I don't think Infantry close in Assault of AFV is modeled properly

[dalem]

I generally poo-poo these types of claims, but I drank the KoolAid on this one. I am under the distinct impression that close assaulting tanks and other AFV with non-AT-armed infantry is now essentially useless. Based purely on my GAME experience, I know that with some version 1.0 or later (i.e. non-Beta) getting HTs or other open-topped/lightly-armored AFV within 10m of a 'plain' squad was relative suicide, and still not a great idea for tanks. Then at some later point in the upgrade string, even immobile HTs became relatively invulnerable.

Am I correct in my perception? I don't know. Which model of behavior is correct? I don't know. But I do believe the sky is falling on this topic, sorry Steve, Charles.

-dale (a.k.a. Chicken Little)

[Dunnee]

How would you take out a WWII era tank without AT weapons? Hmmm, would activating a couple of grenades and allowing the tank to roll over them with its treads immobilize it? An explosion of two to three grenades directly between the tread and the ground might be enough to detrack it maybe, although I'm not positive...Cause after it's immobilized, the infantry boys can just bounce(leave)...Again, I have NO techinical proof of the above, so snotty "realists" back the F up, just offering suggestions...

[Stalin's Organ]

I'd be guessing, but a couple of grenades might well break a track, immobilising the tank.

Of course it'd have to be just right and I'd guess that your chances of doing it perfectly would be slim. Certainly a possibility tho'.

But that doesn't knock the tank out - it immobilises it.

[Brian Rock]

It's tricky analysing what it takes to kill a tank. We all agree AT weaps work, of course, with a reasonable degree of effectiveness. At the other extreme of likelihood are those one in a million situations where some guy armed with a butterknife raps on the top of a Tiger while calling out "Hans!", and some idiot named Hans opens the hatch and gets spread across the turret. It may have happened, but I wouldn't bet my life on that one.

It's the in-between situations that are harder to call. Do the inf have grenades? Is the tank damaged? Are the infantry approaching unobserved, or so close to the tank they are within its blind-zone? Is the crew spooked? Are the infantry spooked? How disorienting is the environment (smoke, noise)? DO the infantry have improvised AT weapons (molotovs or whatever)?

At some stage a designer has to abstract and randomise the likely chances.

I tend to lean to the "it's damn hard to kill a tank" side of the debate. I base this on anecdotes such as US tankers in the Pacific, tanks swarming with Japanese light infantry, sweeping each other's tanks free with MG fire. Or Ethiopians fighting the Italians in the 1930s, who found they couldn't even penetrate a light tank - so they just rolled the suckers over.

One thing I am sure of: whatever decision a game designer comes up with, 2/3s of the gamers will argue with it.

[Goanna]

I agree that it is frustrating not being able to kill the suckers these days. Just two days ago I had a full platoon ambush a Greyhound at 10 m. They all used their fausts at once (which pleased me greatly), but alas all of them missed the kill, but the resulting explosion took out a tire, immobilising the dog. Following that, a rain of 12 grenades on the first turn and another ten on the following turn, with one squad rushed around behind the now immobilised and buttoned dog, has failed to take it out. However, it has not managed to kill any of my guys either, so I am still watching movies until I see what happens.

Since v.12 of the game has come out, I do notice that my close assault troops have been a lot less likely to take out HT's and other open-topped AFVs once they are out of personal AT assets. Even the open-topped ones, mind you, not just the fully enclosed AFVs. They tend to immobilise them and then either do nothing, or get mg'ed in the process of trying.

Is this realistic? I have no idea, but I do think it would be pretty hard to get a grenade "through the hoop" under the pressure of fire, so it might be pretty close.

However, you gotta admit it is pretty cool to watch them try from the 1 or 2 view.

[Gremlin]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>OK - I'll bite. How do you destroy a tank without any anti-tank equipment?

By this I mean no bundled grenades, no molotov cocktails, no magnetic mines, satchel charges, hollow-charge weapons, no crowbars or gas-cutting torches!

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

German troops were encouraged to acquire or create devices like these if they weren't issued Panzerfausts or 'schrecks.

