Panther riders

[Imp]

British OOB Unit 297 Panther CLV passengers are carried as riders, other Panthers 55,56,57 are okay.

[DRG]

OK, will check but 297 is a utility vehicle class and should be carrying internally. What makes you think it's not ??

Don

[Imp]

I got shot at by a HMG at about 1.5k & scouts on board died so checked it in editor, treats as riders.

[DRG]

What ??? By checking the status in MISC??


On the list......

Don

[Imp]

Yep few beers produced this bit of lateral thinking.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by Imp

British OOB Unit 297 Panther CLV passengers are carried as riders, other Panthers 55,56,57 are okay.

yes - the utility vehicle class is not protected for passengers.

The protected attribute is a unit class attribute, set globally, since SP1 days. Therefore Trucks and utility vehicles are unprotected (assumed to be a soft vehicle class), tank classes are too (have no passenger compartment), but APC are (are armoured and have passenger compartment).

The variable is set by class from global data - not in mobhack for individual vehicles.

So if you had the "same" unit (to human eyes) but available in several classes then you may well get "odd" results in terms of protection. Take a medium truck. If available as a medium truck class it gets unprotected status as expected. Now copy that 4 ton truck to an existing APC class since you have armoured inf that also sometimes use trucks. Now your "soft" 4 ton truck is protected because you made it an APC class. So the player could have some of the plain truck and some APC versions, getting completely different results when sprayed with MG fires.

I suppose I could add some code in to check "soft" classes and switch it to "protected" if front steel armour was >0 and carry>0. Same in reverse for APC classes(?). That might cover most bases, while still leaving unintended anomalities.

The best way would have been for SSI to have this as a unit attribute (like front armour say) and so Mobhackable. The same could have been said for smoke ammo (another thing done by class). The only cure to that would be a completely redesigned and new game though.

Andy

[Imp]

Think I understand what you are saying so at present 2 options.
For a scenerio change data using edit unit misc from 0 riders to 1 APC.
For a permanent change at present have to reasign unit class in Mobhack, as the pick list uses formations this will not effect it?

[DRG]

The pick list uses formations but the formations use units and if you arbitrarily change a unitclass all kinds of fun can result.

We're going to look at a bit of code to help this along becasue although in WW2 most of the utility vehicles were jeeps or light trucks etc that were not armoured and it made little difference if the passengers were riding inside or out but in MBT quite a number are armoured and this is an issue .

Don

[Imp]

Sounds good I just came back because thought of a few other strange incidents as Andy said the reverse may be true also unarmored HMMV comes to mind.
As a thought not sure if any in MBT but WW2 some units with frontal armour but soft rear I think like armored jeep which is only one I can think of with carry capacity maybe some TD to so needs to be based on rear armour not front possibly or ignore for WW2.

[DRG]

Just to point out the obvious. This is a legacy issue with the code and the way the game handles this and people have been playing for YEARS this way without this ever being an issue

Don