Lorcan Nagle
Mongoose
cordas said:
But it's not broke - you can target the Shadow quite easily. You just can't target the infantry in front with the coax machine gun if you do.
Problems with Tank guns.
- Thread starter cordas
- Start date
But it's not broke - you can target the Shadow quite easily. You just can't target the infantry in front with the coax machine gun if you do.
not sure about the americans but i very much doubt a british tank gunner would use the main gun against a car sized vehicle if the chain/machine gun on board is capable of killing it, better to keep main gun for big jobs like blowing infantry out of cover or taking out enemy armour.
vitalis6969
Mongoose
I'll ask a friend of mine, served 8 years in Heavy Armor M1s...
I'll see what procedure is. Another friend that served in regular armor M1s in Desert Storm used the main gun on everything that moved or didn't move.
Bunker, Main Gun
Light Truck fleeing, Main Gun
Camel, Main Gun (got in serious trouble for that one)
T-60, Main Gun (that is where I got my Iraqi tanker helmet from, came off of the driver)
I'll check it out and see if there is standard procedure.
-V
I'll see what procedure is. Another friend that served in regular armor M1s in Desert Storm used the main gun on everything that moved or didn't move.
Bunker, Main Gun
Light Truck fleeing, Main Gun
Camel, Main Gun (got in serious trouble for that one)
T-60, Main Gun (that is where I got my Iraqi tanker helmet from, came off of the driver)
I'll check it out and see if there is standard procedure.
-V
Lorcan Nagle
Mongoose
Mr Evil said:
Well in the case of the shadow, the MGs aren't capable of scoring a confirmed kill without a string of good dice rolling. Were it up to me, I'd be popping a Shadow with the main gun every time, it's too dangerous to risk not killing it outright,
That said, I'd probably try and kill it with Barrets if I'm playing EFTF or Kornets if I'm playing MEA before popping a tank gun at it.
Xorrandor said:
its not the fact that the 85pts of troops it worth more than the 70pt shadow. its the fact the 85pts of troops are not a threat to your tank but the shadow is. a tank gunner would want to take out threats to his nice little safe haven.
and as someone else stated the average person is not going to even set off a tank shell, the shell will either go straight through them or take them with it into the target of the soft skinned shadow destroying both the vehicle and the person along for the ride.
as for the person who said why cant infantry do this then sure go for it. anybody should be able to target something bigger than the infantry in front. problem is rounds from your L85A2 are not going to get through the infantry as easily. plus infantry are more of a threat. however if you have an anti tank weapon in the squad then i dont see a problem shooting at a vehicle. in fact look at if an RPG is fired at a squad, when its pointed at them and released they all tend to hit the deck quite quickly, whereas the vehicle behind them doesnt have that choice so gets hit smack in the face.
I am sure tank gunners are trained in target recogniciton, and in threat assesment, now whilst I am sure they are able to pick out a guy with an RPG and target him with the main gun, I am happy to accept that as a game mechanic that this isn't possible.
I feel very differently when it comes to vehicles, they are clearly different to men and a tank gunner should be able to target a vehicle if he sees it as a priority target. I understand what Mr E says, and would question why someone should want to shoot a tank gun at a car sized vehicle, when there is a tank as a potential target... but when there are no tanks and that car carries a weapon capable of killing the tank....
As for the shatter point arguement, you only need to have 1 guy in front of the shadow (not the entire 85 point fire team) to work as effective ablative armour given how the rules currently stand, as the closest target gets the highest dice allocated to it. Given how important tanks are currently to the game keeping as many tank killing weapons on the board as possible is vital, I would happily sacrifice 1 guy to save a shadow a turn if I where playing USMC.
I feel very differently when it comes to vehicles, they are clearly different to men and a tank gunner should be able to target a vehicle if he sees it as a priority target. I understand what Mr E says, and would question why someone should want to shoot a tank gun at a car sized vehicle, when there is a tank as a potential target... but when there are no tanks and that car carries a weapon capable of killing the tank....
As for the shatter point arguement, you only need to have 1 guy in front of the shadow (not the entire 85 point fire team) to work as effective ablative armour given how the rules currently stand, as the closest target gets the highest dice allocated to it. Given how important tanks are currently to the game keeping as many tank killing weapons on the board as possible is vital, I would happily sacrifice 1 guy to save a shadow a turn if I where playing USMC.
