Captured Weapons/Resistance Groups

[Imp]

I agree getting a vehicle going roughly is not that hard but controling it at a level that means you survive combat is a diffrent story.
Drive a car for the first time down an empty road is easily do able if you dont stall it. Now do it after 10 mins practice in a town centre & dont hit anything.
When I was 16 drove dozers & unlike a car takes practice to turn smoothly & put minimum strain on the vehicle.
4 Gears fwd & rvs pre selector box.
Push down & select 1st or 2nd for that track to drive fwd the other reverse
2 throttles & 2 brakes 1 for each track
Then theres the blade controls.

To start with you turn jerkily using mainly the brake & chewing up the ground then you become smooth & can do most turning by regulating the throttles for all but the tightest turns. You are now far more maneuverable & can turn at higher speeds, well for a dozer.

Actually its not unlike a car thinking about it when I first drove a car would be correcting throughout a bend rather than just steering smoothly through it.

The point is yes you might get it down the road or across that field but you are not being kind to the machinery & when you start getting fired at if driving it is not second nature are you going to see tommorow. You have just thought stop put in reverse but the skilled guy is long gone, he did not think at all he reacted primal brain & instinct the self preservation bit did it for him. Thats the level you need on the battlefield or that helps you avoid that crash by driving your car through a small gap at speed. You didnt know you could that but if its second nature sure you can.

[Lt. Ketch]

Originally Posted by Imp

You have just thought stop put in reverse but the skilled guy is long gone, he did not think at all he reacted primal brain & instinct the self preservation bit did it for him. Thats the level you need on the battlefield or that helps you avoid that crash by driving your car through a small gap at speed.

You've built a good argument for this and I have no intentions of knocking it down. I would simply like to throw a small rock against it.

There were tankers (and other drivers) of all abilities during the war from the veterns with dozens of kills to the new recruit that was thrown into the tank because they were short a gunner or driver, or loader, etc. So there were many people who probably had to think about what they were doing at various times. However, if you want to simulate that I think that the way the game allows this already is appropriate: using "green" formations, large number of units to commander in a platoon, etc.

Now I realize that having one or two new guys in a crew of four or five is not the same as using foruegn equipment. I'm reminded of the movie "U-571" where the one submarine guy that speaks German had run around telling everybody what everything was.

RERomine - Good point, I hadn't really thought about that, and it makes perfect sense. I guess tank use by partisans and resistance groups would be more on an opportunity basis. I.e. "We're going to ambush this supply convey here and oh look, an immobilized Pz. Lets use it to start the party with a bang." Or something like that.

I really wish that you could switch out small arms weapons to simulate captured equipment/behind enemy lines, but I realize a few things. 1-This has a higher potentional of being gamey then realist, 2-this is not a simulation but a game, 3-the coding on this would have to be a nightmare, and if it wasn't I wouldn't expect Don or Andy to say so and 4-This has aready been discussed and they said it wasn't going to happen for the reasons given above. The best I get is the partisan units (another reason I'm drawn to them.)

[Imp]

There were tankers (and other drivers) of all abilities during the war

Agree entirely, the likes of the tank workers in Stallingrad jumping straight into them & driving straght to battle, did they fair well I think probably not & it was the disparity in training that made a big diffrence in the early years.
The game represents this with exp ratings & throws in enough variables that even the likes of the Germans at there height can get a duff crew.

Rays point is a very good one the weapons are probably more useful though it might be handy to use 1 for something specific if you had it.

Nothing to stop you setting up a captured tank formation with the tanks you might use. Give it a negative exp mod but possibly plus morale because they have got a tank. You could do the same for troops & make some with enemy weapons. No need to give a formation just upgrade to in a campaign. This would mean they could take a slight exp hit & so represent getting the hang of the new weapons, though in most cases will make no diffrence.

Really vague on but there was a SS unit that near enough ceased to exist who ended up fighting virtually exclusivly with Russian weapons.
They went forward to capture a rail station for the supply line. Took it easy enough as lightly guarded but if remember correctly there were Russians on the way already by rail, a near by military school & something else. Luckily for them the Russians attacked in 3 seperate waves I think once with a cease fire to clear the dead.
They repulsed the first attack easy enough but what armour they had was then stripped of weapons as out of HE (think 1 had rounds left) They needed to do this because MG ammo was low. They collected enemy weapons in the gaps between waves to as all ammo was running low.
The 3rd human wave very nearly wiped them out as think they only had ammo for one MG when it started. This was a very bloody battle thousands of Russians were killed & if I remember the only functioning German weapons at the end with rounds left were a couple of Lugers & possibly one rifle.

[pjbandit2003]

Now if I remember correctly (and I probably dont) I remember reading years ago about a British unit in North Africa that set up a squadron of Italian tanks that were abandoned by the retreating Italians and putting crews in them that had had their Crusaders shot out from under them. I can remember where it was but I think it was outside of El Aleimain and they used them for the duration of the NA campaign. I know this is not the same as partisans as these were trained tank crews but with unfamiliar vehicles.

[redcoat2]

Resistance groups could use captured tanks on occasion. I think it usually happened when they switched over to conventional operations from guerrilla warfare.

Here are three examples I can think of:

1) The Warsaw Uprising. The Polish Home Army (PHA) used several captured tanks and half tracks. Zoshka’s Storm Battalion used a tank to break into the Gesiowka concentration camp to liberate 400 Jewish prisoners.

A PHA Panther



2) The Battle for Paris. The ‘French Forces of the Interior’ used captured tanks against German strongpoints. These tanks were originally French tanks from 1940 and so some members of the resistance may have been familiar with them.

A photo of one of these tanks in use

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...fare_scene.png

3) Yugoslavia. Tito’s Partisans were able to capture and use tanks on occasion. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that some of the captured Italian vehicles were driven by Italian defectors. Later in the war the Partisans also received allied tanks from the British and the Soviets.

A captured Italian tank in Partisan service, 1944

[Lt. Ketch]

Originally Posted by redcoat2

Resistance groups could use captured tanks on occasion.

Thanks, Redcoat! You do raise a good observation that most of the, shall we say, "heavier" equipment available to resistance groups, tended to come out when they brought the conflict into the open. I'll have to keep that in mind. I'll also have to look at the Italian OOB when I build my partisan force. It only makes sense as the Italians were in the Balkans before the Germans, for the most part.