The GAZ AAA truck is one of the four tech tree APCs, which were added in the “New Era” update. In the post “Weapons and vehicles of the next update”, referring to update, the GAZ AAA’s model looked like this:
As you can see the seats are situated perpendicular to the cabin - in that regard being functionally the same as the Studebaker 6 U1 and Type 94 Isuzu, having the historically accurate and main seating configuration of the time.
This is the most functional configuration in the game - all 8 soldiers in the back (when the APC is at full capacity) can aim and shoot during engagements, in the direction they are seated towards. However the GAZ model was changed some time after the update, most likely in the Rzhev update, where it’s mentioned in the patch notes: “Reworked the models of the GAZ AAA (USSR), Studebaker 6 U1 (USA) and Type-94 Isuzu (Japan)”. It could be at another point (I’m unsure when it exactly happened), but the important thing is that from the perpendicular position of the seats, it was changed to a parallel:
Now, this is a problem because this configuration prohibits the soldier in the middle seat to aim and shoot. So, from 8 the effective soldiers turn to 5, almost reducing their count to half. This is a serious change to the combat effectiveness, especially when their isn’t a reason for it. The Sd. Kfz. 7 suffers from the same problem, although Its seats are like that by design. There isn’t a bonus to this system. The soldiers have less sight and are positioned in a such way so they are very vulnerable to frontal fire, while their silhouette isn’t significantly reduced from the sides.
I have a few different proposals and I’m interested with what you think. These are my proposals:
- Changing back the model of the GAZ AAA to the parallel seating position and giving Germany another APC. Fitting variants are the Opel Blitz (already in-game); Kfz. 70; Ford V3000 S and Mercedes-Benz L3000.
(Also the GAZ AAA could be replaced by the Zis-5, which has a model in-game. There isn’t a strong reason to do so, but I thought I should mention it, as a more radical alternative. A plus is that it was produced in larger numbers, making it more common overall.)
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Only changing the model of the GAZ AAA and leaving the Sd. Kfz. 7 as it is.
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Keeping everything as it is.
Which do you think is best?
- Changing back the GAZ AAA and switching the Sd. Kfz. 7 for another APC.
- Changing only the GAZ AAA.
- Not changing anything.
- An option I haven’t mentioned (comment what).
As always, thank you for reading my post, I want to know what are your thoughts on the topic.
