Tank Suppression

[ILCK]

This is really more a historical question than a game mechanism but what does supression on tanks simulate? I understand infantry and crewed weapons getting pinned becuase going for cover keeps each individual alive, as does running away. With tanks, freezing up doesn't help diddly that I can see. Maybe the plunking of shells off the armor makes you get tense and freeze up? Also, why does rifle/MG fire suppress a tank? These things are built to survive this sort of fire so you'd think that'd all be pretty darn useless. Any thoughts?

Are there any good works on what it was like to be inisde on of these metal beasts in WWII? Not a tactics sort of thing but a sort of what it was like IN a tank. Maybe that would help me understand this a bit more.

[Voriax]

Hello ILCK

If you fire at tank with small arms one thing you *will* cause is that the crew buttons up. Driver will close his hatch and begins using vision slits/periscopes. Commander will stay inside turret instead of keeping his head/upper torso outside. He'll be also using vision slits/scopes. This greatly reduces visibility. Also small arms fire may enter through such slit, if you are lucky. Or you may hit the sighting scope.

Voriax

[Yamashita]

Just some thoughts...A fella who served in tanks said getting hit by anything makes you stop & go "What the heck was that!? Are we alright?" heavy HE shells would certainly have an effect, but rifle & mg fire ? Depends on experience probably. Maybe in game terms it represents the tank moving around within the hex to avoid enemy gunfire & therefore not being able to return fire?

[robot]

Do this some time. Take a metal bucket and put it over your head. Then have your buddy beat on it with a baseball bat. See what all you suck in and how much your head sinks down intto your shoulders. You will start to grind your teeth and see stars. Now cut a small slit in the bucket and see how much you can see while your buddy beats the crap out of the bucket. This will give you a small idea of what it feels like inside a tank. You know the bat wont come thru the bucket but it still makes you cringe.

[ILCK]

So what I'm hearing is that basically it is about the, for lack of a better term, noise factor on the weapons striking the armor and, as I've found to my chagrin, about the visibility issue. I'm guessing this wasn't the most pleasant duty to get.

[Losqualo]

Being hit by a HE shell is one thing, but MG fire?

And the tank is limited in it's abilitys by being "buttoned up" anyways, so I agree with ILCK that the added supression by MG fire is a bit questionable. Furthermore since the AI seems to like that tactic a lot.

[Yamashita]

ORIGINAL: Losqualo

Being hit by a HE shell is one thing, but MG fire?

And the tank is limited in it's abilitys by being "buttoned up" anyways, so I agree with ILCK that the added supression by MG fire is a bit questionable. Furthermore since the AI seems to like that tactic a lot.

Yeah I gotta agree, seems a bit overdone. But then I use that tactic against the AI too.

[UndercoverNotChickenSalad]

hi

A lot of times the gunner will fire his coax machinegun to make sure he's got a hit before firing the maingun. So you never know when that :+: tink tink :+: is someone gaining a beed on ya. I'd image it can be quite disturbing.

[chief]

ILCK: To answer your question about tankers try the book "Iron Coffins" It's about US Shermans in WW2......sorry I don't know author.[&:][8|][:o]

[ILCK]

ORIGINAL: UndercoverNotChickenSalad

hi

A lot of times the gunner will fire his coax machinegun to make sure he's got a hit before firing the maingun. So you never know when that :+: tink tink :+: is someone gaining a beed on ya. I'd image it can be quite disturbing.

I'll have to try the book Chief recommended becuase the reaction the game simulates- not doing anything, no shoot, no scoot- makes no sense to me in my comfy chair even if you think you are being plinked preliminarily to being blow apart- then again actually being there might well be a dramtically different experience.

[Major Destruction]

From the books that I have read, getting infantry and tanks to work together was not easy.
Infantry didn't like attacking without tank support - it rarely succeeded without high casualties
Infantry didn't welcome working with tanks in support because the tanks would attract artillery fire.

Once the tanks buttoned up, they couldn't see very much of anything and relied on the infantry to spot targets for them. Machine guns didn't bother the tankers too much because they were protected by the armour but the tankers knew that the infantry were not doing much support work with all that MG fire in the air.

If nobody is looking for where the MG's are shooting from then who is watching out for mines and anti-tank guns?[X(]

[Yamashita]

Still, it seems like crews hit only by light weapons would be more likely to put it in reverse & get the tank out of there, not bale out into all that small arms fire. Perhaps different supression effects are needed for the small caliber infantry weapons as opposed to larger AT & IG fire. ?

[ILCK]

Bailing out always seems like a very last resort to me, like if the tank is on fire or the suspension is gone and death is gonna happen soon. Seems like crews really leave their tanks quite a lot and where it makes alsmot no sense are the t-34 and Char Bis-1 things that my German guns plink off of. You'd think after 4 or 5 hits it'd strike you that "hey they can't hurt us".

[chief]

Sit in a tin hut in a hail storm and I'll bet you'll want out after 5/10 minutes.[;)] I once saw a horse that went through just that and he was shelled shocked.[X(] I suspect that a tank crew feels the same way.[&o]

[ILCK]

ORIGINAL: chief

Sit in a tin hut in a hail storm and I'll bet you'll want out after 5/10 minutes.[;)] I once saw a horse that went through just that and he was shelled shocked.[X(] I suspect that a tank crew feels the same way.[&o]

Believe I understand the noise effect BUT if I'm in tank and hear all that racket outside then my interest in going outside and finding out what it is like to be live and in person in that type of strom is exactly nill. I know guys can panic and what not and run from otherwise safe spots but in this case you have the entire crew bail out. I'd feel better about the "historical" side of this if someone had a quote of when this sort of bail out really did occur.

[rbrunsman]

I've never seen a crew bail from a mobile tank. I've seen them bail from an immobilized tank.

I've played ALOT of SPWAW. Have I been missing something?[&:]

Are you guys suggesting that crews jump out of perfectly functional tanks? I've never seen it happen.

It makes perfect sense that a crew bails from an immobilized tank when the suppression gets too high.

rb

[ILCK]

I've seen crew bail from what I assume are mobile tanks when I get, in my last battle, 3 front hull and 1 turret hit- none of whihc, I assume, are immobilizing hits.

[Losqualo]

ORIGINAL: ILCK

I've seen crew bail from what I assume are mobile tanks when I get, in my last battle, 3 front hull and 1 turret hit- none of whihc, I assume, are immobilizing hits.

I think the problem may be that as long as the tanks is supressed you won't notice that the tank is immobile. You'll only see the "Immobilized" message on the lower left screen if the tank is ready, i.e. not supressed and not buttoned.

[rbrunsman]

You can right click on any enemy unit and get details about it. Not the least important of which is its movement. If its movement is 0, then you'v got yourself an immobilized tank and thus a lower priority target.

I still suspect that only immobilized crews bail from their tanks which is a very logical thing to do even if there is a hail of bullets hitting it. It's the TANK that is drawing the fire, not the crew. Remove crew from tank and the tank is still going to be getting the shots, IRL anyway.

[MOTHER]

In the game a 0 movement tank [assumed immobilized] is a lower priority target ,true-but in real life ww2 tanks are beasts of move , stop, acquire and shoot.
Bar the obvious destroyed tank if you saw an immobilized tank with a gun pointing at you ,you would s****n bricks.
To quote from a german tank crew member in the western desert."It was orders to shoot at escaping tank crews, we didnt want to do it ,but the logic explained to us was it takes days to produce a AFV,it takes at least 18 years to create a humanbeing to operate one." [X(]
Mercy or fight to the death, thems your options