The PCs are a four man tank crew, all of them controlling the same tank

>The PCs are a four man tank crew, all of them controlling the same tank
Is this viable gameplay-wise? What kind of system could accurately reflect the cooperation controlling a single tank would require?

Only war can be pretty neat for this. You can have your whole party being a Leman Russ crew

Eh. Might get boring if you're not the tank commander. I mean, a loader loads. A driver drives. If your peeps are into hard-military sim, go ahead though.

Did this in Only War. Driver, Commander, main gunner, sponsons, engineer to do repairs/give the engine a boost/man secondary weapons.
It was pretty fun, but we never made it out of the LZ.

Also doing it in only war. only two players so we are doing driver and gunner, the rest are npc.
As for the cooperation, it's maybe better to have the commander as a mute npc and let the players do their stuff, learning ic and ooc how each other acts and reacts.

>Char B1 Bis
>Good tank
Literally pick one

Also
>Tank capable of fighting and resisting Panzer I and II
That describes pretty much every tank ever featured in WW2, including fucking Renault FT-17 and male Mark V

This is literally how you run all vehicles in Twilight 2000 - each person assigned to specific station, doing their role. Unless they are just in transport, then their role is to sit on their asses and hope for the best... or get out and most likely die, while stupidly trying to provide additional firepower.

Either way, each person manning the vehicle is doing their role. And if it's possible for specific vehicle, get more than one guy to the role. For example - put a driver with good driving skill and co-driver with higher CUF stat than the driver (preferably the highest possible after the CO) and you are in the sweet, sweet spot.

>pic says panzer 3/4
>user talks about panzer I & II

I think you might have reading problems

To be fair, Panzer 4 came to use after France had surrendered.

No ?

You mean you want a campaign based off Fury?

Might work. Make sure to give everyone a gun, keep the tank understaffed so they have to make decisions, and have out-of-tank adventures.

The Char B1 was excellent for it's time. It was one of the only "heavy" tanks in production (others being Soviet), and was capable of taking on any of the German tanks it was going up against. Plus it was deceptively maneuverable for it's weight, but was a little slow and undergunned. Germany beat it not by directly engaging them, but by going around them. Their doctrine was simple, deep thrust through a weak point, and exploit the breakthrough. French tanks at the time were not able to react quick enough, and the population (and politicians) of France were not motivated to fight *yet another fucking war* on their scorched earth soil left over from WW1.

For a tank from the early period of WW2, the B1 was awesome.

(different user here)
You are correct in that the Panzer IV was present during that time. But all they had was the D, with a short barreled 7.5cm KwK. They had problems penetrating even the sides of the B1, unless right up on it.

I'm actually running an Only War game with this premise, although I only have three players, so commander, driver and gunner, with comrades handling loading and shit. It actually works fairly well. The only thing that might be problematic is that other than the commander, the players don't really have much freedom(and the commander only has so much freedom as well, given the military nature of the game), but that hasn't been an issue with my players, probably because it's exactly what they were signing in for.

As in 'we started the campaign, but didn't have time to keep it going', or 'we got eaten by Tyrannids halfway through the first session'?

As far as I know, a tank is not a democracy. The commander controls all the major combat decisions at the end of the day, and is expected to be heard when he gives small orders as well. Because of that, I don't think it would really work unless the rest of the group was comfortable with one guy literally being in charge.

no it was not. especially the one man turret made them hard to use effectively
(German tanks had 3 guys, one to load the cannon, one to aim the cannon and one to have an overview of the battlefield, decide what the tank should do and coordinate with other tanks/infantry, the poor french guy in the turret had to do all of that alone)

That is a misleading fact since the Pz IV D was meant to engage infantry positions and bunkers not armored vehicles

True, though that turret was also a lot smaller. Then again, that didn't stop them from tearing through German tanks. And that 140 hits story is actually true. A single Char B1 (named Eure) actually survived that many hits (including hits from tank destroyers... designed to destroy tanks) and destroyed multiple German tanks.

