Engine 5 Wishlist

[Heirloom_Tomato]

2 hours ago, glilley said:

Once a towing vehicle is in position and given the crew is not under hostile fire (and factoring in crew experience)  it only takes 5-10 minutes to attach towing cables to the towing clevis (2 on towing vehicle and 2 on towed).  Attaching cables would probably require some form of the "Dismount" function to make realistic. After this, now its a matter of whether the towing vehicle can perform the function of getting the other vehicle unstuck.  This process can take another 5-10 minutes and may not be successful (in which case player makes decision to continue trying or cut losses and get towing vehicle back into the fight).  Now I'm talking about a straight forward tow evolution, not something more complicated using multiple vehicles or extra tow cables.

Or the tow vehicle also gets stuck and now you have two vehicles out of the fight. This is one possibility you have to be open to if towing is introduced. 

[chuckdyke]

Bogged four-wheel drive vehicles it takes easy 30 minutes to free it using a 2nd vehicle. In the game after a few turns it becomes immobilized which is realistic.

[Ultradave]

We had M561 Gama Goats for our artillery prime movers. People would swear you can't get one stuck, 6x6, super low gear, articulated, swimmable. 

We proved them wrong.   Getting that one unstuck would have greatly exceeded the time limit of a CM game.

Not to say one couldn't be done in the time frame of a game, but in most cases, a lot of your units on the map are under observation/fire. It would be a dicey situation. 

Dave

PS - mostly Goats were pretty awesome, that double low range 6x6 drive could handle almost anything. Almost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gama_Goat

We need them in whatever CW module covers having Abn troops   Just because they are weird.

 

[callada]

15 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

We had M561 Gama Goats for our artillery prime movers. People would swear you can't get one stuck, 6x6, super low gear, articulated, swimmable. 

We proved them wrong.   Getting that one unstuck would have greatly exceeded the time limit of a CM game.

Not to say one couldn't be done in the time frame of a game, but in most cases, a lot of your units on the map are under observation/fire. It would be a dicey situation. 

Dave

PS - mostly Goats were pretty awesome, that double low range 6x6 drive could handle almost anything. Almost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gama_Goat

We need them in whatever CW module covers having Abn troops   Just because they are weird.

 

Boy, is that a strange looking machine.  Simultaneously bigger and smaller than it appears, somehow.

[glilley]

1 hour ago, Heirloom_Tomato said:

Or the tow vehicle also gets stuck and now you have two vehicles out of the fight. This is one possibility you have to be open to if towing is introduced. 

That is very true - seen it happen IRL and that would be one of those "gee, that's too bad" situations. Think that if towing vehicle starts getting bogged and you catch it before immobilization, it could perhaps be set up to stop movement, decouple the tow cables (crew out/in) then try to unbog the towing vehicle.  With all of the variables this may be too big a stretch for coding though.

[glilley]

12 hours ago, glilley said:

That is very true - seen it happen IRL and that would be one of those "gee, that's too bad" situations. Think that if towing vehicle starts getting bogged and you catch it before immobilization, it could perhaps be set up to stop movement, decouple the tow cables (crew out/in) then try to unbog the towing vehicle.  With all of the variables this may be too big a stretch for coding though.

Since I started this I'm going to pull my wish list request.  After thinking more about it I realize that I've become fixated on this issue without stepping back and looking at the rest of the picture. In any engagement, unless the mobile asset is extremely mission critical, taking another like asset out of the fight for recovery evolution is rarely done. With mission success so dependent on time, terrain and force assets, taking another mobile fighting asset out of action is going to have a noticeably negative impact on one's ability to win the fight. If you get stuck, you're  going to have to wait till night or the next day for recovery.

[arprince31]

The recovery discussion reminded me of something from one of my very first wargames books almost 50 years ago, you could probably set this up as a scenario:

Donald Featherstone - Battles with Model Tanks:

CHAPTER 16: TANK RECOVERY, WESTERN DESERT, 1942

The table-top terrain consists of a topographically featureless but undulating area of sand-coloured plastic or cloth draped over polystyrene or wood slabs, or even books laid in such a manner as to provide some hull-down positions for the tanks of both sides, plus the shallow bowl in which the stranded Grants lie.

