[Mobhack]

Tank riding is a very poor tactic to use, especially in our versions as opposed to the original SP.

I think it was the original SP that "popularised" tank riding, since they were such a useful tactic in that version of the game. I think (it is a long time ago!) that the SP1 riders were protected from HE fire, and so did not fall of if hit by shell fire and MG bursts. And they were quite good at defusing an assault, even if the vehicle (and thus the riders) was suppressed.

In ours - Tank riding is rather suicidal for the riders once fire starts coming onto the tanks (direct or indirect). It is therefore really only of use for an "administrative move" - in the rear, or behind cover of a hill, wood, etc.

Once you are out in the open, within say 1000m of where you know/suspect enemy to be, then you should have deployed them on foot as a skirmish line either ahead of or just behind the AFV.

In our version, a tank rider party that gets all its ducks in a row in terms of suppression, experience, and lucky dice rolling, while being assaulted by a smaller squad, which itself is perhaps low quality (exp, mor, damage) - might just manage to defuse the assault, take only 1-2 casualties, drop off pinned, and shoot the lesser quality squad in reply in the face. Might emphasised!. I have only seen it happen rarely, with experienced Soviets in a Long Campaign, who were veterans, and it tended to be in response to beaten-up stragglers "jumping" my tanks where I had not expected any survivors to still be around and so was still mounted-up, and drove by some half-eliminated remnant grunts who "jumped" the vehicle in an assault while it was completely unsuppressed.

Tank riders do act as a sort of "reactive armour" - but generally this reduces them to a puddle of strawberry jam spread all over the tank's outside!. So its not the "must do" thing that it was back in Ye Olde SP1 days!.