Currently most tanks don’t have hull mgs implemented, where they at the moment only serve as armor weak points. We haven’t heard about this from devs so not sure what prio they are.
However devs should put this on the agenda and implement the hull mgs to make tanks more intimidating against infantry assaults.
I’ll try to keep the general proposal rather short:
1.) Implement the machine guns to all tanks which don’t have them yet.
2.) Allow players to separately control these when buttoned in the tank and in aim/commander view using the “C” button to switch between controlling the hull weaponry and turret. So basically: you hold down C and move the mouse, turret stops but hull gun can be aimed in its firing arc, lift C and the turret moves again and hull gun stays in the position you set it to. This should be implemented also to t28/e for turning the hull turrets, or M3-Flamethrower for separate aiming of the hull-flamer, etc.
In the end this would allow you to both react fast on frontal arc without having to turn the turret, as well as potentially set up the hull MG to aim at a separate point and fire at enemy that pops from there while having turret trained somewhere else. It would become much more dangerous to approach tanks frontally as well.
3.) Implement a 3rd firing button to ground vehicles which specifically controls the hull weapon. We could re-use something like X. Therefore you could use the hull weapon as a fully separate weapon system of the tank.
2&3 could be done on existing vehicles even before other tanks get functional hull MGs.