Small Vechicle Question

[rogue189]

After FINALLY making it though the American campaign, I found myself with a couple of questions about vehicles.

 

1.  What does the hide command do?  Does it actually do anything or is it there just to mess with you?  I would assume it would turn the engine off, but I figure it would also make the driver turn off the radio and/or hide under the dash board.  There has to be an answer out there.

 

2.  Fences.  Ok, I get that they are obstacles and not necessarily the barbed wire or split wood fences shown.  But still....when I see a multi-ton tank take it slow going over one I can't help but think, what is that fence made out of?!  Why is that Abrams going so slowly over that wooden fence??? Is it like in the movie Signs where an advanced alien race can be stopped by a simple wooden door?  Heaven help us if Battlefront put working signal lights in the game!  I would spend half a battle sitting in traffic!

[womble]

Hide is, apparently, supposed to reduce the noise signature of a vehicle. The effectiveness of it is debateable. I don't know whether it comes with comparable impediments to spotting when used with vehicles as it does when infantry elements Hide. In general, Hide is of limited (but important) use for infantry, and even more limited and less important use for vehicles. I think the button is there mostly for completeness' sake.

 

We've had a few tankers on here explain how even modern tanks are liable to throw tracks if abused. They haven't demurred at the behaviour of AFVs in crossing linear obstacles. Routinely crossing barbed wire fences at flank speed is, apparently a risk few tankers would take. Panzersaurkrautwerfer may well contradict me though Your question, has prompted me to wonder whether using the "Evade" command would demand the vehicle maintain the pace you set, regardless of risk... May have to do a quick test, there...

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

Depends on urgency.  However:

 

1. You always want to approach linear obstacles at a 90 degree angle.  This generally results in the "cleanest" breach with the least likely to have crap getting caught up in the tracks.  This applies to things like wire and fences, but also stuff like railroad tracks (the Marines "lost" a whole platoon to mobility kills in Fallujah when they went over the railway wrong and got the end connectors from their tracks hooked on the rails)

 

2. Slower is better (if possible).  If you're going through a field with 203 MM artillery ranging in and swarms of AT-5s, yeah you're going to plow that fence under and pray to everything that you're okay.  If you're just going over a fence because it's the most direct route and you've got a minute or two, you're going to go over it slow.  Basically you're listening to hear if it sounds like you've got anything that's now caught up in the tracks.  That slowness basically buys you the time to stop the tank if you need to and pull something out before it's fully bound up around the tracks and roadwheels.  There's all sorts of horror stories from NTC of crews spending literally days extracting all the barbed wire from their suspension and tracks because they were going all out and hit some abandoned wire belt from four or five rotations ago.  

 

In terms of wooden fences:

 

a. It might not be totally clear what's on the other side.  Might be a irrigation ditch, might be some cleverly placed mines,

b. Simple physics means there's going to be at least a bit of a jolt.  Unless it's something short enough the tank will simply go over it, it's often best to push the obstruction over and then roll over the top.

 

Of course again the giant caveat is all this care and caution will be balanced against mission requirements and danger (as I alluded to earlier).  

[rogue189]

Actually that is kind of interesting.  Being in the Coast Guard, I don't always understand Army tactics but I try my best in the game.  Since the Combat Mission games were based on the old Squad Leader and Advanced Squad Leader series, I have been trying to take that approach to my recent game play with some exceptions.  I try to put infantry in woods and buildings to give them cover.  Unlike the board game, I have been willing to put tanks in woods to give them better cover too.  The last American mission, Vanguard was a huge eye opener to the usefulness of trees.  I don't know how many trees I killed trying to knock out the T-90's.  But I do find the game's LOS a bit wonky when it comes to trees.  Krause has a good example in his lets play video where a T-90 is hidden from an M-1 simply because its behind a skinny tree.  It seems like overall if a tank sees another vehicle using thermal sights, it will engage regardless of what is in the way.

[Vanir Ausf B]

In Black Sea the Hide command is the only way to prevent anti-aircraft units from firing on aircraft (they ignore covered arcs when targeting aircraft). I assume this function will be back-ported to the other games in the next batch of patches.

 

Outside of that it has no effect on vehicles.

Edited July 14, 2015 by Vanir Ausf B

[Vanir Ausf B]

Oops. Let me rephrase that last statement. It has no effect on vehicles in games other than Black Sea. In Black Sea it does decrease the distance at which a stationary vehicle can be detected via sound contact. I forgot that Charles changed that. Which is embarrassing since it was my own bug report that got it changed, LOL. I assume it will also be changed in the other games eventually.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Vanir Ausf B

[Sublime]

will the stationary vehicle on hide to reduce its sound signature still fire at enemy units in los and spot normally?

Because if they do then its gonna start being sop for a lot of my vehicles.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Sublime

[Vanir Ausf B]

I haven't tested. They probably spot the same. Hiding infantry only spot worse because their faces are in the dirt part of the time. Not a problem with vehicles. I expect they will be reluctant to open fire, similar to how infantry on Hide are. I only hide vehicles that are in close terrain and have very limited LOS.

