Driving over guns!

[Freel]

In a PBeM game of mine, I suddenly saw a truck with a gun towed behind it moving on the west site of the battlefield. There was some infantary to protect it, but they were moving far in front of the truck\gun formation. I've seen no other enemy units near the truck.

An ATR-Carrier of mine was in the vicinity and I orded it to race towards the truck and knock it out. But being it a desert map, the dust constantly prevented me to get a line of sight and a good shot at the truck.

My opponent saw the danger and dismounted the gun, who was now facing to other site as which my ATR-Carrier was racing towards from.

I managed to move the carrier past the infantary and within a few meters of the gun. Line of sight at last!!! But trying to knock out a gun with a ATR simply does not work! For a whole minute the Carrier kept firing at the gun without any result. The gun slowly turned to face his attacker. The minute ended and the gun was now only a few degrees away before going for the kill.

Figuring that the command delay and the time needed to turn the carrier was way to long, I decided to ram the gun with Fast-Move!

The ATR-Carrier drove with roaring engine towards the gun and rammed it silly, letting the crew abandoning their gun! YES!!!

.........Now where did that truck go????

[ November 11, 2004, 05:29 AM: Message edited by: Freel ]

[dieseltaylor]

Perhaps it is the upgrade from CMBB. I was most disappointed that ramming a Russian A/car with a Stug repeatedly did nothing like knock it over or damage it. The crew did not even bail.

[Sergei]

I don't think that ramming vehicles does anything in CMAK either... but driving over infantry can cause them to panic.

[Redwolf]

Guns gets abandoned when a vehicle comes too close. MGs don't.

Vehicle collisions do nothing.

[Freel]

This happened in CMAK.

[Carl Puppchen]

My opponent in CMAK (I played the Axis) got in the habit of driving over my guns because his early war british tanks don't have much in the way of HE and whenever possible I put the guns in the trench to make them especially difficult to root out. It definitely causes the troops to panic a lot and abandon the guns and is a pretty good tactic. Of course it didn't help my cause that I had a lot of the 37mm AT guns or 47mm Italian AT guns which weren't exactly big tank killers if the British brought Matildas or Valentines

This tactic of course becomes more and more suicidal late war when most infantry has organic AT weapons and team weapons like zooks and schrecks are common; you are better off "standing off" and smashing the position with HE. But in the early war you need to work with what you have...

[YankeeDog]

Destroying guns by overruning them was actually part early war armor doctrine, training and practice to a degree, and it does work in CMAK; in fact, as noted, sometimes with the HE-less early war British tanks, it's the only way to reliably KO a well dug-in gun -- taking an entrenched gun out with MG and/or AP fire alone usually takes way too much time and ammo.

Also worth noting that there are historical examples from North Africa all the way up through the Bulge of tanks attempting to destroy entrenched infantry positions by rotating the tank tread along the edge of the trench/foxhole and caving it in. In particular, I've read multiple accounts of German tanks doing this during Fruhlungswind, and also late war in the Battle of the Bulge and in the short-lived German counterattack in the south right after the Bulge (Nordwind?). It strikes me as a great way to get your tank bogged, or worse a bazooka round up your @ss, but I suppose if you're short of infantry and indirect HE fire assets (as the Germans probably were more often than the Allies), you've got to try to do something to get the infantry out of their hidey-holes.

Cheers,

YD

[Brent Pollock]

Trenches are no help either - just ask my ROW IV opponent in 'Frontier Firefight '40'; scrunched the entrenched Italian ATG with my puny Mark VI.

I've also bowled over '88s with Stuarts in a couple of CMBO/CMAK matches.

Grand fun - well worth the thrill ride.

Originally posted by Carl Puppchen:

[snipped by Brent]...whenever possible I put the guns in the trench to make them especially difficult to root out...[snipped by Brent]

[FM Paul Heinrik]

How do you over run a gun position? In CMBB, I can't get an afv to move head on toward a gun that can fire even a atr will stop the tank and make them reverse or look for cover. And on the chance that the afv can with stand hull or turret hits I'd be too afraid of a disabling track hit to keep forcing them forward. You can smoke the gun emplacement and then fast move to it but again I would be too afraid of other unreveiled kill zones.

[YankeeDog]

I don't think it works in CMBB -- I think overrun attack was a new feature added with CMAK.

And yes, it can be tricky to get the AFV to do it without cowering. It's a bit easier in CMAK because of the new FOW rules applying to targeting line -- in CMAK, a feature was added where it usually takes several shots before your units "sees" the targeting line of an enemy gun, and tanks don't cower away from (or target, sometimes!) an AT gun unless the TacAI can "see" that the AT gun is targetting them.

Anyway, I usually find myself using overrun with early-war Brit HE-less AFVs. The trick is to pin the gun first with MG fire -- MG fire only rarely actually knocks out or forces abandonment of a gun in good cover, but MG fire from 1-3 tanks (depending on range and situation) will keep the gun crew's heads down, and then one tank can actually execute the rollover attack. It's kind of the armored version of a close assault.

