This is kinda spitball-at-the-wall idea, but i’ve been thinking on something that could add a little more flexibility to gameplay in campaigns, and maybe an interesting dynamic. Armored cars were used pretty extensively during the early war period, since they were immune to small arms fire, but fodder for anything stouter.
Armored cars would be cheap, mobile machine gun positions that don’t take up a vehicle slot, ideally an armored car squad could be its own thing entirely, something to push points or hold areas that isn’t as worrying to lose as a real tank.
Like a tank, they’d be blind, but only lightly armored, easily killed with well-timed det packs or even the lightest anti-tank weapons.
There are two dynamics i’m considering:
The ‘standard’ dynamic, where armored cars carry guns that can pen other armored cars, I.E. .50s and 20mms. This is like how tanks currently are, where besides infantry, other armored cars can stop troublesome armored cars.
For this dynamic, i think the best options are:
Axis: Sd.Kfz 231. It’s got the same 10-shot 20mm as the Pz. II, and a generic 7.92 MG
It’s got 15mm on the front, 8 on the sides, and 10 on the back, armorwise.
US: the M2 Half-track. It’s carrying a .50 caliber M2 machinegun, which will punch through around 20-23mm of armor, if i’ve done my research right. Less than a 20mm will do, but the axisonly have 10 shots til reload.
It’s got at least 12mm of armor frontally, and the thinnest part is 6mm, but i’m having trouble with specifics.
Soviets: Here’s where i run into an issue. The soviets don’t really have an equivalent for this dynamic. So here’s my two tentative suggestions:
The Landswerk L-180, a swedish armored car with a 20mm madsen main gun. This is basically the same thing as the german KwK 20mm, even having a 10-shot magazine option. My reasoning is that they were sold to Estonia and Lithuania in the late 1930s. We know the soviets captured at least a few of them, but no exact numbers.
Only 9mm of frontal armor, 5 for the sides, but it’s got a 15mm thick turret all round.
–OR–
The Ba-27. Like the Ba-11, it’s got a single-shot main cannon as a primary gun, but instead of the Ba-11’s unstoppable 45mm cannon, the 27 has, well. It’s a Puteau SA-18, I.E. the same gun as the renault FT. 37mm, only 600m/s, it can punch through around 30mm of armor, if that. Basically just a slightly wider 20mm.
Only 7mm of armor all around, but it’d have some reasonable anti-infantry use with HE shells.
As for british vehicles, i’ll wait til Tunisia is a thing, but god knows they had enough armored cars to choose from. I’ll talk about the other dynamic in the second post.