Towed units should be able to fight in the next AI turn after moving by transports, under some conditions

[Kasperlzhang]

In the old PG2, when a towed unit (or infantry) moves by transport, it cannot fight immediately after said move, but it will be ready in the next AI turn, artillery will be able to provide defensive suppression fire, infantry able to get off to defend themselves instead of getting caught in their trucks and obliterated.

While I do agree this make the transports too OP and too easy to use, the way PzC treats them, that whenever they are used, the units will be totally helpless in both the player turn and the upcoming AI turn, is not ideal either. I mean in Achtung - Panzer! Guderian specifically discussed one of his prefered use of towed paks, to proteck the flanks of advancing columns against enemy tanks. How do you do that when a pak unit stays in transport mode whenever it moves more than one hex?

How about cut a middle solution between the PG2 and PzC, that when a unit has to use transport to reach a certain destination, it will not be able to get off and fight immediately, but if the said march only uses no more than half the move points of its transport, it will be able to get off and fight in the upcoming defensive turn? After all, if you only spend half the time in a truck, there should be some time for infantry to jump off a truck and take defensive positions, or for a gun to be dislodged from a horse and pointed to the right direction.

[captainjack]

One way round this is to allow some units a passive attack. For example, some AT guns were able to fire while in towing configuration or were very quick to deploy, so a passive attack of about half the normal attack would seem about right. Also, the French Dragons Portes in the DLMs used trucks fitted with pintle mounts for the squad LMGs (mainly intended fro AA use), so they were clearly ready and able to fire if using the mounts, so I gave their transports passive attack.

The advantage of passive attack is that transports can't be used to attack while mounted - one of the arguments used against fitting an MG to Lorraine transports was to ensure they didn't get used as improvised AFVs instead of for their intended job of resupplying troops and ferrying equipment.

[auda]

I thought of that many times, and I agree with cptjack's passive attack concept, however, would like to add that going up the gun caliber, the passive attack value should be lower, so it kind of simulates the weight of the gun. I imagine setting up the 37mm AT gun was way quicker than say the 75mm Pak, or the 88mm Pak.

[Elkarlo]

I think they should stay in transport if attacked by artillery or by airplanes. They should have a penalty if attacked by ground units, a small on, that gets smaller as the unit gains XP

[captainjack]

If you assign 0 attack value, the unit has no ability to harm that class of unit. So for your towed AT gun which is easy to get into action you could assign SA -1, HA -4 AA 0, NA 0 and it can only fight back against ground targets, or set 0, -4, 0, 0 and it can only fight back against hard targets.

If you do this for a Transport class unit, it wouldn't get the AT combat values when attacked (no +3 Init for attacked by tanks and no +2/experience star). However, if you allow only selected AT units to have this rapid deployment facility, (which is probably more sensible) you can allow the units to switch between firing and transport mode (essentially towed or portee) so that they get AT combat benefits. It works quite well for Portee guns, if you set a switch between portee (mobility on a vulnerable truck) and emplaced (poor mobility but better defence stats).