softies

[Greybeard]

Hello Guys,

Well, for you that just mentioned that the crew was gone, and the vehicle was abandonded, here is probably what happened..

A) yes it's possible for a vehicle to take a hit, and the crew/passengers bail out leaving an unmanned vehicle behind.. often you opponent will concentrate on the crew.. any HE fire that targets the crew will cause supression to the squad.. and if the crew is killed, the squad will suffer more supression from seeing their allies' demise.
Next turn, it's much easier to go after a retreating/routed squad..

B) The game has limits on how many units it can handle. ww2 and mbt the max unit count is 500. In H2H/WAW it's 400. Once the limit is reached, you'll find when vehicles take damage that would normally result in the crew bailing out, will end up abandoned with no crew to be found.. because the game simply has no more room to accomodate the crew.. personally I think the game designer's were Star-Trek fans.. and the USS enterprise is out there beaming up hapless crews that find they have their mounts shot out from under them :)

Greybeard

[AlienXXX]

It just happened to me yesterday, after having seen your post, with an Israel Scout Jeep. (just crew, nobody else onboard)
The IA phase replay was fast but I could just see the jeep was hit and abandonned. At the end of IA phase, I though I would find the crew somewhere but I could not. No crew on the map, no crew destroyed in the Unit menu!
But the jeep is on the map as "Abandonned"
I must say it's the first time I notice that.

Thesix,
Seeing Greybeard's reply, do you think that is what happened? Do you think the Israelis when over the 500 unit limit?

[Thesix]

No, absolutly not a problem of 500 limit in my case.
In fact, I suppose what happened is what Greybeard describe in A):
- the crew was destroyed just after they bailed out but in the same turn after taking a second hit. This way, the game did not have time to create the new unit for the crew which should have been named F11 for example. I guess the system create the new unit only if they survive the bail out turn.
In this case, you find an abandonned vehicle but no crew.

[Narwan]

Hello fellow WinSPWWII and MBT players.
Again I seek the knowledge of the more experienced players...

I 2) When a truck carrying a section of infantry blows up, there is usually only one or two casualties. Even when the truck blows up on the first shot (i.e., no time for passangers to bail out).
I find this a bit too kind, as I guess if you hit a truck with a rocket and it explodes all passangers would turn to mince meat...
Are the kill routines really too kind or am I missing something?

Thanks
Cesar / AlienXXX

The answer to that one is game balance.
While what you mention does get noticed by players, the opposite and similarly unrealistic usually goes unnoticed. If you fire at a soft vehicle with passengers several times and miss each time the passengers stay on board. They don't jump out and take cover even though the bullets and/or shrapnel are flying all around them. The only way a vehicle will dismount the passengers is when it finally gets hit. In a situation like this it would be much more realistic if the passengers get out once they're under fire and take cover. They'd most likely be taking no casualties at all (irrespective of what happens to the vehicle subsequently). The game doesn't keep track of how often a vehicle gets fired at so doesn't 'know' what would be the 'realistic' amount of passenger casualties. So instead of giving the extremes of 0 or very high casualties the game tends to give light casualties (1 to 3), more or less like an average. You can still get 0 or very high numbers of casualties but those are fairly rare.

Having a soft vehicle dismount all passengers when fired at isn't an option either. It would mean you can force dismounts by aiming a single very low odd shot at a truck. For high speed utility vehicles with few passengers it isn't a huge problem as the vehicle will have enough movement points left after remounting the troops again the next turn. But most of the heavy trucks and many of the medium ones have movement rates that are nearly equal or lower than their carrying capacity. In other words, they'd need all movement points to mount the troops (or whatever they're carrying) again. That would be very unrealistic too. It would make the 'scenario' of a truck filled with troops racing away while being fired at from quite a distance impossible. In fact it would mean moving these vehicles around on the battlefield would get very cumbersome and tricky. Not a desirable situation either.

So the game designers chose a mechanism which tends to 'average' out the passenger casualties to take all situations into account. It does lead to specific instances that look unrealistic but 'solving' one would only lead to other unrealistic effects that would be a greater strain on balance and 'realism' than the current mechanism.

Narwan