Gunner

>Shitting on Soviet/Russian tanks

The only one modern tanks have done away with i the co-driver and that was largely because they found that the bow machine gun wasn't needed and the benefits of a centrally positioned driver and more free space obviously outweighed it.

youtube.com/watch?v=HV2nIkqnGBI

post more of these pics for ww2 tanks plz

Tiddly

this

True, but it seems to me experience shows that 4 men works well. 3 is too few. 5 might be unnecessarily many.

What movie?

Our mothers and our father, German mini-series.

Not bad, but goes for memes and chance-encounters rather than historical accuracy.

Everyone uses three and four man crews these days. If you're driving a tank with a five man crew in it's likely the same age as your granddad.

There's literally no reason a tank shouldn't have an unmanned turret and be crewed by one person like a mobile suit.

>slavs micromanaging manpower
uhhhhh

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-14_Armata

Yes there is every reason. Try spotting targets, then engaging targets while keeping situational awareness, while communicating with other tanks and maneuvering on top of that. It's the most inefficient layout ever.

Autoloaders break very easily since it's hard to engineer an automatic cannon that works in such a tight space, with a 360 degree turret and verticle movement. Having an extra guy around to load is also good because he can help out with shit and won't break down. If he does, someone can replace him easily.

*stores ammo in turret ring*

Tanks throw tracks though.

>tfw the only game that had a realistic and spooky feel of tanks is RO2

Autoloaders don't beak easily. It's very easy to do all of that. An extra guy is very situational, plus fitting an additional man in the tank take up more room than you think.

They almost always get shitty kill death ratios. Even when they won, it was entirely due to superior numbers, which using WW2 as an example was achievement of Russian factory production taking so many short cuts and giving so few fucks that they managed to cut the production time of the T-34 in half, because the T-34 was getting fucked so hard there was statistically no point in making anything last longer than 6 months. It was repeatedly blown the fuck out by fucking panzer IVs, and still didn't even manage to out produce the Sherman, which performed well against panzer IVs. Even if you wanna pull the "but real war isn't cod k/d doesn't matter", having to rely on massively outnumbering your opponent does not a good weapon make, further, it only helped them in WW2, since then they have been BTFO repeatedly.

Russian tanks can be shit on because they are shit, they are made to be shit, because the Russians always bet on drowning you in shit. That user didn't say anything that wasn't right.

>They almost always get shitty kill death ratios
Which had more to do with tank doctrine and training rather than the quality of equipment itself.

Terrible gun sights meaning they'd often have to home in with machine guns and lack of radios also fucked them hard, in case of the T-34 specifically, arguably, past WW2 it's usually blamed on Arab/African tankers. I will add, it the disparity between Arab and Soviet pilots are any indicatioon, Russian tankers probably wouldn't have performed much better.

Where do the spent casings go?

They usually just rattle around until theres a break in the fighting then they're tossed out, Unless there's an auto loader. I know the Conqueror heavy tank had a system designed for ejecting spent shell cases out but no one else used it.

Dont tanks today have driver, commander and driver?

>THEY WUZ ZERG AND SHIT

He doesn't know about DEEP BATTLE!!!

Their sights and optics as a whole were never as bad as people make out. The overall vision in the early T-34's was awful but the later ones had better target acquisition than panthers. Training and experience makes more of a difference than anything. More than a lot of people realise.

>muh deep battle

And they really managed to succeed on that front without vastly superior numbers, oh wait.

Still succeeded. Most of the losses was due to have a shit officer corp because Stalin's stronk paranoia. Deep battle is a sound doctrine and an actual doctrine unlike shitzkreig.

5:3 hardly counts as "massively superior numbers". Hell, the Germans outnumbered the Soviets worse during Barbarossa.

usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/connor.pdf (pp70-71)
Part of what made the Soviet system work was that they consistently achieved local superiorities well in excess of their overall front ratios of force, while at the same time not opening themselves up to counterattack at wherever they left themselves thin.

Let's be real, the best WW2 combat doctrine was the US doctrine.

