why not just REQUIRE 2 people in a tank?

charliegrs · Post by **charliegrs** » 2008-01-16 04:37

this is sort of in response to the thread about having a 30 second delay for tank drives,

but why not just make it so the tank wont even move without 2 people? or is this some kind of hardcoded issue? i mean if we are trying to eliminate solo tanking why not just make it impossible for solo tankers?

Guerra · Post by **Guerra** » 2008-01-16 04:42

What if the gunner disconnects? What do you do then?

What if some engineer rushes the tank, puts C4 on it, and the driver gets out and shoots the guy, but then gets wounded and bleeds out in the tank?

There are instances where one guy stays in the tank while the other crewman gets out, for whatever reason. Then if the guy outside dies, the one left in the tank has to go pick him up.

Post by **Mosquill** » 2008-01-16 04:52

Guerra wrote:What if the gunner disconnects? What do you do then?

What if some engineer rushes the tank, puts C4 on it, and the driver gets out and shoots the guy, but then gets wounded and bleeds out in the tank?

There are instances where one guy stays in the tank while the other crewman gets out, for whatever reason. Then if the guy outside dies, the one left in the tank has to go pick him up.

+1
I agree completely.

And why does the driver needs a gunner to drive the tank IRL? So why implementing it if it has a negative effect on both gameplay and realism?

Heskey · Post by **Heskey** » 2008-01-16 05:09

In instances where vehicles are abandonned in the middle of no where, it is often necessary to take a 3rd Crewman in your tank's .50 seat to go and recover the tank, and drive it back to his gunner.

BLUFOR-73 · Post by **BLUFOR-73** » 2008-01-16 05:12

instead of completely disabling the tank the turret shouldnt function if theres no one in the driver seat?

kilroy0097 · Post by **kilroy0097** » 2008-01-16 07:30

BLUFOR-73 wrote:instead of completely disabling the tank the turret shouldnt function if theres no one in the driver seat?

Then there wouldn't be any reason for one manned tanks at all on the field. Since you can't fire the gun without a driver being there. Obviously you can still drive it around but switching to the gun turret would do nothing. I like the idea.

Mora · Post by **Mora** » 2008-01-16 10:17

but wouldn't that be unrealistic.. i think a tank driver has some training for the fire position as well as for driving a tank

bobfish · Post by **bobfish** » 2008-01-16 11:30

If they can't make it require two people, they should increase the delay from 30 seconds to 60 seconds.

Post by **Deadfast** » 2008-01-16 12:20

Mora wrote:but wouldn't that be unrealistic.. i think a tank driver has some training for the fire position as well as for driving a tank

Is it realistic to hop inside a tank ALONE and drive right to the middle of a combat zone ?

mammikoura · Post by **mammikoura** » 2008-01-16 12:31

Deadfast wrote:Is it realistic to hop inside a tank ALONE and drive right to the middle of a combat zone ?

is it realistic as in can it be done? yes it is.
is it realistic as in it's used a lot? no, probably isn't.

there are times in pr when driving a tank by yourself is a good idea. For example, you die and you notice there is a tank that is not being used in the main base. Instead of waiting like 5 minutes for your squad mate to die you take the tank alone and drive to a bunker/firebase and meet your friend there.

Also sometimes the driver/gunner leaves the tank, for example to throw his field dressing to some infantry guy who needs it. If he is killed then the tank would be completely useless with only 1 guy there.

As for the "can't fire if there isn't a driver"
This would work pretty well. Though then again if your driver dies you would have to take the tank away from combat and go to pick up the driver when he respawns, instead of having him come to you.

Soulja · Post by **Soulja** » 2008-01-16 12:33

Mora wrote:but wouldn't that be unrealistic.. i think a tank driver has some training for the fire position as well as for driving a tank

Technically with their training a person could man a tank by himself though he would be at a great awareness disadvantage and if there wasn't a shell in the gun already and you were in the driver's seat I'd say it would take 1 1/2 min to get the tank ready to fire. There's a reason 4 men crew a tank in reality.

The real issue is like they said that there are instances where you have to solo a tank. Other than that I'd support a even longer wait time on position switches.

Darkpowder · Post by **Darkpowder** » 2008-01-16 17:25

I'm all up for any idea preventing the one man tank phenomenon, it preserves the assets for those people who are working in squads. Technically the commander as officer and 2 other members being crewmen is the finest combination now you can set rally points with 2 squad members + officer only.

The only problem with making it more extreme than the current 0.7 system is that certain vehicles involve much more dismounted activity than other ones. I'm thinking of scimitar when it is a 2-man recon team present in that vehicle who could potentially do a fair bit of dismounted work. I would guess that any changes would have to be gobal on all turret equipped armour which would prevent some nice tactical deployments of scimitar, including close target observation and patrols out from the vehicle to locate enemy forces.