Lorcan Nagle
Mongoose
But you can still place your fire zone in such a way as to guarantee the shadow is the nearest model to the tank, rendering the entire problem moot. Check the rules- the FZ can be centred on any point in LOS, it doesn't have to be on a model like in SST.
Lorcan Nagle said:
That isn't always possible, in the game on Sunday the shadow was hull down on the back of a hill.... What happens if the Shadow is 4" infront of a building or woods... you have to have 6" LOS behind the center point of the shadow to do this. Unless you are saying you should put the FP in mid air having a vertical FZ which would open up a whole pandoras box of problems regarding the ability to snipe models without snipers.
Given that all the RPGs that allow target selection give a size of 2 or greater for this ability, I just think its probable that MGP made a mistake... Maybe in the original stuff they had all vehicles being size 3 or greater, and then later decided to make car sized vehichles size 2, corrected the RPGs meant to do the tanks but got a hpone call and forgot...
Lorcan Nagle
Mongoose
well if the shadow was hull down behind a hill would you even have had LOS to fire at it? Also you don't have to place a Fire Zone directly behind it to ensure it's the nearest target, you can place it diagonally too. unless you're playing in very built up terrain then you should have some angle of fire on it
(and you can't place a FZ in the air - it has to be on the ground)
(and you can't place a FZ in the air - it has to be on the ground)
Lorcan Nagle said:
The Shadow was obscured by being hull down, it could fire so it could be fired upon. Again you are wrangling with existing rules to try and fix a problem that could be more easily and reasonably fixed by altering the tank gun rule and bringing it into line with RPGs (What should be better able to locate and fix a target and fire... a tank gunner in his armoured tank or an infantry squad RPG gunner who will probably be wanting to squeeze off a shot and duck back out the way?.)
As for FZ's in the air we use them, just they are horizontal not vertical, its the easiest way to do it when you are shooting at guys on the 2nd floor of a building, put the FZ inside the building and you can't get LOS, so you put it just outside the window / balcony / openning and work out LOS to individual models.
i ahve to say in all the games i have played so far of wich there has been one hell of alot, i cant think of a single time a trooper has been in a position to sheild a shadow from a tank gun.
infantry tend to hold areas such as buildings while for example the shadow is moving down flank to hit an enemy armoured unit, if it carried troops then they tend to deploy into cover with the shaow out of LOS from the enemy, or the shadow being used as block between enemy and themselves.
if your using tactics such as using infantry to protect a shadow can i be the first to play you and put a £100 bet on the table for whos to win. if your army for example was just infantry and a shadow killing the shadow is all well and good but in same turn if you killed all the infantry you just shattered the enemy with ease after all a tank shell can still miss.
the point od most BF-evo games is to shatter the enemy, and thats the most important tactic in the gme, always aim for shatter.
infantry tend to hold areas such as buildings while for example the shadow is moving down flank to hit an enemy armoured unit, if it carried troops then they tend to deploy into cover with the shaow out of LOS from the enemy, or the shadow being used as block between enemy and themselves.
if your using tactics such as using infantry to protect a shadow can i be the first to play you and put a £100 bet on the table for whos to win. if your army for example was just infantry and a shadow killing the shadow is all well and good but in same turn if you killed all the infantry you just shattered the enemy with ease after all a tank shell can still miss.
the point od most BF-evo games is to shatter the enemy, and thats the most important tactic in the gme, always aim for shatter.
cordas said:
Pretty much sums it up for me. One of the problems with these boards is the way members will throw up any sort of excuse or wrangle rather than admit that, maybe, someone at beloved MGP did not quite think through a rule properly. Where's the harm? We all make mistakes. I just printed off 300 newsletters dated 2006
Mr Evil said:
All very nice and all very pretty, and even well spelt for once :wink: but completely irrelevant to the point I am trying to make.
In the early game when you are trying to knock out tanks ASAP it would be very handy to be able to protect your shadows from in coming tank fire whilst they fire back trying to pop tanks. Hands up *HONESTLY* all you USMC players who would rather loose 1 infantry model than loose a Shadow? The same goes (a bit less thou) for MEA and technicals, but what about the PLA and FAVs, given the fire power a FAV dishes out what PLA players would rather loose an infantry or a FAV?
