Vehicle breakdowns?

[Brian Rock]

A couple of questions prompted by a previous post mentioning the occasional need to push disabled vehicles to get past them:

Will there be armored recovery vehicles in the database? (Could be cute, but it's not a big deal for a number of reasons.)

Of more interest to me - will vehicles breakdown, or bog, or slip off a road, or hit a tree, or become otherwise disabled apart from combat damage?

The only games I can think of that addressed this were the HPS games - eg the higher the speed, the more likely a tank would lose a track. I don't recall if vehicles could get bogged down.

This could impact on tactics - eg Tiger's were notoriously unreliable at speed, as refelcted in standing orders not to force march them. Yet most games let players run them at top speed without risk/penalty.

Equally, soft ground is a nightmare to tankers. Think Operation Market Garden - move off the highway and stop moving.

Other factors that could impact of gameplay: trucks less reliable off-road performance, impact of terrain from a defender's POV, etc.

Not a killer issue, but it would be a nice inclusion.

[Guest Big Time Software]

No to recovery vehicles. They are COOL, but outside the scope of CM. Generally the vehicles would only come in when the area was secured (Germans LOVED to do this at night).

Vehicles can become immobilized for any number of reasons, most of which you have listed. Vehicles, especially tanks, were highly prone to breaking down or otherwise becoming immobilized. Tossing a track is way too easy to do. Most games, and gamers, treat tanks as if they are more powerfull than a speeding locomotive and can drive through buildings with a single bound This is simply NOT the case in the real world.

Speed has nothing to do with tossing a track on its own. The thing is the faster the tank is going, the tougher the terrain, and the less straight the path leads to a better chance of tossing a track. However, my tank driving manual (revised 1946) shows plenty of ways to get into trouble in 1st gear or reverse

I'm not saying that CM will be prefect, but it will certainly be better than what people are used to.

Steve

[Guest Rhet Schmidt]

Speaking of armored recovery vehicles, I don't believe they are necessary for CM but their purpose cannot be overlooked for the campaign game. If a vehicle becomes disabled during a battle this situation should not automatically preclude it from participating in a subsequent battle. I think for simplicity sake, units that have become immobilized (eg. bogged down, threw a track, high centered, etc.)should be allowed to participate in the next battle. All vehicles during this period were too valuable to be left out of combat operations. Recovery crews would work very hard to recover these vehicles and get them back into service. For serious breakdowns such as a malfunctioning main gun or a drivetrain breakdown the vehicle should be excluded from the remainder of the campaign. I believe this should be modeled this way as these repairs would involve moving the vehicle to a rear area to fix the problem and as a result make the vehicle unavailabe for the next battle.

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Rhet

[Guest Bobb]

Tactically, this issue of breakdowns could be critical as in Market Garden. The Huertgen Forest battles saw several occasions when a single tank getting stuck or throwing a track on a narrow twisting trail or otherwise very sorry excuse for a road with impassable conditions on either side proved to either completely undo an attack or contribute materially thereto.

I am not suggesting that our erstwhile participants and hosts are not aware of such occasions, but I do hope for such lovely touches of reality in at least moderate doses.

My brother in training at Fort Polk (ca. 1950) unfortunantly was a member of the tank crew that proved to be the next one immobilized following the frustrated Batallion CO's order, that any more tanks getting stuck will dig it out themselves. Of course it was a stupid order and the thing had to be retrieved, but not before a very unhappy and predestined to failure effort. Like mules they tried.

A story of nothing much to do with CM, I know, but where else would I tell it --------. I wonder if we will find COs of such mentality surviving into combat CM style------------------ Can we have our troops have "accidents" with a lousy leader? Oh, no I remember now, they will not show up individually. Too bad. Such a nice informal mission for a sniper. Not necessarily a bad omission, though, considering WHO will likely be acting in the overall command of the battle.--------

[Guest Big Time Software]

Rhet, recovery vheicles are still outside of CM's scale even for Campaign games. We would have to actually make a "recover your tank" scenario for them to be used. This isn't going to be fun to do after the first one or two times. It will also be time consuming.

For Campaigns we have abstracted vehicle recovery. Depending on the battlefield conditions, the nature of the breakdown, the length of time before the next battle, and lighting conditions will all determine if you get your vehicle back. A vehicle with a tossed track, at night, while on the attack, and the next battle in 4 hours will have a much better chance than something that got nailed in the roadwheels in broad daylight while on the defensive. Oh, and loose the field, you loose your vehicles 100% of the time.

Bobb, you are *SO* right about the clogging problem. I just made a map of impassible forest with a small winding road going through it. First vehicle was whacked by a panzerfaust, and the rest of the column (2 Shermans and 6 M3 HTs) could only reverse course. But this isn't easy to do with 8 vehicles, so they pretty much got into a traffic jam. The infantry bailed out and went into the woods to find the trouble, and unfortunately for them they did What an unfair ambush THAT was!

Oh, a bad commander can get whacked, but not by "accident". You can get them killed by exposing them to lots of enemy fire (we can't prevent this), but you risk losing the whole HQ unit. In this case the fix would be worse thand the problem.

Steve

[Guest Rhet Schmidt]

Steve,

I should have known you had it covered. What you described for vehicle recovery is exactly how I was looking at it. There is definatly no need to have a scenario to recover a vehicle. The "abstracted" method you refer to is what I meant by saying for "simplicity sake". Basically the recovery of the vehicles should be an alogarithim which factors in the type of breakdown, weather, time between battles, location of the vehicle with respect to the front line, etc. Excellent call guys.

One last thing I know you have covered but its worth a mention. If the crew bails from the vehicle and is subsequently wiped out (KIA) then the chance of the vehicle making it back into the next scenario (er battle) should be nil.

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Rhet

[This message has been edited by Rhet Schmidt (edited 04-22-99).]

[Guest Big Time Software]

We are thinking about making the recovery of a crewless, but recoverable, vehicle dependent on available crews. We haven't nailed down *exactly* what will happen, but the thinking is that if you recover a vehicle, and there is no crew available (i.e. one that bailed) to man it, you don't get it back period.

Steve