Acquire ammo?

[BadgerDog]

I'm trying to understand how to acquire more ammo from one of my Keblewagon's that is stuck in the mud, but shows that it has additional ammo in quanitity on board.

I read the manual and I've tried placing my platoon (which needs ammo) over the vehicle and the down arrow appears. When the next move comes up, they run to it, get in, but then get out, so I never have the ability to use the "acquire" command to load up with ammo.

What am I missing?

Thanks for any feedback ...

Regards,

Doug

[Erwin]

Make sure that there is adequate space inside the vehicle for the men you are trying to board.

Sometimes you have to dismount the crew first.

With small vehicles like jeeps and kubels etc, you will usually have to split your squad and board only the recon or AT team to ACQUIRE and then disembark and rejoin the squad.

[YankeeDog]

No, there is a problem with acquiring ammo from immobilized vehicles -- the AI seems to have some sort of "Auto dismount" routine that kicks in when a unit is in a vehicle that is immobilized and has no fighting capability, so it's hard to get the team to stay in the vehicle long enough to acquire ammo. I haven't verified, but I think this only happens with immobilized vehicles with no active weapons -- for example, from what I've seen a team will stay in an immobilized halftrack with a useable MG.

In RT, if you're quick on the click, you can pause the game and select the team to acquire the ammo just after they enter the vehicle, but before they dismount.

Only workaround I've discovered thus far for WEGO is to try to time the team's entrance into the vehicle for right at the end of the turn, so that they haven't dismounted yet at the orders phase.

Seems like there is a need for some sort of adjustment here in a patch... maybe it can be tweaked so that teams ordered into immobilized vehicles don't auto-dismount for at least 1 minute, or something like that.

[BadgerDog]

No, there is a problem with acquiring ammo from immobilized vehicles -- the AI seems to have some sort of "Auto dismount" routine that kicks in when a unit is in a vehicle that is immobilized... <snip>

Yup, that's what's happening ...

Immobilized and stuck in the mud ..

Regards,

Doug

[BadgerDog]

With small vehicles like jeeps and kubels etc, you will usually have to split your squad and board only the recon or AT team to ACQUIRE and then disembark and rejoin the squad.

Crew is already dismounted... they panicked and went to the pub for a pint ..

I hadn't thought about too many guys to fit into the small vehicle .. I'll check that ...

Thanks ..

Regards,

Doug

[YankeeDog]

Crew is already dismounted... they panicked and went to the pub for a pint ..

I hadn't thought about too many guys to fit into the small vehicle .. I'll check that ...

If you got the green arrow when you plotted the movement order into the vehicle, this wasn't the problem -- if a team is too large for a vehicle, the cursor changes to the red "no-go" icon.

[Erwin]

"immobilized and has no fighting capability..."

One can definitely mount an immobilized vehicle, so it must be the "no fighting ability" aspect that is the problem.

[BadgerDog]

If you got the green arrow when you plotted the movement order into the vehicle, this wasn't the problem -- if a team is too large for a vehicle, the cursor changes to the red "no-go" icon.

I didn't know that .. learned something ...

Yes, had the little green down arrow, so it must be a bug as you suggested ...

BTW, I have a Panzershrek team without ammo. I'm trying to get them to go to another team who has ammo, but are dead. I placed them next to that dead team and now I see two (2) Panzershreks in the equipment list, but no ammo. I moved away from the dead team and the list changed to just one (1) launcher, not sure why?

So, how do I get the ammo from the dead team?

Regards,

Doug

[Erwin]

If you let the unit stay with the KIA (or WIA) team so they give buddy aid, the KIA/WIA unit will disappear and MAYBE (probability driven) the OK unit will have acquired the ammo.

[BadgerDog]

Thanks.

Regards

Doug

[ClarkWGriswold]

I really wish that BFC would allow the Acquire command to work without having to actually get into the vehicle. You would think that being directly next to a vehicle would be good enough. That would likely address the issue brought up here, as well as fixing the problem that you can't mount and dismount within the same turn (which means that acquiring ammo takes one full PBEM turn and at least one partial turn).

[G. Smiley]

I really wish that BFC would allow the Acquire command to work without having to actually get into the vehicle. You would think that being directly next to a vehicle would be good enough. That would likely address the issue brought up here, as well as fixing the problem that you can't mount and dismount within the same turn (which means that acquiring ammo takes one full PBEM turn and at least one partial turn).

That would be better.

[SlowMotion]

A feature request about related topic:

If ammo sharing between units currently happens when one unit is out of ammo, it would be nice if it could be also done with a command. Maybe a unit could acquire selected ammo from a nearby unit the same way it can be done with vehicles. Then a unit could get just one kind of ammo that it needs most.

