US Open -Top Vehicles Tips

[user1000]

Here are some tips for the M8 HMC, M20, M8 GREYHOUND, Priest, Half-Tracks, MG Jeeps

 

I thought it was a terrible idea but many US vehicles are opened topped letting in enemy fire, grenades, mortars, water etc.. Here are some tips to make them come to life and work better for you.

 

-Park under trees in the shadows, this will minimize enemy seeing you at a distance and will increase your fire hits. If an enemy can't see you in the dark shadows his shots will be poor.

-Don't park or travel below an enemy that is above you..

-Stay away from fields with many shrubs, for the enemy that you can't see will toss grenades inside.

-Half-Tracks need to park far away from buildings an mg-42 will go them with ease. (only when close) You can park right up behind an allied tank to unload near to a building though.

-If you are defending an area with an m20 or greyhound go hull down behind a stone wall, if there is none hull down behind anything, a bush is better than nothing.

-Use them to work together with troops. They will expose enemy for you and you will to them.

-Another good thing about trees is some protection from mortars and return fire.

-Don't park in a way where the vehicle looks like it's tipping to one side and exposes the entire inside to the enemy, try to find even ground.

-Yet another thing about trees is harder for aircraft to spot you.

-Don't park close to buildings with open topped vehicles where they can throw grenades or shoot down inside. Stay on the outskirts of towns or in hedges!

-Align your armor so the front is facing the enemy.

-Use HE for indirect fire, enemy troops will start to run away, this is when you should pop out of tank hatch to use the coaxial guns. Works very good.

-Clear MG-42s in buildings. Most of these vehicles have a .50 caliber mg, that is a big round that will go through any houses or building with ease. It is nothing an mg-42 team is willing to stick around for. But yet again make sure you are far enough way from buildings, .50 cal and your cannon has a longer range than the mg-42.

-Force an enemy to blow it's cover. Pop out of the turret and directly back in once in awhile to let enemy troops shoot and you, if they are dumb enough to try. you have the location now, and can use HE or canister indirect fire on the area.

-In a rainy missions unsure of game modifier but tree cover may help aiming the gun and stop water on crew for that better shot.

-Unsure of dirt road dust causes poor aim for open top stuff as well.

Edited August 18, 2015 by user1000

[MOS:96B2P]

Here are some tips for the M8 HMC, M20, M8 GREYHOUND, Priest, Half-Tracks, MG Jeeps

-Don't park close to buildings with open topped vehicles where they can throw grenades or shoot down inside. Stay on the outskirts of towns or in hedges!

-Align your armor so the front is facing the enemy.

 

Thanks for posting user1000.  Below are some old screenshots your post made me remember.  I think they kinda help illustrate your point.  (not exactly but close enough)

 

Recon

 

Counter recon.

[IronCat60]

Great tips user1000! "Stay away from fields with many shrubs, for the enemy that you can't see will toss grenades inside." Yep that is one of my biggest bad habits. I send a halftrack along a shrub line figuring like a modern APC they will flush out any enemy I didn't count on and shrug off the small arms fire received. Nope a few "potato mashers" later I have a flaming TRP that marks enemy contact,

 

And to MOS:96B2P. Holy smokes! Those are some great screen shots! I have never seen a Panzerschreck round in flight before! The modeling detail in this game is amazing! And that blast on impact, man that is a pretty graphic representation of a HEAT round!  

[Bulletpoint]

Here are some tips for the M8 HMC, M20, M8 GREYHOUND, Priest, Half-Tracks, MG Jeeps

 

 

-Park under trees in the shadows, this will minimize enemy seeing you at a distance and will increase your fire hits. If an enemy can't see you in the dark shadows his shots will be poor.

-In a rainy missions unsure of game modifier but tree cover may help aiming the gun and stop water on crew for that better shot.

-Unsure of dirt road dust causes poor aim for open top stuff as well.

 

Are these things actually modelled by the game, or are you imagining things?

[user1000]

^ It's hard to imagine stuff that works.......

 

The rest is just modifiers.

Edited August 18, 2015 by user1000

[womble]

Are these things actually modelled by the game, or are you imagining things?

Well, shadows per se aren't modelled, but the tree trunks and foliage will hamper LOS and intercept some incoming. It certainly won't improve your chance of hitting; more likely the foliage will block your LOS, though that's less likely for the lower-profile vehicles like M8 armoured cars than for the mooses like M3 Halftracks.

