Kubelwagens as scout vehicles ?

[noob]

Would the community regard the use of Kubelwagens as scout vehicles as a gamey tactic, i'm running an operation as an umpire and i have the option to ban the practice but i want some confirmation first, if they were used as bait in real life then fair enough but i doubt it, what say you all ?

[argie]

Sure it is.

Just in case, the best is to have a realistic layer of infantry troops to kill soft targets before entering in the ATG killzone.

[Lets_All_Fight]

Do Kubelwagons carry anything much in the way of ammo? In SF I got really wary about putting anything in harms way if I thought I was going to lose a source of supply - especially in some of the longer fights.

[YankeeDog]

Mostly gamey.

But to play devil's advocate, if you have your PaK front set up with absolutely no pickets/OPs in front of the guns that can take care of something as flimsy as a kubelwagen, then you deserve to have your AT Guns discovered.

[Sixxkiller]

Unless theres a FO in it, then not so gamey. You might be a monster but not gamey.

[Jaws]

Mostly gamey.

But to play devil's advocate, if you have your PaK front set up with absolutely no pickets/OPs in front of the guns that can take care of something as flimsy as a kubelwagen, then you deserve to have your AT Guns discovered.

Agree gamey tactics... He didnt scout.. He drove full speed, over an bridge and into my defence line just to check my fire.... We named it already the Kamikaze Kübel. One of my .30 took it out deeper in my defence.

[YankeeDog]

Also worth noting that there are legitimate ways of scouting with a Jeep or Kubelwagen.

U.S. Armor units, especially, sometimes used Jeeps as forward scouts.

In a large map, move to contact battle, darting a jeep from defilade to defilade, and occasionally dismounting the crew and having them scout forward a bit on foot, is completely legit.

But suicide runs towards a known enemy defensive line is definitely gamey.

[MikeyD]

If you read contemporary accounts of U.S. scouts they would literally drive their jeeps down the road until they encountered - one way or another - the enemy. Admittedly, they tended not to use such tactics if the enemy was guaranteed to be 200m down the road like on CM maps. So you need a willing suspension of disbelief during the game "Just out for a drive, looking around. Nothing bad going to happen to me. Nosiree."

[YankeeDog]

Sure. But all the accounts of this I have read were during rapid armored column advances, so again we're talking about move to contact drill, where the enemy could be anywhere over a considerable distance, not a headlong charge into a known enemy defensive line.

Fundamentally, if the enemy could be anywhere in the next 10km, driving a jeep down a road and seeing if gets shot at might be appropriate. There's a risk vs. reward calculation that has to be made here, and in a rapid advance there's a payoff to keeping up forward momentum and preventing the enemy from getting a chance to catch a breather and dig in.

But if you already know there is a significant enemy resistance point within the next 1-2km, sending unarmored vehicles traipsing down the road as bait isn't so realistic.

[c3k]

Gamey? I don't understand the term. There are tactics. There are good tactics, bad tactics, tactics that work, and tactics that don't. Kill a kubel. Tell him to send more. Why worry about your opponent's feelings? Crush him. Crush him with a bulldozer. Crush him with a crowbar. Crush him with squishy jello cubes. Just crush him.

[YankeeDog]

It's gamey and a problem due to CMx2's current lack of a cover armor arc.

If you hide or give your ATGs a very short cover arc to prevent them from firing on low-value targets like a suicide kubelwagen, this may let your opponent execute an armored bound without getting shot at (A Sherman can cover a fair amount distance across open ground in a single WEGO turn).

Or, you can leave your ATGs unhidden, so they'll take on enemy armor as soon as it comes into view. But then they may open up on a Kubelwagen and reveal themselves before any enemy armor makes an appearance, unless you are able to eliminate the Kubelwagen VERY quickly with other assets.

[c3k]

Sure. Now the tanks know where the ATG's are. Or do they? Were the tanks in oversight? If so, they should be vulnerable to the ATG's. If not, the spotting information won't help (much). Or are tanks supposed to go forward without recce?

Why not give your ATG's tight cover arcs until the tanks are in the kill sack?

Counter, counter-counter.

[Sergei]

Gamey? I don't understand the term. There are tactics. There are good tactics, bad tactics, tactics that work, and tactics that don't.

And then there are tactics which, if someone tried to enact them in real life, would get a response of "you want me to do WHAT?", possibly followed by fragging the officer suggesting it. These are generally called as gamey tactics.

It also refers to abusing any other game mechanism, bug or feature that might result in clearly unrealistic results. It's not very clear cut - to one a flag rush might be a legit tactic, to another player it would be gamey abuse of the knowledge of what the goal is - in real life, commanders didn't fight for the control of victory locations, and usually they wouldn't know beforehand what the coming battle would center around on unless it was something like a bridge, a prominent hill or other exceptional feature.

[Fetchez la Vache]

Simply not cricket, what?

[YankeeDog]

Sure. Now the tanks know where the ATG's are. Or do they? Were the tanks in oversight? If so, they should be vulnerable to the ATG's. If not, the spotting information won't help (much). Or are tanks supposed to go forward without recce?

Why not give your ATG's tight cover arcs until the tanks are in the kill sack?

Counter, counter-counter.