They used AT rifle grenades, hollow charge flare/signal gun rounds, magnetic mines, home-made explosive charges, molotov cocktails (particularly against the engine air grilles on the rear of the tank), Blendkörper (glass-bodied grenades filled with noxious smoke that penetrated the crew compartments), standard smoke grenades, bundled hand grenades, gas cans with smoke grenades attached, and all kinds of home-made devices.

See this for some possibilities.

[Jarmo]

OK, I earlier suggested I'm cool with how tough it now seems to be to kill tanks without any proper equipment. Stick your hand between the threads so they'll jam or kick the door in, are not good options.

But it is too hard to kill open topped vehicles. If you get within 10 meters and the vehicle has no flexible MG, the vehicle shoud die almost right away. Or the crew should surrender.

I recently spent 2-3 minutes tossing grenades into a halftrack from 5 meter distance. My men were in a building, obviously undetected. After a while the HT drove away.

It's also damn hard to kill open topped vehicles with small arm fire. Even if the infantry is on a second floor and the vehicle right below them. This was always the case.

[ 07-03-2001: Message edited by: Jarmo ]

[Jeff Heidman]

If anyone has one of the old patches, it would be interesting to run tests against pre-1.12 builds to see when the change occurred.

Jeff Heidman

[Vanir Ausf B]

All the old patches are still available at the BTS ftp site.

[L.Tankersley]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

I think AFVs in general (and especially HTs) are way too resistant to close infantry assault. A HT should be almost trivial to destroy by infantry at very close range.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, while I agree that HTs seem a bit too resistant, I don't know if I'd go quite _that_ far. I'm imagining a squad of soldiers standing in front of a halftrack, equipped with small arms and grenades. Now I agree that it wouldn't be too hard for them to incapacitate the crew ("Abandoned"), but actually rendering the HT inoperable ("Knocked Out") would probably take a bit of time and effort. And if the HT has a flexible MG maybe it's not really all _that_ easy to eliminate the crew.

[Stacheldraht]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Now I agree that it wouldn't be too hard for them to incapacitate the crew ("Abandoned"), but actually rendering the HT inoperable ("Knocked Out") would probably take a bit of time and effort. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Just a grenade tossed into the HT towards the front crew area would presumably render the vehicle undriveable, let alone kill the two or three crew members. Check out some overhead or interior pictures of HT's, and you'll see how fragile and exposed they are.

[Jeff Heidman]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Stacheldraht:

Just a grenade tossed into the HT towards the front crew area would presumably render the vehicle undriveable, let alone kill the two or three crew members. Check out some overhead or interior pictures of HT's, and you'll see how fragile and exposed they are.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

And they typically were not armored at all underneath. A single grenade under the front tires would probably render the engine inoperable, and quite possibly light the thing on fire.

HTs were designed to protect the crew from moderately ranged small arms fire, not from short ranged assault. I would bet that a rifle round would penetrate the armor at less than 40m, and a LMG should shred the vehicle at short range.

Jeff Heidman

[Stacheldraht]

Don't forget, too, that a number of the HT variants in CM are loaded with mortar rounds, flamethrower fuel, etc. Boom.

[L.Tankersley]

I agree a grenade in the right place _could_ disable a HT, but I don't think it's all that certain. I could be wrong, of course. And even if you penetrate the armor with small arms, that is far from guaranteed to render the vehicle undrivable. Hell, even a modern passenger car can withstand small arms fire and keep running. Sure, maybe you shoot through something vital, but odds are the damage isn't all that crippling. I've never set off a frag grenade inside a car, but are you really all that certain it would render the vehicle unusable? Sure, anybody in the driver's seat will be hurting, the instruments will probably be broken and things will be messy. But are you actually going to make it impossible to operate? I'm not so sure.

[PzKpfw 1]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

HTs were designed to protect the crew from moderately ranged small arms fire, not from short ranged assault. I would bet that a rifle round would penetrate the armor at less than 40m, and a LMG should shred the vehicle at short range.

Jeff Heidman<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

An Sd.Kfz.251 was armored with face hardened plates from 8 - 14.5mm thickness (US M3 HT's plate thickness was 6.3 - 12.7mm)including an armored belly plate bolted to the frame bottom.

