towed ordinance

[TMO]

I'm playing the Devil's Hill scenario at the moment and have just noticed that 1st Light Flak Pl KG Becker has lost all of its 3t trucks but has still got its Flak 38 2cm-towed AA guns. As the trucks have now gone these weapons need to be man-handled. What happens to the unit's mobility in this case?

Tim

[Arjuna]

At present, by virtue of their Estab, they will still considered to be motorised. I realise that this is not right. This is on the wish list to fix. But it happens so rarely that it's priority has not been very high. Your mentioning it here has just raised it's priority though. [;)]

[Barbarossa]

Especially when they rout across a field with them .


Patrick

[JudgeDredd]

ORIGINAL: Barbarossa

Especially when they rout across a field with them .


Patrick

Maybe they have very strong men!![:D]

[d95err]

Reminds me of a scene in the movie "Stalingrad" which I saw the other day. After a battle against russian tanks, the main characters are forced to drag an AT-gun back to the camp across the snow by hand...

[Tzar007]

ORIGINAL: d95err

Reminds me of a scene in the movie "Stalingrad" which I saw the other day. After a battle against russian tanks, the main characters are forced to drag an AT-gun back to the camp across the snow by hand...

A damn hard way to earn one's grunt salary...[:)]

[TMO]

Dave (and others)

Thanks for the reply(s). My thought: if the towing tractor/truck is knocked out then the next time the unit is tasked with moving to a different location the towed guns should be lost (left behind) and the remaining personnel now considered as infantry. The other replies to this thread have a point - it's bloody difficult to move these things by hand (a 17 pdr AT gun is enormous!!).

Regards

Tim

[Oleg Mastruko]

I wanted to post this as separate thread one of these days, but since it's on topic here...

It is my impression units with towed guns are generally too flexible, ie. they deploy and redeploy too easy, with or without towing vehicles. I mean, main purpose of AT gun is to be used on defence, deployed perhaps once in the course of the whole (shorter) scenario. In HTTR we are allowed to tow them left and right with almost no penalties, deploy them, then tow them again, which strikes me as kinda unrealistic. Difference between SP and towed AT arty is not as great as should be. (This is not a "scientific opinion", it's just my personal impression based on playing, nothing more.)

Units with towed ordnance should be given some redeployment penalties. Hard to tell how to do it without additional "switches". Ie. it would not be fair to penalize towed units every time they move. Perhaps they didn't even deploy their guns, just stopped on the road? But, once deployed in defensive posture it should be time consuming and fatiguing to redeploy them elsewhere.

Thoughts?

Oleg

[KNac007]

SP Guns shouldn't suffer any penaltie, they were, and are in the game, as movile as tanks. But for towed guns they should be have penaltie for deployements. In fact, they have to deploy to fire (I think!) and they need sometime to deploy (some minutes). I can't tell you now, but a trained crew was able to dismount and prepare an AT gun for fire in very very few minutes! An example of this it's that in the African campaing the germans used towed AT guns as offensive weapons. An other thing is concealing and dug-in them, make defensive works and create pak fronts or the even more complex defensive systems the soviets made from 43 onward.

But for deploying, not much time was needed. For redeploying and towing again the gun more time was needed, and was impossible to do udner heavy or soft enemy fire! So maybe for that some tweaks must be made, but as Dave allready told, it's allready on the list (units retreating or moving).

Just one thing more, when this is added to the game, if units lose all their ATG but not men, I hope they are disbanded (I do not want useless platoons or companies going around) and join to their parent HQ or whatever.

[Golf33]

Re: redeployment of towed guns
Units with towed guns or other weapons requiring setup must be deployed before they can use those weapons. If you see an AT unit trundling down the road and firing without deploying, I can assure you it is only firing rifles, SMGs or LMGs; if you see the ammo count on a non-deployed towed gun decreasing, please let us know!

Also, each unit has a set amount of time required for it to achieve deployed status. For some units like heavy artillery batteries, this can be quite long, IIRC the heaviest guns take about 45 minutes to get deployed. These units will not be able to fire their 'must be deployed to fire' guns until that time has elapsed.

Re: units unable to transport their guns
This has been on the wishlist for a while, as Dave said. One thing that must be worked out before it can be implemented is exactly how it should work. By this I mean in what circumstances a unit should become immobile, and in what circumstances it should lose some or all of its heavy equipment, just for starters. Add to that, that it is possible within limits to move by hand even pieces normally considered to require a towing truck; for example, on the Kokoda Track Australian gunners manhandled the 25pdrs over considerable distance without any vehicle support whatsoever, on extremely steep and muddy terrain, using only the most rudimentary of corduroy tracks. On the other hand, it is reasonable that a 17pdr crew, assaulted at close range by overwhelming enemy infantry strength, and having lost their truck, might well destroy their gun in order to flee on foot, rather than try to manhandle it out of the way!

Until we have logical criteria that can resolve both of these extremes to at least a reasonable end, we can't effectively implement a system to make it better than it is now - so your thoughts on what exact criteria we can apply to these questions are very welcome. [:)]

Regards
33

[Golf33]

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

Ie. it would not be fair to penalize towed units every time they move. Perhaps they didn't even deploy their guns, just stopped on the road?

Considering the scale of the game, we consider that any unit that halts will automatically deploy for contact, even if the enemy are not in the immediate vicinity. We acknowledge that this was not always the case but in general units operating in proximity to the enemy would behave like this so it's reasonable for our game.

Certainly when we were on a road move and had to halt for more than about two minutes we would always pull the trucks off the road into herringbone, dismount and go into all-round defence; we wouldn't bring the guns into action but then again, in the game that takes 20-45 minutes depending on the unit so doesn't happen there either.

Regards
33

[Golf33]

ORIGINAL: KNac007

For redeploying and towing again the gun more time was needed, and was impossible to do udner heavy or soft enemy fire!

I don't completely agree with this. For indirect-fire units, deploying the guns to fire (in real life and in the game) takes longer than just readying the guns as they need to pass line and so on. Bringing the gun position out of action takes much less time since all that has to happen is to bring the guns out of action and pack up any stuff lying around.

I can't speak for towed AT guns since our army didn't have any [:)] However I doubt it would take any longer to bring them out of action than to bring them in.

Off the top of my head I would say that retreating units would have a very good chance of preserving any guns they could tow, while routing units would have a pretty reasonable chance of losing them.

Regards
33

[KNac007]

Yes, sorry, I mean under enemy fire. But not for indirect-fire units (pure artillery) but for AT artillery and so (line support units).

For artillery units more preparation was needed as far as I know (I'm not a gunner ) but position was very important and local defense was srt up etc, also they were bigger units etc. But bringing ATG into action was rather quickly, and getting out of action if they are not under fire or are reasonably covered should be as fast.

[Golf33]

Ok, got you now, I agree. I wasn't even thinking about getting undeployed but yes, that should take some time (a few minutes) as well. Currently I would consider time for bringing guns out of action to be more or less included in the orders delay, though eventually it would be good to account for it separately as you suggest.

Thanks
Steve

[TMO]

Started up Big Chill Breakout scenario as the Germans. Haven't started the game yet as I'm just looking through my forces but have noticed something very strange: 2nd Lt Flak Pl 7th FJ Regt has 2 flakvierlings listed but no trucks. There is a truck icon but it's greyed out and the number of trucks listed as 0. This implies it has lost its trucks but I haven't even started yet. Very Odd. Any thoughts?

Tim