BATTLE DRILL - A CM Tactics Blog

[Bil Hardenberger]

New post on Battle Planning just posted.  I hope you find it interesting.

Enjoy!

[Buzz]

Thanks Bill.

"Estimating the Situation never ends...." one of the reasons CM is addictive fun and challenge for me and I am sure many others.

Will review more fully tonight.... but great images convey solid advice on Battle Planning ?

[Bil Hardenberger]

New post on METT-T Analysis on the blog.  I hope you find it useful.

[Bud Backer]

Another great pair of posts, Bil. 

 

What I find interesting in the first one is your comment that you usually don't have a plan at the start of a battle. It seems so counterintuitive - everyone preaches having a plan, even a bad one, rather than no plan. What I am reading, inter alia, is that you have no firm direction but as you state, you do have a reconnaissance plan - which will inform all your decisions and coalesce into a plan as the battle unfolds. 

 

[grunt_GI]

WOW, I should have scrolled down to find some of this content...really excellent.

One question about Recon...which is a horrible weakness of mine...how do you actually do it in the game...I get the basic idea of a bounding overwatch approach so all your scouting teams aren't moving at once, and I have become a big fan of recon by fire, but what COMMANDS do you give your recon units to give them the best change to 1) spot bad guys  or 2) react swiftly to minimize casualties and began the battle drill of reacting to enemy contact? Do you use HUNT?  Some sort of SLOW and COVER SECTOR combo?

This is especially hard for me as I love to play a lot of town or city type scenarios and need a better way to spot ambushes, pesky MGs or even AT weapons other than screams of agony and heavy casualties.  

Thanks for all the work on the blog...something to dig into an practice some battle drills...

[Bil Hardenberger]

One question about Recon...which is a horrible weakness of mine...how do you actually do it in the game...I get the basic idea of a bounding overwatch approach so all your scouting teams aren't moving at once, and I have become a big fan of recon by fire, but what COMMANDS do you give your recon units to give them the best change to 1) spot bad guys  or 2) react swiftly to minimize casualties and began the battle drill of reacting to enemy contact? