Making Tank Crews

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[Scotzmen]

So my sexy friends, we can into tank crews!

This is information for you, and more of a reminder for me on how I'm going to make this work.
Lets start off with the launcher side of things.

Every tank and vehicle becomes a transport. Able to transport squads. But, you won't be able to put a regular infantry squad in it. I'll come to why in a minute. Basically operate how the transport starts with loaded squads. Select the tank, right click the tank crew squad. Unfortunately, this will be the only way to do this, without editing heaps of code. The tank crews will retain the veterency, the tanks will not. The SQL side has a sheet called units, which determine units id, pop, icons and whether they drop by parachute or glider. Theres options for how many squads it holds too. If at all etc. You can go ahead and try to put a normal squad in, but you shall be left with an inactive tank.

So your sexy tank hits the field, you tank crew loaded inside. Ready to rock this shit. Now, you get into a hairy situation and you have to bail. Unload the tank crew as you normally would in any transport and leg it! I shall see about making it blow up when you leave it. Even if it doesn't, tank crews have their own holdable_ext, and tanks will only accept that type and no others. Infantry have the normal Infantry_hold_ext. Where the tanks crews will be different.

Now, making the tank inoperable without a crew will require some copy paste from the current repair abilities. Which basically inerts your tank when you hit repair. It basically applies modifiers to the tank that make everything 0. So speed, turret rotation etc. I'd hate to be the person that coded that, seriously. So whilst the Hold_ext is empty the tank will have those modifiers applied. As soon as there is a tank crew, the tank will have the modifiers lifted.

On to veterency. Squads veterency can provide a number of things. Using Squad Ability on one of the vet ranks, it can provide a AOE buff to the vehicle they are sitting in. Now, Obviously the squad isn't actually killing anything, the tank is. So, we allow the squad to share a specific type of veterency, with the tank/tanks. So we don't see people having random tank crews running around with infantry sucking up vet from them. Now, the only way to see a veteran tank is clicking on it and seeing what vet the crew is inside. unfortuantly, i'm not sure how i can get around this at all.

Look forward to tank crews in the very close future.

[GrayWolf]

So basicly you can go full retard kamikaze with your veted up tanks and when it's 10% HP left, just leave and click "T"?
I don't know if I like this idea, especially for Axis super heavies. :/


Tank commander would be cool for buffs (like in BK mod), but I don't know if tank crews like in COH 2 would be a good thing for EiRR.

[shockcoil]

Would be a cool ability if you could recrew tanks. Otherwise eh don't like it

[TheVolskinator]

Slot items. Have the tank crews give tanks a slot item, one for Vet1, Vet2, Vet3, etc on till Vet5 (via an aura); the tank would then receive that veterancy level. If the crew bails, or the tank is crewed by a less experienced crew, the veterancy level of the tank will change accordingly since it's all mucked about via auras.

If you're going to apply all of the modifiers (per vet level) with JUST the aura, and the tank itself doesn't change, just keep the proper XP requirements and make the veterancy visual only--the tank crew could then get an aura at Vet1, at Vet2 it adds the Vet2 modifiers, and so on (such as how the Lieutenant gets an improved aura at Vet3 in vCoH).

[tank130]

So basicly you can go full retard kamikaze with your veted up tanks and when it's 10% HP left, just leave and click "T"?
I don't know if I like this idea, especially for Axis super heavies. :/

I think this is a fair point.
Perhaps the solution would be the retreating unit walks at normal speed, has no weapons, and mine sweeper health.

If you can make your unit survive under those odds maybe it deserves the vet?

At the end of the day, I don't know if I like the idea of tank crews to be honest. We are making it easier and easier to vet and repair tanks. I think we may be going in a direction that will just result in more vehicle spam.

[Unkn0wn]

So basicly you can go full retard kamikaze with your veted up tanks and when it's 10% HP left, just leave and click "T"?
I don't know if I like this idea, especially for Axis super heavies. :/


Tank commander would be cool for buffs (like in BK mod), but I don't know if tank crews like in COH 2 would be a good thing for EiRR.

I would imagine thered be a delay, i.e take a few seconds before a crew bails. If players forego further repairs and bail the moment their tank gets low they are sacrificing quitd a bit of that vet tank's combat effectiveness in a given battle. And the crew can still be chased down and killed

[TheVolskinator]

Prevent them from retreating. You need to manually make them haul it to the map exit/entry point; would still allow you to preserve your crew when faced with Paks, Marders, 88s, etc, but if you YOLO into a pack of Shreck storms covered by an MG, you lose the tank, the crew gets pinned, and its GG from there.