My instinct is to remove completely vehicle "decay" making people less inclined to drive and dump their assets or as i saw someoene do the other day on "oilfields" get out of their APC as crewman try to climb a ladder up a white oil tank and promptly get shot, leaving a useless eney asseyt stuck their in the middle of the battle, all good for our team.

AnRK · Post by **AnRK** » 2008-01-16 17:34

What army in their right mind would send out a tank worth hundreds of thousands of dollars/pounds/whatever with ONE man manning it, that's ridiculous. I don't like this idea though because of alot of the exceptions listed when it's bad to lock the tank.

It'd be nice if the thing had a delay for the driver too to be honest if you ask me, only a dead short one, that means people who still manage to solo can't get away when their being fired on or a helis gonna take them out or something.

Also it'd be good if there was no delay on anything if the gunner and driver seats were manned, but I take it that's not possible otherwise it would probably have been done by now.

I don't think unmanned assets are so much of a problem now you can get crewman from bunkers and firebases though, you can now pick up peoples slack without the long walk/drive/flight.

mammikoura · Post by **mammikoura** » 2008-01-16 19:17

AnRK wrote: It'd be nice if the thing had a delay for the driver too to be honest if you ask me, only a dead short one, that means people who still manage to solo can't get away when their being fired on or a helis gonna take them out or something.

I have been thinking of the exactly same thing. Having something like a 15 or 20 sec delay when going to the drivers seat would be awesome and probably realistic too. Right now solo tankers are still too effective, all they need to do is sit somewhere on a hill and they will be fine.

Wolfe · Post by **Wolfe** » 2008-01-16 19:57

Driver delay was suggested and tried a year ago. It produced weird and undesirable results.

click here for dev response

BloodBane611 · Post by **BloodBane611** » 2008-01-16 20:20

Also, server population isn't always large enough to support the use of all vehicles on the map. If you're on quinling with 30 people, you COULD fully man all the vehicles, but you would have few infantrymen left. It's better to have a tank being 1-manned in the field than sitting empty at base.

Darkpowder · Post by **Darkpowder** » 2008-01-16 22:24

BloodBane611 wrote:Also, server population isn't always large enough to support the use of all vehicles on the map. If you're on quinling with 30 people, you COULD fully man all the vehicles, but you would have few infantrymen left. It's better to have a tank being 1-manned in the field than sitting empty at base.

Normally i agree with much of what bloodbane has to say but not this time. for me a tank unmanned sitting in the base is just where it should be, one man in a PR 2-3 man tank is a leftover idea from vanilla.

one man tanks can still do fairly well on 0.7 alas, but the fine minds of some of the people i know (nightwolf and nickbond) have already designed some helicopter tactics to show what a useless and anti-teamplay idea a one man tank is. Nickbond will also tear a few new holes in one man tanks for fun in his two man tank. Same way i used to like knifing crewmen getting out of a one man tank in 0.6 i now enjoy designating and watching rhino's paveways slamming into the pathetic static turrets around quinling lake. Thant or watching rank knife the tank commander in the turret.

Also the idea that all the vehicles are being manned in quinling with only a few infantry is the general idea of quinling from what i hear. It's primarily a constant surge of armoured power requiring some clever combined arms to halt, and defend on various fronts against often overwhelming attacks.

Symplify · Post by **Symplify** » 2008-01-16 23:08

bobfish wrote:If they can't make it require two people, they should increase the delay from 30 seconds to 60 seconds.

I disagree with that. The 30 second delay is just fine. If it were 60 seconds and you DID have two men, you could be out of the base and in a battle zone/under attack before you could move the damn gun.

I think it is fine the way it is. It's not always possible to get 2 man tanks, when you do it's great, when you don't you're a sitting duck for 30 seconds while you charge the gun.

fludblud · Post by **fludblud** » 2008-01-17 00:33

besides, a 1 man tank DRIVER is still pretty damn deadly, especially when he gets into a base full of infantry and simply starts running us over while the only HAT guy has to wait 20 seconds to ready the SRAW and a further 10 to set the deviation only to have the t90 survive the shot and run him over as well

all our tanks were too afraid of firing into our bunker for fear of getting kicked for teamkilling

kilroy0097 · Post by **kilroy0097** » 2008-01-17 08:19

I find the excuse that a driver might need to jump out to take out something pretty weak. That kind of situation is pretty rare and rather risky. There shouldn't be a single reason to get out of a tank outside of a safe area to repair and the such. It's better to go down with a tank than to leave it in the middle of nowhere. That goes for just about every single vehicle out there IMO.