Crewing enemy vehicles and guns...

[Urban Shocker]

seems a bit overdone. The ease of which these can be identified and then crewed was made apparent in the latest videos. Even if the "untrained" crew is less efficient it still seems a bit gamey. I might give a tank crew that lost their own tank the ability to crew an enemy tank since they have a reasonable understanding of tanks. It is pushing it to think that any grunt can jump in any tank and start chewing up the enemy with it. It seems more likely that they would open the hatch and throw a grenade in it.

Now I'm not saying that it wouldn't be fun to take over some equipment and turn it on the enemy but if "realism" is being stressed then this needs to be look at carefully by Battlefront a company known for realistic war games.

[Yahoshua]

Did you notice that red bar when the Brits jumped into the Jerry tank?

That's an efficiency/crew capacity bar.

Half-assed performance is not too gamey. And I doubt that those brit troopers will be able to even drive the tank very well, let alone fire it accurately.

Eventually you can figure out how to drive a car without any drivers' training. It doesn't mean you'll be good at it, but you'll be able to accomplish it.

[Spindry69]

I think learning how to drive a WW2 tank would be a lot harder to learn without training than a car; especially the tanks with crude steering and gearing.

[Megakill]

Most of the Russian tank drivers never had any tank training early in the war :-( Some were basicly peasants that drove a tractor a few times. Still they managed somehow.

For those who want to have super realistic gameplay - well, it is up to you, to crew enemy equipment or not. If you don't think it is a good thing to do - don't. Overall this feature ads a lot to gameplay, we did a lot of focus tests and everybody seemed to love this feature.

Maybe in the future we can release a special super-hardcore patch or smth to prevent crewing guns and tanks if this is such an issus

[Sammy_Davis_Jnr]

Yes it seems to be a very topical question.

I tend to agree with Urban shocker when he states

It is pushing it to think that any grunt can jump in any tank and start chewing up the enemy with it. It seems more likely that they would open the hatch and throw a grenade in it.

Urban shocker

But i guess a compromise might be a tank crew are the only units to capture a tank and use it to some affect. Though i guess the more grey areas would be vechicles such as motorbikes, trucks and half tracks...i must say im not sure on how difficult they would have been to drive with no experience. My educated guess would be relatively easier due to the fact maybe you are not relying on a crew.

I would like to see the ability for soldiers to be able use small arms fire that they may have picked up from the enemy..again im not sure if this was a practice that happened often or if at all.

--------------

"The Bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives."

- Admiral William Daniel Leahy (advising President Truman on the U.S. atom bomb project, 1945)

[Megakill]

Taking enemy small arms was VERY often. A lot of Soviet soldiers would trade their unreliable early war weapons for a good old MP-40. I have seen a few war movies about special forces and scouts - they would often abandom standard equipment in the favour of German.

[von Paulus]

For instance, it could be interesting to order a grunt crewing the AA machine gun of an abandonned tank, whether it is a friendly tank or not.

Somehow he would abandon because he doesn't want to waste his time looking for ammo in the tank to reload ...

Just an idea ...

(I remembered Audie Murphy in the Ardennes)

Paulus

[M Hofbauer]

Megakill,

edit: clarification: the following applies to the use of captured enemy gun pieces and vehicles, NOT small arms. I am fine with the use of captured small arms.

what about the learning curve? The first shot, first time the equipment is operated (fired, moved, hauled) should take very long to get into action. All subsequent actions should go considerably faster.

I imagine that once you find yourself operating an enemy gun or tank, you would for the first minutes or so try to figure out which knob, wheel and lever does what. In an enemy tank that is damaged I guess it is also very dark, with only a little light from the hatch illuminating the exotic equipment. Maybe you would never really find out how it works and give up.

But once you grasp the basics and manage to fire and reload it ONCE, all subsequent acts do not have that initial lag again. You already know that this wheel traverses the gun, this thing are the sights and so on. You dont have to completely learn anew.

to cut a long explanation short, the first shot should take very long or fail completely, the second shot and all later shots should go considerably, a big leap faster. Same goes for managing to execute a drive command etc.

[ August 30, 2006, 09:32 AM: Message edited by: M Hofbauer ]

[Sirocco]

I'd expect infantrymen to be more likely to attempt to crew and AT gun than a tank, and as far as gunnery is concerned I'd expect them to take longer to fire each round and to be much less accurate, especially over longer ranges and against moving targets.

[Hensworth]

They put it in because people thought it was fun, not because it was in any way, shape or form realistic. Megakill has said as much, sort of pre-empting the need to go into in depth discussions of how it should be modeled. Once it's established that the model has no basis in reality whatsoever they can pull whatever they want out of the hat, as far as I'm concerned.

The only widespread use of captured tanks occurred when armies (predominantly the Germans) surrounded and bagged large numbers of tanks unscathed and incorporated them into their OoB, with crews specifically trained to use them.

It may have happened once in a blue moon that somebody with at least some knowledge of how to fire a cannon got into an abandoned enemy tank and used its main gun. But I am yet to come across a single reference to an abandoned enemy tank being taken over and put to full use within the course of a single tactical battle.

The use of captured enemy guns as portrayed in ToW belongs more in a Napoleonic or American Civil War era. An AT gun or field piece wouldn't generally be sited in such a way that you could simply swing it around and use it against the enemy in such short notice.

But then of course the deployment of guns in ToW leaves something to be desired in the first place.

[M Hofbauer]

von Paulus/Sirocco/SgtKelly,

Originally posted by Sirocco:

I'd expect infantrymen to be more likely to attempt to crew and AT gun than a tank, and as far as gunnery is concerned I'd expect them to take longer to fire each round and to be much less accurate, especially over longer ranges and against moving targets.

Sirocco,

I fully agree with your above assertion.

I also agree with von Paulus that in any event they are most likely to just hop onto a vehicle to use its flex/AA MG since they are a bit familiar with that, and not bother reloading even that but instead rather hit the ground again and fight as an infantryman like they are trained to and familar with (I, too, envisioned Audie Murphy... and wasnt that a MaDeuce from atop an M10 TD? IOW, rather "familiar" own equipment...)

you are right that some menlets using on occasion captured enemy or abandoned friendly, yet unfamiliar equimpent , would not reach the effectiveness of the crew that are trained on that abandoned equipment, both in reload times and overall operation. plus they are rather likely to break it in prolonged use since they do not know all the do's and don'ts of said equipment (say, if they were to try to move around with a tank).

And of course Sgt Kelly is right that this "feature" has hardly any grounding in reality, it is a game fun element.

But even then, taking all the above into account, wouldnt you agree on my reasoning

that there should be a difference between the time it takes for the first "shot" (operating/moving) and all subsequent ones,

and that a fuzzy logic or certain chance probability that they would be unable to operate the equipment *at all* when they first try to operate it,

and a big chance that they would break it (cc4 and cc5 had a slightly increased weapon jam probability for operating scavenged small arms)

would make this aspect of the game a bit more, uh, acceptable, and even more fun?

[Urban Shocker]

First off, a point on the use of the prefix "super." When attached to a word like natural as in supernatural it means beyond the natural like ghosts, spirits, angels, demons and so on. In other words, "beyond normal." So calling something that is in fact closer to realistic, super-realistic or super-hardcore is a misuse of the prefix. In actuality, allowing any soldier on the battlefield to crew any weapon found on the battlefield should be described as "super-realistic" or beyond real.

Perhaps an option could be inserted (now or patched) where a player could turn on or off crewing captured weapons.

I do agree that it could be fun taking over weapons of the enemy and turning against him as I stated in my original post but there is more than one way to have fun!

I am still excited about ToW and am looking forward to the demo.

[Urban Shocker]

...also, how many real after action reports have you read where part of the battleplan was "...then we'll capture that battery of german 88's and turn them around and blow the sh#t out of the germans?"

For some reason this could be a viable strategy in ToW.

[PseudoSimonds]

Then don't order your guys to do it. What's so hard to grasp about this?

[Tarquelne]

Originally posted by PseudoSimonds:

Then don't order your guys to do it. What's so hard to grasp about this?

Lets start at the beginning:

What do you mean by "then"?

[PseudoSimonds]

Originally posted by Tarquelne:

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

Then don't order your guys to do it. What's so hard to grasp about this?

Lets start at the beginning:

What do you mean by "then"? </font>

[Spindry69]

Why not just have using enemy equipment an option in the option menu.

[Captain Pies]

I agree that it should be a menu option, at the very least this would stop asymmetric use of the capability in TCP/IP games.