So why are high explosive satchel charges destroying tanks?

Sappers in the Anti-Tank Role?

Sappers in the Anti-Tank Role?

During World War II, how often were Red Army Assault Engineers/Sappers employed to destroy enemy tanks with explosive charges?

I'm for the placed satchel charge option.

Though I hate to say it, I think some sort of time delay while you hold down a key and go through a planting animation similar to DoD:s would be a good idea.

It would actualy allow infantry supporting the tanks to interupt the planting and protect their armour more effectivley, and it might even encourage more cooporation between tanks and infantry.

An occasion springs to mind when a German engineer made a dash from cover towars a T34 clutching a primed satchel. I droped him a few feet from the tank with my rifle, only to seconds later, see the charge go off and take out the T34. Upon respawning the tank crew prompty complained about our infantry not protecting them properly.

Currently if you expect to encounter tanks your better off selecting combat engieer instead of AT soldier, which to my mind is not in the spirit of the game.

The awesome answer would be to give the Russians molotov cocktails that are overall less effectives vs tanks, but give them lots of them!

Killing a tank needs to be easy, and atm this requires satchels. Why? Not cause tanks were easy to kill irl, or because satchels were great, but because of the respawn rate of tanks.

If I kill a tank, I can reasonably expect another to be in its place in 30 seconds. IRL, if I killed a tank, it meant I would not have to deal with it. However, lets say we are on on Konigplatz.

There is the old option. Somebody runs over the hill at the tiger with a satchel in hand. Because of the way the system works, by theh time they are even in LOS, its to late. The tiger is dead.

However, the tiger is back in 30 seconds.

Then there is a new system. Satchels are gone. The Russians use some weaker AT weapons to take out the tiger. It takes them 2-3 minutes, during which time it was shutting down the objectives. This is all reasonable. Tanks *were* really scary.

Finally, they get it blown up. IRL, in an battle like that for Berlin, it means that the position is now tank-free.

In game, another tiger is there in..30 seconds.

The tank system does not need to be modified. The Satchels do not need to be tweaked.

The whole system has to be fixed from the ground up. Driving tanks to their deaths like worthless, changing positions/entering/exiting tanks, tank damage in general, angling, it all needs to be fixed. The idea that we can address some problems and not all is just silly.

The PTRD is an effective weapon. I can kill 5-6 tanks off of the starting ammo from a good position. The problem is that even though I'm killing all these tanks, with the respawn rate, and the way spawns are, etc, in a stock map, it doesn't make a damn difference. I kill a tank. A second one is passing. I am busy trying to finish it off by the time the first one has respawned, and passed my position again. Thus, I cannot handle it. In the end, I made a minor dent. Satchels very quickly dispatch tanks, sometimes multiple tanks, and actually put fear into tanks, often unlike PTRDs. They do make a dent.

Ha ha if those satchals destroyed tanks in real life from 10 metres away, then the Soviets would've formed entire battalions of satchal armed, suicide human wave attacks.

Just curious but did any soldier ever try to make one of those satchals into some form of grenade by attaching it to a stick or rope and hurl towards the enemy?

Been thinking about what a lot of people have been saying on here about how easy it is for the crew to exit the vehice and shoot aproaching infantry, then quickly get back into the tank.

Strikes me that if you want to exit a tank in real life you have to unbutton it first. As a compromise why not make hitting the exit key play the unbutton sequence first? Would give aproaching infantry some idea that the crew is about to bail, and a chance to pop them as they apear at hatches. Of course mg position would be a problem as it doesn't have an unbutton sequence. Maybe if tank crews couldn't defend them selves so easily we could tone down the satchels?

On a side note, this would also work quite nicely to discourage solo tankers. Can you imagine if a driver wanted to switch to commanders seat, but first had to go through unbuttoning from drivers position, and possibly buttoning up in comanders seat? Not the thread for this idea I know, but an interesting idea?

Tanuki said:

....<snip>On a side note, this would also work quite nicely to discourage solo tankers. Can you imagine if a driver wanted to switch to commanders seat, but first had to go through unbuttoning from drivers position, and possibly buttoning up in comanders seat? Not the thread for this idea I know, but an interesting idea?

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I can foresee that if a map is sparsely populated for whatever reason, the use of tanks would be rendered useless by the above concept.

To get back on topic, I must admit many of the suggestions are excellent and I'd go for them only IF they were configurable options for Server Admins. By doing so, the variety of gameplay styles available to players via the community RO Servers would be outstanding.

This pisses me off. A satchel is planted infront of me 5 meters away, so I don't even bother to drive away from it AND BAM I'm destroyed FROM THE FRONT and I'm using a Tiger.

Hopefuly the new patch will tone the satchel power down so it only disables tanks.

