Sd Kfz 7/2 37 mm

[pktaske]

Does this thing rip or what? 48 points for ammo-rich, HROF, infantry-stompin', TD plinking, fighter-bomber wackin', scootin' and shootin' long-range mobile killing-machine. I routinely grab these in my battles in lieu of AT guns...they were immobilizing and penetrating (side)Sherms left and right at 1000 yards...trying to hit these suckers at that range with 90mm Jacksons proved fruitless...try closing in on 'em with Hounds or HT's...forget it..best bet would be arty...if they stood still long enough..sure they they can be had...but I've yet to see a unit with more BFYB than these suckers...I'd definitely take one of these with me as my luxury item...try voting me off...n e 1 else agree?

[109 Gustav]

They are nice, but they're unarmored, and are therefore vulnerable to small arms. They aren't as nice as AT guns, because they can't hide, and if they don't get a flank shot on the first shot, they're dead.

I prefer the non-motorized 37mm flak guns, if only because they can hide and pick their shots.

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Well my skiff's a twenty dollar boat, And I hope to God she stays afloat.

But if somehow my skiff goes down, I'll freeze to death before I drown.

And pray my body will be found, Alaska salmon fishing, boys, Alaska salmon fishing.

-Commercial fishing in Kodiak, Alaska

[pktaske]

Gus - I thought the same...but the only small arms fire that seems to matter are stand alone .50's...HT's and light AFV's with em are toasted quickly..and any other type of small caliber weapons have to be pretty darn close to be effective..I just set up an allied attack vs. 2 flakwagons..they ripped up the Stuarts and HT's and then started picking the infantry apart at 400 yards..after numerous casualties, my ammo was almost out and I went in ..got cut up at 20 yards by a US squad..given it was vs a lame AI but I was just hitting Go most of the game...immobile guns could never do that...and besides, guns are usually sitting ducks for HE and mortars..if they were half the cost, I'd agree with ya......maybe

[Juardis]

I attest to their usefulness. If placed correctly, they are very deadly. I've stalled attacks with them long enough to bring reinforcements to bear then used it to route the imperialistic yanquis. I did lose it to machinegun fire from an M5A1 though, the little wussies .

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Jeff Abbott

[Abteilung]

Originally posted by pktaske:

Does this thing rip or what? 48 points for ammo-rich, HROF, infantry-stompin', TD plinking, fighter-bomber wackin', scootin' and shootin' long-range mobile killing-machine.

They are an effective way of dealing with M18 Hellcats, too.

[MikeP]

I faced 2 of these mobile FLAK in a TCP/IP game this evening and found them fairly impervious to small arms fire. 3 turns of MMG and 60mm mortar also had no effect. I got one finally with a bazooka round and the other with an 81mm mortar barrage. (Don't ask who won) They appear to be very good value for the points spent, if nothing else, distracting resources that could be better used elsewhere.

[von Lucke]

See my much earlier post concerning the Sd Kfz 7/2 vs. Firefly thread.

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/012049.html

These critters are way more effective than most would expect --- or probably should be.

[This message has been edited by von Lucke (edited 02-12-2001).]

[Olle Petersson]

Boouuuaaaaa!!!!

My secret Überweapon has been exposed to the public...

Cheers

Olle

[Gremlin]

There have been countless acrimonious debates about which side has better equipment or is favored by CM, but you have to admit that all the flak variants the Germans get put the Allies' equivalents (what very few they have) to shame. The mobile flak guns (trucks, Wirbelwind, Ostwind) are enormously useful, and the stationary ones are useful too. The Ostwind has about four times the ammo, afaik, as the Sd Kfz 7/2, btw

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[This message has been edited by Gremlin (edited 02-12-2001).]

