Hi

So i am planning to run a tank company campaigne, But i can't figure out how a single player could control a whole tank in combat. Or more presice how to shoot the guns in combat and not get way to many rolls???

regards

Zugy

Operators get a Comrade who can act as Gunner. This way, the player can drive the tank, whilst an NPC loads and fires the main gun. Any other weapons would have to be neglected for the specific reason you mentioned (amount of dice rolls), however you could easily allow the player or their Comrade to change places and man the station that is most appropriate for the situation at hand.

Alternatively, supposedly , pre-WW2 French tanks had a crew of just two, with the tank commander also being its gunner and loader. This way, the player could take over the gun and shoot (which may be more fun than driving) and allows them to better exert their role as vehicle commander. However, this is not quite supported by the rules, so you'd have to "wing it" by switching Drive and Attack actions between PC and Comrade.

Backgroundwise, I'd recommend to explain this with manpower shortage. Perhaps the regiment was subject to a virulent plague that killed off more than half its members whilst leaving the equipment untouched, and instead of just leaving the tanks behind, the Colonel opted to split the remaining crews up to man each vehicle with a skeleton crew.

As yet another option, you could perhaps man the remaining guns on all tanks with more NPCs, yet treat their attacks as a "group" thing similar to Horde rules, so that you don't have to roll a dozen times just for all those heavy bolters. This is a very abstracted approach, but if you intend to have the tanks get swarmed by masses of Orc infantry, it could provide a good backdrop. Simply find a way to correspond the number of manned auxiliary weapons to Magnitude, then have the tanks use this attack as a group once per round.

Assuming you want to give each player a tank, as opposed to the whole PC group being a tank crew, then just give them more comrades and assume the PC is the tank commander.

The next step is to not allow sponson weapons. So every Leman russ has a Battle Cannon, a hull mounted weapon, and maybe a pintle monuted weapon. But you can reduce the use of the pintle mounted weapon simply by firing small arms at the tank, because the commander has to stick his head and shoulders out to use it. So most of the time, the tank just has two guns. I'd also recommend making the battle cannon have a magazine size of one. That way, they don't solve every problem with immediate cannon fire, because the it takes a while to reload.

All good answers, I'd say.

Another option is to have the PC play the tank commander and the other roles filled by comrades/npc.

Use narrative for supporting parts of the story and actual rolls for major parts with either the player or comrade/npc.

For example, the tank is hunting a ork waggon supported by orks on foot.

You can describe the sponson gunners keeping up a steady fire and holding off the foot orks while the tank commander searches for the waggon while the gunner is waiting to take the shot.

Or you can describe that the sponson gunners are holding off most of the orks but a very brave ork is still approaching with a tank mine. Now the player must man the pintle gun and kill the ork or the tank will be disabled...

This way, only the cinematic actions require actual rolls, the background actions are merely described.

Indeed -- it's perfectly possible to compensate for removing the NPCs from game mechanics and still maintain a narrative presence by simply doing the same with the enemies they shoot.

Yea i was thinking of making the sponson fire auto or on need to kill. like for example what is the most pressing enemy? the PC will then man the gun that he think is the best against it, such as a battle cannon is better for blowing up orks, but it is turned to the left at a 90 degree angle and the orks are coming from the left. That way he must "man" the sponson to protect his tank.

but yea thanks for the great replies