Crew/Bail out Questions

[Sgt Schultz]

Picture a Sherman. Nothing wrong with it at all.

The 'Commander' orders the crew to bail out to recon a treeline(foolish but possible).

The crew dies performing its mission.

Another nearby Sherman is abandonded by its crew due to damage.

Question 1 - Can a crew take over a tank that is not its own?

Question 2 - Can a tank crew take over a Halftrack or vice versa?

Question 3 - Could a German crew take over/capture an Allied tank or vice versa?

Bored minds want to know...

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[Magpie_Oz]

Pretty sure I saw a German crew capture a Valentine in CMAK

[Juju]

Pretty sure I saw a German crew capture a Valentine in CMAK

That seems highly unlikely to me. I'm pretty sure CM1 didn't model this.

[Battlefront.com]

CMx1 did not support recrewing of anything, so no Valentine in the service of the Wehrmacht

In CM:BN vehicle and heavy weapons crews can be manually leave their vehicles/guns. In the case of vehicles the crews can reenter, in the case of guns the crews can not. So be very careful when ordering crews to abandon guns!

Enemy action can cause vehicle crews to bail out before the vehicle is Knocked Out. If this happens you can remount the vehicle with that crew (and no other!) provided there are enough survivors and their condition is OK. However, this situation doesn't happen too often.

Steve

[FragerZ]

Oh, and in the VAAR the crew bail out of their tank and clobbered a squad with their pistols. When crews bail, are they auto-pinned and often panicing or routing, like CMAK? Or are they often as strong as the VAAR showed?

*never mind, this is a pointless question. I don't know how to delete it.

[Magpie_Oz]

CMx1 did not support recrewing of anything, so no Valentine in the service of the Wehrmacht

OK must have been a scenario that included a captured Valentine in the German OOB that I am thinking of.

[Waaarg]

I really hope the hot key for bail out has been changed. Can't recall exact numbers ( it was a ton), of pbem turns that went to hell because I accidently hit [ trying to issue button orders.

[akd]

Trucks, jeeps, most halftracks and some recon vehicles can be mounted by anyone, so you can swap crew or passengers as you please.

[Battlefront.com]

AKD is correct about that. As with CM:SF/CM:A, vehicles that normally do not have dedicated trained crews can be driven by anybody. That would be things like Jeeps/Kübels, trucks, halftracks, and... well... that's about it.

We've heavily tweaked crew behavior since the VAAR. One thing is they don't always bail with a SMG.

Steve

[womble]

I really hope the hot key for bail out has been changed. Can't recall exact numbers ( it was a ton), of pbem turns that went to hell because I accidently hit [ trying to issue button orders.

You can change your own hotkeys And there's an alternate set being included with the release version, we're informed. That has 'B' for bail, though, so you might want to edit that, even. For my money, 'Bail' is a command that doesn't deserve a hotkey. It's not an every-turn command (you'd hope... ) and even in RT, it's probably a low priority command, and even more important that you don't do it by accident.

[Baneman]

...In the case of vehicles the crews can reenter, in the case of guns the crews can not. So be very careful when ordering crews to abandon guns!

...

Nooooooooooo !! I was so hoping that the "rattled crew" from CMx1 that ran away would at last be able to recrew their perfectly serviceable gun.

Any particular reason for this ? Is the gun's status not independantly tracked ?

[womble]

I think it was said that a 'bailing' gun crew would, as SOP, spike the gun they were leaving behind (fire one last shot with the recoil cylinder drain plug removed, often), so an 'abandoned' gun wasn't going to be usable without some out-of-combat maintenance, if ever.

[Other Means]

You can change your own hotkeys And there's an alternate set being included with the release version, we're informed. That has 'B' for bail, though, so you might want to edit that, even. For my money, 'Bail' is a command that doesn't deserve a hotkey. It's not an every-turn command (you'd hope... ) and even in RT, it's probably a low priority command, and even more important that you don't do it by accident.

IIRC (I'm in work) the "Bail" command isn't mapped in the alternative hotkeys - you have to select it with the mouse.

[scottie]

CMx1 did not support recrewing of anything, so no Valentine in the service of the Wehrmacht

In CM:BN vehicle and heavy weapons crews can be manually leave their vehicles/guns. In the case of vehicles the crews can reenter, in the case of guns the crews can not. So be very careful when ordering crews to abandon guns!

Enemy action can cause vehicle crews to bail out before the vehicle is Knocked Out. If this happens you can remount the vehicle with that crew (and no other!) provided there are enough survivors and their condition is OK. However, this situation doesn't happen too often.

Steve

curious, what was the reason for stopping crews re-crewing guns if it work ok for tanks ?

[MrSpkr]

Enemy action can cause vehicle crews to bail out before the vehicle is Knocked Out. If this happens you can remount the vehicle with that crew (and no other!) provided there are enough survivors and their condition is OK. However, this situation doesn't happen too often.

Steve

I had it happen in a QB I was playing the other day. One of my M4(105) Shermans was getting knocked about. The tank commander was hit, and the crew bailed out. About four turns later, they had recovered morale sufficiently that I was able to get them to re-enter their tank. That tank ended up anchoring my entire right flank, causing over 50 enemy casualties and accounting for 3 enemy tanks.

