Tank desant

[M.Herm]

Good day,

first of all best regards to the campaign developers, I am currently completing the "Pebble in my shoes" mission of the "Ride of the 120th" campaign.

I noticed that I haven't had high losses from infantry mounted on tanks for a long time. Not due to a rising learning curve, but because it is not possible to mount tanks at all.

Is this a deliberate decision of the developers?

Sincerely,

M.H.

https://imgur.com/3UKOUUZ

https://imgur.com/dJokctz

 

[dbsapp]

I guess the only CM game you can mount tanks in is CM Red Thunder\Fire and Rubble

[Bufo]

I want to add that the rails circled with red on the picture are not added for the tank crew to mount / unmount. They are meant for the desant (tank riders). So these tanks were purposefully manufactured with this in mind, it is not an afterthought.

 

Edited July 9, 2021 by Bufo

[SergeantSqook]

1 hour ago, dbsapp said:

I guess the only CM game you can mount tanks in is CM Red Thunder\Fire and Rubble

Final Blitzkrieg, too

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, M.H. said:

Good day,

first of all best regards to the campaign developers, I am currently completing the "Pebble in my shoes" mission of the "Ride of the 120th" campaign.

I noticed that I haven't had high losses from infantry mounted on tanks for a long time. Not due to a rising learning curve, but because it is not possible to mount tanks at all.

Is this a deliberate decision of the developers?

Sincerely,

M.H.

https://imgur.com/3UKOUUZ

https://imgur.com/dJokctz

 

Pebble in My Shoe?! That means you are almost at Alsfeld...first one I have heard of yet!

Troops on tanks.  Yep, plays well to combat camera but when we dug into the Soviet Orbats on the German front, not surprisingly no units were purpose built for this.  The main reason is that the Soviets were entirely mechanized by this point (e.g. the only dismounted orbat we could find were Airborne).  So now in terms of CMCW "tank mounting" is really an ad hoc venture when/if an APC gets shot out from under a squad.  Not sure how that whole mechanic works in the game engine but investing time to building it into CMCW started to make a lot less sense when we are talking about ad hoc or anomaly behaviors.  "That" and the fact that besides the glorious pictures of manly tank jumping, on the CMCW that move is absolute suicide - would be kinder to have the commissar simply shoot them - as the lethality of the battlefield is pretty intense and exposed humans on top of the #1 target on the field is a pretty desperate gambit. 

[dbsapp]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

That means you are almost at Alsfeld...first one I have heard of yet!

 

That should make you wonder if everything is alright with the game that has been released 2 month ago. 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, dbsapp said:

That should make you wonder if everything is alright with the game that has been released 2 month ago. 

We clearly have some philosophical distance on game design.  When you get one off the ground, let me know and we can compare notes.

[Artkin]

4 hours ago, dbsapp said:

That should make you wonder if everything is alright with the game that has been released 2 month ago. 

??? The game is fine

[MikeyD]

Wholesale Soviet mechanization kind'a did away with tank riders. The hand rails gradually disappear from T64 and T72 in later versions. Tankodesantniki have disappeared from the OOB by our timeframe. There's a difference between troops hitching a ride aboard a friendly tank to save on walking along the route of march and clinging to the sides of the vehicle as you rush towards the enemy.

[Vanir Ausf B]

4 hours ago, dbsapp said:

That should make you wonder if everything is alright with the game that has been released 2 month ago. 

Of course. When a player advances to the next mission of a CM campaign they make a post about it on the forum. Everyone knows this.

[Centurian52]

16 hours ago, dbsapp said:

That should make you wonder if everything is alright with the game that has been released 2 month ago. 

That reminds me, is the game doing alright financially? I've been trying to promote it as much as possible among my friends, but I don't know many wargamers in my day to day life. I just really hope it does well enough to eventually get us a Bundeswehr/NVA module and/or British module.