[womble]

Then a unit could get just one kind of ammo that it needs most.

It already does that. Ammo is only shared between eligible units when one of them has none of the relevant bullet type available and the other does. The transfer is pretty much immediately fired off, because it's the need to fire that drives it. That's pretty much the ammo it 'needs most' by definition.

[Erwin]

However, as soon as the ammo "giver" moves away, the OOA unit has no ammo. It would be good if could issue an order so that (say) a certain ("reasonable") % of the giver's ammo was transferred.

[Michael Emrys]

It already does that. Ammo is only shared between eligible units when one of them has none of the relevant bullet type available and the other does.

That may be true for small arms ammo; I haven't checked that yet. But I notice that if two mortars are placed in close proximity, they each show the sum total of ammo for both of them.

Michael

[Erwin]

Mortar ammo is shared so long as the mortars are in proximity (8m?). But, if they are apart each reverts to what it had originally (which could mean that one of the mortars is OOA).

Small arms ammo is only shared clip by clip ONLY when one of the units is OOA, and ONLY between units in the same platoon IIRC. So, when they part the OOA unit is still OOA.

[womble]

That may be true for small arms ammo; I haven't checked that yet. But I notice that if two mortars are placed in close proximity, they each show the sum total of ammo for both of them.

Michael

Only in the weapon info pane. In the unit's ammo count, the numbers don't change. The weapon info pane shows "rounds available". The unit count shows "rounds carried".

That's another way you can see whether two MG/Bearer teams can share ammo: if they're close the total available ammo will show in the weapon info panel; if that number is larger than what either team is carrying, it means they can share ammo.

[skimbo]

If I may offer something ammo related I noticed the other night when playing on the battle strange awakening.

I had 2 german mortar teams and I parked two mortar ammo trucks next to the mortars and got the drivers to dismount. I'm sure the ammo count went up on the mortar teams to 61 HE rounds and 14 smoke rounds.

Can only assume this is because they were set up next to the ammo trucks and within easy reach of the goodies the trucks contained. Sound logical to anyone else? Thought I was going to have to board the guys to acquire the extra ammo.

Skimbo

[Statisoris]

Can only assume this is because they were set up next to the ammo trucks and within easy reach of the goodies the trucks contained. Sound logical to anyone else? Thought I was going to have to board the guys to acquire the extra ammo.

Skimbo

Yes Skimbo, vehicles share ammo from their stockpile with nearby infantry, however, when the infantry moves away from the vehicle the extra ammo will not be available anymore. The unit would have to get in and aquire the ammo to make the ammo carryable. It works the same way as infantry ammo sharing except that the platoon command structure requirement is not there for vehicle/infantry sharing.

[skimbo]

Thank you for clearing taht up - thought I might have dreamt it ...

Regards

Skimbo

[SlowMotion]

It already does that. Ammo is only shared between eligible units when one of them has none of the relevant bullet type available and the other does. The transfer is pretty much immediately fired off, because it's the need to fire that drives it. That's pretty much the ammo it 'needs most' by definition.

Often yes, but there are also cases where some unit has just very little ammo left. And need more ASAP - like before next enemy contact, because it's very likely the unit won't survive with ammo they have left. Also in some special cases units might want to get equal amount of some ammo. Like if one schreck team has 5 rounds and another team just 1. 3 and 3 might be better.

The same with MG teams where one has 100 rounds, the other 2000.

So I guess my point is: there are plenty of situations where sharing ammo is better done *before* enemy contact.

[womble]

Often yes, but there are also cases where some unit has just very little ammo left. And need more ASAP - like before next enemy contact, because it's very likely the unit won't survive with ammo they have left. Also in some special cases units might want to get equal amount of some ammo. Like if one schreck team has 5 rounds and another team just 1. 3 and 3 might be better.

The same with MG teams where one has 100 rounds, the other 2000.

So I guess my point is: there are plenty of situations where sharing ammo is better done *before* enemy contact.

I'm not talking about possibilities, or 'better' or future developments in-game. All I'm doing is describing how the mechanic works in the game. Of course it'd be 'better' if we had the option to dragbox two teams and then freely share their ammo at whatever point we thought tactically appropriate.

[SlowMotion]

to womble: on page 2 I wrote

"A feature request about related topic"

So obviously I was talking about future developments.

[Jaresh]

What about bazooka ammo?

I placed one unit with zook without ammo on same square with another who had no zook but zook ammo. They don't seem to exchange. In manual it says that they need to belong to same formation. I'm not clear what is a 'formation': team, squad, bataillon?

Has anyone managed to succeed this?

Thanks.