Of course, it is far easier to take out guns with on-board mortars or artillery, but in the desert there were many situations where fast-moving armor breakthrough attempts had to fight Pakfronts little or no infantry/artillery support, and if you don't have HE shells in your tanks, you have to find some other way to get the job done.

Smoke from a CS tank is another option, though as you note it does require some careful placement of smoke rounds and a bit of luck.

Of course, all of this requires that the enemy not interfere with other assets -- having to take out AT guns in this way makes you understand why the Desert Rats so appreciated it when they got tanks like the M3 Lee that had a decent HE round!

Cheers,

YD

[FM Paul Heinrik]

I gotta get CMAK!!

[Pzman]

I did that (driving over guns) in CMBO as well, I think its been in the game all along.

[Brent Pollock]

Ditto - I've been crushing field guns from doorknockers to 88s since CMBO.

Don't try to do it with any command other than FAST.

It certainly gives the gun owner incentive to use pine/woods as cover, even though it leaves (go ahead, needle me about my puns) the gun open to airbursts.

Originally posted by Pzman:

I did that (driving over guns) in CMBO as well, I think its been in the game all along.

[Roast Duck]

This is all new to me, thanks guys.

Off the subject. Every so often in the game Close Combat if you drive your tank over an enemy position, they let off the longest, most god awful scream, filled with pain, agony, and despair I have ever heard in a game (ya gotta love melodrama). The first time I heard It we were playing over a network in the same room. The volume and base was turned up, as my tank drove over the enemy position it scared the BaaJesus out of us. I have always wondered if it was a bug.

[Wake]

in CMBB, I had a STGIII over a russian light gun.

The light gun kept on firing and scoring hits on the STGIII although they occupied the same space.

[YankeeDog]

In re: driving over guns in CMBB and CMBO.

Even in CMBO & CMBB, the gun crew will often abandon the gun anyway as the enemy tank gets really close. I think this is primarily due to the increasing effectiveness of the tank's MG fire as the range closes.

However, as Wake notes, it is possible to see a tank and an ATG virtually on top of each other in CMBB & CMBO, and have both survive for quite a while. In my experience, this happens most often with an MG-less AFV, which supports my theory that MG fire is what is actually causing most gun crew abandonments as AFVs close to single digit meter ranges.

However, it seems that in CMAK, some sort of rollover attack feature has been added to the code, which means that even MG-less AFVs can KO an ATG by rolling in close. At least, I've never seen an ATG survive for more than a couple of seconds with an AFV right on top of it in CMAK, and I've frequently used rollover attacks in this iteration of the engine.

I suppose someone should set up a test in the editor. . . doubt I'll get to it anytime this week, but if I find time somewhere, I'll try to verify my hypothesis.

Cheers,

YD

[Sergei]

You may also have noticed that infantry move out of AFV's way in CMAK (even if friendly). I believe there to be a connection.

[Brent Pollock]

[Hmmm...I could've sworn I replied to this yesterday...oh well :confused: ]

No, I watched all those movies near endlessly from CMBO-days onward: the gun gets abandoned without any requirement for incoming fire. I also ran tests back then to see the effects of AFV overrun on infantry (no casualties but morale suffers and they can break cover) & vehicles (no damage; just pushed) as well as. I used AFVs with zero ammo. I even tested smaoke rounds to see if they could cause infantry casualties; gave up after half an hour.

The only AFV MG "weirdness" I've seen is tankettes getting KOd (even saw one brewed up) by the small calibre BMG/CMG. The only thing that makes this "weird" to me is that it wasn't possible in ASL; makes complete sense otherwise.

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

In re: driving over guns in CMBB and CMBO.

Even in CMBO & CMBB, the gun crew will often abandon the gun anyway as the enemy tank gets really close. I think this is primarily due to the increasing effectiveness of the tank's MG fire as the range closes.

However, as Wake notes, it is possible to see a tank and an ATG virtually on top of each other in CMBB & CMBO, and have both survive for quite a while. In my experience, this happens most often with an MG-less AFV, which supports my theory that MG fire is what is actually causing most gun crew abandonments as AFVs close to single digit meter ranges.

However, it seems that in CMAK, some sort of rollover attack feature has been added to the code, which means that even MG-less AFVs can KO an ATG by rolling in close. At least, I've never seen an ATG survive for more than a couple of seconds with an AFV right on top of it in CMAK, and I've frequently used rollover attacks in this iteration of the engine.

I suppose someone should set up a test in the editor. . . doubt I'll get to it anytime this week, but if I find time somewhere, I'll try to verify my hypothesis.

Cheers,

YD

[YankeeDog]

I stand corrected. Thanks for the info, Brent.

It still does seem like it's easier to overrun guns in CMAK, tho -- maybe the code has just been tweaked to make the gun crew more likely to abandon as the AFV gets close?

And yeah, it's pretty cool that light armor can actually get KOed by regular small arms at really close ranges.

Cheers,

YD

[throwdjohn]

Can you run over enemy infantry also? That would be fun, a mass runover attack......