Recrew vehicles and enemy equipment

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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [World War II] >> Steel Panthers World At War & Mega Campaigns >> Recrew vehicles and enemy equipment

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Recrew vehicles and enemy equipment - 8/3/2001 9:22:00 PM

gdpsnake

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From: Kempner, TX
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Is it possible to program in a future version the ability to recrew a vehicle with a crew unit other than the one that started in the vehicle? That way, crew units could be purchased (At a higher cost perhaps) to represent ad hoc drivers to recover vehicles whose original crew was killed. (Everyone likes to kill those poor saps!) The crew would enter a hex (Whether or not the original crew was around) and the game would ask "RECREW VEHICLE? If you type yes then the crew hops in. The penalty is very low experience (not morale as they could be as fanatical as anyone else). This would require another change to the game and that's the destruction of a vehicle when the crew inside is killed. Fortifications, tanks, apc's, AA and AT guns all get destroyed when the last crew member manning the unit is killed. It would be nice to recrew an AT gun, abandoned tank, whatever when it's not ruined, only the crew is. You could also use crews to man abandoned enemy equipment! Nothing like GI's coming across an unmanned German 75 and turning the weapon against the original owners for the duration of the scenario! Breakdown value should increase and experience should be low. This would be very realistic. Of course, it would be great if any line infantry could do this but I'd settle for just crew units. What do you think?

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- 8/3/2001 10:24:00 PM

dfsrusa

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From: St. Paul, Minnesota
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Totally agree. Probably not possible in existion code of SPW@W but might be something for Combat Leader. True, there are tons of documented occurrences of troops using both their own side's equipment that they were not originally asigned to and using captured equipment. If this is done it would be good to have it work for MMGs and HMGs. Then it would be like support weapons in Squad Leader. Just because the original crew got picked off by rifle fire doesn't mean the MG doesn't work anymore. If I were in a trench next to them and saw several men advancing on my position I just might be brave enough to scoot overthere and open up with the MG. It would also be nice to have the option to try and hit the actual AT/AA gun itself, not just the crew, again, as in Squad Leader. An AT gun hit by an AP round will probably be rendered ineffective for the duration of the battle if not totally destroyed, while the crew could escape relatively unharmed. Scot Stephenson

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- 8/4/2001 1:52:00 AM

sinner

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From: North Carolina
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I disagree. Let's see the easiest to operate weapons in the battlefield: a personal weapon. Think about this: You are an infantry guy. You find an enemy MG. Maybe you can use this MG that has a few rounds still atached to it. But, after that, you must get more rounds. You cannot get more supplies easily. They gun is different of what you know how to use (sights? safety locks? fire select triggers?). And you already have a gun that you have been trained into. And it works. Take this: You are a pro on your weapon. You know it from the inside to the outside. But then you have the opportunity to use a weapon that you do not know, that can hide a bobby trap (a hand-grenade), and that it is difficult toget ammo for. My choice is clear: I stick with my weapon. Maybe after the battle I will pick it up as a souvenir, but... not while somebody wants to kill me! Then, for other weapons (AT guns, mortars, ...) they are more difficult to use. They need training to be used effectively. And you are an infantryman, not an AT crew member. And, who knows if there's a hand-grenade with no safety pin in the ammo box. And, if a friendly airplane sees an enemy gun, he is going to bomb it! Thinks about a friendly armoured vehicle. They see an AT gun, enemy type. First thing to do: shower it with MG fire, some HE rounds and get the hell out of there! And, maybe, call for some mortar fire to that position. War is not Rambo against everyone, picking up guns left by dead enemy bad-guys. It is about profesionals looking to follow orders, capture/defend the objectives and survive the battle. Of course this is how I view it.

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- 8/4/2001 2:48:00 AM

Rick Borovec

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From: Rochester, Washington
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I would agree that having ad hoc crews would be not in the best interests of the game. Reminds me of the movie "Kellys Hero's" where at the end Oddball buys the Tiger tank from the german and drives off. The movie was a bit of a stretch, but that part was totally absurd. Thanks but no thanks.

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- 8/4/2001 3:12:00 AM

john g

Posts: 984
Joined: 10/6/2000
From: college station, tx usa
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quote:

Originally posted by gdpsnake: Is it possible to program in a future version the ability to recrew a vehicle with a crew unit other than the one that started in the vehicle? That way, crew units could be purchased (At a higher cost perhaps) to represent ad hoc drivers to recover vehicles whose original crew was killed

My major problem with this is that no nation that I know of did this on the battlefield. Vehicles if abandoned were checked for boobytraps after a battle and then towed back to the shop. Troops would not jump into any available vehicle and try to continue fighting with it without knowing what its condition was. thanks, John.

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- 8/4/2001 5:37:00 AM

Tombstone

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And until your own markings were on it too right? Tomo

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- 8/4/2001 5:50:00 AM

sinner

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...and after telling to the higher HQ that you have captured equipment, so your airforce wouldn't blow it up!

