Ramming feature

[Tankgunner]

I've already filled my wishlist in the poll thread, but I'd like also suggest introducing ramming feature for the vehicles. Running right across the enemy ATG or MGfoxhole (crushing them by weight) was a common tactics, though it was sometimes dangerous to the attacker's suspension and armanent (unexperienced crew could block tank's tracks with wrecks or damage the gun barrel).

The same could be applied to terrain obstacles, like walls and barbed wires. If an AFV have crossed the wall or wire fence, infantry should have less problems with moving through the obstacle. I don't mean no problems at all, but runnig through scattered bricks is not like climbing at the wall.

[Bigduke6]

I want to be able to ram other tanks. There is a great Soviet propaganda story about a KV commander at Kursk that blew away two panzers, and then rammed a Tiger, and both tanks went up in flames. The guy got a Hero of the Soviet Union so it must be true...

[Michael Emrys]

Oh boy! The next title will be "Combat Mission: Bumpacars".

Michael

[FFE]

Let's all go to the tractor pull next Tuesday night down in the swamp!

[undead reindeer cavalry]

it would be cool to have some form of causing damage/casualties by driving over infantry etc with tanks, especially now that we have more exact representation.

it would be cool if tanks would cause infantry suppression or morale checks just by their very presence.

[Thomm]

Can you imagine Russian tanks doing the the "Waltz of Death" on German foxholes ... Brrrrrrrr!

"Maybe not in the first release, though"

Best regards,

Thomm

[undead reindeer cavalry]

awgh, you might be right. hadn't thought about it from that perspective.

[Brent Pollock]

You guys should do some digging in the "Tips and Tricks" section. Some of what you are asking for is already in the game.

Guns in accessible terrain can be overrun and KOd; I've proven it in tests battles & used it in games, including a ROW IV match. I don't think there's a bog risk, but maybe it's too low to have been noticed so far.

Infantry, including MG teams, HATE being overrun. From what I've seen, it does not cause any actual casualties, but it usually gives a big morale hit. I've even had friendly infantry get spooked by having a vehicle run through their space.

[Brent Pollock]

...and you can't disable enemy vehicles by ramming, but you can push them...even into "prohibited terrain"; in one game, my StuG IIIb ran into a BA-6 and pushed it into some rubble, wherein it got stuck.

[Michael Dorosh]

I would like to see a ramming command; there was at least one instance in Normandy of such a thing being done by a British armoured unit faced with KTs. I also seem to recall reading examples in some of the GD histories of similar events occurring. I guess one would want to guard against "gamey" use of such but that is no different than with anything else.

[birdstrike]

A simple solution to avoid the gamey-use of a ramming command could be to have the two tanks "imobilized" after the ramming.

[Dr.Love]

Will there be penetration calculations on the ramming?

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by birdstrike:

A simple solution to avoid the gamey-use of a ramming command could be to have the two tanks "imobilized" after the ramming.

Might be more of a deterrent if there was no guarantee of a successful ram assault, however; a chance that you could ram another tank and do no damage to him would make you think twice and leave it as a true weapon of last resort.

Would be neat to see it happen accidentally, too, of course - say two vehicles at speed going around a blind corner.

[RSColonel_131st]

I like the idea of breaking terrain obstacles for the following infantry. With deformable terrain, that may just be possible.

[Philippe]

I don't have the details at my fingertips, but one of the climactic tank duels during the liberation of Paris ended by the Frenchman ramming a Panther with his outclassed tank in desparation (I can't remember if it was a Sherman or a tank destroyer). And it worked. Gets discussed in Is Paris Burning (not to be confused with Paris is Burning).

[A.E.B]

Ramming did happen, but only in truely desperate circumstances, or by accident.

Irish Guards

The best picture I've seen is a short-barrelled Stug III that had rammed a T34A head on. I Cannot find the picture on the web!

I have also seen footage of a T34 ramming a Tiger I at high speed, but that was a propoganda shot taken after Kursk and neither tank was crewed (road wheels go flying though).

A.E.B

[SgtMuhammed]

Kind of OT but I saw two M60's ram into each other during a battle (training) in Hohenfels. The ramming tank stopped cold and the rammee tipped up to about 30 degrees (it was a T-bone hit). I drove up to see if everyone was ok. They were busy yelling at each other so I figured they were all right.

The guy that got hit was right in front of me in the column (it was at night by the way, lots of sparks flew when seen through NODs) and luckily he stopped in the intersection or I would have been the target in my little M113. Not a pretty picture.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by A.E.B:

Ramming did happen, but only in truely desperate circumstances, or by accident.

Irish Guards

A.E.B

Cool, they had the top secret 18 pounder gun. Irishmen get all the breaks.

[juan_gigante]

I remember hearing about a T-34 at Kursk who rammed a Tiger and then fired pointblank into it. The explosion apparently destroyed both tanks, if the story is to be believed.

[TufenHuden]

Well that's was an advantage that

allied tanks had-there was also

a American Shermam-75mm encountered

a KT-knowing he really had no chance

with his gun he rammed it a jammed

the KT's turret from moving.

If you think that's gammey too bad!!!

But I'd think you would do that in RL

if you where in the same shoes....

