Tracked vehicle attrition

[Targan]

That's not unrealistic. If you were to "throw track", that is if the track were to slip off the sprocket, you could slip it back on if it hadn't slipped too far off. This requires a large steel bar referred to as a "rooster bar" or tanker/track bar. It's a lot like putting the chain back on your bicycle. Just will a massive machine that can crush you. It is very easy to get hurt doing it and is usually a result of poor maintenance or bad track tension.

That sounds a bit like the perils of owning your own dragon. It's a beast of war so awesomely destructive that it will even sometimes accidentally kill its owner, and not even require it's breath weapon main armament to do it. It just mis-stepped, critically chipped a toe claw and the ricochet decapitated it's rider.

[pmulcahy11b]

I do not miss breaking track. I never worked on an M1. My track was an M577. This was arduous enough. I can only imagine what a bear of a task breaking and replacing track for an M1 must be.

Last time I broke track on a 577, it was because we had to change all the track pads on both sides for the whole TAC. Just a long, labor-intensive activity...we started with an air gun for the track pad bolts, but it gave up and had a meltdown before we finished the first track...after that, it was the misery of tightening bolts with breaker bars on a hot day and an activity that stretched well into the night...the TAC had four 577s and two 113s...

[kiltedguard]

Ironically enough, my current character I'm playing with (well...just started) was a team leader on one of the combat service support teams sent forward to cannibalize equipment and bring parts back. His team got jumped, he got separated...