In the late game which you are talking about when numbers become a far greater issue regarding breaking point, why would a player want to shoot a main gun at a Shadow and risk not killing it, if you had to do was kill 1 infantry to break the enemy.
Mr Evil said:
Oh, I had it come up once. The annoying bugger rolled a 6 on his RPG(?) (well, a 6 total really), so he got to allocate it to the desired target anyway...
(Or maybe that was a point man vs. a gunner within 2" of everyone else in the fire team, I forget. Either way I screwed up, but I figured there's no way he'll roll a 6 exactly, so I should recover...)
cordas said:
I would rather lose one infantry than one Shadow, sure. Although honestly I haven't had this come up yet. I haven't tried tying up a fire team just so they can leap in front of tank shells one at a time. If I did, it would last exactly one turn, since after that the target tank would be in range to take two fire actions: one to remove the covering infantry, and the second to fire the main gun. I guess I haven't been cutthroat enough to try such a strange tactic, although I can see where it would be annoying.
If I felt the need to fix this, I would go for a different solution: a Hit The Dirt action/reaction. Infantry can use a Ready action to Hit The Dirt, whereupon they gain obscured bonuses, suffer minor CC penalties and don't block LoS. If a unit of infantry is Supressed, they must either run toward cover (Move reaction) or use a Hit The Dirt reaction.
(edited twice, to clean up use of action and reaction)
woo i spelt a post well !!!
il try keep in character and not do that agin sorry
thing is a shadow never sits in the open and their often so far forward to infantry in our games, maybe the way we play i spose, mobility is the key part of the shadow, hanging it around infantry is good for your oponet as what you do is hide your tanks to draw them out away from infantry.
its about tactics as well.
maybe the infantry guard for your shadows is a viable tactic, so use it but i feel your eventualy have it as your forces undooing like all tactics.
i thinl its quite funny to have a poor infantry man hit by a cannon shell and propelled backwards pinning him to a tree while the shaow crew operate the windscreen wipers.
i play pla and im more than hapy for the usmc to have a meat sheild as any kill is a good kill, if shadows bother you that much then hit the smoke, or hide behind a building. Shadows are a pain but they are dead meat to a PLA FAV or any IFV and a tungusta will eliminate the shadow and anything close enough. and dont forget ramming as a tactic a technical with a command action from a tungusta upgraded to a command vehicle can charge 36" across the table at the shadow.
every tactic has loads of countertactics in this game.
il try keep in character and not do that agin sorry
thing is a shadow never sits in the open and their often so far forward to infantry in our games, maybe the way we play i spose, mobility is the key part of the shadow, hanging it around infantry is good for your oponet as what you do is hide your tanks to draw them out away from infantry.
its about tactics as well.
maybe the infantry guard for your shadows is a viable tactic, so use it but i feel your eventualy have it as your forces undooing like all tactics.
i thinl its quite funny to have a poor infantry man hit by a cannon shell and propelled backwards pinning him to a tree while the shaow crew operate the windscreen wipers.
i play pla and im more than hapy for the usmc to have a meat sheild as any kill is a good kill, if shadows bother you that much then hit the smoke, or hide behind a building. Shadows are a pain but they are dead meat to a PLA FAV or any IFV and a tungusta will eliminate the shadow and anything close enough. and dont forget ramming as a tactic a technical with a command action from a tungusta upgraded to a command vehicle can charge 36" across the table at the shadow.
every tactic has loads of countertactics in this game.
PilGrim said:
Eh, it's not just Mongoose. I dislike proliferation of house rules anywhere, because it fragments the player base and makes it hard to play outside your regular group. If something is clearly broken, sure I'd like it fixed, but I'm still not convinced this qualifies. And I'll probably advocate against house rules to "fix" it, since everyone will come up with a different fix. See my previous post for an example...
Lorcan Nagle
Mongoose
PilGrim said:cordas said:
Pretty much sums it up for me. One of the problems with these boards is the way members will throw up any sort of excuse or wrangle rather than admit that, maybe, someone at beloved MGP did not quite think through a rule properly. Where's the harm? We all make mistakes. I just printed off 300 newsletters dated 2006
Or maybe some of us honestly don't think it's a problem that needs fixing?
