How do you handle vehicles, dogfights, extras?

[Tatertron]

I was wondering how other players might handle vehicle combat. Im prepping to run a Weird War 2 Campaign, and wanna have all my bases covered. on the combat tracker, how do you deal with tanks and crews? Do you put all 5 crew members and the tank on the tracker? I tried it, it gets confusing. Especially wen you have several tanks on either side. ( we like large Private Ryan Style battles.)

Also, with dogfights and the chase tracker. I figured out how to put a Fighter onto a character, but cant drag and drop weapons or anything. Should I just have players add vehicle weapons to their weapons inventory manually or is there a quicker way? Also, if anyone has any other tips on how to make vehicles and characters merge more seamlessly, any and all advice is welcome.

And finally, I want the players to control any friendly NPC extras in combat, as per Savage Worlds style. How do I do this? is there a way to assign a few NPS to character control?

Any and all answers are much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Mask_of_winter]

I hope this screenshot helps you figure it out.
One pointer here, always drag weapons, npcs, vehicles, etc. from your library to your sidebar panels first before adding to the combat tracker.
The library is your database, the sidebar panels are your toolbox.
https://i.imgur.com/LzBGj4p.jpg

[Skellan]

didn't realise that myself. I usually just bung them all on the tracker. The groupings look really helpful.
nice fonts btw

[Tatertron]

That looks awesome! As soon as I get home from work I am so gonna test that out.
Thanks!

[Mask_of_winter]

And if you want just a group of extras, start by dropping one in the combat tracker. Mouse over the group icon, hold down ALT and click to add as many extras to this group as you want.

[Tatertron]

This has helped a bunch. Thanks!
Still a couple questinns though.
#1: not exactly sure what the "sidebar panel" is.
#2: when I share the combat tracker with my players (in this case myself. Have a second FG open), no info comes up. I would like them to see the stats of the vehicle their in, so they can use its weapons instead of having them equip weapons in their personal sheet.

Thanks in advance!

[Mask_of_winter]

#1: Story, Images, Personalities, Notes, Tokens, Library, etc. those are the large sidebar panels... Within a campaign, always share things with the players from those, not from the library. If the item, extra or whatever isn't in one of those panels, drop them there first.
#2: To give a pc access to a vehicle or item, hold down alt and drop whatever you want them to have access to on their portrait. They can then access them on their sheet (npc extras under allies, items including vehicles in their inventory tab). Alternatively, you can drop them on their sheet where they belong, just as you would if you were creating a character. Note that they won't see the stats on the combat tracker, they'll have to bring up the stat sheet that was shared with them.

[Tatertron]

Awesome! That makes sense. This is starting to come together thanks to you.

One last question: what I started doing last night is sharing the vehicle sheet with the players so they could have all the stats, including weapons right there that they could drag and drop. Is there anything wrong with doing it this way? I also started doing this with NPCs.

[Mask_of_winter]

Nope, that's a good way to do it. If they want they can put it on their sheet themselves later. The only situation where doing alt+drop on portrait is good is when they fumble to drop it in the right place on their character sheet. Without the alt button held down it will also share it to THAT character only. Useful when it's something private you or the player doesn't want to share with the other players for some reason.