"Wheeled vehicles off-road in wargames" Topic

Wheeled vehicles, unless 4X4, are not designed to go off road. Driving a car on a meadow already gives you a bumpy ride…on rough terrain it must be nearly impossible.

In most wargames, wheeled vehicles have a movement rate on/offroad, being the latest slower but thatīs all the penalties they get. Unless you really need to reach certain point on the table very fast you could happily ignore roads (which are made for wheeled vehicles)

I think any kind of off-road movement for trucks and cars should be trated as rough terrain with a chance of getting bogged down or broke a wheel.

Do you know any rules that treat off-read movement like this? Any thoughts?

Military wheeled vehicles tend to have much bigger wheels and a higher ground clearance than normal road vehicles precisely because they are expected to be used off road.

What military wheeled vehicles aren't at least four-wheel drive??
-Kle.

Kubelwagen for one.

An awful lot of British kit was also not 4x4, hence the popularity in the British Army for Jeeps (and their larger Weapons Carrier cousins) and Canadian Military Pattern (CMP) vehicles, which were all 4x4 as standard.

About the only time I think they might bog down would be in muddy, or deep sand terrain, or when crossing bocage, hedges, rivers, and streams.

quite a lot of ww2 vehicles were 2 wheel drive including some cmp's and most early trucks.
2wd off road means hard ground, fields, tracks ect.
a profesional trained driver could get a 2wd vehicle quite far but only if not grounding out or up slippery hills.
the only wheeled vehicle not all wheel drive that could get quite far is a motorbike, but only a light one at that.
some rules cover winter movement.
even all wheel drive vehicles in a russian winter were restricted to roads and then often needing helpwhen bogged.
i use a simple set of rules for our clubs african games and then add the restrictions on to that.

I tried once to set up a rules system with two impulses where the movement rate at the first impulse would be smaller than the movement rate on the second impulse. Thus a vehicle could move very slowly and do something else (like spot or shoot) or it could move more quickly but everyone would be hanging on for dear life and incapable of doing anything elses. The thought was the number of axles times two would be the first distance, and the cross-country vehicle speed would be the second distance.

It ended up being too hard to keep track of, so I dumped it for the 50/50 breakdown.

Although not 4x4, the VW Kubelwagen had very good off-road capabilities, because the rear engine put the weight over the dive wheels and because it had a smooth under belly, so did not get hung up on rocks and things so easily.

Something I only learned recently is that German motorcycles with sidecars actually had 2 drive wheels, as the wheel on the sidecar was also powered. So they were 2x3s.

I often find rules allow wheeled vehicles to move to fast off road and to slow on road. The off road portion should also be very limited towards terrain ( open fields is one thing, woods of any kind is another). The on road aspect seems to be limited to rules which deal with tracked vehicles. A jeep on the road is much quicker than most tracked vehicles, just because an APC stat says it can do 40mph doesn't mean it's capable and under good control. Most wheeled vehicles can reach that easily and with control.

Just some thoughts
Doc

In my humble opinion (for what it's worth!) I really think that rule systems are a little too easy going on the question of wheeled vehicles bounding around cross country. My Ford Transit would cross a nice open, flat field but it doesn't mean I would when there was a road available for my destination. Simply slowing a vehicles' speed down while it crosses country doesn't seem enough of a restriction to me. Surely exposed axles and suspensions that were designed for roads would come under some considerable strain while bouncing across country?

Then there was the time that the neighbor boys stole their Mama's car and raced around the pasture while I was in my jeep. They hit a partially exposed boulder (that was hiding in the grass) that stuck up about 8" above the ground and left their rear axle positioned about a foot further back than desired.

An object lesson in 2X2 vs. 4x4 and off-road terrain (plus what happens to you if you steal Mama's car).

Lost Pict

For WW2 I use an idea from Steven Zaloga:
Vehicle movement 3xD6, 1x1= wheeled bogged,2x1 = half track bogged, 3x1 = tracked bogged, also gives the unpredictability of vehicle support.
But having seen a Finnish movie "Ambush" bicycle recce troops hurtling along forest tracks on 1930/40s boneshakers
(suspension is for wussies) people travelled harder without the all wheel drive luxery.
Guy T

'Vehicle movement 3xD6, 1x1= wheeled bogged,2x1 = half track bogged, 3x1 = tracked bogged, also gives the unpredictability of vehicle support.'

I like that idea.

@donlowry
The BMW which were the most numerous didn't have the sidecar power, only the Zundap motorcycles had the powered sidecar wheel.

Mako, Military wheeels bog all the time. So much so many of them come with winches for self recovery. I have had to use two trucks on the road chained together just ot drag one out of the mud.

