Camouflaged tanks

[Skippy]

According to the manual, units that remain in their starting position are considered "camouflaged." How effective is camouflage in keeping tanks hidden? How much effect does the tank's profile have? What about hull down status?

On a related note, what does the "hide" command mean for tanks? The manual never explains this. Does it just mean that it will not fire until fired upon?

[tar]

Not sure how effective the camouflage is. It is, however, rather difficult to hide a tank at typical combat mission ranges.

Unfortunately I don't know if tank profile affects spotting. It does affect to-hit chance for point fire weapons. Hull down makes your tank harder to hit and eliinates the chance of getting hits on the lower hull. The latter may or may not be an advantage.

The "hide" command when given to tanks generally just assures the enemy of getting off the first shot at your tank. I don't think it is useful for vehicles at all. [OK, I'll soften this just a little bit. It may be useful against a human if you have your tank completely out of LOS and don't want to reveal the presence of vehicles through a sound contact.]

[DavidFields]

Camouflage: Let me see....might be useful at range (1000 meters), in a defensive situation, with an AFV in scattered woods--waiting to lure in light armor (HT/Armored cars) before they spotted you and went into reverse. I personally would not trust it to save me in a potentially lethal dual.

Or it may have helped me when I was forced to hide Half-tracks in scattered woods at the beginning of a scenario--effectively compensating for the fact that the map was too small (more so in CMBO), and that the HT would have actually have unloaded their infantry well before probable contact.

But their are so many other variables involved with visability/spotting: weather, time of day, whether the opponents AFVs are buttoned, how deep the AFV was in the scattered woods (in brush, I can't imagine it helps at all--though I stand to be corrected), intervening terrrain, too make me certain that the camouflage ever helped. I can't say I ever had the guts to put a thin skin tank destroyer in some vulnerable scattered woods thinking that the camouflage was going to keep it safe.

"Hide"? In CMBO it was useful as fire control, but cover arcs are now better for that--except when I am too lazy and just want to hit the "H" key.

With both issues, I always felt I was trying to cover a steel monster with a fig leaf.

[dieseltaylor]

I used hidden Grilles in broken woodland in CMBB and they were a surprise to the T34's - what I did find surprising was my opponent did not spot them but that may have been due to his forces being in fast mode when they opened fire.

The ones that might have seen me being dead att he end of turn. Range 800-1200 metres.