Flamethrower Units, Casualties and Transports
 

I have a question about how this game handles flamethrower units that take damage, based off of something that occurred during my playthrough of an Iwo Jima scenario.

I'm assuming that open topped transports like the Amtracs and LVT's the marines use allow the passengers to be shot at and take casualties. At the same time, I'm also assuming that should a unit with a flamethower take a casualty, the game determines if that damage was to the fuel tank of the flamethrower and if they straight up just explode and incinerate a few other team members.

Would I be correct in my assumption that if a sniper were to fire at an opened topped landing craft or amphibious vehicle, and that transport were to contain a flamethrower, and that flamethrower unit were to take the hit, that the subsequent explosion would wind up blowing up the entire vehicle, which would kill everyone/sink the vehicle in deep water?

Because if not, then a single Japanese sniper blew up like four amtracks full of marines and that is blisteringly unfair.

Re: Flamethrower Units, Casualties and Transports
 

Vehicles designated in the various APC/IFV classes protect their passengers under their armour (if any), I believe this is also true of the amphibian class. A soft vehicle, ie one without armour, doesn't protect its passengers.

A sniper, or other unit, firing at a soft vehicle (or through the open top of an open armoured vehicle) needs to kill the crew to "destroy" the vehicle. No one will survive if a passenger in a destroyed vehicle in deep water.

AFAIK the game does NOT handle flamethrowers as any different from other infantry types.

Sounds like your soft skin / opentopped amphibs had their crew killed in open water destroying the vehicle and all occupants - makes no difference if a flame thrower was onboard or not!

Smoke is your friend! :)

Re: Flamethrower Units, Casualties and Transports
 

Open topped vehicles have no armour on the roof, so people shooting down into them from above can kill crew (=hit points), falling artillery goes in like a stone into a bucket, doing the same thing. And they are not good things to be inside if assaulted by infantry that can simply flip a hand grenade into the tin bucket, or pop up on the deck and spray the inside with bullets.

Of course, some early amphibs were unarmoured - see the LVT 2 in the USMC OOB for example. Some later ones only had steel in parts. The unarmoured faces let bullets fly through just like a truck would. And being un or partly armoured was an acknowledged design defect of these early models.

Fire smoke to screen your approach, along with HE (produces dust/smoke) otherwise the things are only a little more safe than a rubber dinghy as used in river crossings..

Re: Flamethrower Units, Casualties and Transports
 

That is also my impression, so no need to worry about flamethrowers exploding.

As for vehicles, some of the flamethrower armed ones may have slightly lower survivability ratings than their ordinary gun-armed equivalents, though this would be rather a feature of specific unit profiles rather than universal feature of the game engine itself.