A lot of that stems from the problem that the military overloads everything. It is not your family jeep on a weekend outing. It is the jeep with your family, and a couple of cousins, and all of everybodys posetions.

And when it is not mud or sand, it is cover in vegitation. Thing get hung up on stumps, or that small bush was hiding a ten foot hole in the ground. A half inch of rain converts the field you stopped in yesterday to a deep swamp with all the trucks sunk to the axles, or so it seems when you try to drag them out. And dont think frozen ground is all the great either. Ofthen the truck has enough preassure on one tire to break through and them you get all the problems of mud and frozen at the same time.

In 21 years, I spend roughly half in Selfpropelled artillery(tracks) and half in towed by trucks. Towed, even light guns behind Humvees have maybe three times the mobility troubles tracks have. Of course when you do stick an SP howitzer, it is pretty stuck.

And changing a flat tire is a lot more fun than fixing a thrown track. Bet Tim has some storys about that.

So yes wargames are very nice to off rad wheels. But then a really set of movement rules would not see all that much movement. why do you think armys are so obsessed with fighting over roads.

owen

You could rationalise game offroad movement rates as representing travel on lesser tracks etc that are not represented directly with a terrain piece on the table.

'why do you think armys are so obsessed with fighting over roads.'

Good point.

Mid 20th cent. 'cars' were much better off road than modern ones (being less optimised for smooth tarmac 'on road' use) …

Those Russian BA20s were produced in their thousands predominantly for use off road and on dirt roads.

Roads are key for armies because the logistic tail uses the roads (at least from the rail head) …

Anyone who has worked in combined arms exercises know how loudly an infantry company CO will scream at the accompanying tank troop or half squadron who set the pace a little too fast for the poor fellows in the back of the carriers.

Loudly enough to be heard over the engine and tracks without the comm system?

Vehicles designed in the 1920s and 1930s assumed that the 'good' roads were gravel (or cobblestones). They didn't have the extreme wheel travel that modern 4x4s do, but even a Rolls Royce saloon would be able to handle a muddy track in India without breaking a sweat, while the 2000s vintage Rolls would likely need a lot more help getting unstuck.

It's true, older cars were better off-road, largely because their aerodynamics were worse.

1970s and previous vehicles were pretty good offroad, if you went slow enough (or fast enough, in the case of mud).

As for the quotidian nature of 2WD military vehicles in WW2; I did not know that, and it's kind of sad.
-Kle.

Quite possibly cars of that era had a higher road clearance. They were build with poor roads in mind, not super highways.

… and narrow tyres that bite in to get a grip.

I would think that most wheeled vehicles, even 4x4, should not be able to go much faster than infantry walking speed off road. Especially when you consider that the open terrain areas on the wargames table do not represent flat football pitches, but include areas of rough ground, with bushes, ditches, rocky areas, etc that the wheeled vehicles would have to navigate.

When I was in Military Service, one day we were three in a jeep, the lieutenant was looking at the map and he said: "Tournez ā droite" (="Turn on the right" – he meant at the next crossroad!)

Guess what happened?

The obedient driver immediately turned on the right, and before we could say anything we had left the road and were at full speed on a ploughed field.

Actually, the speed you can attain is going to depend a lot on your advance recon or on ground cover. Much the same for tracked or 4x4 vehicles.

At least here in the western US (Rocky Mountains) I have had and have seen others attain 40 mph or higher speeds across open terrain in 2 wheel drive vehicles.

Add some foot to 3 foot tall grass or other foliage and I get a lot more cautious unless I have scouted it. As noted above a rock or a small depression/ditch/gulley (foot to 2 ft deep) can ruin your day at speed. But that is the same with the 4x4, 4x6, etc.

One of the maxims I grew up with was that 'what 4 wheel drive is good for is getting you really stuck.' Therefore we drove over all kinds of terrain off road and only put the vehicle in 4 wheel in tight spots.

Even if they don't get bogged as such, off-road movement for vehicles is pretty limited in a lot of terrain. Aside from when you are in deserts or virgin grassland, there are fences, hedgerows, ditches, bogs, trees etc etc etc which even a modern day Land Rover cannot simply sail over. I would suggest that huge portions of the table (in western Europe or similar) should be virtual no-go areas to wheeled vehicles – and a lot tougher for tracked vehicles than we wargamers tend to make it.

I remember being on exercise in Forestry Commission land and there was simply no chance of taking our soft skins more than a few yards off the tracks. It was a case of driving up to a spot, unloading the boys and doing what we could to hide the vehicles before pushing on on foot.

Sure, with enough lads and enough time, chain saws, axes, sand ladders and winches and all the rest, you can get a Defender virtually anywhere – but that's not the same as it whizzing about cross country.