Tanks & terrain

[Erik2]

Tanks can't fire at enemy units on mountains and tanks can't move onto mountains. That is fine.

Tansk can't fire at units in jungle, but a tank unit may move into the jungle. That can lead to some odd situations.

In the screenshot my Mathilda cannot attack the Japanese tank in the jungle, but the Japanese may attack the Mathilda in town.
That does not seem OK to me.
Either tanks should be unable to enter jungle terrain or they should be able to attack units in jungle.

[zakblood]

nearly all tanks learnt how to fire from a different hight by using slopes, either made or natural ones tbh, or they did in other theatres, not sure about the Japanese but have seen loads of pictures of US tanks firing into mountains from slopes

A reverse slope defence was used a lot by the Japanese which the US tanker counted by slope tank fire as there guns could reach the heights without, so imo it's working right as any tank should be able to fire into a mountain and attack as they often did

[Erik2]

Yes, that was my impression as well.
And tanks in the game will defend if attacked by a unit on a mountain.
So this mechanism is not working 100% in my view.

Tansk should be able to attack into mountains/jungle, but not move/advance.
Maybe make the attack/defense fire less efficienct than from 'normal' terrain as well.

[Myrddraal]

This is not to do with firing up slopes, it's more to do with hex size. When a unit of range '0' attacks another unit, this represents a unit moving into the defenders hex to attack them.

If a unit is on a mountain hex, it is in the mountains, and the tank unit isn't. The tank unit must move into the defenders hex to attack (which it can't, in the case of mountains). That's also why tanks can defend themselves when attacked from mountain hexes.

NB, if artillery are adjacent to a mountain hex, the artillery can shoot at the units in the mountain hex, even if the artillery unit can't move through mountains.

[Erik2]

OK about mountain as I said in the original post.
What about jungle? A tank can fire out of the jungle (I think), but into it.

[Myrddraal]

Uhh.... tanks can (or should be able to) attack units in jungle. I've just loaded up a game and confirmed it works for me...

Could you click on the hex to confirm the terrain type?

[Erik2]

I did check the terrain, it was jungle.
It is a multiplayer game so I don't have any saves.
But glad to hear it is supposed to work, must have been a glitch.

This seems to affect the Matilda II, it can't fire at infantry in jungle either.
Maybe it can't move into jungle?

[Aksully]

Ok here are my comments concerning this topic. Understand I am new to this game. I am in my first campaign playing the Japanese and about halfway into Guadalcanal. Here are my thoughts.
1) Tanks/armor can fire into jungle terrain but can't move into that type of terrain...in real life. Same applies to forest terrain unless roads are present. Pretty much every historical board or computer game has recognized this. But in OOB Pacific at least in the one player vs AI play this function is erratic. For instance I am unable to attack the AI US unit in a jungle hex. Yet I've seen US tanks enter and stay in jungle terrain.

2) I've been able to move a Type 97 Japanese tank across a river tile without a bridge in place? Again pretty standard gameplay that armor, tread, and wheeled units are unable to cross a river tile especially the size of the ones depicted in the Guadalcanal scenario. Yet in this game I've been able to move the tank following the river as if it was "walking" on water.

These are obviously serious flaws and kind of surprised this didn't come out during Beta testing? The problem as I see it is that there is a disconnect between the way the tile is defined by the programming and what the player sees as the major terrain type. When I clicked on the tile with the river going through it, it shows as Open Terrain. It's obvious the game engine says the terrain as open and allows armor to enter. This applies to the jungle issue too. There are tiles where we see jungle but are listed as open or difficult. That would account for the inconsistent movement. A tile can't have two terrain attributes like we see visually.

My guess is that all scenario tiles have to be individually checked to see if it matches with what a player sees as the major terrain type. Otherwise it changes the whole complexity of gameplay. Why worry about getting to the lone or key bridge tiles that will be heavily defended when I can just have my heavy armor cross another river tile that is listed as open terrain? Don't need a bridge. Don't need the engineers to build a bridge.

Again just my observations but recommend that tanks/tread/wheeled units not be able to enter river or jungle tiles. Shooting into them should be fine but with reduced effectiveness for the obvious reasons. Hope this helps. Otherwise I see a lot to like in this game!

[Soar]

The difficulty of crossing rivers is already represented. An unit may not enter a river hex unless it is adjacent to it prior to the move, and moving into a river hex uses up all of an unit's movement points. When moving out of a river hex, units are likewise restricted to moving to an adjacent hex. Therefore, crossing a river without the benefit of a bridge takes 2 turns, and the fact that only one unit may enter a given river hex on a given turn creates congestion (unlike with a bridge, where an entire column can just drive across in a single turn).

There is one exception to this: if an unit attacks an adjacent enemy after entering a river hex, and manages to dislodge it, it can move into the enemy's now-unoccupied hex. This shaves off 1 turn of crossing time since the unit doesn't have to start its next turn on a river hex anymore, which doesn't make much sense.

As for jungles, in the game, moving tanks into them is possible but often counterproductive. Not only is it slow, units other than light infantry, marines and some light vehicles/-tanks suffer a major penalty to their efficiency (readiness) when moving into a jungle hex, meaning they can't move far in jungle before having to stop for a turn to recover. In addition, due to the terrain's high cover percentage, infantry gain increased attack values against tanks in jungle, while tanks have their own attacks penalized (unless equipped with a flamethrower or a low-velocity howitzer).

The problem as I see it is that there is a disconnect between the way the tile is defined by the programming and what the player sees as the major terrain type. When I clicked on the tile with the river going through it, it shows as Open Terrain. It's obvious the game engine says the terrain as open and allows armor to enter. This applies to the jungle issue too. There are tiles where we see jungle but are listed as open or difficult. That would account for the inconsistent movement. A tile can't have two terrain attributes like we see visually.

Which hex has which terrain can be a bit unclear in the World Map mode. I find the Tactical Map mode (accessible in the preferences) easier to read (although it does have one major deficiency: it doesn't mark destroyed bridges in any way compared to intact ones).

This seems to affect the Matilda II, it can't fire at infantry in jungle either.
Maybe it can't move into jungle?

I think it's because the Matilda II has only 3 movement points, but it costs 4 movement points for a tracked vehicle to move into a jungle.

[bebro]

2) I've been able to move a Type 97 Japanese tank across a river tile without a bridge in place? Again pretty standard gameplay that armor, tread, and wheeled units are unable to cross a river tile especially the size of the ones depicted in the Guadalcanal scenario. Yet in this game I've been able to move the tank following the river as if it was "walking" on water.

Well, it is classic behaviour in the PG/PzC series for all land units, the only exception being IIRC big/impassable rivers in PzC.

Sure you're right tanks in reality can't just cross any river though these days they might manage to using specific gear if it's not too deep.

But game-wise it takes a full turn and costs you all movepoints. So this would represent the real-life preps to cross rivers. It's a tribute to gameplay, maps with rivers that could *only* be crossed by the help of (fixed) bridges or explicit engineer equipment would probably play very cumbersome...

[Erik2]

I do miss a river type that cannot be crossed everywhere. I have asked for it a couple of times.
Burma is a prime example where they would be useful.
Using a lake terrain takes up too much space.
I hope I get it when it is time to transfer my large A Bridge Too Far' scenario to this game system