In fact, the Germans were so impressed by these tanks that they instantly confiscated them after the Battle of France and redesigned them as mobile artillery (which was probably the best thing they could've done: change the one weakness of an already excellent tank).

Such a shame France gets the surrender monkey stamp when even in WW2 their performance was by no means horrible.

Correct. Technologically, French tanks were actually superior to the German enemies, their crews were well trained, and courage undeniable. Their failure was in doctrine. They simply weren't deployed, trained or prepared for the fast pace and mobility of Blitzkrieg.

Keeping in mind, of course, that the tactics of Blitzkrieg were purposely developed to be the bane of the large, set-piece armies of Eurpoe at the time. The Whermacht's tacticians and planners knew full well that they'd lose a head-on clash with the USSR, and that a classically fought battle with France would drain their reserves quickly. So they changed the rules of the game.

Also, for France, they were still exhausted from losing /five percent of it's population/ in WW1. Not just exhausted, but outright traumatized. Verdun was still a toxic hell of trenches and mass graves when Germany struck the first blows of Round Two.

All that said, the French surrendered because the Whermact's tactics did what they were supposed to do. Knock the French off balance, catch the majority of their forces out of position, and leave them bereft of supplies. The Army wanted to fight on, to the death if need be. But Paris was already encircled and the population already in danger, leadership was scattered and supplies low. They didn't have much of a choice. They had a /chance/ when the BEF got involved, but the Brits were as unprepared for a war of rapid maneuver as everyone that wasn't Germany at the time.

>/five percent of it's population/
>/chance/

You're not from around here, ๐‘Žre you?

What I think is also heavily underlighted was the neccessity for a fast victory for the Germans. WW1 has already proven that in a fight against the French, either the Germans would win quickly or they would not win at all. Germany had the higher population and superior industrial capacity, but it was obvious that France's advantage would grow (and eventually overshadow that as Germany) the longer the war would go on. They had colonies, access to rare materials, the superior navy (this superiority being enhanced even further by the presence of the British navy) and undisturbed sealanes going to America, the workshop of the world. This is why Von Moltke declared WW1 lost after the Miracle of the Marne: France would be able to reel in foreign resources where Germany would not, France would be able to fill losses with colonial manpower where Germany could not, France's industry would grow as that of Germany would starve. Germany would also most likely literally starve, as they themselves did not have enough domestic agriculture to support their population while France did (which would eventually force them to expand into the Ukrainian Wheat Belt, which would be an even bigger disaster with the French still kicking around).

That month-and-a-half victory was probably the only scenario that would see a Germany not get its shit pushed in by France, the German high command understood and exploited this.

Actually tried this before. Combat basically boils down to "I make a drive check" "I shoot" "I also shoot" "I roll a repair check"

As long you do what tank stories do and make crew go out of tank to do various stuff, including combat too.

I would like this not to be repeated at every occasion since the mechanic was acting as a loader in the turret when the tank engaged (not very comfortable, but the B1 turret wasn't, even for the commander)

I've seen a fatguy claim that he had a great campaign that way, by putting a timer on the table. The coordinated actions that the PCs needed to take before time ran out each turn did wonders for the tension, apparently.

>putting a timer on the table
That's a solid idea. DM wants to do Mordian tankers with 2/3 people, but I'm not sure that'll be too fun since we tend to get bogged down in mechanics now and again. I'm gonna tell him to try a timer once we get the hang of vehicle combat.

>I've seen a fatguy claim that he had a great campaign that way, by putting a timer on the table.

This should literally be the standard, but bad GMs seem to prefer that all tension in combat scenarios dissipate into the ethers instead.

>the Brits were as unprepared for a war of rapid maneuver as everyone that wasn't Germany at the time.
what are cavalry tanks
what is deep battle

Almost everyone knew warfare was going to go mobile, the major benefits ze germans had were widespread integration of forces and communications, concentration of force, and the massive gamble of the ardennes that paid off.

>No "Will always be up for anal" on the tank
You had one job, just one...