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Never Seen This Before


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Personally, I think the balance is about right.

Tanks are invincible, dominant forces on the battlefield, right up until the moment they aren't. That's true for close assault, handheld AT weapons and larger AT assets.

Making any movement in a sufficiently dense urban environment is a die roll - you're taking a risk with each step, and it's something that you have to work hard to keep on top of. It's possible to do it flawlessly, and wonder what the fuss was all about, but it only takes a couple of dodgy decisions for you to be wrecked.

There are parts of the simulation (gun elevation, for example) which are not modelled. Generally these are a little more minor, and the broad strokes of the tactical exercise remain intact. It's reasonable to argue about what's missing here, since there's definitely room for improvement, even if you end up with diminishing returns.

The strengths of infantry over armour in an urban environment are the inherently short ranges of everything, which only favour the infantry, concealment, which only favours the infantry, and to a lesser extent the effect of elevation - getting hits in on open-topped vehicles or thin top armour with AT weapons. Not every AT weapon is ideal for that (PIATs are pretty exceptional in that environment), but they can all do it to some extent. The strengths of armour over infantry in the same environment is that they give access to a dominant amount of MG fire and HE on a mobile, protected platform, and therefore can shut down any firefight pretty quickly.

So... yes. Tanks are amazing, and they're useless. Tanks are more vulnerable in cities than on the open field, but they're not immediately dead, and have a useful role to play.

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  • 2 months later...
On 2/12/2020 at 11:54 AM, Bulletpoint said:

It's very possible for tanks to be both too strong at a distance and too weak up close. I'm not saying they are, but we cannot conclude that it is an example of the stereotypical "stupid customers don't even know what they want".

This. 

I think one of the more interesting points in the "tanks op?" thread was the question whether the coordination between tanks and infantry is too easy in CM. And I'm still of the opinion that it is. Mind you, this is not neccessarily about borg-spotting (letting tanks area-fire at targets that they can't even know about), but also about reaction by movement. If I spot a Panzershreck team with my infantry over there, I can let my tanks stop/reverse very quickly. Tanks can react to things they shouldn't be aware of. An interesting but purely hypothetical "solution" would be to increase reaction intervals for tanks, so that - for example - you could only give new orders to a tank every 3 minutes, not every single minute. 

Also, I still think that the lack of proper defensive works in Combat Mission increases the tanks' power against infantry.  

On the other hand, quickbattle-map-design tends to make tanks more vulnerable to infantry (and also to other tanks). Most quickbattle-maps are extremely compartmentalized, which means that tanks are too close for comfort most of the time. (It also means that heavy MGs aren't even remotely as usefull as they should be, but that's another issue)

Edited by Kaunitz
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2 hours ago, Kaunitz said:

This. 

I think one of the more interesting points in the "tanks op?" thread was the question whether the coordination between tanks and infantry is too easy in CM. And I'm still of the opinion that it is. Mind you, this is not neccessarily about borg-spotting (letting tanks area-fire at targets that they can't even know about), but also about reaction by movement. If I spot a Panzershreck team with my infantry over there, I can let my tanks stop/reverse very quickly. Tanks can react to things they shouldn't be aware of. An interesting but purely hypothetical "solution" would be to increase reaction intervals for tanks, so that - for example - you could only give new orders to a tank every 3 minutes, not every single minute. 

Also, I still think that the lack of proper defensive works in Combat Mission increases the tanks' power against infantry.  

On the other hand, quickbattle-map-design tends to make tanks more vulnerable to infantry (and also to other tanks). Most quickbattle-maps are extremely compartmentalized, which means that tanks are too close for comfort most of the time. (It also means that heavy MGs aren't even remotely as usefull as they should be, but that's another issue)

There are many ways in which this game could be fundamentally changed and improved. But it seems their strategy is to produce more content for the existing engine, rather than to update the fundamentals.

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On 2/8/2020 at 8:57 PM, CanuckGamer said:

I've been playing CM games since the first series and have never seen this.  Seems unrealistic.

You must have never close-assaulted a tank in CMx1, because it was there, and worked exactly the same way. Infantry throws grenade at tank. "HIT" text appears. Then there is a chance to knock out or immobilize the tank.

That's the way it's always worked. It's intended to be an abstracted 'close assault' of a tank by infantry using grenades or whatever ad-hoc antitank weapon they might have available.

Seems unrealistic though.

Yeah, definitely.

 

 

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