AT guns and other hassles...

[henri511]

These remarks are preliminary, caue I have not played enough to make any solid opinions.

I played the first two campaign scenarios, but did not finish the second after the Soviet AT units knocked out 4 of my tanks on the first turn.[8|]. I know that the theory says that infantry should accompany tanks when enemy AT is present, but with this open terrain, troop carriers will get clobbered immediately if they stay at the front.Maybe putting infantry on the tanks? Otherwise how is one to combat AT units in this game? [&:]

I did win the first scenario, but I only had 3 tanks left, so it was somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory. One Russian AT gun knocked out 6 of my tanks all by himself![:'(]

I had no artillery in the first scenario, so in the second I chose a mortar and a 105 mm. However in the first two moves (before I quit) I was unable to get any of my commanders to order any strikes, the Art orders being greyed out, so I was unable to strike the Russian AT units that were clobbering me. The Russians had no such problems and clobbered my forces with 82 mm mortar fire.[X(]

In the first scenario, I could often not get my armored cars to fire Mg or HE at enemy infantry or AT units, so I had to fire AP, which is not very effecive against infantry.And my Sdkfz troop carriers could not fire at all after they had unloaded their infantry.[:(]

In the first 2 scenarios the Russians are on the defensive, and theory states that one should have an advantage of 3:1 to attack defensive positions. But the Germans barely have equality, nothing close to 3:1.[:-]

What am I missing?[&:]And yes...I DID read the manual.[&o]

Henri

[redwolf]

You need to find the guns with the minimum of your forces at risk, then clobber them with artillery. You can use the 222 armored cars for that.

Arriving with armor in a zone covered by AT guns and having no artillery is suicide.

If artillery doesn't help, keyhole your force so that only one AT gun can see any of your tanks but is covered by many tanks and then work the suspected gun positions one by one.

Fire on suspected gun positions before the guns open fire.

Avoid open areas that might be covered by guns, try to move up to suspected gun positions so that LOS is only established at short range and not to all guns at once.

[pvthudson01]

Scout scout scout and use Recon
 
and dont charge out in the open so much

[Erik Rutins]

Henri,

Keep at it, the skill will come. With each new game some habits may have to be unlearned. I'm not sure why you are getting hit so hard, but in general I would advise trying the following while you are getting a hang of things - Don't use the Rush orders, focus on using orders like Advance, Bound and Engage->Move to give yourself a better chance of spotting and engaging the enemy before being ambushed. Also, use scouts. These can be empty or loaded halftracks, scout cars, etc. Recon by fire with artillery or direct area fire can be helpful too and in general having "wingmen" to cover each of your units will limit ambushers' total before they themselves are engaged.

I do recommend choosing one artillery unit per battle for the Germans, 120mm mortars are a good choice, just because they give you more flexibility. Also, keep in mind the Soviets do have artillery access on Turn 1, so staying in your deployment zone for too long is not a good idea. If they call it in on Turn 1 and you are still sitting in your zone on Turn 3, you may be in for a rude surprise.

Regards,

- Erik

[mbtanker]

What others have said. Also, as far as I can tell, you can recon by fire effectively. So I'll have a tank platoon on overwatch (Engage) and have it pump HE into suspected areas. This seems to help. I went from getting my clock cleaned on the first mission to a decisive victory. Of course knowing where things were going to be also helped....[;)]  But that's also why I think the tactic works because I got considerably less AT fire when doing this.

[PDiFolco]

Does the game have smoke ammo for mortars ? It should be a classic here ...

[ahauschild]

No smoke for Artillery or mortars that I can see so far. Would help allot to screen against those ATG's.

[Mobius]

Rush only short distances and from cover to cover or hull down to hull down.  Also have some other platoon covering your platoon's rush. 
If no other platoon can cover do a bound from cover to cover as the other half of your platoon will cover the rushing elements.
Do lots of scouting. 
Don't let the Russian 76.2mm AT guns get your tanks in the sides as they can pretty much go in one side and out the other.

[FeurerKrieg]

ORIGINAL: ahauschild

No smoke for Artillery or mortars that I can see so far. Would help allot to screen against those ATG's.

ANother must add. How can there not be smoke in a tactical game? Is the wish list posted yet?

