Matrix Games Forums

The British 15cwt truck.

For those of you who are 'metricated', in the US, or anywhere else in the world where this archaic measure is not known (which is probably most places I admit!). 'CWT' is an abbreviation for a measure of weight called a 'hundredweight' which was 112lbs. Confusingly, there are 20 (not a hundred) hundredweights to a ton, so a 15cwt truck was a 3/4 tonner. It was the general purpose work-horse vehicle in every regular British Army formation in the ETO and most other places you'd care to name and was used by the RAF and the RN too. The problem is that it doesn't appear to exist (at least not where I can find it) in the Force Editor and I can't seem to find a suitable substitute for it there either.

So my question is: does the 15cwt truck lurk in the Force Editor under another name or is there a suitable alternative therein that I can use instead?

The Chevrolet 30cwt truck is obviously twice as big so using 5x30cwt trucks instead of 10x15cwt trucks would confer the same load carrying capacity but it would reduce overall mobility and a 'hit' on a 30 would do twice as much damage a a hit on a 15 (costing a fifth of your transport instead of a tenth). A generic half-track confers way more off-road mobility than a regular truck (and I'm not sure about the load-carrying capacity) so neither are entirely appropriate substitutes.


Any ideas or suggestions please?

15cwt truck would be a light truck. But for some reason Norm in his infinite wisdom decided to make one truck not one truck. It's any number of trucks. One truck can move an entire division. So making different sizes of trucks isn't really useful since a truck regardless of size would be any number of trucks capable of moving entire units regardless of that units size. Best to put in enough trucks until you reach the mobility you want.

Also, some transport capable units that are considered infantry fighting vehicles and their ilk are modeled same as trucks in one sense yet as AFVs in another. If you have a halftrack then for transport purposes that halftrack is any number of halftracks and can move an entire unit regardless of size. However, in combat that halftrack is one vehicle. So if you have a completely mechanized infantry unit it may have a large number of halftracks putting it's mobility off the charts because you need to have the halftracks as AFVs and so have a huge amount of transport.

It's clear Norm didn't really think that last one through.

Ah ha!

I am, as they say, absolutely none the wiser but so much better informed. Thanks for that.

A truck is not an entity - a mere piece of kit - as such. Its a conceptual thing, an 'infinite' truck. It works like a metaphysical conveyor belt conferring mobility upon its host unit enabling it to travel from A to B because... erm... because it can. But I do get the point that, in the case of an AFV, that it would fight as a single vehicle even though it would behave as infinite transporter of men and materiel in another context. its all very Zen! Bonkers too, but very profound. There's far more to this game than first meets the eye.

I wonder, is such a truck maintained by quantum mechanics?

Thanks again for taking the time and trouble to answer, I do appreciate your kindness and patience.