OK here's my rant about satchals...
- Tanks obviously had very cramped quarters which leads me to believe that crews didn't carry much extra equipment...so how common was it for crews to carry 2 10 lb. satchals on their person? I'm guessing it wasn't very common.
- It annoys the hell out of me when someone can throw something of that weight and that shape with any degree of accuracy or distance.
OK I'm done crying.

I just cant help but wonder, in the cramped conditions inside a tank, if the satchel would at least kill or knock out the crew through concussion? During WW1, the French and Germans would set off big explosions under each other's trenches, and often men in the concrete bunkers (which weren't necessarily destroyed) would die instantly from concussion. The only difference in RO is that it's a smaller scale with just a satchel and the bunkers are tanks.

was it for crews to carry 2 10 lb. satchals on their person? I'm guessing it wasn't very common.
- It annoys the hell out of me when someone can throw something of that weight and that shape with any degree of accuracy or distance.
OK I'm done crying.

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Firstly the current Satchel is not the Right weapon for the German pioneers I m not even sure if even existed the bag certainly did but I do not think it was ever an "exploding bag" it was used to carry supplies like explosives tools and extra ammo.The most common charge was the 3kg charge shown here:

Secondly a Pioneer or anyone with a pulse would never treat 3kgs of an explosive charge that way throwing it almost as far as a grenade. It was placed on vehicles (such as the Kv-1 in order to try to disable or destroy it)/ building so at most you should be able to "throw it" a few feet 1or 2 at most only because this is a game.

Should it kill tanks?
possibly lighter tanks would be more vulnerable especially if thrown on the weakly armored roof for example the roof of the T-34 was about 20mm thick.

This is why I look forward to CC, anti-tank grenades

If you ask me, the satchels could damage the tanks abit and maybe break the tracks on it, this would nerf the satchels but they still have a good use

If they nerfed the satchel, combat engie should get some other ability. I am thinking the ability to repair vehicles. NOT the magic wrench of BF42 that could bring everything back up to full health. I am talking about the ability to fix a damaged engine, or repair a broken tread. It would take a while, and could even have only a 40% chance of being successful. But at least it would be better than having to suicide your own tank since it was disabled. Also, maybe let the combat engie carry a length of wire, enough to block off about 2 meters. This would let them close up a doorway, or even a breach in a wall. This would make the ability to drop the weaker satchels more useful, as that would be the only way to clear the wire.

Well Here's a nice vid that is relivent to the topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWQEqFou1Vs
part one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb7SixS9PAw
part two

It's a German traning film called Manner Gegen Panzer (basicly infantry fighting tanks with avalible anti-tank weapons -sans Panzerfaust and shrek)

Germans should have the HHL and the Soviets should have the RPG-43 (or RPG-6).

The mines would be great, even letting grenades damage treads a little would be great. And a server side option for having to climb in and out of tanks would be great.

metternich said:

If they nerfed the satchel, combat engie should get some other ability. I am thinking the ability to repair vehicles. NOT the magic wrench of BF42 that could bring everything back up to full health. I am talking about the ability to fix a damaged engine, or repair a broken tread. It would take a while, and could even have only a 40% chance of being successful. But at least it would be better than having to suicide your own tank since it was disabled. Also, maybe let the combat engie carry a length of wire, enough to block off about 2 meters. This would let them close up a doorway, or even a breach in a wall. This would make the ability to drop the weaker satchels more useful, as that would be the only way to clear the wire.

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Even when it is not the "magic wrench": It is still unrealistic. Repairing a broken track should take some hours, fixig some engine damage - well, in real life you wouldn't have the needed parts.
And you can not simply put some barbed wire into a door or a break to close it - the enemy could simply take it away. Or walk over it. It would take some seconds, but not enough to really stop them. Besides this, it would be quite some work to implement such a not really needed feature.

Back to main topic: I can not proof it, by I think that a satchel could do serious damage to early war tanks. Even when it is not able to simply blast away the armor of the tank, it could still cause a rain of fragments inside the tank. I wonder if this could also happen in later war tanks, what would explain the heavy damage of the satchel in RO.

Yeah on no maps should someone carry more than 2 pieces of equipment (excluding Panzerfausts, as those go below).

Take the Satchels out of all tank maps, but DON'T tone down their power.

I think that satchels should only be effective A) if they detonate under a tank or B) are in contact with a tank. Proximity blast i could see blowing off a tread- but that sounds too hard to code in a third damage zone: Just have a very narrow kill zone (so that when it's on or over it can blow a tank) and a large damage zone. Making some sort of sticky point to blow off a tread sounds like it's not worth the effort.

Repairing a broken track should take some hours, fixig some engine damage - well, in real life you wouldn't have the needed parts

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I do not know much about tank repair but I recall an account where a Panther was disabled-broken track and the crew after the Russian advances were thwarted fixed the track and moved the tank back to the German lines to reform witht he other German tanks. So its possible that some damage maybe fixeable by lowly crewmen however having a "magic wrench" would be several steps back from what RO is now in my opinion.