[henri511]

How do you get hull down^ I have not seen that in the menus...[&:]

Henri

[mbtanker]

ORIGINAL: hen5ri

How do you get hull down^ I have not seen that in the menus...[&:]

Henri

It's not a command. You just have to position manually.

[ravinhood]

Did you READ THE RULES/MANUAL FIRST? Or did you just start playing an expect to clobber the ai/game without any grey matter? lol

[mbtanker]

I read the manual. Did I miss a hulldown command somewhere?

[ravinhood]

Well I know when I get a new game takes me at least a whole day just to read and "comprehend" the rules from the manual. Especially on more complex wargames. It's one thing to read the manual and it's another to RETAIN what you've read in 5 minutes for some people.[:D]

[mbtanker]

Dude I guess I am just not following you. A fellow asked where the Hulldown command is. I've read the manual and have been playing the game since last night minus breaks to come here. If you know of a Hulldown command then tell us where it is. Otherwise I'm afraid I just don't understand what you are getting at. [&:]

[Erik Rutins]

No problem with the question at all!

You do have to "eyeball" hull down positions. The game itself takes a look at whether a given enemy can "see" your entire tank or just the upper hull/turret. In the latter case, it's considered hull down and the hit locations take that into account. Note that for some vehicles, because their turret armor is weaker than their hull armor, being hull down may not be that big of an advantage. However, you also become a smaller target and thus harder to hit which is an advantage in general.

Regards,

- Erik

[tc237]

Thanks Eric, redwolf, Mobius
Some real good tips. It will definitly help me play better.
 
mbtanker, unfortunately sometimes you just have to sort through the BS on forums. Beware the [:D] user. 

[henri511]

OK, I replayed the first campaign scenario and this time I got a decisive victory and only a few losses. Knowing that the enemy is on the defensive is a big help, in the first try I had divided my force into three, with the main effort on the right.

This time, I sent everything on the right except one Panzer platoon (left in the middle in case the Soviets tried to bring some reinforcements across the map - they didn't).when a soviet tank appeared, I concentrated fire on it and thus knocked out the 3 tanks on the right objective.(Why is it that when my tanks miss, they always miss by about 6 feet on the right of the target?[:'(])

The enemy AT was a lot more difficult. It's one thing to say AT guns should be taken out by infantry, and its another to get the infantry close enough in this game's open terrain while the enemy backfield tanks and the AT guns are sniping at them. Only one infantry unit managed to get close enough to take out an AT gun - the others were eventually taken out by tanks.[8|]

BTW, why is it that my Panzergrenadiers, armored cars and halftracks seem to have only AP ammo? And the 100 meter accuracy for the artillery seems a bit much; surely after a few zeroing-in shots, 105 mm and mortar artillery is more accurate than that? [&:]

Henri

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: hen5ri
BTW, why is it that my Panzergrenadiers, armored cars and halftracks seem to have only AP ammo? And the 100 meter accuracy for the artillery seems a bit much; surely after a few zeroing-in shots, 105 mm and mortar artillery is more accurate than that? [&:]

That's just how we list "standard machine gun/rifle ammo". As for artillery, it should get more accurate with every phase of fire, so it's most accurate fire should be on the sixth phase, least accurate on the first. Rockets are also less accurate in general.

Regards,

- Erik

[Yoozername]

And the 100 meter accuracy for the artillery seems a bit much; surely after a few zeroing-in shots, 105 mm and mortar artillery is more accurate than that?

'Accuracy' of indirect artillery is very dependant on the range it is fired at. Even a modern day 120mm mortar, firing at max range, can spread the rounds around much further than 100 meters. Some rounds may land 100's of meters away (at max range).

A mortar firing 'direct' at 100-200 meter range would have a much tighter spread. Walking the rounds into a building would be no problem.

The actual spread of the rounds is an ellipse for artillery and an oval for mortars. The size of the spread, again, is range dependant. It can also be muzzle velocity dependant also. Howitzers can 'tighten-up' the ellipse by moving closer to the target and firing at a greater angle.

When firing artillery over the heads of real troops, you would not want them much closer than 200 meters. This is because there can always be an outlier in the spread.

Not sure how the game works but once artillery is shifted 'onto' a target, it does not really get more accurate. It is subject to dispersion.