 

I'm about 100% sure that keeping the rain off has no effect whatsoever.

 

Dry dirt roads definitely throw up dust that hampers LOS. But for it to stop someone shooting at you from the front, you pretty much have to be reversing and it'll stop you shooting in the direction it's covering you from, too. And it's the same for all vehicles, not just open topped ones.

[Bulletpoint]

^ It's hard to imagine stuff that works.......

 

The rest is just modifiers.

 

Well, don't forget to imagine the effect of attacking with the sun in your back so you force the enemy to squint. I imagine that many times

Edited August 18, 2015 by Bulletpoint

[Lille Fiskerby]

"Don't park close to buildings with open topped vehicles where they can throw grenades or shoot down inside. Stay on the outskirts of towns or in hedges!"

So true these poor guys was killed in St. Lo in an M10 :

[user1000]

Well, don't forget to imagine the effect of attacking with the sun in your back so you force the enemy to squint. I imagine that many times

who knows they may have a modifier in game for it..

[womble]

who knows they may have a modifier in game for it..

We know. Steve said. They don't.

 

Imagine all you like. It's not there.

[user1000]

We know. Steve said. They don't.

 

Imagine all you like. It's not there.

That was kind of a moronic post womble, at most got any tips for open top vehicles or any offerings to the thread?

[MikeyD]

Also something to remember, these are vehicles designed to be uses in combined arms combat. They aren't do-everything superweapons. A common complaint during the war was M10 TD units being employed as erzats 'tanks' though they're far from being tanks. They're mobile anti-tank gun platforms. I recall there were late war tests to see if the Hellcat could be converted into an effective light tank. The armor wasn't able to stand up to 7.62 mg fire so that project was dropped.

[A Canadian Cat]

That was kind of a moronic post womble, at most got any tips for open top vehicles or any offerings to the thread?

 

Whoa stand down man.  You asked:

 

who knows they may have a modifier in game for it..

And @womble answered you - Steve has said that the sun in your eyes is not factored into spotting.  His post answered your question. If you don't want to know things don't ask questions

 

[user1000]

 

Whoa stand down man.  You asked:

 

And @womble answered you - Steve has said that the sun in your eyes is not factored into spotting.  His post answered your question. If you don't want to know things don't ask questions

 

My suggestion to you Ian, would be if you can't contribute to the thread don't post in it.. The sun top is a moot point no sense in keeping up on the rambling about it eh?

Edited August 19, 2015 by user1000

[Doc844]

My suggestion to you Ian, would be if you can't contribute to the thread don't post in it.. The sun top is a moot point no sense in keeping up on the rambling about it eh?

Bit of a strongly worded response to someone who contributes significantly and has a lot of knowledge about the game and the subject matter. Manners cost nothing.

[sburke]

Manners, Manners, right here getcha manners  red hot manners 2 bucks!!

 

If they didn't cost anything more people would have them right?  Hmmm........

 

So yeah just for reference sun glare, shadows, lighting in general (beyond LOS in terms of distance), skylining etc have no effect in game.  Unfortunate but BF has confirmed.  Would really be cool if/when it is in but I expect that will be another engine not CMx2 at all.

[womble]

That was kind of a moronic post womble, at most got any tips for open top vehicles or any offerings to the thread?

What, like:

 

 

Well, shadows per se aren't modelled, but the tree trunks and foliage will hamper LOS and intercept some incoming. It certainly won't improve your chance of hitting; more likely the foliage will block your LOS, though that's less likely for the lower-profile vehicles like M8 armoured cars than for the mooses like M3 Halftracks.

 

I'm about 100% sure that keeping the rain off has no effect whatsoever.

 

Dry dirt roads definitely throw up dust that hampers LOS. But for it to stop someone shooting at you from the front, you pretty much have to be reversing and it'll stop you shooting in the direction it's covering you from, too. And it's the same for all vehicles, not just open topped ones.

 

Offering correct information is hardly as moronic as spouting ill-informed conjecture as sound advice, is it? And deriding same correct information is hardly contributing to the thread, is it? At least not as much as pointing out error.

