tank ridding

[Narwan]

Yep, and by picking an elite formation like para's or SS armor or soviet Guards etc, as the 'company' from which you delete all but the HQ you end up with a leader who can rally very well and 'cheap' troops under his command. Ideally you pick about 3 sections to attach to such a HQ for optimal rallying and command. That's about as gamey as it gets IMO.

As to tankriding, my opinion on it has swayed a bit throughout the years. I never agreed with the view that only soviets could use tankriders and even then only desant troops. I felt, and feel, that that reasoning fails to make the distinction between hopping on a tank for a 'taxi-ride' and riding it into battle. As pointed out earlier, just about all nations used tankriding to some degree or another. But using armor as apc's in front line, loading and unloading all the time was indeed a bit too much of a good thing.

Now I don't care much about it anymore. Two reasons; one is the added cost in MP's of mounting and dismounting troops. Not only do the tanks lose MP's, but lost MP's mean lost shots. They usually don't have too many for their main gun so this can be a big drawback.
But the biggest factor was the introduction of splash damage in the game (especially after it got finetuned as vehicles suffered far too few splash hits initially). Before that the vulnerability of troops on tanks was very limited. You needed a direct hit on a tank to hurt them. With splash damage shrapnel and large shells landing nearby can do a world of hurt. As can mmg's and hmg's.

So tankriding into battle has become much more risky than it was. For ww2 games I use it occasionaly, mostly as taxi's, rarely in combat. For MBT just about never; for one less MBT you can buy up to 20 cheap apc's (possibly cheaper than the troops they carrry) so the added value of tankriding is greatly reduced.

Narwan