throwing grenades

[Bulletpoint]

There's one problem with the "grenade abstraction of close assault" though. In real life, assaulting a tank would mean getting out of cover to run up to the tank, maybe even climb it. Massively exposing yourself.

 

In this game though, troops "assault" a tank, but do so from the comfort of their cover, staying put while throwing grenades.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Bulletpoint

[womble]

There's one problem with the "grenade abstraction of close assault" though. In real life, assaulting a tank would mean getting out of cover to run up to the tank, maybe even climb it. Massively exposing yourself.

 

In this game though, troops "assault" a tank, but do so from the comfort of their cover, staying put while throwing grenades.

While this is true, the range at which they can "close assault" from cover is very short. Frankly, if a tank is that close, it deserves a good kicking from the infantry that its owner couldn't be bothered to screen for. Sure, sometimes there might be an MG42 that would, if every motion of every pTruppe was explicitly modelled, provide overwatch and scratch the fleas off the back of the armour, but 30m is too damn close to cover, and it only takes one bit of covered approach the MG can't reach for the grunts to ruin the tankers' day.

 

As an incentive to keep your arms combined, it works real good.

[A Canadian Cat]

There's one problem with the "grenade abstraction of close assault" though. In real life, assaulting a tank would mean getting out of cover to run up to the tank, maybe even climb it. Massively exposing yourself.

 

In this game though, troops "assault" a tank, but do so from the comfort of their cover, staying put while throwing grenades.

 

I don't feel that way.  For all the tanks I have lost or my men have taken out it this way it did not feel like anyone got to stay in comfort.  It has always been bloody, really bloody. 

[Melchior]

I think people have misinterpreted accounts of infantry close assault during the war. That because some tanks were knocked out by close assault during the war the understanding somehow became that that it was an easy or predictable job just requiring you to get close enough. The reality was that their wasn't much most men could do, or were willing to do, against a 20+ ton murderdozer. Proper anti-tank weapons were usually too few and far between, and it wasn't uncommon for infantry lines to just totally fall apart once tanks smacked into their positions and just overran everything.

[Bulletpoint]

While this is true, the range at which they can "close assault" from cover is very short. Frankly, if a tank is that close, it deserves a good kicking from the infantry that its owner couldn't be bothered to screen for. Sure, sometimes there might be an MG42 that would, if every motion of every pTruppe was explicitly modelled, provide overwatch and scratch the fleas off the back of the armour, but 30m is too damn close to cover, and it only takes one bit of covered approach the MG can't reach for the grunts to ruin the tankers' day.

 

As an incentive to keep your arms combined, it works real good.

 

I agree it works well. My comment was just some musing out of interest in the similarities and differences between the game and real life combat.

 

Luckily for me, I'm born in a time when I'm able to do so from the comfort of my own cover

[jtsjc1]

I would think more tanks were taken out by LATW than close combat. I'm sure most infantry were reluctant to approach a tank close enough to assault it. They'd probably rather get behind cover and wait for it to pass unless it was a direct threat. Just common sense I figure!

[A Canadian Cat]

I agree it works well. My comment was just some musing out of interest in the similarities and differences between the game and real life combat.

 

Luckily for me, I'm born in a time when I'm able to do so from the comfort of my own cover

 

Amen to that.

 

I would think more tanks were taken out by LATW than close combat. I'm sure most infantry were reluctant to approach a tank close enough to assault it. They'd probably rather get behind cover and wait for it to pass unless it was a direct threat. Just common sense I figure!

 

I am sure you are correct.  And tankers really had no desire to go crashing around in a forest or into the tight streets of a town without their own infantry in front of them - also for good reason. The fact that we game tank commanders seem to want to do that kind of thing needs some negative feedback to remind us not to take it for granted.  Personally I think the game does a pretty good job of making it costly for the infantry to be messing around an enemy tank and costly for tanks to go driving around through enemy lines on their own. 

[Ardem]

An interesting piece from Panzer Operations: The Eastern Front Memoir of General Raus, 1941-1945, in one of the bridgeheads his gruppe had to hold in 1941, some T-34's come charging in without infantry support, at this stage they could not destroy it as they had no weapons to counter it as infantry, so a brave sergeant jump onto the drivers port and blocked the visions slots with a rag, until it drove out of the AO, if I recall correctly.

[jtsjc1]

Amen to that.

 

 

I am sure you are correct.  And tankers really had no desire to go crashing around in a forest or into the tight streets of a town without their own infantry in front of them - also for good reason. The fact that we game tank commanders seem to want to do that kind of thing needs some negative feedback to remind us not to take it for granted.  Personally I think the game does a pretty good job of making it costly for the infantry to be messing around an enemy tank and costly for tanks to go driving around through enemy lines on their own. 

+1 especially in BS as I have found out...