arethusa
Posts: 145
Joined: 5/12/2003
From: GTA, Canada
Status: offline
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[QUOTE=Red Devil].....The rationale in my mind behind renaming the ammo trucks was that a canvas covered truck is a canvas covered truck, it doesnt look any different to any other truck, its not marked AMMO TRUCK on the side so that some gunner a mile away can target it in preference to any other target in view. If, as happened an infiltrator unit passes by some trucks maybe 150 yds away then what do they do? Do they open fire on them and give away their existance or do they approach nearer to find what it is the trucks are servicing? In this case it was 3 Katyusha launchers.
Although it seems to be the general concensus of opinion here that renaming for deception should not be done without prior agreement, I would argue that deception is a vital part of all warfare...from distant history to the present day. After all the Trojans would not have got very far if their horse had a big label on it Greek APC (Passenger Greek Special Ops). One of the major factors in the victory at El Alamein was cardboard tanks and guns, unit moving up and down to great duststorms that looked like major unit movements.
Whilst these are not necessarily all things that can be duplicated in the game, I do not agree that renaming in this instance is the heinous crime its being made out to be.....![/QUOTE]
Red Devil has a definite point about the canvas covered trucks. They all look the same in RL and in the game, the icons are the same except for the German ammo trucks.
In the RL, peacetime army, ammo trucks carry a special placard on the bumpers denoting them as such. I know since I've crewed one. You want to alert everybody to stay clear and be especially careful around them, especially with cigarettes. Although it's possible in wartime that these trucks are not so marked, (any vets want to correct me?), it seems unlikely because the placards (known as TAC signs) are small enough and cryptic enough that if the enemy was close enough to understand them, he's going to be shooting at them anyway.
On a slight aside, I just watched a movie followed by a documentary on the Halifax explosion (largest explosion in the world before the A-bomb) and '[I]Mont Blanc[/I]' notably did NOT fly the red flag denoting it was carrying ammunition specifically to avoid becoming a preferred U-boat target.
So, even though I haven't done it nor (knowingly) had it done against me, it doesn't seem unfair to rename an ammo truck as just a truck (of whatever variety it looks like from the outside.)
On the same note, I HAVE renamed an infantry unit that was designated as HQ to call it just an infantry unit. Since it was several months ago, I can't remember what the specifics were but I thought it unfair to me that my opponent would know he was targetting HQ instead of just soldiers. In the army in combat uniforms, officers specifically have their insignia made hard to see so that they won't be singled out as targets.
Renaming a jeep as a tank or a 37mm as an 88mm is dumb IMO, since looking at it you can see it's different and the .wav files give weapons and engines different sounds. It just becomes annoying to your opponent to have to inspect each unit to find out it's true ID.
However, renaming something like an engineer squad as a bicycle platoon would seem to be wrong because in RL, the difference would be obvious but the game icons don't give a clue to the difference.
Therefore, I suggest a couple of rules. IMO it should be okay to rename a unit IF and ONLY IF, the icon for that unit is the same AND the unit would look the same at a reasonable safe distance to an enemy observer in RL. Both of these rules must be satisfied before a name could be changed in the game.
FI, you could rename an ammo truck a 'truck', but not a Sherman, you can call Rangers an infantry squad, but can't call an engineer squad ordinary infantry. Even though the game icon might be the same, you know in RL that an engineer carries much more obvious equipment and so the name change doesn't satisfy both rules as listed above. By the same token, you also couldn't call a Nashorn a Tiger either since they don't bear any resemblance even though the main weapon is the same.
On a slightly different note however, what about calling a Nashorn an '88mm tank'? It sounds the same and the unit on the recieving end, if he doesn't get the chance to see it, wouldn't know the difference as long as you also called all the Tigers '88mm tanks'. By the same token, all Panthers, Hetzers etc. would be '75mm tanks'. It would be obvious to the opponent as soon as the icon is spotted but it would not be trying to make the tank out as something it is not.
Same with large towed guns. The explosion from a 120mm shell should be about the same whether it's a howitzer or a mortar; the guy on the recieving end wouldn't know in RL unless he found the tube. What is everybody's opinion on this idea?
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"Good military intelligence is worth at least as much as an extra regiment."
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