Originally Posted by Bc2ID

Al,

Just think of the covereage you could have had with two man tanks and the two engineers. This way you can set up fields of fire and coordinate a better attack/defense. You can also move in bounding overwatch which will keep your squad alive more. The options are endless when you have a wingman...
I still think that even with another tank the squad would have been even more deadly....
B

I'm not sure how they've adjusted the tanks in this version as i rarely drive tank at all, I'm more of an APC gunner or groundpounding medic. But I'm wondering how they've done the reloading/moving.

My experience with the much more tactical game Red Orchestra with tanks has been a love-hate. In RO they made it abundently clear that a tank with less than a full crew was much less effective than having no tank at all, and they had almost the same positions as these tanks (1 tank commander with cupola or periscope and unbuttoned view, 1 gunner with periscope/bore view, and hull gunners) Tanks could only be crewed by tank commanders and tank crewmen class, as well.

In RO, and much like in WW2O, the tank must be started all the way before it can move, and it doesn't proceed at full speed. Traversing the barrel is also done a lot slower, with an actual motor speed controlling the rotation instead of the speed of your mouse. Also, your main gun doesn't reload if there's noone in the gunner's seat, the gunner and his (invisible, i don't think most of the tanks had hydraulic ammo lifts back then) loader had to be in position after firing to reload which took 10+ seconds.

So in RO you couldn't run and gun, you had to find cover or a strategic place to sit your tank where your accurately modeled armor deflection (this is another question, do we have armor deflection modeled in this game, because i'm used to that..) is to your advantage to bounce incoming shells/panzerfaust/protevotankovskoe Rushy’degtyarev rounds off of your armor with little harm.

So, you needed lots of communication to run 1 tank. The turret gunner had the best distance-view, but little field of vision, while the commander could (usually) see all around but couldn't shoot anything, much like the way it works in PR now. Since the turret gunner can't swing the turret around in a blink of an eye to point the coaxial gun at invading troops, the cupola or hull gunner was needed to sweep attackers away, much like is needed in PR at the moment, too.

A partially crewed tank is partially broken. While driving, the turret is not reloading, and the turret stays in the same position. While gunning, the tank is not able to move to a defensive position, and you don't have the FOV of the commander, and invading enemies can take you out in a pincer formation movement. In PR, the cupola gunner is more vulnerable, but is able to attack and defend from air targets much more readily than the turret gunner can, and i think has a more powerful round (i'm not sure). All 3 can make up a good force, but if you are missing elements, the efficiency of the tank goes down considerably.

Which brings about another point, tanks without infantry support are about as vulnerable as infantry without tank support. A tank can't look everywhere at once and respond to threats as fast as infantry eye can. They need repairs and resupplies which could be miles away (think Kashan) I'd like to see more people supporting the armor gunners, be it with the support trucks, or just spotting targets for the crew. It makes a much more effective force, and iirc, the engineer's spanner is more effective than the crewman's for some reason.