The machine gunner on my Sherman tank will not fire no matter how much I yell at him in front of my PC.
Currently, the machine gun seats on tanks are often just for decoration. Some tanks have machine guns that can fire, but they also work in conjunction with the playerâs coaxial machine gun to fire at the exact same spot at the exact same time, meaning they overheat and reload at the same time, and you canât shoot multiple enemies at the same time. This makes no sense to have multiple machine guns.
So why not leave the firing of the machine guns other than the coaxial machine gun to the AI and let it automatically shoot enemy soldiers who enter the firing angle? I am sure that would be wonderful.
I think in the old Enlisted, you could order the bot to be stealthy or aggressive, and I think it would be great if you could order the gunner of a tank to fire or stop firing in the same way.
I think the AI behavior will probably still be modified, so I guess this kind of functionality will be considered after that⌠but I hope it will happen in the future.
If you have a co-ax machinegun then the hull machine gunner is not a plable position.
Japanese tanks that do not have a co-ax have hte hull machinegunner playable, but you have to change to his position to use that gun - itâs a bit irritating, as @Zarcos94 alludes to, but you get good at it!
I found out the Ho-I can use the mg when in the commander seat as well. But then you need to pop put with binoculars to zoomâŚbut when you do you get 2 machine guns
From what I remember we donât have hull MGs because they are not modeled in WT where devs take models from.
So all we can do is to wait and do a bit more of waiting.
Some of htem are modeled in WT - eg M6 twin .50âs - basically you get them if they are in any sort of âturretâ, an use hte term very losely in reference to hte M6!
Having useable hull mg make a lot of japanese tanks worse for me as they just leech crewmembers that could help reload your main gun or serve as the commmander of the tank.
And for me there is no point to utilise the mg seat as it means not useing your big gun to nuke infantry.
The mg just cant compete with 57mm HE/HEAT or 75mm HE with their small clip and limited traverse and sight.
So even as commander they are not great but due to the mg leeching the commander slot it makes sure you wont even be able to use that mode reliably once a single tanker died.
They literally have no excuses. They modeled AI turret seat gunners in planes and the AI tracks other planes as well as shoots at them while you fly around.
There is no reason you canât give the port gunner in a tank a cone of vision as they do have a view port of their own, and anything that moves into that cone of vision gets targeted by AI the same way the rear gunner in a plane tracks the target and fires at it.
A tank without a hull gunner is the same as a bomber with no side or rear gunners. Most tanks have hull gunners, all Shermans had hull gunners. Like in the film Fury, the main character is the replacement crew member for the original hull gunner who was killed.
The film also makes evident that the hull gunner has his own machinegun and ammo to supply it with.
The machine gun on the roof is optional, hence not all Shermans had them but all Shermans had a hull machinegun and coaxial machinegun.
That is why they set it to prioritize certain positions. Like replace the gunner or loader before the port gunner or driver. Replace the crew in such an order that it will get the main gun back up as fast as can do.
The problem is that if the hull mg spot is useable like on the japanese tanks it is the 3rd most important slot when it should be the least important in my point of view.
So having the option of the hull mg ensures that any crew loss will knock out your commander or loader in favor of the mg still beeing operable.
DF decided that the mg not worth useing is more important than a loader or comander which eighter improve your battlefield awarness or double your rate of fire on the main gun.
Tanks usually have 5 crew members depending on the size, the Sherman can easily make 5 with a Driver, Port Gunner, Main gunner, Loader and Commander.
The Port gunner is the least useful member yes, but his role can be useful if the Main gunner and Loader are up as well as the turret may not be facing forward therefore the Main gun viewport cannot see forward but the Port gunner can.
You can argue that the Commander is more useless than the Port gunner, however the Commanderâs roll is to make sure the crew can work fluidly. A force without a leader to issue commands falls into chaos quite fast.
In the movie Fury, the Commander is the one who operates components the least but issues all of the commands to the crew, it is the Commanders job to sight, inform and range targets for the Main gun to fire at.
In the scene where the convoy is attacked by the Tiger tank, it is the Commander that sights and identifies the threat to the crew, then issues the order to fire smoke in front of the tank as he knows they are at a disadvantage due to the open field and the distance to the Tiger.
If the Commander is killed then the rest of the crew would most likely just become a mobile bunker or a stationary fighting platform. If the Port gunner is killed then it is the job of the Main gunner to intercept any and all threats.