You don't need oversight with firepower; it's a suicide run -- you expect to lose the soft-skin. You just need a couple of teams with binocs to watch for the location of the ATG when it opens up. Platoon HQs work great because they have binocs and can spot for the mortars as soon as the ATGs are spotted.

Or, if your opponent puts tight cover arcs on the ATGs, now you know what ground he's not covering with the ATGs, and you can move your armor accordingly.

Admittedly, it's often more difficult to spot ATGs in CMx2 than it was in CMx1, so this tactic isn't as universally useful as it used to be -- generally you need to observer(s) to be closer to be sure of seeing the guns. But it still works pretty well much of the time.

Now, if we had some way of telling our ATGs to only open up on armor, or the TacAI for ATGs simply didn't open up on infantry or unarmored vehicles unless specifically ordered to do so, or if the enemy soft skins were getting dangerously close, things would be much easier...

[dan/california]

If you read contemporary accounts of U.S. scouts they would literally drive their jeeps down the road until they encountered - one way or another - the enemy. Admittedly, they tended not to use such tactics if the enemy was guaranteed to be 200m down the road like on CM maps. So you need a willing suspension of disbelief during the game "Just out for a drive, looking around. Nothing bad going to happen to me. Nosiree."

"Private whatsisname is drunk again, I mean still. That idiot, wait I have the perfect job. He can take his bottle with him for all I care. What jeep is in the worst shape, I wonder? "

The unspoken thoughts of an unnamed company commander some where, some when.

[Agua]

Definitely, gamey.

[c3k]

Oh, I totally agree that a Cover Armor command would be fantastic. We don't have it.

Would you think it gamey if I rushed a squad into the middle of the town which is my objective?

a) They get gunned down, showing that it was a suicide run, but I learn were all the defenses around the town square are located.

They make it. I am rewarded with my audacity by gaining a toehold on the objective.

One man's "gamey" move is another man's innovative tactic. Once we start defining gamey then we'll fall into a system where a group of cognescenti look down with opprobrium upon anyone who doesn't "play by their rules".

Now, that doesn't mean I want to battle someone who has 100 kubelwagens and a dozen FO's. But once the unit parameters are agreed upon, it's game on. Use what you've got in any manner the game allows you to.

[noob]

The situation in the games i am overseeing is that the attacker knows that the enemy will be in the immediate vicinity i.e. within 1 Kilometer so im banning it

[c3k]

You do know that German recce was often conducted with Kubelwagens? Isn't that the purpose of sending them out? If the defenders have poor fire discipline (no covered arcs) then the attacker finds out where they are located and radio it back.

Do we need to have a list of gamey behavior? C'mon. Man up.

[MikeyD]

would get a response of "you want me to do WHAT?"

There were a LOT of "You want me to do WHAT?" tactics back-in-the-day. That's how you get casualties in the hundreds of thousands during wartime. Recce by jeep was one of Belton Coopers many tasks in "Deathraps" if distant memory serves. Even today squads tend to rotate who gets to be on point because the chance is the first guy down the road is going to be the one to get shot at, if not shot. Racing forward to get shot really does little good in the game, the faster you go the less situational awareness. All you tend to do is abruptly discover the forward edge of the battle.

[noob]

You do know that German recce was often conducted with Kubelwagens? Isn't that the purpose of sending them out? If the defenders have poor fire discipline (no covered arcs) then the attacker finds out where they are located and radio it back.

Do we need to have a list of gamey behavior? C'mon. Man up.

As far as im concerned certain vehicles were designed for certain tasks, and i'm going to make a big assumption here but i think the armored car and the half track were designed for first contact in a known hostile area, so although there might be exceptions in real life it seems reasonable to me to ban kubelwagens from performing the duties an armored car or Half track should.

Also in an operation between two teams of players you do need to have a list of gamey tactics to avoid a mutiny by one side or the other

[Sergei]

You do know that German recce was often conducted with Kubelwagens? Isn't that the purpose of sending them out? If the defenders have poor fire discipline (no covered arcs) then the attacker finds out where they are located and radio it back.

There's different kinds of recce. Many of those, including the type you are describing, are outside the scope of Combat Mission.

In real life, just the scout running into the defense line and getting killed doesn't yield any information whatsoever to the attacker. The scout has to get back and report what they saw, as well. This is why recce units usually don't consist of a single vehicle (whether they be on jeeps, trucks, motorbikes, bicycle or on foot): if the lead vehicle blows up, the rest of the column can retreat and report.

[Jaws]

I will not blame people if they use gamey tactics.

Only thing that bothers me is, we have the best ww2 tactical game in the world with all kind of game tweaks to prevent gamey tactics. And still people will try to find the flaws.

My Gamey XP CMBN PBEM until now.

Arty in attackers deployment zone in turn one (sometimes very small in most of QB maps)

Running a US scout team in front of a German tank and after 10 seconds move a US tank in position to take out the distracted German tank.

Exploit US 60mm sniper mortars.

Kamikaze Kübelwagen.

At the end gamey tactics can spoil this beautiful game and people will play only single or play another game.

[MikeyD]

i'm going to make a big assumption here but i think the armored car was designed for first contact in a known hostile area

I'm working off old faulty memory here myself, but I believe about this timeframe they actually took away recce unit HT armor and gave them jeeps instead. The Brits had the best of both worlds combining 30mm frontal armor with the inconspicuousness of a jeep in their little Dingo scout cars.