 

The difference in sound contact range is not huge. IIRC it drops from 140 meters to about 70m.

[Placebo]

After watching a program about the US armoured advance into the centre of Bagdad i was really impressed to see an Abrams driving over a concrete roadblock at full speed!!  That thing was flying in the air a long time,  I think this needs to be modelled in the game

On a serious note, it makes sense that tankers slow down to lessen any risk of throwing a track. 

[Sublime]

vanir will they open fire though? that sound contact range could matta quite a bit. ive had situations where the vague tank marker moving around in woods gave away enemy units

[womble]

Hide definitely includes an element of reluctance to fire. Or at least it's meant to, and it does for Infantry. Who knows what's working if it was broken for vehicles....

[Sublime]

damn i wonder if hide in conjunction with a cover arc. certain death for infantry bc their noses are in the dirt but armor... hmm

[womble]

TAs don't encourage units to fire on targets within them, remember, they only restrict firing on targets outside them. So if vehicles are less likely to fire (in order to try and stay "Hidden"), putting a TA on 'em won't help them fire sooner. 

[White2Golf]

Depends on urgency.  However:

 

1. You always want to approach linear obstacles at a 90 degree angle.  This generally results in the "cleanest" breach with the least likely to have crap getting caught up in the tracks.  This applies to things like wire and fences, but also stuff like railroad tracks (the Marines "lost" a whole platoon to mobility kills in Fallujah when they went over the railway wrong and got the end connectors from their tracks hooked on the rails)

 

2. Slower is better (if possible).  If you're going through a field with 203 MM artillery ranging in and swarms of AT-5s, yeah you're going to plow that fence under and pray to everything that you're okay.  If you're just going over a fence because it's the most direct route and you've got a minute or two, you're going to go over it slow.  Basically you're listening to hear if it sounds like you've got anything that's now caught up in the tracks.  That slowness basically buys you the time to stop the tank if you need to and pull something out before it's fully bound up around the tracks and roadwheels.  There's all sorts of horror stories from NTC of crews spending literally days extracting all the barbed wire from their suspension and tracks because they were going all out and hit some abandoned wire belt from four or five rotations ago.  

 

In terms of wooden fences:

 

a. It might not be totally clear what's on the other side.  Might be a irrigation ditch, might be some cleverly placed mines,

b. Simple physics means there's going to be at least a bit of a jolt.  Unless it's something short enough the tank will simply go over it, it's often best to push the obstruction over and then roll over the top.

 

Of course again the giant caveat is all this care and caution will be balanced against mission requirements and danger (as I alluded to earlier).  

 

 

What this guy said.      Wanted to add that it took me a second to think about why going over RR tracks like that could do what you said.  That had to be impressively installed RR track that the RR track won.   Also, having been there and done that with the whole "I spent 24 hours picking wire out of the tracks" thing, a HUGE +1 to the idea of not running over many obstacles unless you really have to.   It might be fun in the moment but you will likely regret it later.   I probably said this before... For every hour of "this is awesome" you get out of being a tanker, there are 10 hours of "this sucks" that goes into it.  

 

But it IS a wicked awesome hour. 

[Sublime]

the driving over stuff is really important in FI. the italian vineyard tile is the biggest tank immobilizer ive ever seen in this game.

What i meant about the CA.s was if a units on hide would it force the vehicle to open fire to things within the CA. for example i want to hide a tank and have less of a sound signature, so i put it on hide but add a CA so it definitely opens fire on targets within.

[Kieme(ITA)]

Funny thing. Few days ago I had to pull out of terrain some very old (30+ years) vine logs, which were planted to hold on a mesh wire fence 2m tall. The logs were some 2.3/3m tall and 0.5/1m deep in the ground. Well I had a hell of a time to take them out of the ground. Not only they were extremely sturdy (despite being so old and left unpainted in the open), they had thick fibres, whenever I tried to lever force on them they didn't break, they twisted and kept toghether. Even using a hand saw the fibres were so hard I had to sweat twice or more to cut them as a common green wood of the same size. 

 

Moreover, the wineyards are a mixture of plants, logs (modern ones are also made out of reinforced concrete) and wires, add the fact that wines like rocky ground...

Edited July 18, 2015 by Kieme(ITA)

[womble]

What i meant about the CA.s was if a units on hide would it force the vehicle to open fire to things within the CA. for example i want to hide a tank and have less of a sound signature, so i put it on hide but add a CA so it definitely opens fire on targets within.

I know that's what you meant, which is why I tried to point out that TAs don't work like that. All they do (as far as fire discipline is concerned) is restrict your firing to targets within the TA's covered area. Just because they won't fire on things outside the arc doesn't make them any more likely to fire on things inside the arc. Putting a TA on them will make unlikely-to-fire-anyway Hidden units into units which will not fire outside their TA unless they feel really threatened.

 

TAs do not encourage troops to fire. End of.

[antaress73]

so you cannot use a TA to spring an ambush by hiding troops and make them unhide and open fire when a target enters the target arc.

[A Canadian Cat]

Not hiding troops no. I am not sure how that works with vehicles, which is the subject of this thread. I have never used hide on vehicles.