[John Kelly]

I selected one of these in a quick battle, but it was toasted by a marauding US fighter-bomber. Its bombs had been dropped elsewhere, but the six .50 caliber machine guns ripped it apart. I didn't have a chance to see what it could do. It fired in hapless fashion agaisnt the incoming plane...and then was no more. John

[pktaske]

Yeah..the Ost has more ammo but penetration is only about 60% of the 37mm...critical difference for side shots and long range barrages...but I would tend to agree with some of the posts, present and past, that I've read...their most definitely is some sort of glitch that makes soft vehicles harder to knock out than they should (at least ones that return fire)...like I mentioned in my previous post, I had 2 Jacksons at 1000 yards never come close to knocking one of these suckers out while they were returning fire left and right with deadly (and lots of non-deadly) accuracy...IIRC, the 90's were using their AP rounds...which sounds right...but not being able to secure a hit shot after shot with vet TD crews seems unlikely..I've observed several more instances of these AA trucks being impervoius to fire but not enough to be statistically meaningful (although even Demming would find it hard to argue with my success when employing these suckers)...BTS - Tone 'em down in CM2.

[Bullethead]

Another thing these SdKfz 7/things are pretty impervious to is bazookas. I've set up experiments with many zooks blasting away at a flak wagon and never once hitting it. And with a zook's low explosive force, near misses don't seem to do any good, either. It's as if the flak wagons don't exist for zook rockets. This might be the reason Pktaske's M36's couldn't hit them, either. Something screwy in how AP shots are counted against them.

I've also noticed that the crews of these things seem to bear a charmed life. Smallarms fire sometimes seems to kill them at their jobs, but if something knocks out the vehicle (like even a 500# bomb landing 2 feet away and causing a catastrophic explosion) all crewmen emerge from the wreckage unharmed.

All in all, I find these things nearly impossible to kill. Smallarms usually has no effect, AP rounds and rockets never seem to touch them, and they ignore being blanketed by 81mm mortars. In fact, it seems to require a near miss by 105mm or larger to knock them out. All very strange considering they are unarmored and have a large crew well exposed passing explosives ammo to the gun.

For these reasons, I never purchase these vehicles. They seem bugged to the point of pure gamey-ness.

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-Bullethead

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

[Juardis]

Originally posted by Bullethead:

All in all, I find these things nearly impossible to kill. Smallarms usually has no effect, AP rounds and rockets never seem to touch them, and they ignore being blanketed by 81mm mortars. In fact, it seems to require a near miss by 105mm or larger to knock them out. All very strange considering they are unarmored and have a large crew well exposed passing explosives ammo to the gun.

For these reasons, I never purchase these vehicles. They seem bugged to the point of pure gamey-ness.

So let me get this straight. You found a weapons platform that is hard to kill and you have trouble believing it so you won't buy it? Wow.

[Bullethead]

Juardis said:

So let me get this straight. You found a weapons platform that is hard to kill and you have trouble believing it so you won't buy it? Wow.

No, my problem with the SdKfz 7/whatevers is that they are unrealistically hard to kill, or even hit, IMHO. At the very least, they should be taking crew casualties right and left. With crews of 8 and little or no protection for most of them, they should be as vulnerable to smallarms and HE near misses as similar-sized squads in light cover. But not only are crew casualties rare, the crew doesn't get suppressed like a squad under similar fire would be because the crews are part of a vehicle, which doesn't use infantry-type suppression.

Hence, using these vehicles confers an unrealistic advantage to their owner. Being unrealistically tough, they tie up more of the enemy's resources than they should, making things unrealistically easy for the rest of the enemy force.

If you are aware of these problems and use the flak wagons anyway, in my book you're cheating. I don't cheat, so I don't use them.

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-Bullethead

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

[Guest wwb_99]

One thing CM does not simulate is vehicle morale. If I am in an unarmored Sdkfz I am not sticking around when an AFV comes into sight. Not to mention risking your AAA cover was a very bad idea for any German commander in 1944/5.

WWB

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Before battle, my digital soldiers turn to me and say,

Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutamus.

[Gremlin]

Pktaske, the Ostwind has the 37mm gun. You're thinking of the Wirbelwind with the quad 20mm gun.