>just smother it in artillery

U.S. doctrine was not consistent throughout the entirety of WW2, although I will admit that their late war doctrine was extremely advanced. It was, however, more than "just smother it in artillery." Hell, the Soviets tended to commit more artillery on offensives for a given number of men than the Americans did, but they also tended to be less responsive and rapid acting when they did shoot the big guns.

>What does a gunner do that a commander can't?

Focus solely on gunning.

The job of the commander is to employ his tank as part of a team, or lead a team of other tanks. That means he has to maintain a situational awareness beyond that of a gunner alone. Hell, just the communication and coordination piece alone warrants having the separate gunner position.

>why does the real world not coincide precisely with my memes?

Uuhhh

Yeah.

In my extremely limited understanding, the US tended to focus far more on relatively small unit combat, and have a more responsive system of command and control.

t. gamelin

>focus far more on relatively small unit combat, and have a more responsive system of command and control.

We stole that approach from ze Germans, who developed it in WW I.

Commander, gunner, loader, driver seems to be a normal tank team today.

Ehh, not really on the small unit angle, but definitely on the C&C. At the core of the difference, the Soviets didn't really trust their own armed forces to not overthrow the country, as a result, they tended to divide up responsibility to make sure that units didn't get together, march on Moscow, and throw out the government; it was fears like that which created the purges in the first place, and people tend to focus overmuch on the officers removed and not the new military culture that was created in the post-purge environment. Dividing up command like that tends to result in subpar battlefield performance, and especially bad communication, which does make things like trying to get two different branches to work together very difficult.

But the Soviets had those problems at pretty much all levels of command, not specifically to lower levels.

I can second this.

>he didn't drop $125 on a Steel Beasts Pro PE license
loving every laugh

The Red Army was kind if weird and hard to understand. Ended up being lots of favoritism and competition at the high levels that lead to a lot of reckless moves. If their commanders weren't as good as they were there could have been potential for many military disasters.

I think he's talking about how in an engagement, a batallion or a platoon even...instead of committing to an engagement, would retreat and then immediately rain artillery down on the enemy positions. The Germans actually had a saying for this.....some German commanders were even frustrated by it, they believed that the German infantry was superior to American infantry but American doctrine rarely led to full on infantry-infantry engagments....at least not with a healthy dose of artillery first.

>dude where are the computers that do the work for meeeeeee

Never send a man to do what high explosives can do better.

t. Infantry leader

no

Scan the terrain 360° around with no Tunnel Vision.

I think RO2 is literally the only game I've ever played that hammers home just how horrifying these things were to fight as an infantryman. Literally every other game I've played is just "oh well time to take out the rocket launcher."

Tfw trying to take out the tank is best done with the AT gun and killing its crew

Tfw your first shot doesn't hit the gunner's vision slit and the turret starts slowly traversing towards your position

>he didn't play RO Ostfront

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ITS BETTER IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY

In English it's called "Generation War" from what I recall.

True, but the the fifth crewman and his radio were an invaluable asset for the german tank forces, especially early in the war when such was a rarity.

Imagine how shitty it would be dying from a tank going on fire

Fire is definitely among the worst "normal" ways to die. Every nerve ending in your body screaming at you that you need to get away from the thing causing so much damage to you, but the act of escape is a physical impossibility. Horrifying.

What are the differences? I enjoyed RO2 for its refreshing abandonment of the concept of class balance in favour of historical realism, as well as its brutally realistic damage levels. Keep in mind I pretty much only play the campaign/point capture mode. But if Ostfront is better in those regards and has populated servers then I might give it a shot.

That's why I made sure to carry a pistol whenever I served as a TC in any closed armored vehicles. Better to shoot your gunner, or driver, and eat a bullet yourself than be burnt to death.

>tfw I never played RO2
Am I missing out on a lot? Is there still an active player base? The most realistic games I've played were probably the modded Sturmovik games, Silent Hunter and ARMA games.

the french used 3 man crews during the battle of france, with commander doubling as gunner

it was shown to be worse than the german 5 man crews

t. Gamelin

>crew compartment catches fire
>wellthisisit.png
>pull out pistol
>shoot gunner in the back of the head
>automatic fire extinguishers kick in
>...

jokes aside though that is a really understandable precaution to take.