[GrayWolf]

I think this is a fair point.
Perhaps the solution would be the retreating unit walks at normal speed, has no weapons, and mine sweeper health.

If you can make your unit survive under those odds maybe it deserves the vet?

At the end of the day, I don't know if I like the idea of tank crews to be honest. We are making it easier and easier to vet and repair tanks. I think we may be going in a direction that will just result in more vehicle spam.

Yes and no. I disagree on the surviving point of yours. If the unit is going to be killed by RR drop behind enemy lines, I don't think the RRs will be able to kill the running away minesweepers even on low speed. Basicly you just see green flare, and insta retreat before AB even land, lol.

Altough I agree on the second point of yours. We might be going in the wrong direction. Veterancy should be something you earn my playing smart and sometimes safe. All I can see is making stupid things might not kill your vet, because you still have chance to survive it by running away with your crew. Also running normaly is still faster than KT with damaged engine, right?


Unknowns proposition (if it's not planned yet) is quite nice. Still 3-4 seconds delay is enough to run from AB spawning or some finishing off tactics like Tallboy bomb.

[tank130]

What is the walking speed of infantry versus engine damaged speed of a heavy tank? Anyone got that information handy?

[GrayWolf]

What is the walking speed of infantry versus engine damaged speed of a heavy tank? Anyone got that information handy?

Walking speed is slower.

unit walks at normal speed

Moving normaly is faster. If that's what you meant.

I'm not sure if KT's speed is 3 or 4 now and unfortunetly I cannot check it (corsix is making fun of me). Walking speed should be still slower even if KT's speed is 3 and around 1.50 with damaged engine.

[aeroblade56]

i think walking speed is faster than churchill :p

[nikomas]

KT speed is equal to regular running speed of inf iirc

[tank130]

Is walking speed ( Not cloaked ) of a sniper faster or slower then lets say riflemen?

It feels to me like walking sniper is the slowest speed, so what if we made retreating tank crews walk that slow?

Another question: If I retreat from my tank right in my enemies spawn, will it block units for entering or exiting that spawn? Can that tank carcass still be destroyed? Would the tank carcass still provide line of sight?

[TheVolskinator]

The tank would probably become a neutral object that could be targeted like an abandoned ATG. It would block the spawn, I think, until you blew it up, but you *could* blow it up.

[GrayWolf]

It feels to me like walking sniper is the slowest speed, so what if we made retreating tank crews walk that slow?

If that's so, why would people try to run away with infantry (which would be slower) and not with their tanks. There are some situations  where enemy has just ATG etc., but tbh it would look pretty funny. Infantry moving away slowly Try to imagine that. They would be like: "Fuck this shit, I'm out (literally)"

Tank crews could be a part of Terror/Armor/Engies/TankHunters doctrines. Dunno how would they work, but the actual idea is something I don't really find enjoyable. How about tank commanders that could enter and leave the tank for the docs mentioned above?

Hmmmmm... Now when I think about this... Allied drivers taking the axis heavies. That could be ridiculous if possible :p

[Tachibana]

I think either this Idea or the engineer repairs need to go on the back burner depending on what you implement first. As tank said, having both going at the same time could be a back stacking of survivability. Just implement engineer repairs and see how people feel then, that way, you won't have to prance around with all these "slow down the crew" or "delay exit" ideas until people have a feel for how the repair system will effect tank survivability.

[tank130]

Ya, the more we discuss this the less I like the idea.

[Hicks58]

Main grief with crew retreat on tanks is that you'd be able to just bail out and lololol peg it in the middle of combat when your health gets around 10%-20% or so.

So, there's an easy solution to that.

Put a 5-8 second delay on the ability after clicking before the crew dismounts to retreat. You'd be able to retreat crews upon getting immobilised by a mine or abilities, or if you're low health and are paranoid of the drive back due to roaming LV's, but the delay means if you try and ninja dodge an ATG hit with it, you're in for copious levels of disappointment.

Further it by having the crew as a 2-3 man squad at 55 hp and they'd be as vulnerable as any other low health squad trying to retreat in combat.

However, Tachi is right, one idea should be implemented at a time for design changes or some serious clusterfucks are guaranteed.

[Scotzmen]

Tank crews it is then.

So they will have a bail out time, so as to stop lolo retreating. They will be low health squad, and be very vulnerable.



The Engineer repairs system has a hit a roadblock on the whole fact i can't seem to get it to repair and drain munitions at every second/minute/ticket. If you just attach a lump price to it, you get it refunded if the tank is never repaired fully. Very exploitable.

[Scotzmen]

Another thing is, the tank is still like normal, it just can't do anything if you unload it. So it will sit their sucking up pop until it is destroyed. I'm not sure if there is a self destruct button for that.