Anyway, to keep this comment more or less on the topic of the thread, as I recall tank riding in the Red Army emerged in WW2 as a way to allow supporting infantry to keep up with the tanks despite lacking sufficient motorization to create actual motorized infantry units (one of the things that went wrong at the battle of Dubno apparently was that they didn't have enough trucks for the infantry to keep up with the tanks, so the tanks went forward without the infantry). After the war the Soviet Army (now officially rebranded from the Red Army) invested heavily in mechanization. Once that investment paid off and their infantry were almost universally mounted in APCs tank riding became a pretty moot concept. But of course it would take a minute for that investment to pay off, so it makes sense that the T-55 and T-62 would be designed with rails for riders.

[MikeyD]

From my limited observation, the bosses at Battlefront appear to be very happy campers about CMCW's reception and will be doubly-pleased when its anticipated sale on Steam comes about. There's still the plan to get everything in their catalog up for sale on Steam. I don't really know what left. CMFB isn't up on steam yet, is it?

Another aspect of infantry in cold war is NBC. WWII-style tank riders would be exposed to nerve gas, radiation, and nuclear blast effects. The Soviet offensive concept is buttoned-up forces rolling through a devastated landscape.

Edited July 10, 2021 by MikeyD

[Vacillator]

3 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

I don't really know what left. CMFB isn't up on steam yet, is it?

As far as I can see, as of today, only modern titles are on Steam, none of the WW2 titles are there.

[dbsapp]

On 7/10/2021 at 3:43 AM, Vanir Ausf B said:

Of course. When a player advances to the next mission of a CM campaign they make a post about it on the forum. Everyone knows this.

Apparently, not everybody, but some people do:

On 7/9/2021 at 5:00 PM, M.H. said:

I am currently completing the "Pebble in my shoes" mission of the "Ride of the 120th" campaign.

 

 

[Artkin]

30 minutes ago, dbsapp said:

Apparently, not everybody, but some people do:

 

Hey man, just be nice. If you have something credible to complain about (that hasn't been mentioned already) we would like to hear it. Otherwise it is nonsense. It's gotta be credible.

[dbsapp]

1 hour ago, Artkin said:

Hey man, just be nice. If you have something credible to complain about (that hasn't been mentioned already) we would like to hear it. Otherwise it is nonsense. It's gotta be credible.

Don't be a crybaby. 

Saying "just be nice" and "it is nonsense" is not nice. I always believed that expressing your opinion on the product you bought is not a crime. 

[Centurian52]

This is how misunderstandings escalate into full blown fights. It starts with an innocent criticism or disagreement:

2 hours ago, dbsapp said:

Apparently, not everybody, but some people do:

which then gets interpreted as hostile:

1 hour ago, Artkin said:

Hey man, just be nice.

and then actual insults start getting thrown:

27 minutes ago, dbsapp said:

Don't be a crybaby. 

There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with each other. Healthy human discourse requires disagreement and argument. But you can't let it antagonize you or make you defensive. If you feel attacked by a certain statement stop and reread it a few times until you can find a non-hostile way of interpreting it. If there is no non-hostile way of interpreting a statement then just ignore it. It probably wasn't relevant to the topic of the argument anyway. Above all, never insult or attack the character of your opponent. Personal attacks and hostility are the fastest way to derail what could have potentially been a perfectly rational argument and cause it to devolve into a fight.

Edited July 11, 2021 by Centurian52
adding clarity and detail

[Artkin]

I dont think there are any significant game breaking errors to the game, besides the m113 thermal vision bug (Not sure if it was fixed).

Meh, CMCW is my favorite game so far. The Russians are that sweet. The game is totally fine, I am having a total blast. Not sure what the problem is.

Edited July 11, 2021 by Artkin

[chuckdyke]

On 7/9/2021 at 5:29 PM, dbsapp said:

I guess the only CM game you can mount tanks in is CM Red Thunder\Fire and Rubble

Final Blitzkrieg too.

[Thewood1]

On 7/11/2021 at 12:25 AM, Artkin said:

the m113 thermal vision bug

Did this get fixed?  I don't remember if it was mentioned in patch notes, but thought it was finally recognized post-patch.  Its a bug that can bite hard sometimes.