It was very, very cool to watch.

Steve

[Baneman]

I think it was said that a 'bailing' gun crew would, as SOP, spike the gun they were leaving behind (fire one last shot with the recoil cylinder drain plug removed, often), so an 'abandoned' gun wasn't going to be usable without some out-of-combat maintenance, if ever.

With respect, I put it to you that if a gun crew runs away or routs from their piece, they're not stopping to do anything fancy to their gun.

[LuckyDog]

It's a shame that you cannot swap or combine the tank crews. I had a couple of instances in CMSF where I had a full crew who bailed out from a destroyed tank and a partial crew in an intact tank (usually the commander was dead), and I really wanted to swap them. If Battlefront could allow us to swap crews it would be appreciated! I have read plenty of anecdotes where commanders swapped tanks so they could still lead and on the radio net.

[womble]

IIRC (I'm in work) the "Bail" command isn't mapped in the alternative hotkeys - you have to select it with the mouse.

'Twas according to the sticky... I looked, special-like.

[stikkypixie]

With respect, I put it to you that if a gun crew runs away or routs from their piece, they're not stopping to do anything fancy to their gun.

I reckon that if the crew are still composed enough to receive and execute the bail out order from the player, they can still disable the gun (and apparently it doesn't take much to do this). Don't know about panicked crews however.

[womble]

With respect, I put it to you that if a gun crew runs away or routs from their piece, they're not stopping to do anything fancy to their gun.

Don't put it to me. Read my post carefully and you'll see that I'm only reporting what was said.

[Other Means]

'Twas according to the sticky... I looked, special-like.

Not for CMBN

*makes mental note to check when home*

[Baneman]

Don't put it to me. Read my post carefully and you'll see that I'm only reporting what was said.

My phraseology was clumsy, sorry.

I was just making the point to the thread readers in general and hopefully to BF.

I reckon that if the crew are still composed enough to receive and execute the bail out order from the player, they can still disable the gun (and apparently it doesn't take much to do this). Don't know about panicked crews however.

Yeah, I'm not fussed about a commanded "abandon gun" order, but in CMx1 for example a crew might Panic and Abandon a gun from some harassing MG fire without even taking a casualty and even if rallied later, cannot re-man the piece, which I find a tad unlikely.

[stikkypixie]

Yeah, I'm not fussed about a commanded "abandon gun" order, but in CMx1 for example a crew might Panic and Abandon a gun from some harassing MG fire without even taking a casualty and even if rallied later, cannot re-man the piece, which I find a tad unlikely.

From experience these occasions are quite rare, the crew has to intact, have enough time to recover and the location of the gun must be safe enough to recrew. So my guess is that even though it's a shame that this not included, it rare enough to justify not putting the effort in it. Remember that Steve was talking about the bailing out order specifically. My speculation anyway .

[YankeeDog]

I have to admit that I'm a bit curious to hear the justification as to why AFV crews can abandon & re-crew in the game, but gun crews can't.

I can see arguments both ways for either type of weapon system. But it doesn't seem to me that, as a rule, gun crews would necessarily be more likely to "spike" and permanently abandon than AFV crews; AFV crews certainly would sometimes spike the gun or otherwise permanently disable the vehicle when abandoning.

And have also read accounts of gun crews deliberately moving away from their gun position, and then re-crewing later. Most common instance of this I have read about is the practice of creating an artillery shelter somewhere near the gun position, so that the crew could hunker down during a barrage. Most accounts of this practice that I have read relate Soviet forces, though, so I don't know how common it was in the ETO.

Of course, AFV crews being able to bail out and re-crew does serve the important function of allowing vehicle crews to scout on foot ahead of their vehicles, something that I do think is an important addition, especially for recon vehicles.

I dunno... perhaps in future iterations this is something that could be refined a bit.

[TrailApe]

Way back in the days when I played with guns, there were different stages of disablement, mainly triggered by the tactical situation and the notice given.

Obviously if you were expecting to be back in a few hours, you want to leave it in a situation where it cannot be used against you, but can be quickly brought back into action on your return. Drawing from an increasingly erratic memory, I think we had to take the sights (both the dial sight and the telescopic sight – indirect/direct fire respectively), the gunners quadrant (a bit of kit that in a push, combined with the iron sights on the gun, could be used to give a direct fire capability) and a few other bits and pieces with us as we legged it away from the threat. All of these bits and bobs could be taken off and put back on the gun in less than a minute and passed amongst the crew for ease of carrying.

However if you wanted to ensure the gun was not used again, one shell and cartridge in the breech as per usual, one shell bunged into the barrel from the other end and then a loooooonnnggg bit of cord/cable/string attached to the firing lever.

Either methods would take less than a minute to put into effect.

Although the only circumstance I could think of taking these actions would be total surprise “Hey Fred, look at that tank driving through the gun position, totally ignoring the track plan – oh aren’t THEY going to catch a bollicking off the BSM. What sort of tank is it? never seen one of those before”

Or the gun truck/tractor/primary mover is destroyed and there is no means of pulling the gun it off the position.