Re-manning guns, weapons, picking up ammo, etc

[dangerousdave]

This may have been covered, but I haven't seen it. Will CMX2 have the capability for troops to use stuff on the battlefield that has been discarded by others? Manning an abandoned gun (or even tank) would be the obvious example, but also the ability to pick up small arms and ammo from casualties and such would be a good addition. Certainly, this was a necessity for some troops, such as Russians who were issued ammo and told to pick up a rifle from the battlefield to use it. Even using captured arms from the enemy you just overran. Doesn't seem it would be that hard to do either since the game already leaves the abandoned gun/tank on the field, and bodies are left by casualties.

[Philippe]

Picking up abandoned weapons probably smacks a bit too much of the FPS. In a company level game stray weapons and ammunition probably aren't worth tracking. Besides, as everyone who has ever played Jagged Alliance knows, you may be picking up weapons and ammunition on the battlefield, but they aren't really going to do you much good until someone with high mechanical skills and a tool kit spends a few hours working on them. And that would throw it into the next scenario.

On a more serious note, I've always been disturbed by crews abandoning machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank guns. It's just too easy for someone to reman them, particularly the machine gun. One American Medal of Honor winner got his award by abandoning his machine gun and playing dead while the germans walked through his position, then gunning them down from behind after they had passed. He did this several times in the course of one night. This is clearly a case of re-crewing an abandoned machine gun.

As for mortars and anti-tank guns, when you see the crew drop the weapon as a result of small arms fire you just know that they're doing it for morale reasons and not because of damage to the gun. I really don't see why they couldn't recrew their AT gun/mortar/machine gun if they recover morale and the weapon hasn't been overrun.

[dangerousdave]

Yeah, certainly for some of those things, it might not make sense for a 30-45 minute battle. But re-crewing an MG or mortar I would think would happen as a matter of course. Also, you'd think troops would pick up ammo from their dead comrades if they were running low.

[RSColonel_131st]

Picking up ammo from the dead is simulated in CMBB at least; that is the reason why infantry troops never fully run out of ammo, but remain "low" and only fire the occasional shot.

Recrewing heavy weapons would be really nice. In theory, we should even be able to temporary retreat crews from the Guns if they come under long-range fire...no?

[hellfish]

I don't know that using the weapons from the enemy dead is necessarily normal. I mean, US forces did it in OIF when tank crews suddenly got turned into infantry and they realized they only had one rifle for every two crewmen - they used captured AK47s to bolster their firepower.

But that was not something that was done willy-nilly - I'm sure those troops had time to sit down and take apart the weapons, some range time and were able to re-zero their new guns.

On the battlefield, it's one thing to pick up an AK to spray bullets, but a totally seperate thing to pick up an AK of dubious maintenance standards and expect to hit an enemy at anything over 100m with accuracy. The sights aren't zeroed to you, if there's a jam you might not know how to clear it, you might not know how to properly seat a new magazine or ammo belt, etc.

Think if you could go out on your front lawn right now and you find a random weapon there - be it an AK47, K98, Garand, Sten, or a FAL. You notice some thugs are about to do a driveby. Can you pick up that weapon, not knowing anything about it, and expect to be able to engage those thugs effectively with it?

Most soldiers don't get trained on enemy weapons.

Nearly all infantrymen are nearly always trained on friendly weapons, though, and the current method CM uses to simulate casualties tends to work out well in this regard - it's usually the most casualty-producing weapon that is the last one to die (e.g. MG42 or BAR).

That said, I fully support the recrewing of heavy weapons.