Halftracks

[Kiwikkiwik]

Hi Ive had a look at the German halftracks and here is some changes you might like to make.

unit 218 SdKfz 251/1 PzB doesnt exist 2.8cm sPzB L61 has a muzzle brake, the picture is probably of a Drilling. 251/10, /7 and /5 do however carry an Pz.B.39 AT rifle wich may explain the confusion.

According to Jentzes panzer tracts no. 15-3 251/9 should not appear as a platoon commanders vehicle in the armoured infantry platoons, it should only appear in the Battalion heavy company or in a kompanies as the kanone company as shown in formation 360, Again according to panzer tracts platoon comanders only received sdkfz 251/10 or 251/17.

Also in Williams book Rapid fire Unit weapon 115 the 1.5 cm drilling has an armour penetration capability of 18mm/300m/60 degrees firing Ap shot you have its AP Penetration as 0. The 20cm Drilling, weapon 166 also has a penetration of 0 the book gives it a penetration of 10-12mm at the same distance and angle.

Panzer tracts 15-3 about the 251 says this

The ... 521/1 was also outfitted for two s.M.G. ... crews...with the .. MG ... mounted on a s.M.G. Lafette on the ... roof plate instead of the swivel mount for the armour sheild. Two ... tripods were also carried for mounting the other two ... MG on the ground.

The nice drawings in the book show the HMG amd HMG tripod mounting with telescope on the armour plate above the driver. So at the moment this vehicle carries 3 dismountable mmg teams it should change to 2 dismountable HMG teams and the forward LMG replaced by a HMG.

Again according to Jentze in Panzer Tracts 12, for unit 435 SdKfz 251/17 the picture is for a 2 cm Flak 38 auf Schuetzenpanzerwagen not a 251/17. The pictured vehicle was only for the luftwaffe Herman goring division. Very few were made, maybe only 9, it carries a 2 cm Flak gun. The real 251/17 appearing in Panzer Tracts 15-3 has a KWK 38 tank gun but mounted so as to be able to follow an aircraft. It has 600 shells in 10 round magazines so the ammo for this vehicle is not enough at 40 HE 5 AP should be a lot more and half HE half AP. For the real 251/17 production starts in November 44 not Sept 42. Jentz says they appear in inventories in Sept 44 but these might be field conversions.

Panzer Tracts 15-1 for the 250 says this

a ... MG mounted in a panzerschild and a s.M.G. with a s.M.G. lafette 34 (Heavy machinegun tripod mount) stowed on the rear. However photos reveal that numerous le.S.P.W.(Sd.Kfz.250/1) issued to the 1. to 3.Zug of the leight Schuetzenkompanie (gepanzert) (renamed Panzergrenadierkompanie in 1942) had the M.G.34 mounted in a s.M.G. Lafette on the forward plate instead of the swivel mount with the armoured shield. A s.M.G.Lafette 34 (tripod) was also carried on the rear for mounting a second ...M.G. as a s.M.G. (Heavy MG) on the ground.

Once again the volume contains nice pictures and drawings of the configuration.

here is a picture on the internet
http://www.kfzderwehrmacht.de/Homepa...1_l__spw_.html

So a relatively common vehicle missing in the German OOB, the 250 with HMG mounted above the driver and carrying a HMG, little brother of the 251 with 1 mounted HMG and 2 dismountable HMGs.
I know the german OOB is full but maybe the HMG 250 configuration could replace the nonexistent squeeze bore 251?

Or maybe a space can be made this way, unit 578 and 856 seem to be the same? Maybe they can be combined to make a space?

[DRG]

The 251/9 issue I will look into but it may impact a number of scenarios and I am not going to "fix" one problem only to create a multitude of other problems...but I will look into it.

Good point about the AP capability of the 1.5 cm drilling..other weapons in that UC also have AP capability but you obviously didn't look at the UC of weapon 166..... off map aircraft weapons DO NOT get AP capability.

YES I know unit 435 is the Luftwaffe vehicle..it does the same job as the 251/17 so it is doing " double duty".

I too have a source that shows the HMG mounted 251/1 and I will consider adding it but as noted the OOB is full and many units have been as they are now for years and changing or removing them can have an impact on scenarios and as I said already I am not going to "fix" one problem only to create a multitude of others requiring many hours of work for an issue one ( 1 ) player has a problem with.