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- 8/4/2001 11:02:00 AM

Khan7

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From: StL
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It's probably pretty unrealistic to have people going out on the battlefield and hopping into abandoned enemy tanks and driving them to victory. I don't believe this ever happened in WW2. GUERRILLAS of all times and places have commandeered enemy equipment for their own use (this being their main source of arms and military supplies), but they probably wouldn't use it until they had broubt it back to base, fixed it up, and organized a crew and provided it with whatever ammunition, repairs etc. it needed. It's a wacky idea, but it's just that: wacky. Never happened, for all the reasons mentioned in this thread.

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Khan7

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- 8/4/2001 11:41:00 AM

kao16

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But what would be nice is if the crew from one AT gun (since destroyed) can man the other AT gun in their section (where the crew have been killed off). Ditto for tank crews from one in a platoon manning another tank in the same platoon.

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- 8/4/2001 11:46:00 AM

Kluckenbill

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From: Lancaster, PA, USA
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quote:

Originally posted by kao16: But what would be nice is if the crew from one AT gun (since destroyed) can man the other AT gun in their section (where the crew have been killed off). Ditto for tank crews from one in a platoon manning another tank in the same platoon.

I agree, I think it would be useful and realistic if you could replace a disabled crew with another crew from the same platoon, but NOT from a defferent platoon and NOT from a different kind of unit.

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- 8/4/2001 9:06:00 PM

mellon

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From: Otaniemi, Espoo, Finland
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In my opinion recrewing certain types of vehicles/guns would be highly realistic. I once read a book which depicted some events of the Winter War, and there were stories about his happening in reality. In one example a Finnish jaeger squad attacked a Soviet infantry gun, shot some of it�s crew, and the rest ran away. After the Soviets had run too far to be shot with rifles the jaegers "crewed" the inf gun, aimed through the bore and managed to have some shells land quite near the escaping original crew. The leader of the squad almost got seriously injured by the gun�s recoil effect. All this without any inf gun training. If this would be implemented (probably impossible) in SPWaW there should be some restrictions about what units can crew guns, tanks, "soft" vechicles etc.. If I had the chance to cause some extra casualties by using a inf gun instead of my faithful rifle, I might do it, but I wouldn't try to use a foreign tank without any training. Considering all this, it would be quite nice to have recrewing as a feature in CL.

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- 8/5/2001 4:05:00 AM

gdpsnake

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I think it's very realistic. Didin't Audie Murphy take a MG42 from one MG nest and use it singlehandedly to wipe out two other nests? Didn't he jump on a burning tank and use a 50 caliber MG to kill 50 Germans? He was a rifleman and managed to do just fine. There are dozens of examples, DURING BATTlE that captured equipment was used. I think it was in Korea where someone jumped into a disabled tank and used the MG against advancing Chinese troops to good effect. I agree that a squad probably wouldn't jump into a tank and "Drive it to Victory" but the weapondry still works even if you can't figure out how to drive it. Didn't JFK tie a 37mm AT gun on his PT boat? Was that a hood ornament or did he expect to use it? While it may be a game programming constraint, I don't think it's so 'absurd' that a squad could use captured equipment or a sherman crew without a tank could go to a sherman tank without a crew during battle as many in this post seem to suggest. If my rifle was empty I'd grab the nearest enemy weapon if only for protection and I wouldn't wait until the fight was over to do so. I know it was a movie but the idea of grabbing motar shells and using them as grenades shows that innovation can make a difference. I guess I'm not convinced by some of these posts that it's not realistic. Fire away and make me a believer! Maybe I've seen too many movies!!!!!!

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- 8/5/2001 4:34:00 AM

Khan7

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The point is that it happened rarely, and various variables would make it very hard to implement, and the rarity of such instances and the possibly hairy instability they would bring to the game would probably make the programming not worth it. Note that generally only more generic things like MGs were commandeered, and no one has come up with an instance of someone hopping in and using a tank to its full potential. So my final analysis would be that it would be too much trouble to simulate the few instances in which this made a difference or even happened at all. However, having a crew switch tanks or guns within their own unit makes a whole lot of sense, and should possibly be looked into.. yet again you run into the question of-- is it worth it?

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Khan7

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- 8/5/2001 4:53:00 AM

sinner

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One thing is manning enemy weapons and/or vehicles. Another thing is to use own stuff. I kind of remember that now, a tank-crew can go to any own abandoned tank and make it work. I will have to try it to be sure, though. You can try it: hit key "9" on a couple of vehicles and swap their crews. Wait a couple of turns and, if nobody shoots at them and they rae not suppressed, it could work.

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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [World War II] >> Steel Panthers World At War & Mega Campaigns >> Recrew vehicles and enemy equipment

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