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

I guess one would want to guard against "gamey" use of such but that is no different than with anything else.

I can see it... people, realizing that they just can't take out that Tiger with the light tanks that they've got, decide from the very beginning of the battle to ram it, and then adopt tactics needed to get close by. I would have a problem with that, because real commanders probably didn't think in such ways, and even if they did, I doubt the tank crew would have listened to such orders.

[Peter Cairns]

It seems the way to tackle the fact that it did happen, but in desperation as a last result, would for it to be a morale effect handlesd by the AI,

Thus in certain rare circumstances when tanks were close, one with low morale, or ammo, or wounded crew would "RAM and RUN" where by it would drive in to the most dangerous close enemy tank and then be abandoned by it's crew.

This would mean it could be in the game, but not used as a deliberate tactic because, players couldn't order it or even be sure a crew would do it.

I think CMx2 should focus on giving realistic orders to the units we command rather than us role playing every unit down to squad or crew.

Peter,

[Dillweed]

OMG didn't we just have a heated (not to mention long and pointless) debate on this very same subject 2 days ago? To be fair, I guess the previous 9 page flame was about tanks ramming anti-tank guns, not other tanks. As I recall, steve patiently explained why spending a long time coding this was a terrible terrible idea, before finally breaking down and giving us the moderatorese for "Go ! Yourself"

"Now, as for supporting ramming and other battlefield oddities. To do this sort of thing we have to write code to make them work. If we want them to work realistically, then we need to put in even more code. For what? Something that should only happen once in 10,000 games? I don't think that is a very good use of our limited time.

You old hands here might remember my Bovine MG42 Sponge example from the early days of CMBO when people requested all sorts of very unusual battlefield events. The short of it is that some GIs used cows to block the fire from a MG42. Bad for the cows, good for the GIs, then bad for the MG crew because the GIs got around the flank. So...

When we look at ANYTHING that happened in a particular setting we have to ask ourselves the following questions:

1. Is it realistic?

2. Is it relatively common?

3. How difficult is it to code up?

If the first answer isn't "Yes", then we stop right there. If the second answer is somewhere between "Slightly Uncommon" to "Very Common", then we move onto the third question, otherwise we abandon the item right there. The less difficult to code, the more likely we go to the final question:

Is it worth doing?

The balance between commonality and difficulty results in either a thumbs up or thumbs down answer. If it is a thumbs up, then it goes into a mile long list of other requests and it is prioritized in relation to the others. If it is thumbs down, then it doesn't have a chance of going in.

Tanks ramming each other passes question one, fails question two. Even if it passed question two it would likey pass question three but would ulikely pass the final question. Even if it did, it would be so far down on the list of priorities that I doubt it would ever get coded.

How's that for an answer? [big Grin]

Steve"

"Tanks going around like bumpper cars smashing into each other is also a fantasy. Did these things happen from time to time? Not a single person here disputes that they did. But are they valid to simulate? See my previous posts about that and be satisfied with that as the final answer.

Steve"

"If we spent all our time simulating things which have no real tactical value, just to prove why it wasn't used much (or at all) in real warfare, we'd have to hire another programmer or simply inform you all that the next game will be released sometime in 2008.

This discussion comes right back around to the same point every time... we can only do so much. Asking us to WASTE (and I do mean WASTE) our time simulating outlier stuff instead of focusing our attention on the core stuff is stupid. I mean completely, idiotically dumb.

Nobody has been able to show that running over infantry and MANNED weapons with tanks is important. By that I mean something that has relevance to real combat and real tactics. Ardem has done a fine job undermining his own position by proving that he can't find any references to back up his claims, but that is not unexpected. You can't find what isn't there.

So... on that note, I'm locking up this pointless and rather heated discussion. It's about as much of a waste of time as it is to spend the time coding it. Would be wonderful if we had endless time to code up whatever any small group of people on this Forum thinks is critically important, but we (the development team) live in the real world of limited time and energy. We MUST prioritize, and this is so clearly a low priority that there is no further need to discuss it.

Steve"

[ September 26, 2005, 04:41 AM: Message edited by: Dillweed ]

[Mace]

Originally posted by Dillweed:

OMG didn't we just have a heated (not to mention long and pointless) debate on this very same subject 2 days ago? To be fair, I guess the previous 9 page flame was about tanks ramming anti-tank guns, not other tanks.

Yep. I have a strong feeling of deja vu as well.

And there was some discussion about tank ramming, with people frothing at the mouth and yelling at one another.....good times!

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Dillweed:

OMG didn't we just have a heated (not to mention long and pointless) debate on this very same subject 2 days ago?

this is actually an older thread.

To be fair, I guess the previous 9 page flame was about tanks ramming anti-tank guns, not other tanks.

i don't know what the subject was, but i doubt it was about tanks ramming anti-tank guns, as it happened so commonly, was documented and even shaped battlefield tactics during the war.

i think Steve and others were talking about tanks running over infantry & gun crews, not AT-guns.

it is unfortunate that running over & vehicle collisions won't be included, as they were important parts of battles (i am still pretty sure people who argue against them do not realize the larger consequences it would have, except perhaps Steve who seems to realize what kind of amount of work it might potentially mean in the end), but i am sure we all can enjoy CMx2 without them being modelled in.