[John Kettler]

user1000,

 

While I don't have the energy or focus to reply in detail to your considerable list of recommendations, I do have some feedback for you on trees and OT vehicles. If I'm in combat, as opposed to moving about in the rear, I avoid trees like the plague. Why? Because trees convert surface bursts into airbursts! In one of the CMx1 ROW tournament fights, I lost no less than three M10s to precisely that cause. While I freely grant that the grim terrain channeling on my end of the map didn't help and created lovely targets for the Germans in both direct and indirect fires, two German mortar rounds knocked out three M10s, putting me in a terrible fix as a result. While OT vehicles are certainly at risk from indirect fire, especially the dreaded mortar able to drop a shot directly into the OT proper, parking under a tree effectively gives the foe VT/proximity fuzed ammo.  In the CMBN Demo, I killed an AC that way. Over the years, I've gotten a fair number of kills, in both CMx1 and CMx2, with mortars via dropping the mortar bomb into a passenger compartment, open turret or even an open Panther hatch! Given these experiences, great is my glee when I find an OT vehicle under trees or parked next to a wall  or anything else which extends above the vehicle. As for grenades, German OT AFV clear up through even the huge Hummel often had antigrenade screens. The screens are shown up here.

 

I'll close this comment by pointing out Russian Army Combat Regulations of WW II categorically forbade the placing of an ATG under or near a tree and also next to or close to a house.  The reasons were twofold: to avoid creating an easy aimpoint and to avoid the creation of wholly avoidable overhead bursts. To give you some idea of how bad treebursts can get, during the Huertgen Forest Campaign, GIs learned that hitting the deck when they heard artillery coming was a really bad idea. Why? This maximized their exposure not just to the projectile fragments and blast but to sometimes even more dangerous branches and heavy limbs in the form of secondary missiles and heavy falling objects. The drill became to find the nearest tree and stand next to it, preferably on the side away from the inbound fire!

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

Edited August 21, 2015 by John Kettler

[Doc844]

Just as a reply to your hurt gen forest tactics, as an ex and serving reservist infantryman the tactic of standing upright near a tree during an arty barrage etc must have been agonising. Every nerve and every training lesson on bombardment per SOP,s says fall to the deck and make yourself become the earth. Standing there near a tree must have been horrifying.

[John Kettler]

Doc844,

 

You'll get no argument from me, but as someone who used to work a bit with the JMEM (Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manuals), if the burst is indeed directly overhead, you assuredly don't want to be sprawled on the ground below it, for that creates the biggest possible target to anything headed downward. and not just a general target, but direct presentation of the head, back of the neck, spine, thorax and kidneys to various weapon related effects.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

Edited August 22, 2015 by John Kettler

[Doc844]

Yeah modern airburst munitions are nasty buggers, I saw the effects of the US Marines opening bombardment into Iraq before we crossed with 3rd LAR. Also for the second half of my career I was a number 1 mortar man on 81mm's and a MFC Bravo and we could do some really nasty stuff on our own.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Doc844

[user1000]

I viewed most of the ww2 manuals for camouflage and it told everyone to STAY IN THE TREES AND OUT OF OPEN GROUND. Open ground is the worst place you can be in.

[Col Deadmarsh]

-Clear MG-42s in buildings. Most of these vehicles have a .50 caliber mg, that is a big round that will go through any houses or building with ease. It is nothing an mg-42 team is willing to stick around for. But yet again make sure you are far enough way from buildings, .50 cal and your cannon has a longer range than the mg-42.

 

 

How far away does the armored car have to be from an MG42 for it to be safe from a frontal attack? 

[Badger73]

Manners, Manners, right here getcha manners  red hot manners 2 bucks!!

<snipped>

So yeah just for reference sun glare, shadows, lighting in general (beyond LOS in terms of distance), skylining etc have no effect in game.  Unfortunate but BF has confirmed.  Would really be cool if/when it is in but I expect that will be another engine not CMx2 at all.

I''ll take $20 worth of your freshest batch so I can hand  some out free to the audience hereabouts.

 

So, questions with regard to no effect for glare, shadows, lighting, etc.,

1.   Is this AI only?  Is there no effect H2H?
2.   Do contacts icons appears regardless of these visibility factors?

Thanks!

[zinzan]

I viewed most of the ww2 manuals for camouflage and it told everyone to STAY IN THE TREES AND OUT OF OPEN GROUND. Open ground is the worst place you can be in.

Ahhh, now camouflage is primarily the art of staying unseen so as to prevent the enemy id'ing your positions/strength etc.  Once fighting starts (i.e. at the ranges we are talking about in CM cover is more impostant as well as line of sight/fire.

Woods are indeed important in the art of camouflage, however they are a DAMNDED awful place to fight, especially if attacking.  Airburst affects are indeed devastating and the allied manual was rewritten after the Huertgen forest battles.