Slitherine

I´ve completed the first campaign and i´m a bit surprised about AT guns. They seems to be incredibly fragile.

Firing with a tank, squad or even a halftrack have a high chance of destroying them. Even if they are on a sandbag position. In reality a deployed AT gun is a small target, difficult to locate and should be much, much harder to destroy them. Even the feared 88´s are wiped out too easily and they pose no big threat if you bring 2 or 3 tanks.

Does anybody else think they should be more hard to kill?

I agree they seem quite fragile. One hit by an artillery unit and they are dead. They can take a small amount of incoming fire from most other units but with artillery almost always dead with that first strike. You basically get one chance to use an AT Gun, then its over.

1. After reading this I knocked out an 88 in a light building with the first bombardment from an 120mm Mortar. I don't know if in RL that mortar can do that?
2. I think ATGs in forests are too easily seen/targeted by tanks.

Yep in near disater both of my 88 were taken in one hit twice

Yes, I have the same impression. I rely on guns quite a lot in MP games, and I've seen them get destroyed unexpectedly fast.

If my memory serves me well I can recall, during an instruction on Soviet Bloc weaponry, that the 120mm Russian Mortar shell had the same explosive content of a 150/152 mm Artillery shell. That's a lot of pain. they used that Particular weapon system up until their stint in Afghanistan. Again if memory is right the shell weighs between 30-40lbs. You would not want to be sitting on the exposed trail or gun layers seat of any exposed weapon if that beauty went BANG!!!

This is an old claim
viewtopic.php?f=104&t=42724&hilit=+gun

Static guns (75mm, 88, 17pdr, etc.) are killed too easily, they count has 1 man, so a hit kills the gun. For example with a gold shoot you just kill a man in a us_30cal_MG, but you kill a complete 88mm (I think 5-8 crew).
Often a tank attacking the a SP kills the gun with a hit that would kill only 1 man on an infantry squad.

I made a mod to avoid the gold shoot that kills an AT or similar in BA1, I'll port it to BA2 also.

The main problem is that a 88mm, o similar, count as 1 man. when you hit an infantry squad you have several possibilities to kill a man, and 4 men left, agains a Gun a kill means unit eliminated. Should be a way to define a unit with more than a man without this makes any effect on the icon image. If you look to a MGs, mortar, etc. (2 men) you will see two images of the unit (MG, mortar, etc.) each with a man, when, it should be showed one gun and two men.

I tried to put 4-5 men on a 88mm so killing one man were just 1/4 of the unit, but the image on the game play appears has 4-5 88mm.
If there is a way to mod this I still not found.

Additionally,
This issue seems worse to me in BA2 than it was in BA1.
I will grant you the 120MM mortar is a big shell, and should have greater odds of taking out an AT gun position.
But the ATG's seem even more vulnerable in BA2 than they used to be in BA1.

I did play with their values as I thought they were too tough but I may have gone too far. Its pretty easy to adjust their fragility - there is a multiplyer to damage which is used to make things like trucks easy kills. I forget the stats name but will try to remember to look it up.

lol... I think if you place it half-way from BA1 to BA2 then you'll get what you were looking for. In the next release?

I agree that AT guns are vastly too vulnerable in the game. It's rather ridiculous to take out a gun so easily which is in an entrenched position. You simply cannot use the guns in a historically accurate way. Watching SMG-armed infantry take out an entrenched gun position with a single shot makes me feel like I'm playing an arcade game.

Please fix this ASAP.

Yes, agreement from this corner too. Something needs to be done to toughen up AT guns.

The AT guns should be used to ambush (as they were mostly used IRL, only the heavy AT guns like the 88s should engage in long range duels with tanks). Put them were not many things can shoot at them and where those things that can shoot at them have to get near to do it. And some infantry protection is good (for example, dont put them in the first line building, but in the second line, or dont put them in the first row of trees that borders a road, but in the second row, where tanks have to get very near to shoot at them, and can only do it one or two at a time)

jcb989 wrote:Additionally,
This issue seems worse to me in BA2 than it was in BA1.
I will grant you the 120MM mortar is a big shell, and should have greater odds of taking out an AT gun position.
But the ATG's seem even more vulnerable in BA2 than they used to be in BA1.

That is truth. In BA AT guns were harder to kill, but I think they were unrealistically hard to kill. If they had been so hard to kill tanks would have been rather useless (too expensive for such a cheap way to take them out. The cost of each medium tank was around 10 times that of an AT gun and in BA 1 one AT could easily kill 1 or 2 tanks or other AFVs before it got destroyed).

They are a waste of points in multi-player...help!

I DON'T believe the AT guns are too fragile. People forget that the crew is extremely vulnerable. A gun shield affords precious little protection against the shrapnel from even a miss. Unlike an AFV, you don't have to score a direct hit to wipe out the gun and/or crew of an AT gun.

As someone else pointed out, the key to the proper use of AT guns is to have them fire from "ambush." Don't take that 2nd shot that will reveal their location Be patient and put them on "Hold fire" so that they won't reveal their location during DF.

Regards,

Paco