Bullethead, are you sure "cheating" is the right term? Since both parties have the same knowledge (potentially) available to them about the game units and mechanics and neither is altering the game engine surreptitiously, I don't think it's fair to call it cheating. I'd say it's making use of/taking advantage of (depending on your POV) the way the game is designed.

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"90% of the crucial decisions in this business are made by idiots who don't even play games." Cliff Bleszinski

[This message has been edited by Gremlin (edited 02-13-2001).]

[Tanaka]

hmmm... This is a very old topic, in CM, 2 things can kill an unarmored target,(Jeep; SdKfz;trucks and so on), they are:

1) Small arms fire (MG and non MG)

2) The blast of a round (artillery or gun fired)

When a German/UK/USA AT team fires to one of this targets, it is using it's HE blast to try to kill it... In the case of a zook it is 6 !!! So you can guess you will have to be very lucky in order to KO one of them with it.

Another example is the M18 with it's 76mm gun, if it fires AP, the AP round is using

it's very low blast to try to KO the unarmored target, if it fires HE, I can assure that the 33 blast is also low to do the job correctly. Most of the time the TacAi will only fire the MG wish is very ineffective at medium to long ranges...

That's the way it is... it is a game engine limitation.

[Ben Galanti]

I've always wondered why the jeeps and what not weren't modeled as having 1 or 2 mm of armor to get around this limitation. You'd think the sheetmetal would give it roughly that much protection

The only thing I can think of is that these vehicles then wouldn't be susceptable to small arms fire (since small arms use the firepower ratings instead of penetration equations like the larger caliber weapons). I don't know if this situation would be better or worse then the vehicles that seem to be overly tough against real AFVs (and personal AT weapons).

Ben

[Tanaka]

Oops...

[This message has been edited by Tanaka (edited 02-13-2001).]

[Tanaka]

I can see that the timed out connection was only for me, not for the server

[This message has been edited by Tanaka (edited 02-13-2001).]

[Tanaka]

Originally posted by Ben Galanti:

...The only thing I can think of is that these vehicles then wouldn't be susceptable to small arms fire (since small arms use the firepower ratings instead of penetration equations like the larger caliber weapons)...

Ben

With the present CM dual system, firepower ratings and penetration equations, the above is entirely true.

[Bullethead]

Gremlin said:

Bullethead, are you sure "cheating" is the right term? Since both parties have the same knowledge (potentially) available to them about the game units and mechanics and neither is altering the game engine surreptitiously, I don't think it's fair to call it cheating. I'd say it's making use of/taking advantage of (depending on your POV) the way the game is designed.

I disagree. Exploiting something that shouldn't happen is cheating, at least to me. If you want to call it something else, fine. But a skunk by any other name still stinks, so shouldn't use these flak vehicles unless you're more interested in Playstation gaming than WW2 simulation.

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-Bullethead

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

[KiwiJoe]

These things are deadly and modeled VERY badly.

[This message has been edited by KiwiJoe (edited 03-30-2001).]

[Olle Petersson]

Originally posted by Ben Galanti:

I've always wondered why the jeeps and what not weren't modeled as having 1 or 2 mm of armor to get around this limitation.

I'd like to add to Tanaka's reply that this would also make soft vehicles too vulnerable to AP rounds, unless of course the game engine required a "weak spot" hit to take it out.

Most AP would go straight through and not make any other damage than improved ventilation...

Cheers

Olle

[Barleyman]

Originally posted by Olle Petersson:

Most AP would go straight through and not make any other damage than improved ventilation...

Hmm, this reminds me of some British bi-plane torpedo bomber which was supposed to be good because it was so flimsy most AP and HE rounds would go straight through without causing much damage..

Not too hot for pilot protection!

IMHO, soft vehicles should be extremely vulnerable to long-range MG fire, the gunner could just "spray" the vehicle. It's not going to hit the dirt, after all.