Scraped together from whatever is immediately to hand, the small recovery force that moves forward consists of a very mixed bag - 2 Crusaders (cruiser tanks Mark VI); 3 M3A1 Stuart Mark IV light tanks; 1 25 pdr gun howitzer and towing vehicle; B Company, Northumberland Fusiliers, with jeep-towed 6 pdr anti-tank gun, 2 mortars and 3 Bren guns; and two Scammell tank-transporters plus crews and a detachment of Royal Engineers.

Guided by the crews who have abandoned the Grants on the previous day (travelling in two 15 cwt trucks) the party moves forward until they find the immobile tanks. The 25 pdr and the anti-tank guns are unlimbering prior to being set up in suitable positions and the infantry moving forward to act as a screen when, from literally out of the blue, a German heavy armoured car SdKfz 231 surges over the top of the ridge to their front, its eight wheels sending up showers of sand as it skids to a standstill on sighting the British party.

The wargamer may take the action on from there. Does the German heavy armoured car get away and bring back reinforcements, or is there a German force in the vicinity who will hasten over to the sound of firing? In any event there is nothing that can reach the area for at least three game-moves, and then it may only be a force strong enough to delay rather than overcome the recovery party. In all, the Germans probably cannot mass in the area more than a couple of PzKw IV tanks, a 50 mm anti-tank gun and towing half-track, plus three SdKfz 11 type HK16 half-tracks 3T and half a dozen trucks, part of a convoy bringing up reinforcements capable of carrying two companies of infantry.

This action can be embellished by progressive attempts to start the engines of the two stranded Grants - first attempt, the two dice for each Grant and a total of 11 or 12 must be scored. If successful, the Grant then becomes operational and can take part in the action, probably with decisive effect. On the other hand if one Grant can be made to move, then it can be utilised to tow its stricken comrade from the field, thus achieving the objective of the wargame which is the recovery of two stranded tanks not the destruction of a small German force!

Featherstone, Donald; Robinson, Keith. Donald Featherstone’s and Keith Robinson's Battles with Model Tanks: Wargaming 1914-1975 (pp. 116-117). History of Wargaming Project. Kindle Edition. 

Apologies for any copyright issues, I bought the kindle version of this book in the last couple of years for practical reasons, plus a physical copy for nostalgia.

 

[Anthony P.]

Fog of war should ideally be extended to cover terrain and buildings. The exact nature of it (specifics such as the potential for certain aspects of terrain being included, e.g. streams created by recent downfall, muddy terrain impassable to vehicles) isn't a foregone conclusion, but it ought to be a included in one shape or another. Firstly there's the player aspects, e.g. that the player should only know how terrain and buildings have been impacted by certain events if he can actually see them: imagine for examples fences being knocked down by passing AFVs across the map or hedgerows and buildings being breached/mouseholed by the opposing player to create defences/routes. The current ability to "sneak" around with the camera and finding out about these things is both a gameplay issue (even if the player "sneaking" isn't intending to cheat, he may inadvertently find these things out when just surveying the map to plan his attack) as well as a realism issue which would make scouting a lot more important.

 

On the topic of buildings, it really should become possible to have units enter them via windows. I think it's fairly safe to say that the notion that one should at least consider not entering a building occupied by enemies via the most obvious path predates the percussion rifle, if not even gunpowder itself.

And just as an aside: maybe if being positioned on balconies is going to be a virtual death sentence, maybe there ought to at least be some option for pixeltruppen not to use them? Their current function is a bit odd to say the least, any floor with a balcony is basically a trap in the direction of the balcony, rendering that floor wholly unusable in said direction (unless you want your unit to be killed).

Edited January 14 by Anthony P.

[Albert DuBalay]

1- being able to follow up and tell how one is doing on achieving the victory conditions (vs. Waiting end of scenario to know for sure)

2- to keep vehicle wrecks and building rubbles in campaign mode when returning to a map or area already played in a previous scenario of a campaign

3- being able to set markers on the map

4- in campaign mode keep a more detailed records for each pixel troopen and how they’ve been doing.

5- a medal board for the pixel troopen

6- to be able to choose a squad (or tank) leader personified to one player with the aim to lead him to the end of the campaign 

[Murauder]

Ammo consumption limit to prevent units from using all their ammo on one target. It would be nice to set the firing frequency of the units so that I can let them use less ammunition when the units are low on ammunition.