Tips on attacking with Armor against Armor

[wbs]

From L. Tankersley:

Originally posted by wbs:

Pondscum, please correct me if I'm wrong, but since the 'hunt' command always has the tank moving in a forward direction, wouldn't the tank make a 180 degree turn in order to execute your command? If so, that would give the enemy a nice shot in the butt.....

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No. You drag the waypoint behind the tank, and while it is selected hit the 'reverse' key to change it to a 'reverse' waypoint. Then it's just like it was a reverse waypoint all along. This is another reason to plot multiple "tophat" style maneuvers at once - it gives you more waypoints to play with. You want to keep them close together (keep the path lengths at or less than the distance you can drag a waypoint) to maintain maximum flexibility. This can help offset the inflexibility you get at turn boundaries with no pending orders.

Interesting Tactic--thank you.

[Viceroy]

Pondscum,

yes, thanks for the tank tip ... I'll start using that right away in my PBEM games.

Toran,

you asked about why the tanks sometimes fire their MG's first rather than the gun. The coax MG the gunner uses was lined up right next to the big gun. When he fired the MG the tracer rounds would show him exactly where his shells from the big gun would hit. So the MG was often used to make sure the gun was aimed correctly. Source:Tank K.Tout is packed full of details about fighting in a Sherman in Normandy.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by L.Tankersley:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by redwolf:

If CMBO MGs were anything realistic, buttoned up tanks would be much more common. Right now people keep them open almost all the time when enemy armor *may* be around. In reality you would have dead crewmembers the instand you move into any MG or MG-possessing squad position, or mortar fire or whatever.

I don't know about this. It doesn't take long to duck down into a tank. It takes a little longer to close a hatch, but not much, and while you're doing it you're not very exposed. Even while crew exposed, a mortar round would have to hit pretty durn close to have a decent chance of injuring a tank crewman. As far as MGs are concerned -- if you drive your tank up within 10 or 20 meters of a strong infantry force, maybe you're right, but in my experience the tank crew will usually have buttoned up autonomously long before then anyway. It's not all that easy to hit a partially exposed target with the first burst from an MG at any signficant range, and if you don't hit, the guy is probably

going to duck.[/QB]</font>

[gredeker]

Originally posted by L.Tankersley:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by wbs:

Pondscum, please correct me if I'm wrong, but since the 'hunt' command always has the tank moving in a forward direction, wouldn't the tank make a 180 degree turn in order to execute your command? If so, that would give the enemy a nice shot in the butt.....

No. You drag the waypoint behind the tank, and while it is selected hit the 'reverse' key to change it to a 'reverse' waypoint. Then it's just like it was a reverse waypoint all along. This is another reason to plot multiple "tophat" style maneuvers at once - it gives you more waypoints to play with. You want to keep them close together (keep the path lengths at or less than the distance you can drag a waypoint) to maintain maximum flexibility. This can help offset the inflexibility you get at turn boundaries with no pending orders.</font>

[Mannheim Tanker]

Originally posted by Toran:

One thing I've noticed and it is a little annoying: I've acheived hull down with a shermon, say, on a panzer and have a nice flank shot all lined up. I see that the panzer's turret is pointed away from me so he hasn't seen me yet. So what do my guys do? They start in with the MG. [sic] But why in the world is he giving his position away by firing a MG?

IRL, MGs were (and still are occasionally) used to estimate the range. Rather than waste a main gun round due to bad range estimation, your TC is letting loose a burst of coax fire to verify that he does indeed have the correct range to the target.

[L.Tankersley]

Originally posted by redwolf:

In reality, any heavy machinegun would sweep any number of tanks in a few seconds. I don't say they would hit the commander, but they would score hull hits on all tanks forward of them, up to 1500 meter of them within a very short time, a 5-10 seconds or so.

This is what doesn't happen in CMBO. You have those single bursts, at a single target, with large delays between them. So you hit at most one unit at a time. If you do, you hit realistically like if you opend up on one target to kill it, but supressive sweeps over an area are simply missing.

I'm not saying MG modeling in CMBO isn't flawed particularly wrt to inability to engage multiple targets or suppress an area. But your original post implied that tank crews should suffer casualties pretty much whenever they came under MG or mortar fire when unbuttoned, and that because they don't players unrealistically leave their tanks unbuttoned. That's what I don't buy.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by L.Tankersley:

I'm not saying MG modeling in CMBO isn't flawed particularly wrt to inability to engage multiple targets or suppress an area. But your original post implied that tank crews should suffer casualties pretty much whenever they came under MG or mortar fire when unbuttoned, and that because they don't players unrealistically leave their tanks unbuttoned. That's what I don't buy.

OK, let me clarify.

I agree that if an MG opens at some distance at a bunch of open tanks, only a lucky shot will hit the crewmembers. But they will button up at this point and stay so until the fire is known to be accounted for.

In CMBO it is like the TC looks at his clock and says "oh, 60 seconds over", lets reopen until someone fires at me. No matter where they are. They get away with that because a CMBO MG which is busy shooting at other targets nearly will take some time to get a shot at the tank, because it has a max number of shots in the turn and large intervals in between. A real MG could let some bullets loose at the tank in an instant, and at the 200 or 300 meter intervals typical in CMBO would have a large chance to hit crewmembers.

If CM would have an delay in the unbutton command, and a cancel for it when fire is near, things would be better.

[L.Tankersley]

Originally posted by redwolf:

I agree that if an MG opens at some distance at a bunch of open tanks, only a lucky shot will hit the crewmembers. But they will button up at this point and stay so until the fire is known to be accounted for.

In CMBO it is like the TC looks at his clock and says "oh, 60 seconds over", lets reopen until someone fires at me. No matter where they are. They get away with that because a CMBO MG which is busy shooting at other targets nearly will take some time to get a shot at the tank, because it has a max number of shots in the turn and large intervals in between. A real MG could let some bullets loose at the tank in an instant, and at the 200 or 300 meter intervals typical in CMBO would have a large chance to hit crewmembers.

If CM would have an delay in the unbutton command, and a cancel for it when fire is near, things would be better.

Ok, I'm tracking you now. I don't know about a "large chance" necessarily (I think 300 meters in combat conditions is pretty far to expect a first-burst hit) but I agree guys wouldn't be buttoning and unbuttoning willy-nilly like they can in the game. Just one of many artificialities created by the turn boundary.

A better solution might be to require buttoned-up vehicles to STAY buttoned up for some minimum amount of time (say, 30 seconds). If you issue an order to unbutton and you've been buttoned less than the requisite time, the order is queued up and at some point during the turn you'll unbutton again. You might even tie the minimum time to crew quality (that might be overkill, though).

[Louie the Toad]

I don't like the idea of a minimum amount of time being automatically assessed to buttoning up. It will make things too predictable.

Uncertainty is the mother of indecision.

Just made that up... Toad