*somehow manages to have worse visability than most tanks which already have shit visability*

>tank gets pinged by a rifle caliber round
>pull out pistol and shoot gunner in the face to avoid him burning to death

Better safe than sorry

I'd say you are, it's my favourite FPS by a very long way. Very active player base. Of the games you mentioned, ARMA is the only fair comparison because the others aren't FPSs. ARMA is more "directly" realistic, in that guns, damage, vehicles, and so on are more autistically modeled than in RO2. However, the issue with ARMA is that it does very little to model command structures or the frontline feel of large scale battles, and requires an organised group if you wanna feel operator. What RO2 does extremely well in my opinion is forcing players to work inside a command structure and work as not a team, but a platoon. Squad composition (class-wise) is set according to the map and you pick a position in a squad, rather than picking a class. Squad leaders have actual responsibilities to their squad in terms of fire direction and general organisation, but more importantly for pub games, SLs are a vital component of advancing over open ground under enemy fire: they have smoke grenades and the ability to feed co ordinates for artillery strikes to the platoon commander. The platoon commander is also a player, who can call in artillery at any of the positions marked by one of the SLs, and has to use a field radio kit to do so.
Also the game does fully model the fact that MGs fire rifle caliber bullets. No stupid damage boosts for bolt actions because lol they fire slow so they must be more powerful. A bullet is a bullet is a bullet, whether it comes from a machinegun or a rifle (or a handgun or an SMG), and will kill you in one shot more often than not.

It makes attacking a very interesting prospect, because doing so successfully against an organised defense (which is actually very common even in pubbie games) usually requires a very well placed artillery barrage coupled with well positioned snipers and machinegunners suppressing the enemy while the SLs all coordinate to throw smoke across the entire line, while the grunts wait to charge together.

More like...

>vehicle gets hit with an IED
>get rendered unconscious from blast overpressure or concussion
>wake up trapped and unable to move in your burning vehicle while hearing your gunner screaming because he's being cooked alive
>choose to draw your pistol with your last ounce of strength in order to grant your gunner mercy and end his suffering before eating a last bullet yourself

>implying most militaries didn't fix ammo stowage by the time IEDs became a serious issue

I can't stress enough, by the way, that one of the absolute best things about the game is a complete lack of class balance. A machinegunner will fuck your shit up, any day of the week. He is as accurate as you and has as much range as you, but if his first round misses he can just hold down the trigger. And he usually has the benefit of a properly braced gun set up with a bipod, plus his rounds have tracers so he can see exactly where they're going. A machinegun is better in every conceivable way than a bolt action, except that it's a fair bit heavier. Similarly, a sniper is just better than you in every way. He has the exact same gun except it has a scope making it accurate to a distance where you can't even see the bastard. Plus he has a semi-automatic pistol which outclasses your rifle to a shocking degree in close-quarters. Hell, the elite riflemen with their semi-autos have an obscene advantage over you. After you both miss the first shot, he puts out 4 more rounds, one of which will probably hit you, while you pull back the bolt. Assault guys and engineers with SMGs will rape you in CQC and have all the advantages of a machinegunner (except tracers and the bipod) at medium range. But that's the fun of it. You take your rifle (no sidearm) and two grenades, and you fight till you die. And if you're a fancy not-rifleman, a lowly dude with a shitty gun can still end your life with one good shot.

But the kill counts are without a doubt realistically skewed towards the MG operators. Jesus Christ it can be horrifying. Sometimes the smoke doesn't work because there's enough of them that they each pick a section of the fog and just fire indiscriminately into it. Or they fight smart and stop firing when they see the other positions getting overrun, and they hide, and wait out the advance until they're looking straight down the line.

You don't even know what you're replying to....but don't let that stop you.

>a complete lack of class balance

Is it not supposed to be about realism than shit like balance

I'm not sure what your question is, but my point is that it discards the concept of balance in favour of realism, which seems to be your concern.

>smother it in freedom

>Only slavshit commie tanks have autoloading
Damn near every tank designed after the mid 1980's features a three man crew and an autoloader.
For instance, the Leclerc, Type-10, Armata and K2