Various parts of Karl must be set up according to its state, such as firing, running on the road, and being transported on the railway. Currently available Karl kits may or may not reproduce these features correctly.

There are four distinctive deployment modes of Karl.

• (A) Automotive/Running mode: running on its own engine, in order to move into the firing position.
• (B) Operation/Firing mode: ready to load, aim, and fire.
• (C) Railway Transport mode: transported on the specifically designed railway transport carriers.
• (D) Road Transport mode: disassembled and transported on Culemeyer Trailers.

There are several features related to the deployment modes: suspension, cradle, and side decks. The suspension is enabled and suspension arms are lowered when Karl is running. It is disabled and the suspension arms are raised when firing, or in transport modes. Karl has a double recoil system; the cradle is in the rear-most position (the "front" of Karl is opposite to the gun muzzle), and the entire cradle recoils towards the front when the gun is fired. The cradle is released from recuperators, and locked, while running or being transported on the railway. The side decks are unfolded when firing, and folded when in transport. They may or may not be folded when Karl is running on its own.

Table 1 summarises the state of these features and the deployment modes.

Table 2 summarises buildable deployment modes in available kits. Note that "modification" in this table refers to necessary "fix" to make the above features consistent with the deployment modes. The kit may or may not require further correction or detail up to make an accurate model of Karl.

Table 2 shows that some kits cannot be made into any valid deployment mode out of the box.

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