Unstuck needed :)

[Voriax]

I was thinking (after having hordes of vehicles stuck in mud) that an 'unstuck' possibility is needed. If a vehicle got stuck in mud it was possible to get people to push, or the tank carried sandbags or logs that could be used to add traction etc.

So howabout that for each vehicle that is stuck you could try to unstuck it once a turn. You'd do this by trying to move it and if it unstucks itself it'd move one hex and spend all it's movement for that turn. Next turn it would move normally. Say that the chance to get unstuck is 50% and modified with experience level.

However if this attempt fails then the vehicle would dig itself deeper, to a 'mired' state perhaps with visibility reduced to 1-2 hexes to describe a tank that is so deep in mud that only turret is visible.

Voriax

[Jackk]

Voriax,

Or you could just stay out of the mud in the first place! LOL

Just kidding. Not a bad idea, but let me suggest the reqirement of having an inf squad in the same hex before it can become unstuck. I think it might take more than 2 people to unstick a 2-1/2 ton truck...or a tank for that matter Maybe they could be assigned a routine similar to the one used for removing mines. It's a thought.



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Jackk
"Smile today cuz tomorrow may really suck"

[Spunkgibbon]

I like the idea of being able to get some vehicles out of mud. I know that a lot of truck drivers carried planks, hurdles, boards or anything else that could get them out of sticky (geddt?) situations like that. Getting stuck on a raging battlefield can't be a good thing.

Also, I've been wondering if crashing through a building should automatically (or near enough) immobilise tanks. I've seen footage of tanks bursting through wooden and even stone buildings (was there an AVI in SPWW2 that showed this happening? I seem to remember so) and they didn't get stuck. Certainly wooden buildings should be pass-throughable most of the time for tanks at least.

[Larry Holt]

This sticky situation has been commented on before but its still valid. Vehicles should be able to pull out other vehicles of equal or less weight. This was true in WWII & still holds today. Most battlefield vehicles carry recovery cables for just such purpose.

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.
OK, maybe just a bit faded.

[jsaurman]

I agree with all of the above, I also hate it when the vehicles decide to crash thru a building for no reason at all and then get immobilized. There should be a way to remedy that.

[Wild Bill]

I like it too, very much. Note made of suggestion. We'll see what we can do...WB

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In Arduis Fidelis
Wild Bill Wilder
Coordinator, Scenario Design
Matrix Games

[RobertMc]

***Also, I've been wondering if crashing through a building should automatically (or near enough) immobilise tanks. I've seen footage of tanks bursting through wooden and even stone buildings (was there an AVI in SPWW2 that showed this happening? I seem to
remember so) and they didn't get stuck. Certainly wooden buildings should be
pass-throughable most of the time for tanks at least.***

If you desire this, you should find an unpatched version 1 of the original Steel Panthers. In it, there was virtually no chance for a vehicle to become stuck in any kind of building. Therefore, you had super tanks that doubled as super bulldozers, you lost practically all battlefield friction, and you had what amounted to an arcade tank vs. tank game.
I think you may have seen not battlefield film, but film taken by the Pentagon to show to the public how "tough" tanks are. In reality, very few tankers are going to try to go through any kind of building, be it stone courthouse or backyard outhouse. The threat of breakdown, throwing a track, falling into a basement or bogging would be just too great. Yes, tanks did enter wooden structures--like barns--to set up ambushes, but this was a slow and painstaking process that was not done very often.
I say prevent all vehicles from entering any kind of building. In WW2, tankers even feared entering woods for the chance of bogging or throwing a track--but would you like to see tankers crashing through multiple hex stone buildings with no threat of consequence?

[Kluckenbill]

I actually have more first-hand knowledge than I wish on the issue of getting tanks stuck in the mud. I commanded M60A1s, also various trucks and (rarely) M113s and other light tracks in Germany in the '70s. I think there should be a BIG difference between the light stuff and heavy tanks in terms of getting them unstuck. Figuring Tigers, KVs atc. are similar in heft to the M60s; it should be hard for their own crew to be able to dig them out or replace a thrown track in the time frame illustrated in a game. It would be possible with the assistance of a recovery vehicle or another like vehicle (at least as big as the one that is stuck.) My point is that a mired heavy tank is a big problem. I was stuck in a swamp in Hohenfels once, we worked over 20 hours and enlisted the aid of several M113s to no avail. We finally got it out with an M88.

The light stuff is another matter. Modern US Trucks have winches that are quite useful in getting them out of mud, I think the WW2 US Trucks had them too, but I don't have any idea about other countries. M113s were light enough that at least you could (sort of) manhandle a section of track. I think that WW2 light tanks (up to 20 tons or so?) should be possible to dig out in a few turns.
I really don't know how to deal with the WW2 mediums (Sherman, PzKw4, T34 etc.) but I suspect they should be more like the heavies and hard to unmire.

Another point on becoming stuck; it should be dramatically affected by crew quality. Inexperienced drivers and TCs threw tracks constantly and veteran crews rarely.

