Empty vehicles and armour

[Jack Ryan]

I was wondering is there any way of having empty AFV, trucks or tanks in the game?

So you could say steal them for the side your playing or use them to blow up as if it was an ammo depot?

Oh also is there any dock buildings out there on the web for this, cranes warehouse etc?

Thanks in advance

[RSColonel_131st]

Yikes...

First, it's not like BF1942 where every soldier can do everthing with just a few mouse clicks. If you are an infantry man you ain't going to steal a tank...

What would work is having enemy stuff captured during the run of an operation...that is, if they fall behind the new frontline, they should be yours, repainted and manned with your people.

Empty tanks dont blow up like ammo depots...they aren't ammo depots.

There are no additional buildings avalable, as far as I know, only reskined (repainted) exsisting ones.

[JasonC]

A scenario designer can manually zero out the gun ammo of any tank, by editing the unit. MG ammo remains, but there are various assault guns without MGs to get around that limitation. There is a "tanks dig in?" option for scenario defenders on the parameters screen. Then in map preview, you can put a tank somewhere, dig it in (which prevents movement), and padlock the set up to prevent a player from changing the location. You can thus create an effectively weaponless armor dohickey someplace that gives VPs if knocked out, as a commando objective demo charges need to be delivered to or what have you. If you instead use a tank with a coaxial MG, you can make a metallic MG pillbox with turret this way. Or, of course, leave the gun ammo and have a gun pillbox. If you want ordinary infantry to be able to take it out in close assault with just grenades, use an open topped critter like a Marder or SU-76.

As for manning such things, I'm afraid not. Weapon remanning, weapon capture, vehicle capture are not modeled in CM.

I hope this helps.

[ April 17, 2003, 11:21 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Jack Ryan]

i didnt mean the tanks being blown i mis worded that sentance. I wouldnt wont it to be like that were everything could be taken.

I mean you could have enemy trucks on map which were empty, so if you had a squad go pass they could steal the truck, the same for tanks but you would need crew members.

So you could have empty enemy trucks sitting round, to simulate a ammo dump. then you could have troops blow the trucks and run off.

Thus oping the way for lots of behind the lines missions as they most likliy did happen during the course of 4 years of fighting.

and on that note, any reskin trucks to look like fuel trucks or even fuel drums?

[ April 17, 2003, 11:24 AM: Message edited by: Jack Ryan ]

[MikeyD]

A long time ago I had lobbied for non-working 3-D 'doodad polygons' to populate the terrain - lamp posts, civilian sedans, even airplanes to put on airfields - but for some reason BFC elected to only spend their time constructing USEFUL objects for the game! In retrospect, considering that they can't fit onto the CD all the armor they were hoping for, maybe it was all for the best they didn't waste the space on my idea.

[Meach]

I would love to see "scrap" doodads to populate my maps with..bits of bombers, tank hulks, trucks and various other bits of wreckage. I would also love it if I could, in the course of an operation, overtake abandoned vehicles, mortars and MG's and have the option of "liberating" them from the enemy and use them in my next battle. They would not have terribly much ammo or be a bit more likely to jam or bog as the crews would not have total familiarity but imagine smashing through a infantry held line and gathering up his MG's or knocking out a tank platoon and after a few battles you get maybe a couple of SU-85 recovered and turned against the enemy..or in the reverse..I don't think the soviets would turn there noses up at a captured King Tiger, even for one battle.

I am not a programmer but I do have endless enthusiasm and imagination for CM, so just slap me down now and again and all will be well!!

[Jack Ryan]

Yeah thats a cool idea.

I think the games should have something simlar to that in it and the chance of behind the lines missions, hopfully a behind the line mission, blowing **** up and escaping, could be CMAK as in N.africa the british used the SAS and some special recon unit to take them in and bring em back out.

[MikeyD]

It'll be interesting to see the makeup of Rommel's forces in CMAK, as by the end of the campaign he was pretty heavily dependant on captured equipment. So are there German Matildas and Valentines in our future?

[Jack Ryan]

wow i didnt know that! i always assumed that he was stuck with the few panzers he had left and may good use. lol.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Originally posted by Jack Ryan:

wow i didnt know that! i always assumed that he was stuck with the few panzers he had left and may good use. lol.

And Rommel wasn't the only one.

North Africa is famous for having the other sides stuff in your inventory. Many of the trucks the Commonwealth used were Italian, the Australians tended to fix up any M13s they found and used them (till they broke down again!)

This is only natural offcourse because both sides had great difficulty supplying the troops. Espcially vehicles, the Brits had to ship their tanks either around Cape of Good Hope or risk running them down the Mediterrean. For good reason, they chose the long way round. The Germans had to ship their tanks past Malta or fly them in with those big ass Gigant planes.

So if you find a fixer-upper you'll get the paint out!

