Half track improvement

[Fungwu]

I have an idea for improving halftracks, remove the rear door. THat is to say where there is a door now, just make empty space. Instead of teleporting into and out of the half track, you just walk in and out of the back, also you don't "enter" the vehicle by hitting the action key unless you are the driver or gunner, the passengers simply climb through the back hatch and stand in the back as the halftrack rides around.

This way you can fire your gun over the side and throw grenades back at the enemy instead of being bolted so tightly into the back seat that you can only move your head. To go along with this stop the silly ability of grenades to kill the driver unless they actually land in the vehicle.

 

[Sigurd]

BF2 does that right. If youre in a transport (car, chopper or boat) you can use your weapons.

My main issue with HT is that driver get killed by nades landing next to it and it's to easy to stop it with MG fire....

 

[Sichartshofen]

That used to be in the mod back in 3.0, it didn't end well. Perhaps it could be done like the cupola's, mouse wheel up to stand up and shoulder what ever weapon you have. Machine gunners would have to only be able to use their pistol. No idea what performance hit it might be for 8 people in a half track firing god knows what.

 

[SgtH3nry3]

That used to be in the mod back in 3.0, it didn't end well. Perhaps it could be done like the cupola's, mouse wheel up to stand up and shoulder what ever weapon you have. Machine gunners would have to only be able to use their pistol. No idea what performance hit it might be for 8 people in a half track firing god knows what.

Yeah, since the HT didn't have fireports, perhaps it would be ideal to scroll your mouse up to stand up and rest your weapon on the edge to provide support fire...

 

[Aeneas2020]

theres no reason why you couldn't have the HT back door as an opening anim and then the troops inside havin an exit anim, if you want to do all the code work and anim work, however im sure as with all these suggestions there is a perfectly valid reason why TWI didn't implement it. Also through personal experience if you have a vehicle that estentially has an empty space in it that players just stand or sit in and can exit via an open door u get all kinds of problems. Firstly bots have a very hard time using them often standing all over the vehicle trying to surf it. Secondly if you jump while the vehicle is in motion you jump straight up and the vehicle drives on leaving you to splat on the ground..realistic maybe however if you clip the vehicle on the way up it can launch you about 50ft in the air.

 

[{Cap-Down}]

i still hold that you shouldn't be able to fire out of a moving vehicle. It'd be way too inaccurate.

 

[SchutzeSepp]

yes, but you would be shooting with the same accuracy as the russian guy who is trying to aim at your moving halftrack with a faust

 

[Heinz]

i still hold that you shouldn't be able to fire out of a moving vehicle. It'd be way too inaccurate.

the German PGs fired out of half tracks all the time. seen many pictures in my day, yessir.

 

[Rich_Zap]

Yes this should be possible, my guess is that all the extra animation and coding work made it an unnacceptable use of time on TW's part and i dont blame them.

In theory they could do everything, in practice its hard enough just getting the simple stuff working properly.

 

[Fungwu]

I dont think you guys are getting it, you don't "enter" the vehicle, you are not firing out of a crew "position" you just walk onto the halftrack and carried along, you can duck, go prone, aim, everything as normal, because you never "entered" the vehicle. Right now you can jump on the back of a tank if you can find a place high enough to do it and be carried around on the tank as it drives, I am saying they should make halftracks so you can just walk into the back and be carried around by it, thus you would be able, to move shoot, duck, throw grenades, etc as normal.

Additionally there are no extra animations or coding for this, just removing a small section of the vehicle's collision model.

 

[{Cap-Down}]

It's a crap fix. In real life if you were just standing in a vehicle that was going over rough ground you'd just fall over. Plus half tracks arn't very tall standing would expose your head

 

[Phoenix-D]

I dont think you guys are getting it, you don't "enter" the vehicle, you are not firing out of a crew "position" you just walk onto the halftrack and carried along, you can duck, go prone, aim, everything as normal, because you never "entered" the vehicle. Right now you can jump on the back of a tank if you can find a place high enough to do it and be carried around on the tank as it drives, I am saying they should make halftracks so you can just walk into the back and be carried around by it, thus you would be able, to move shoot, duck, throw grenades, etc as normal.

Additionally there are no extra animations or coding for this, just removing a small section of the vehicle's collision model.

Doesn't work so well. What happens is the players tend to collide in bad ways with the moving vehicle and get smashed to death.

 

[Pinecone]

Doesn't work so well. What happens is the players tend to collide in bad ways with the moving vehicle and get smashed to death.

That's the first problem l thought of too.

 

[killdozer]

Doesn't work so well. What happens is the players tend to collide in bad ways with the moving vehicle and get smashed to death.

How does a vehicle "smash you to death" ingame when your on the inside?

 

[Stahlgeist]

How does a vehicle "smash you to death" ingame when your on the inside?

What I think they mean to say is that if you just run up and stand in the back of halftrack, with complete freedom, the game won't consider you actually IN the vehicle, and you're therefore subject to the same rules as someone outside. Meaning that if you run against the wall of the vehicle while it's moving, the game'll act like you're some guy who ran in front of the halftrack and you'll die as if you got run over.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[KrazyKraut]

^In addition to that there also had to be some serious alterations made to the halftrack model. With the seats in the places where they are now, no more than four people would fit in as passengers. Not to mention that a SdKfz with no door is kind of easy taken out by a PPSh sprayer sneaking up from behind.

the German PGs fired out of half tracks all the time. seen many pictures in my day, yessir.

Yes. The rail underneath the MP40's barrel was installed just for the purpose of shooting out of vehicles afterall.

 

[Slyk]

Additionally there are no extra animations or coding for this, just removing a small section of the vehicle's collision model.

It is not as easy as you might want to think. The engine, models, and code are far too complex to 'just make it work'. Several of the guys have pointed out the flaws above and it goes much deeper than that.

 

[Welt]

The best halftrack improvement would IMO be:

You can only enter the vehicle from the back (don't know how the drivers got in it), when someone wants to hop out, the doors open and the player "teleports" behind the halftrack. No complex animations needed. Or no animations at all, but the players pop out at the back.

E: The shooting out of the back could be handled by scrolling the mousewheel (popping up like tank commanders, but you could shoot). But that could be a hard job to code and all.

 

[Holzman]

Personally... I'm tired of getting killed because everybody getting out of the halftrack teleports onto each other thus you get two Germans making one tall pyramid. Nice easy target for a Russian MG.

 

[Recce]

You can only enter the vehicle from the back (don't know how the drivers got in it)

I think the driver and co-driver would climb onto the bonnet and then through the top.

I was speaking to some re-enactors, who are in conact with veteran solider who explained to them the drill. I can't remember the complete drill in detail, but when de-busing, the co-driver would man the MG, and the squads MG would be at the rear of the vehicle. He would be the first guy out, so allowing both MG to provide support during the de-bus.