Regarding houses, the biggest danger is basements!! I saw this happen one too, during an icy road march (thankfully not one of my tanks.) The floor beams of a typical German house will hold a heavy tank (again, an M60A1) for about 2 seconds. It may be a bit too detailed for SPWAW to model buildings with or without basements but it would add to the realism. We certainly planned to make use of Barns and other large buildings as 'hide' positions and occasionally battle positions for our tanks. The important point is that someone would have to recon the building on foot before driving into it with a tank.

[Spunkgibbon]

Originally posted by RobertMc:
In WW2, tankers even feared entering woods for the chance of bogging or throwing a track--but would you like to see tankers crashing through multiple hex stone buildings with no threat of consequence?

No, not at all. I just think the probability of getting immobilized should be lessened. Maybe 80% for stone buildings and 40% for wooden ones, with +10% per additional building hex after the first (whether a single multi-hex building or several small ones next to each other).
Basically I reckon taking a tank through a building should be an option (albeit not necessarily a good one) rather than a straight no-no.

[RobertMc]

In the WW2 squad-level games Gary Grigsby did for SSI in the mid 1980s--Panzer Strike and Typhoon of Steel--all vehicles were prohibited from entering buildings. In the Steel Panthers series, ten years later, tanks could enter buildings but there was no sense or logic to this decision; it was a "Panzer Generalization", because tanks rarely if ever became immobilized, even in a multiple-hex stone building (!!).
This lack of sense and logic to the immobilization routines is the root of the problem that faces SPWAW in this regard now:
how to balance realism with the fact that the game won't "fix" immobilized vehicles during the campaign games. Subsequent (I think there were 9) patches to Steel Panthers added a greater chance of vehicle immobilization in buildings, crossing streams, swamps and such--but the engine couldn't cope with how to "replace" these lost vehicles during campaigns.
I don't know how much remains of the original Steel Panthers code, but it seems to me that the vehicles/immobilization issue is a mess and could easily destroy either the realism of the single-scenario game or the "sense" of
the campaign game. Many things could in theory be added--such as size of the tank or building, experience of the crew, efforts at unbogging--and those would be great but I'm not sure the engine can sustain that kind of tinkering without breaking a half-dozen things elsewhere in the code.

[Voriax]

Originally posted by Jackk:
Voriax,

Or you could just stay out of the mud in the first place! LOL

Go and try the Barricades Factory scenario!



Voriax

[Reg]

Originally posted by Spunkgibbon:
I've seen footage of tanks bursting through wooden and even stone buildings (was there an AVI in SPWW2 that showed this happening? I seem to remember so) and they didn't get stuck. Certainly wooden buildings should be pass-throughable most of the time for tanks at least.

Have a close look at the film again. The tanks do not go blindly crashing through at random. They all seem to magically avoid the load bearing walls so the roof (and possibly the 2nd story) don't come crashing down around their ears. Looks a bit set up to me. I don't think any tank (no matter how big) will fare particularly well with an entire lumber yard piled on top of it!!!!

Reg



[This message has been edited by Reg (edited 07-04-2000).]

[Dean Robb]

Originally posted by Voriax:
Go and try the Barricades Factory scenario!

Or fight the map anamolies. I got REAL ticked when, in a scenario, several tanks got stuck whilst running down a road. Seems that somehow a stream had been laid down in that hex along with the road and the game engine did what it was supposed to. GRRR!!!

Several times I've gotten stuck in places I don't think I should have - streams hidden by other map objects, plain ol' map errors, mud hexes that don't look like mud, etc.

So, obviously, I'm all for having a chance to unstick 'em.

[Gobbler]

I know they ( the army) used to sell surplus shermans as bull dozers. and they were used without a shovel to basically ram a woodframe house. What about accidentally hitting buildings? zipping through an unfamiliar european village filled with stone buildings had to lead to plenty of miscalculations.

[Seth]

I like the unstick idea. Also gives an excuse to add in the ARV's. People might actually include one or two in their core.

[Larry Holt]

I've read that during the battle of Berlin the Soviets drove their tanks through buildings rather than face being shot at in the streets. I also know that in my M60/M1 battalion it was stressed that avoiding maneuver damage to buildings was a peacetime thing and that in war we should not hesitate to drive into a building for concealment.

I think the thing here is to add to realism without too much coding work or tipping the scales too far in the other direction. I agree with the 20 ton point mentioned earlier as being the difference between being able to relatively safely drive through buildings or not. I base my opinion on my experience with the size and power of a M113 at 11 tons since I've never seen a real WWII tank drive into buildings first hand. IMHO, I think tanks over 20 tons should be able to drive into wood buildings with about 10% chance of imobilization +- a random factor. Stone buildings should have a base value of 50%. I think the random factor for getting stuck (anywhere, mud, buildings, etc.) should be less for more experienced crews.

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.
OK, maybe just a bit faded.