Area Fire to button up tanks

[rickier65]

I built a scenario with 1 platoon of T34's (3 tanks), and 1 platoon of PzGrenadiers (6 squads). I placed the tank in open facing away from the PzGr. All six Inf squads were place in bldg cover between 75 - 125 feet from the tanks.

Since you can't target tanks with infantry fire, I wanted to see if using area fire would workk to force the tanks to button up.

I put area fire as close to the tanks as i could 2 squads per tank. See Pic 1 below.

And the result was the two flank tanks buttoned up almost immediately. Also note area fire did hit the tanks. See pic 2 below.

I noticed that the center tank was not buttoed and also had no hits in the msg window. On a subsequent order phase I rest the area fire indicator a little better (closer) to the center tank, and it subsequently buttoned up as well.

So this actually works the way I would think it should. It is necessary to get the blue area fire grid as close to the tank as possible - but note that it won't allow you to put it right on the tank, becasue I think the LOS tool sees the tank as a valid target, even though if you try to set it, the rubberband goes grey - so you need to use the area fire method.

(This way I also got to play with the scenario editor too! (using IE6 by the way)

Rick

[rickier65]

And the second pic showing the tanks buttoned.

[rickier65]

I actually ran this thing out 7 more turns, the tanks did change facing the next order phase, but they never returned fire. Which I suspect means they never saw my infnatry squads.

However - I had not set any VP's or objectives for this scean, so maybe they didn't feel the need to shoot anything up.

Having quite a lot of fun with this game.

Rick

[Mobius]

That's most interesting Rick.  I've played this game nearly 2 years and didn't even think of that.
 
At one time the game system did allow firing on something that it couldn't damage.  But was a problem I guess when a combined force attacked.   There the most important target, like a tank, would draw small arms fire and the supporting infantry would be left alone.  Now the squishies are the primary target of other infantry.

[Capitaine]

Very good test Rick.  Kudos for figuring this out.

[Mobius]

It also shows that area fire will button up a tank if it receives shrapnel hits. Of course, messages about rear and side hits relate to shrapnel from exploding HE rounds not to suppresion fire from bullets.

[Agrippa]

[:)]  Thank you for your post.  I was having problems with not being able to target unbuttoned tanks.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Mobius

That's most interesting Rick.  I've played this game nearly 2 years and didn't even think of that.

At one time the game system did allow firing on something that it couldn't damage.  But was a problem I guess when a combined force attacked.   There the most important target, like a tank, would draw small arms fire and the supporting infantry would be left alone.  Now the squishies are the primary target of other infantry.

The benefit of reading the manual, but not too closely. <g>.

Maybe this shold be in the gameplay section rather than here, but I didn't think of putting it there..

Rick