What I don’t quite understand about this whole dilemma is why can’t we have the option to spawn with the gun empty and instead of the next round being automatically loaded, the current keys for “change to X type of shells” become “load X type of shell.”
This is especially crucial for long-reloading guns where different shells have very different uses.
Example: You in a Jagdtiger see an M18 which has not noticed you. Currently ingame you have APC/APCBC loaded, which will overpen the M18 and usually not kill it in one shot. He’d take a hit, be able to retreat behind cover, and potentially be able to barrel-knock you and go around your side while you reload depending on what your shell hit.
But if you could leave your gun empty, you would just load HE and send his turret into orbit.
Example 2: I was recently playing my Chinese IS-2’43, and encountered a T92. Stock AP overpenned it and only killed his gunner and jammed his turret ring. Ended up having to chase him around a corner where he was repairing, load HE, and blow him to bits. I was lucky that he had no friends nearby.
If I could have had the gun empty, I would have loaded HE first upon seeing what he was and killed on shot one.
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Waiting 20 seconds to load a round for an M18 isn’t gonna be as effective as just shooting them with APCBC that has 786 grams of effective explosives.
Those 786g TNTe mean little if it overpens and doesn’t trigger the fuse.
I dont know if its been mentioned in this thread so ill say it anyway. Before match starts or in test drive you can adjust the order and quantities of ammo, they have a drop down selection and you can swap them about. For the cost of 1, it really dont matter,. Would you want to get caught with your pants down with an empty gun. In real life it would be unprofessional but this is WT
It’s the risk you would have to take if you had the option to spawn with an empty gun and manual load. Most times I use derp guns it’s not sudden encounters. So I would benefit immensely from such an option.
It would be as optional as “vertical targeting” is for plane gun convergence.
I personally would not, as i have been sniped from spawn at start of match. And i zlso do not like players who used smoke at spawn
I don’t see how players using smoke at spawn relates to manual reload, but there is no right or wrong answer.
What do you mean by manual reload, would it work with auto loaders, it could affect BR’s
I don’t honestly know - probably not if its a mechanical loader, yes if its just an assisted loading tray like the Chi-Ri II, IS-7, or 279.
Drill Title: Conduct Main Gun Misfire Procedures on a M1 Series Tank - Crew: “Note: If the round fails to fire again, the loader moves the gun to the SAFE position, removes the round, and places the round in the ready ammunition compartment.”
So unloading is definitely a thing for the M1, as I imagine it would be for all tanks with a possibility of a misfire. (Probably doesn’t apply with two-part ammunition, likely have to ram it out from the barrel)
“In real life it might be stuck”–in real life you can blow a shift and trash your transmission, like any other mechanical failure there’s no need to include it.
We can imagine an “unload->load” action to be slightly less than 2x the load time, because the load time already has opening the breech and ejecting the empty baked in.
I’m down for that functionality.
But I’d prefer even more for derp cannons to just spawn with the gun empty and load only what I need, when. Like real operational tanks and SPGs do - they don’t travel cross-country with ammo loaded when they don’t know always what they’ll be shooting at next.
Pretty sure most tanks don’t. Due to hazard risks. Thought do believe some do have the option.
I think the burden is on you to prove that cannons with one-piece ammunition, capable of ejecting an empty shell under normal conditions, would not be able to do the same with an unfired one.
The hazards are the hazards–you still need someone inside to catch it when ramming from the barrel (gonna let a potentially hot round thunk down on the floor?) and hopping out of your tank to walk the dinosaur with your crew after (presumably) trying and failing to shoot at a hostile target is not where you want to be when staying inside is an option.
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I fail to see how that’s related to the topic.
Short version–any tank with one-piece ammo can eject shells, and therefore change ammo without firing it. Forgive me if you weren’t implying the opposite.
It wasn’t i was stating that not all tanks were capable of doing so and I doubt tanks in the past at least a certain quantity of them had this option.
and I doubt tanks in the past at least a certain quantity of them had this option
Yes, this is where you’re mistaken. Ejecting of empty shells is not optional for non-combustible cases. The mechanism which ejects empty shells is equally capable of ejecting unfired ones.
The capability to eject unfired shells is also not optional for ejecting misfired shells, which tanks in the past would certainly also experience and need to deal with.
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Provide sources. With images of WW2 era, early, mid, and late cold war era tanks that do such.
Let’s start with WW2, mmmmmmmkay?
Stuart, breech and ammo:
Note the falling block action and rimmed cartridge. The purpose of a rim on a cartridge is to provide a surface for the ejector to impact, and in some cases to headspace the cartridge. Headspacing is only necessary when the cartridge is relied on to seal the chamber; a falling block action does not rely on the cartridge to seal the chamber. The rim on the cartridge in this case is a surface for the ejector to impact.
See video of the cannon action here, with ejection of the empty occurring at 2:30. The M6 37mm on the Stuart features semi-automatic shell ejection. Said mechanism does not preclude manual operation of the mechanism. From Basic Field Manual, 37mm Gun, Tank, M6, pg. 56: “d. To unload.—The gun automatically ejects the empty case. To unload an unfired round, pull down on the operating handle.”
Sherman breech with labeled extractor and rimmed ammunition (bonus Panzer and Tiger) here:
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I probably could have just posted the field manual with the section on “instructions to unload the gun”.
We’ve got the Stuart and the Abrams. If you’d like to believe that tank cannon technology changed dramatically in between those two, only to end up back where it started, be my guest.
Perhaps next you’d like sOuRcEs AnD iMaGeS proving that, when a vehicle has a gas tank, it has a gas cap component that allows you to fill said tank with gas?
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