We had an interesting discussion on mobility, our rules have 5 levels of mobility
Low Ground Pressure – Highest mobility level, e.g. British CVR (T) and some Russian tanks.
Tracked – This covers Tracked and very high mobility vehicles, typically new generation 6 or 8 wheeled AFVs.
High Mobility Wheeled – Jeeps, 4 Wheeled AFVs etc.
Low Mobility Wheeled – Cars and commercial wheeled vehicles including most commercial trucks.
Specialist Mobility – This represents a vehicle specially adapted to cope with certain types of terrain. Examples would be:-
• Engineering vehicles laying a track across some types of soft going.
• Airscrew boats crossing some types of swamp.
These classifications are used when establishing the ability to cross obstacles and difficult areas.
Now we have certain terrain types, yes you could have thousands of types all with some discrete limitation on vehicles, but the point is you need to finish a game in a limited time looking up one of even a thousand mobility types is impractical. The terrain types tend fit well with our classifications (oh what a surprise!)
Now it all works and we have no problems but being at least potentially inveterate tinkerers we can't help wondering. Some vehicles just come out not fitting well potentially in this level of detail. The French used 4 by 4 VAB's throughout but exported 6 wheelers. Then there are the unique(ish) vehicels the Panard EBR 90mm
link
and of course the brm-2 among others. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRDM-2
These are strange vehicles the, Panard wheels are not even rubber but metal, well for the ETO, apparently these did not work in sand so it became a permanent 8 by 8 with all rubber tyres in the dessert.
So the idle question is where do they fit? A BTR60 and BTR 80 sit happily in High mobility wheeled as far as we are concerned. But if you need 2 let down wheels are you really looking at a Low mobility wheeled vehicle that can become as good as a standard High mobility wheeled?
I guess the real question is why? What do drop down wheels do for you as opposed to just having all wheels down all the time. For the Panard clearly all wheels don't work when using steel wheels try using them at 30mph. Why steel, especially when in the dessert they got replaced by rubber tyred ones. The fact that they were 8 by 8 in the dessert makes the drop down bit look a bit flaky.
Also it's not something that lasted as a concept to today.
Were these decisions made more on economic logic than tactical logic, hard to imagine given the additional complexity.
So have you an opinion or even data on the logic of these unique vehicles and if pushed to fit them into the mould set out above where would you put them and why?
explores another variant in the European Buildings range.
