Matrix Games Forums

From the manual, page 45
6.2.6. ARMOR
Armored units are excellent on offense, but should beware dense landscapes like heavy forest, mountains, or urban terrain. Also, they perform dismally in marshes. Well-entrenched defenders with some AT capabilities will do well in such terrain. Panzers are better on offense then on defense: attack them before they attack you. Most panzers are best against infantry, but panzers with heavier calibre guns and armor will try to focus on taking out any enemy tanks first. Armor and armored cars do not entrench. Armor should be used to thrust deep behind enemy lines and encircle.

I do not know if that's the right decision that tanks and armored cars did not entrench themselves.

We've seen pictures of the entrenched and camouflaged German tanks were dug in somewhere to defend against the Russian offensive.

I think tanks and armored cars should also have the ability to entrench themselves.
Maybe only to a limited entrenchment and / or takes a significant length of time to entrench.
Or speed and degree of entrenchment depends on values such as the experience.

That they can not entrench at all - I think that's not the best design decision. [:(]

1 tank 5 man (or less) crew - would take a very long time to dig any kind of vehicle pit. Sorry dont agree.

Well...

Yes but this kind of entrechment takes long time and surely not under the combat.
Anyhow you can create something like these photos with the fortification option.

Actually, tanks *can* entrench themselves ... if they have a dozer blade attachment ... the allies did, late war, on some, but I am not sure whether the Germans did or not.

They *did* have engineer units, and usually these would have dozers or dozer-like vehicles, which could have dug bays for Panzers, and would have done so in Pz and PzGr Divisions, if needed.

Of course, as the Germans understood, a stationary tank is not the way to go ... tanks are for maneuver warfare, and that's the way they used them as much as they could, as long as they had fuel, so the issue doesn't really arise much, I guess.

Phil

'Fortification' in the game doesnt necessarily have to mean 'digging' in. It could be a simple as pre-registered fire for artillery, setting up firing lanes, and using the terrain to advantage. Just because it is a 'plains' hex doesnt mean it is perfectly flat, devoid of any cover. It could even mean local (spoiling) counterattacks during the enemies attack. All this could be lumped into an advantage number and called 'fortification'

So the germans probably should get some defensive bonus over time for their armour.

Armor SFTs in the game editor have the same entrench power as infantry, so I am not sure why they are not entrenching. Maybe event related or hard-coded.

Also, you can set the entrench level per hex in the editor if you want to go through and, say, set all Soviet armor to entrenched at the start of the scenario.

However, I'm not sure whether it would be 'historical' or not.