I need to review my sources regarding that 251/1 PzB.. they were for sure mounted on 250's and I know for a fact that unit 218 has been like that for going back to the early DOS versions of the game where it was named "SdKfz 251/10a" but I will look into how changing that might create unwanted knock-off effects..it may be possible without too much aggravation to change the early version to carry the PzB 39 ATR as an alternative to the stock 251/1 halftrack but even that isn't simple as it sounds....if it doesn't I may be able to find a solution but it's not just 218.....it's 832 as well and they didn't carry the ATR later war so I *MAY* be able to use 832 as something else but that depends on the impact on scenarios. I am NOT going to fix a very minor problem only to create bigger ones...which is usually what happens .......and it's not just sceanrios.....every separate campaign scenario needs to be checked as well so one seeminly simple change request that takes 15 seconds to make could make days worth of work for something that is actually very minor that has little effect on game play

In other OOB's changes like this are relatively straightforward but in this OOB any change that involved radically changing a unit has to be checked and re-checked. unit 578 and 856 are the same unit but like many others in this OOB are grey before the start of 1943 and camo after the start of 1943 and I am not going to start changing things like that at this stage of game development.

[Kiwikkiwik]

Also USA's 60mm Mor H/T unit 66, does not exist I noted this before the last update in those very annoying long posts about AA MGs in the tank machine guns thread so I guess you didn't read them.

I see your problem and feel sorry for you.
Maybe you can make the scenario designers responsible for updating the scenarios? I don't know how many people play or how many new players arrive each week, but surely people that want to play the scenarios have played them by now? If the designer doesn't want to support the scenario maybe just remove it, same for campaigns. The scenario designer gets all the joy of building the scenario but none of the pain of maintaining it, not fair!

I understand you are drowming in the OOBs and so probably havnt tried my suggestion of playing a trial game with 5x ranges to emulate a 10m hex game, but again It is a MUCH better game. So much can happen in that last 50m that isn't captured at this scale, all the small arms tactics come to life. Maybe that could be set up as a tactical version of this 50m hex game. And with the benefit of hindsight it could be put together with an eye to being easily maintained, and certainly with no scenarios or campaigns.

[DRG]

It would be impossible to have scenario designers responsible for updating their scenarios and new players try the game every month and maybe playing early scenarios for the first time and they need to be playable. If I wasn't constantly refreshing them most would be junk by now and the VAST majority of these nitpicky little "errors" make bugger all difference to actual gameplay for the vast majority of players so if you don't like what's offered you have the choice of finding a new game or building OOB's that make YOU happy and post them to the MOD's forum. I will no longer be paying the least bit of attention to any of these massive lists of minutia corrections that some players feel compelled to publish.

If you are unhappy with the OOB database and it seems clear that you are then you need to build your own.

As for game scale change that will NEVER....EVER HAPPEN. So I guess you need to find a new game to play as it's obvious these ones are not what you need to make you happy

As for the USA's 60mm Mor H/T unit 66 as I recall from nearly 20 years ago that was built as a compromise. In RL would have been a normal HT carrying vehicle for a 60mm mortar but it was built as an SP to fit the 10 unit formation limit of the game in the Armd Inf Pl's it's used and everyone but you has accepted that without complaint for 2 decades. It's a GAME it's not reality and sometimes compromises are made becasue they work " good enough " and in this case that compromise works " good enough "

[Kiwikkiwik]

I see, only problem would be the mortar can fire from behind armour and can return fire that move instead of dismounting and firing the next turn. Can't have everything I guess.

[DRG]

There is a 10 unit hard limit and those platoons use all 10 of them so there was no way to add a normal 60mm mortar team and a vehicle to carry it so the "60mm Mor H/T" was added as a compromise between reality and game reality ( and it doubles as the carrier vehicle for the 37mm gun ) and since it only exists for 11 game months it's hardly worth becoming an issue for anyone..yet here we are. The original OOB designer COULD have simply left it out and made that a normal HT to carry the 37mm gun but he had to compromise to make it all fit

[Kiwikkiwik]

Just to be clear I am suggesting a third game winsptactics not changing this game winspww2. It could be a very tiny game to start. But hey I know it is a pipedream. Duck and Cover.

[Imp]

Originally Posted by Kiwikkiwik

Just to be clear I am suggesting a third game winsptactics not changing this game winspww2. It could be a very tiny game to start. But hey I know it is a pipedream. Duck and Cover.

ROFL sure they will have time to squeeze in a new game, they already lose enough time making minor adjustments to OOB's instead of implementing ideas which is a shame because they are really good at moving the game forward if people would let them.

[Kiwikkiwik]

Hey Imp, guess who spotted the cheat that got fixed in the last patch? Maybe you think that qualifies as moving the game forward?

[DRG]

yes occasionally you do bring up an issue that is not merely a time wasting annoyance