[domfluff]

Not yet, but there's a big patch due soon - it's reasonable to presume that there wasn't any point in a hotfix in the interim.

[Nektoman]

The absence of the tank desant is one of the things which strains me in modern CM games. Of course we know that the infantry should be inside the vehicles during the battle, but the possibility of mounting them in the "tankodesantniki" style could make the game much more atmospheric.

Not to mention that a IFV can carry more soldiers (inside and outside) and the "tankodesantniki" can dismount much faster (what was why this transportation mode was widely used since Afghanistan in Soviet Army and other armies armed with soviet weapon).

Edited July 13, 2021 by Nektoman

[Combatintman]

28 minutes ago, Nektoman said:

The absence of the tank desant is one of the things which strains me in modern CM games. Of course we know that the infantry should be inside the vehicles during the battle, but the possibility of mounting them in the "tankodesantniki" style could make the game much more atmospheric.

Not to mention that a IFV can carry more soldiers (inside and outside) and the "tankodesantniki" can dismount much faster (what was why this transportation mode was widely used since Afghanistan in Soviet Army and other armies armed with soviet weapon).

Every infantryman had a ride and, as others have pointed out, this would have been an extremely lethal battlespace with NBC and masses of artillery.  The BMP series was designed to reflect this reality.  Strain all you like, but it would have been a suicide tactic.   From an implementation point of view, it was discussed and discarded.  The coding is done and from similar discussion held on the CMBN forums over the years, it is a PITA to implement and I doubt Battlefront will revisit this original design decision so unfortunately it is one of those things you're going to have to live with.

[domfluff]

I'm 100% okay with this feature not being in Shock Force or especially in Cold War. I'm also okay with it not being in the other WW2 titles - it's just not tactically relevant to anything besides the Eastern Front. I'm a little surprised it's even in Final Blitzkrieg, really. US armoured infantry did ride directly on tanks sometimes, but not into actual combat, as the Soviets did out of necessity, so it's a nice-to-have, and not something that adds significantly to the game.

The one title which actually might benefit from it, counter-intuitively, is Black Sea. It's remarkable how well the various "lessons learned" reports from the real conflict in Ukraine match up to the experience of playing Black Sea - many of those hard-won lessons (like the importance of drones and their correct usage in the Russian context) match up extremely well.

One that does not is the field-expediency of riding outside the IFV, rather than internally. Clearly NBC concerns are low in Ukraine, but lethality and tempo are high, so there's apparently been a movement towards IFV-riding, to increase the speed of dismount on contact. That kind of tactical decision is relevant on CM-level scales, and despite being a terrible idea, might also make sense as the least-worst option, given the circumstances.

[Amedeo]

1 hour ago, Nektoman said:

The absence of the tank desant is one of the things which strains me in modern CM games. Of course we know that the infantry should be inside the vehicles during the battle, but the possibility of mounting them in the "tankodesantniki" style could make the game much more atmospheric.

Not to mention that a IFV can carry more soldiers (inside and outside) and the "tankodesantniki" can dismount much faster (what was why this transportation mode was widely used since Afghanistan in Soviet Army and other armies armed with soviet weapon).

My understanding is that troops riding outside their BTRs/BMPs in Afghanistan/Chechenia were doing that only where mines were considered a more likely threat than AT weapons and small arms fire.

The Soviet Military Encyclopedia (published 19776-1980, thus very relevant to the CMCW timeframe) clearly states that tank riding tactics lost their importance in the postwar period because of the introduction of armoured transports. Of course the practice didn't totally disappear, but I guess that tank riders in the Soviet Army of the '70s/'80s were more likely to be found in propaganda photos than on the field. I'm not saying that it wouldn't never ever happen, but, well, if we are talking about the first days of a hypothetical WW3 in Central Europe, I don't expect to see a Soviet assault with tank riding infantry.

Yes, it could be a nice feature to have but, as already pointed out, it would be too much a pain to implement, given it wouldn't be an expected/viable tactic. I think there are a lot of more urgent/relevant features to add.