Italian tankettes

[PatG]

narwan said:
<snip>

The range for tankettes is deliberately low. This not due a lack of sights but because of the very low profile of these vehicles with the weapons being mounted relatively low. That means the view for the crew is very, very limited and that is reflected in the range for the weapons.

Narwan

I'm not sure I agree with that logic. We have an Italian tankette at the war museum here in Ottawa (a CV-35 I think) and while it is a tiddly little thing its MGs are definately higher than a tripod mount MG. If the range reduction is because of height, then a similar if not larger reduction should apply to tripod weapons on the ground (not to mention universal carriers etc). If it is a question of reduced visibility through a vision slot, then reductions should apply to the Matilda, PzKw I, etc. Not slagging the deisgners just trying to get a sense of the logic and if it is applied across the board.

[Marek_Tucan]

When speaking of tankettes, just found an interesting factoid about Czechoslovakia (yea, I know, we're dealing Italians here, but bear with me ) vz.33 tankettes - the MG mounted in front of driver was fixed, firing right in front of tank and hitting ground at 300 meters.
Tried to simulate this in my Czechoslovakian OOB (will publish when ready, most likely after next week's vacation) by using MG with range of 6 and 0 accuracy.

[PatG]

I suspect it was set up to maximize the danger space. This type of weapon would be an ideal candidate for enforced area fire. There are other weapons like the typhoon rockets welded to Sherman turrets that would benefit from enforced area fire. Sadly it's probably a code thing and we ask to much of the coders already.

[Marek_Tucan]

fraid so... Now trying to figure how to raise the suppression effect of bunker machineguns as they also don't have the area fire effect... And without it they are virtually useless against large infantry assaults which they were designed to stop Also the wild blindfire inaccuracy bothers me in that area

[chuckfourth]

Hi Pat G
It does look as though sights are the reason for the short range which I accept for the twin 8mm, the fore-sight used seems to be a lump of metal about the size of a thumb. However I cant be sure without a picture but Id put good money on the 20mm cannon coming with something a bit better. So I would think the standard 30 range would be better than the current 10 for this weapon.
I also notice that the cv carrying the 13.2 mm MG has a range of 20. Now in the old days (v6 of the game) there were quite a few guns with 20 range for example from the British OOB units 001 Mk IIa, unit 002 Mk VIc (coaxial gun that is) and unit 126 Rolls Royce A/C. Like the CVs these are very early war vehicles and probably had very poor or no sights at all which is why they got range of 20. After v6 it seems all these weapons just got allocated the same range as the tripod MGs for some reason. To me it looks as though the the Itlaian 13.2 MG (weapon 231), missed out at this time and should have a range of 40 not 20. Personally I would prefer the weapons that used to have range 20 to get that range back again, as i think this better reflects there rudimentary sights.
Best regards Chuck