For the life of me, I can't get past the first couple enemies. They can take down the convoy in a matter of seconds, and the machinegunner of my tank refuses to shoot them, even if I'm at point blank range. If I tell him to target one, he just starts shouting orders to move at me, and still does nothing.

Anyone have any tips?

Ahh, of course... been puzzling over this for about 2 hours, and as soon as I finally post it, I figure it out. I was remaining "turned out", so my gunner couldn't rotate the turret (otherwise it would hit me in the head :P)

Ah, the "shit, forgot to turn in" moments :)

Those are quite tricky missions anyway. As a general tactic, although you're probably doing it already: stop the convoy from time to time and scout ahead to clean the path from enemies. Only move them when you're 100% sure the area is clear. Then rinse and repeat until you reach the objective area.

The AI in armored vehicles also has problems targeting infantry, particularly when they are prone or too close to the vehicle (something that you can exploit yourself in other missions). So it's better to either use manual fire or scan yourself for enemies (moving the targeting reticle around like crazy) instead of relying on the "Target" command. On the other hand, the AI will engage autonomously targets that you'd have never spotted (or not as fast), so it makes up for the mentioned shortcomings.

Thanks for the advice. I eventually got fed up with the mission and just accepted failure. Will probably go back and play it later, though. Escort missions = ugh, even in a game like this.

Now I'm on...is it 'Rolling Thunder,' maybe? One of the tank missions. Still much prefer being a footsoldier. Commanding a tank is a little overwhelming, and it's easy for my poor brain to get confused :3. But after all...the depth and variety of this game is what makes it so compelling. So I'll learn to like the tank missions.

"Guardian" is quite tough. Well, sorta tough. It does take forever the way I do it, which is to put two guys in the APC for the machine gun support (and because they can be decent at finding targets, as mentioned) and leave everyone else, including myself, on foot.

The first couple tank missions aren't bad since you can just tell your driver to keep formation, taking that little bit of a PITA out of the picture. It gets a bit more complicated when you have to control other vehicles, especially when repair and rearm support is available, and when individual crewmembers become wounded. For the most part, when controlling a vehicle platoon I usually set the stance to 'fire on everything that twitches', choose a formation, and stick with simply telling the platoon where to go. I let them figure out their own targeting unless they happen to miss the obvious ones (the aforementioned infantry, for instance).

And just wait until you play the resistance add-on where the vehicle picture is a bit muddier. : )

One thing that I found helps a bit is to periodically use the external camera to give you a slightly cheating eagle-eye view. Well, low-flying sparrow-eye view. The overhead tactical view (not sure if it works with vehicles) is also helpful since you can pan and zoom separate of your own player movements.