure either. The 9mm/45ACP and 30 cal from a M1 Carbine probably not.

While i am not an expert i highly doubt that halftracks were such vulnerable to small arms fire. Angled plates and hard steels should give good protection vs .30 at any range.

Some of the grogs here for a comment?

[altipueri]

My feeling is that the killing of TCs is about right but that spotting while buttoned is too good.

Re half-tracks wasn't Gen Bradley take aback when he asked some troops about the half-track being penetrated by MG42 bullets and the reply went along the lines of "Oh, it's OK General, the bullets just come through and rattle around inside a bit."

[GJR144]

Training films / manuals and reality are two entirely different things.

You didn't watch the video, did you?

[Seedorf81]

I too believe that the sdkfz 250/251 gunners holocaust is not the way things went in real life. It certainly looks to me that as soon as a gunner in the game pops his head up to open fire, he seems to turn into a bullet-magnet of ridiculous proportions and gets killed instantly.

Even if, like I did in my last scenario, the sdkfz250 was between two houses (no side shots probable), and I had a lot of infantry and Stugs providing covering fire. Gunner gets up and gets immediately killed.

The kill ratio is even higher than a 100% because any passenger-MG-replacement gets killed as well.

In my experience the US halftrack gunners are better off, be it slightly.

[c3k]

Two items:

- German halftrack armor was thicker and harder than US halftrack armor. It also had significant vertical sloping. Deflection angle due to vehicle facing would be the same regardless of US or German halftrack. The compound angle due to the vertical sloping was beneficial.

This led to the fact that Germans were safe behind their armor at ranges much closer than that of US soldiers in their halftracks. There's a bunch of thickness, brinell hardness numbers, and ranges which back that up floating around in several threads. (As well as various books.) I don't recall the exact numbers so I won't post what I "think" they are, so as to avoid cluttering the thread with misinformation.

- Vulnerability to small arms by the gunners. Yes, it's been extensively tested. Rounds counted, charted, hundreds of iterations, various ranges, different halftracks, etc. I know. I did them. The shields provide a significant protection.

Now, those tests were awhile ago, and several builds in the past. Could something have changed? Sure. Not likely, but it could have. Do I want to spend another week redoing the same mind-numbing testing because of a feeling here or there? Nope.

What I suggest is taking a halftrack out of a battle and putting it on a test lane. See how often the gunner gets hit when the enemy riflemen are unsuppressed. Now see how often he gets hit when the enemy is suppressed. Next, repeat with US hafltracks with no gunshield for the gunner.

Ken