The only thing I've noticed is a surprising lack of captured arty being used by the opponent. Is this just a gap in my knowledge or is there another reason?

[Jack Ryan]

i rember seeing a news report in a book from the africa campagin and it said that rommel launched an attack with less then 90 panzers to brake the entire brit lines. obvoiusly they did not mension all the brit and maybe itailian tanks they had.

[Meach]

I think with artillery the calibre of the shells might have been a problem to mix with friendly shells..Brits using imperial measurements and Germans are Metric...just an idea. With captured vehicles you would get at least enough shells to fight for one battle and any other PzGr39 you came across could be scavenged..I really would love to see this in CMAK or even patched into CMBB. It would give the operations a whole new angle if you had to deal with your "own" king kats rampaging through your lines.

[MikeyD]

CMBB does that scavanging thing already - sort of. I was doing a Finnish infantry attack a few days ago and was running out of ammo. To my surprise after sitting for a few turns a number of my units were practically back up to full ammo load again! I had NEVER seen that before. I can only figure the survivng troops were rifling-through the pockets of the dead in search of spare ammo clips.

[ April 17, 2003, 03:18 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[Meach]

BONUS!!..i will have to try that out..never knew it was possible..still be nice to pick up PPSh sub-machine guns "on the fly" or pick up an AT rifle after the battle.

[Mud]

Jack Ryan --

It sounds to me like you're looking for a completely different game.

CM models at the level of squads, half-squads and teams, instead of individual men. Control is limited, since it's a full 60 seconds between order phases. Instead of crack shots with silenced weapons, years of training, a permanently level head, and advanced demolitions equipment, we have grunts with much more reasonably (low) marksmanship and realistically crude weaponry. Since tiles are 20m on a side and squad position is abstracted, you don't get fine positional control. To me, all these factors combined mean that stealthy "commando" missions in CMBO/CMBB simply aren't a good fit.

CM can't really do "sneak in, blow stuff up and steal a ride out". Even "sneak in and blow stuff up and sneak out" isn't too likely, since that degree of stealth requires control much closer to that of FPS games -- you can't order the TacAI to "wait until the guard's looking the other way, then crouch and take cover there, and knife the sentry when he comes by" or anything like that.

As noted, though, you can make high-value targets out of immobilized vehicles. You can even take elite trucks and drop rubble tiles on top of them (so they can't run away) if you want to make very soft unarmed targets. You can drop building tiles on units, too -- you can even create mined buildings that way, if you really want (although I haven't tried dropping buildings on vehicles...)

[MikeyD]

About that 'ammo scavanging' feature I mentioned above, I should say it's happened to me once and ONLY once. I recall seeing a small reference to it in the manual (maybe), but never seen it at work before in combat.

Usually my men are down to rifle butts and pocket knives to fight with by the time I'm done with a game. Maybe it was just a special uberFinn feature.

[JasonC]

Plenty of captured arty was used, but you had to grab enough ammo to go with the guns to use them. Ammo, not tubes, is the real limit on arty firing.

The Germans used captured French 75s (the Pak 75-38) and Russian 76s (obviously, the 76mm ATG - which was actually rechambered to use German 75mm PAK ammo). Late in the war, they had infantry divisions equipped with mixed 76 and 122 div arty, just like the Russians. Their 120mm mortar was a knock off of the Russian one. They also used captured French 155s and Russian 152s in place of 150s.

You get that kind of ammo from taking a whole country, or a huge bag of prisoners along with half a country, not just by overrunning a front line unit, though. Some special items were used because they gave a capability own side assets did not - like Russian use of PAK 40s and fausts. But you are always going to run out of ammo pretty quickly, if it is just a few weapons grabbed on an active front.

[Meach]

That is what I am driving at...I don't want to be able to purchase an arty spotter with a whole regiment of stolen soviet arty...as much as the idea appeals..more like what is available after the battle to be used in the next in the operations game. Those pesky Finns, first they kill tanks at 2000m then they can scrounge ammo from nowhere...conspiracy I tell you!! Is Steve Finnish by any chance??

[SgtMuhammed]

Using captured equipment also puts an incredible strain on your logistics. If you outfit a battery with captured guns, what are these guys going to do when the scrounged supply of rounds runs out.

One of the biggest handicaps facing the Wehrmacht was that its logistical system was a shambles. It had no nice universal truck like the allies and the use of captured and specialized equipment and weaponry required a piecemeal effort to keep everything supplied.

Another thing to consider is that battlefield scavenging wasn't really a squad or platoon or even company activity. Except for small arms, most scavenging happened after the battles and was controlled by the logistics organs, usually at regimental or higher levels. On some occations there were examples of individual scavenging of tanks and guns but not enough to make it a regular feature of the game (unless, of course, you want to simulate a specific event).