Basicly 30.cal rifle & or BAR fire is going to be hard pressed to defeat an 251's armor even at close range, Ie, an MG34 could penetrate 8mm of armor @ 100m @ 30^. Grenades tossed underneath the undecarriage would be hell on the tires but still would have to defeat the belly plate.

Best prospects of killing an 251 would have been, mine, AT-gun, Mortar, Bazooka, 50cal HMG fire, or an grenade into the crew compartment

Regards, John Waters

[ 07-03-2001: Message edited by: PzKpfw 1 ]

[Stacheldraht]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>But are you actually going to make it impossible to operate? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The question is, what would a hand grenade do to the steering wheel and column, gear shift, pedals, fuzzy dice on the rear-view mirror, etc. I can't imagine they'd survive a direct blast.

[Jarmo]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Brian Rock:

where some guy armed with a butterknife raps on the top of a Tiger while calling out "Hans!", and some idiot named Hans opens the hatch and gets spread across the turret. It may have happened, but I wouldn't bet my life on that one. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Guess what!

Yeah! I remember reading of a case where a finnish infantryman climbed on top of a soviet tank and just knocked on the turret hatch. The tank commander (probably) thought it was someone friendly and opened up!

One tank less.

[L.Tankersley]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Stacheldraht:

The question is, what would a hand grenade do to the steering wheel and column, gear shift, pedals, fuzzy dice on the rear-view mirror, etc. I can't imagine they'd survive a direct blast.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm not so sure. Remember these items are probably made of metal, and aren't all _that_ fragile. Sure, they'll get dinged up, and maybe bent, but I'm not convinced they will be rendered inoperative. Especially a frag grenade that is using most of its blast energy to produce fast-moving shrapnel.

[YECoyote]

I agree. I don't believe a grenade is powerful enough to disable a tank. What you really need is something more powerful, like engineers explosives, plastiques, TNT, or Shaped-charge explosives. But since we're talking about abstraction, we can assume that they scrounge up some decent explosives to do the job.

[Jarmo]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by YECoyote:

What you really need is something more powerful, like engineers explosives, plastiques, TNT, or Shaped-charge explosives. But since we're talking about abstraction, we can assume that they scrounge up some decent explosives to do the job.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well it is abstracted and isn't.

Most squads do have something to kill a tank with, or at least try to. Like a rifle grenade, faust, or a gammon bomb.

I believe the squads didn't really carry around too many self made bombettes.

[YECoyote]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jarmo:

I believe the squads didn't really carry around too many self made bombettes.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

True, they don't carry self made explosives. But that fallen team of Panzerschrek should have something to be scrounged. I thought that was the idea of LOW status in your ammo box.

[Andrew H.]

I remember reading some desert war accounts of infantry vs. tanks; apparently one technique that sometimes worked against the Pz III was to fire repeatedly at the side vision ports in the turret from very short range. While the glass block in the vision port was, technically, bullet proof, repeated hits with steel-jacketed ammo would cause it to shatter and then permit bullets to penetrate the turret and bounce around. Which either caused causualties or caused the tankers to open the hatches and escape.

I'm not sure how regularly this could be employed, however, as those vision slits are pretty small; it would seem that you could only do this well if the turret was jammed.

And of course there is the danger of ricochets from bullets that don't go through the vision slit.

In general, though, it should be very hard to take out mobile tanks w/o special weapons.

[Pzman]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by YECoyote:

I was just using SPR as an example. My point is that the tank should not be targeting the in-close infantry. It either die (eventually), or try to run away.

The QB that I was playing was "One foggy Christmas night..."

And Panzerman, I killed lots of tanks with grenades. Just move you squad to the back of the tank. Make sure the tank is immobolize first. Tanks really like it when you assault them up the ass <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That was Panzer leader :confused:

[Doug Beman]

YECoyote, there's no "scrounging" in CM. If a Panzerschreck team dies, nobody else can pick up its equipment.

The LOW status only applies to small arms. Squad-level AT weapons like rifle grenades and PFs are tracked individually, and once they're used that's it.

DjB

[YECoyote]

another kill from FJ team using grenades

I apologize for that stupid Hypersnap stamp :mad: