Tank crews and promotion after battles... (good read)

[Werner_U292]

Whats the best way to promote the crews and squads so that it will best benefit you in missions to come? I've noticed that individuals all have their own leadership rating regardless of rank, so in other words a low ranking soldier with a high leadership rank might make a fine commander some day, if he survives long enough. The Iron cross also bumps up leadership but I think it should increase skill too, theres no point in awarding an infantry grunt who killed 10 infantry in a mission with the Iron Cross if all its going to do in benefit his leadership. This takes some of the role play out of the game for me and should be fixed with the patch. On a similar note, how is everyone promoting rank/skills of their tank crews? It seems to me that two crewmen generally start out with skill sets (gunner, driver and commander if applicable), the other 2 crewmen are useless and are essentially infantry grunts with tank uniforms and no guns (which makes them increasingly useless). What I've been doing in my german campaign is taking the same tank crews into battle to build skill sets that benefit the whole, for example awarding Iron Crosses and lots of rank to commanders to build up leadership, and racking the gunnery and driver skills up on the rest of the crew. This way if one crewman dies, another will be able to take over (because we're all sick of watching the gunner die in our PzIV's and instead of someone taking the controls the tank spins in circles dumbfounded or goes armageddon and charges the enemy trenches killing itself).

Couple questions in relation to crews:

-The scouting skill, does this only benefit the commander? What if there is both a commander and a gunner? Will it benefit both? Machine gunner, driver? I would think it would help all of them.

-Same as above except for infantry squads, does this benefit the whole or only the squad leaders?

-Gunnery skill is to tank guns as marksmenship is to machineguns and rifles, right? How can you build up marksmenship? It should really be an option for rewarding your infantry squads after a battle, I can only put so much "scouting" skill into them and whats the point of having gunner and driver unless they haphazzardly stumble upon a tank thats worth a go.

-How do you get special infantry such as snipers and panzershreks (bazookas)?

-Whats the point of ATR squads?

-Some of the infantry carry mausers (rifles) but have drum ammo in their invantory? Is this to replenish the MG-34 soldier?

-Lastly more of an opinion. The PzIV's are great tanks in this game but seriously lack on armor ratings especially for front and treads. Usually my PzIV's will only get half way through the map before getting disabled and crew panicking, but my 35's and 38's go FOREVER. Also there should be an option for tank and equipment repair on sight (or is there and I'm just missing it?)

More questions to come and thanks in advance!

[Hammer-n-Sickle]

I would like to see a thread on this.. I'm not too up on how the promotion interface works

[Moon]

- Scouting benefits each individual soldier. Spotting is done on the individual soldier level. For a gun crew, the most important scout is your TC followed by the gunner. Good scouting skills have the biggest impact at those two positions.

BTW, "scout" not only affects spotting but also avoiding being spotted.

- Gunnery is the same to tank guns as marksmanship, yes. The difference is that marksmanship is automatically increased as your soldiers are firing ther rifles (and hitting with them). Marksmanship is also increased DURING the battle, the only skill as far as I remember which is increased in this way and not after promotions.

- "Special infantry" are parts of squads.

- ATR squads are available usually around the early war years when anti-tank rifles were actually still somewhat effective against the smaller and lighter tanks. They become obsolete rather quickly (after Poland)

- not sure, but perhaps those are HMG crew members? (or have been at some point). In other words, the answer is probably yes.

- no tank repair during a battle, sorry.

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by Werner_U292:

-Lastly more of an opinion. The PzIV's are great tanks in this game but seriously lack on armor ratings especially for front and treads.

if that's the way it is - that's the way it's supposed to be. there's a historic reason why it was called Rotbart by it's crews ("hauchdünn" as the contemporary commercials had it for the razor blades of that brand).

and thats also why some cm players coined the phrase "do not expose to sunlight or fresh air" w/r/t the durability of the Pz IV. btw, have you ever played CM?

Usually my PzIV's will only get half way through the map before getting disabled and crew panicking, but my 35's and 38's go FOREVER. Also there should be an option for tank and equipment repair on sight (or is there and I'm just missing it?)

you mean as opposed to repairing at night or with blindfolds?

personally I think there should be an option to grow repair weed. you could harvest that and replenish your tanks' shields with it or build new ones in small factories.

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by Moon:

- ATR squads are available usually around the early war years when anti-tank rifles were actually still somewhat effective against the smaller and lighter tanks. They become obsolete rather quickly (after Poland)

The german ones, true (british, too). But apparently someone forgot to tell the russians who just started producing them two years later and right up into 1945... (also forgot to tell them that ATRs are supposed to be ineffective ). Not to mention the heavy sniper rifles, "anti-material rifles", of today (Barrett et al), which are, after all, nothing but ATRs in new design. nihil novum....

edit:

cue some fin to bring up the Lahti...

[Reichenberg]

Werner, with the Pz IV issue you can take a look at the armour values of the tanks in comparison (from the ingame encyclopedia):

35t - Front Hull 25mm(17°/30°) - Front Turret 25mm(10°)

38t - Front Hull 50mm(17°/16°) - Front Turret 50mm(10°)

PzIV - Front Hull 30mm(7°/12°) - Front Turret 30mm(10°)

As M.Hofbauer pointed out, the PzIV do not look to good on that one. Additionally comes the size of the three tanks to it - with the PzIV being the biggest one, making therefore for the biggest target too.

Everything together leaves the unlucky PzIVs as very vulnerable out there.

Uwe

[Werner_U292]

Of course fixing everything on a damaged tank in battle would be unrealistic, but a tread fix would be possible "behind the lines". What I mean by this is the supply trucks that get sent with reinforcements could easily have an engineer that would be able to fix or attend to a broken tread or the damaged hull of a tank. I have had many situations where the tanks are disabled at the very beginning of the map and the fighting is several miles ahead of it by the time reinforcements arrive. Maybe not the best time but deffinately doable by a repair team. It comes back to the point about tank crews being absolutely retarded when it comes to common sense situations. Letting the controls go if the gunner or driver become incapasitated and sitting there like idiots is NOT realistic. Even if their skill at gunning or driving had a major negative modifier added would be better than nothing. I am a pilot in real life and if the captain of a 737 were to pass out at the controls the co-pilot isnt going to just sit there and let the plane crash, he would take the controls. Same principal applies with these tank crews.

My .02 cents

[Kharnvor]

Once I've had the option to take ATR squads in my German campaign. None of the squad members had an anti-tank rifle nor really anything with which to combat a tank. Kinda wondered what their purpose was.

The infantry with Kar98s and machinegun ammo are carrying extra loads for the machinegunner. I was puzzled at first, but when I saw they had the ammo right at the start of a mission it clicked.

Glad to hear marksmanship increases automatically. I've had a few infantry with 6-8 enemy infantry kills. Happy to know they're getting rewarded for that. What about my paratrooper who picked up a single anti-tank grenade off a dead Soviet and immediately destroyed a tank with it? Forgot to check his XP after the battle, hope he got a nice bonus.

[Werner_U292]

I thought I was going crazy, but yeah my ATR squads in my german campaign have no AT rifles that I can see. The only difference is a lower rank commander with a grease gun and +10 points to get it. :confused:

[Kharnvor]

Maybe they were specially trained to hunt down, eliminate, and pilfer weapons from Russian Anti-Tank squads.

That training is what the 10 points are for:

SpotEnemyATSquad: +17%

HitEnemyATInfantry: +15%

LootPillageCorpses(AT): +100%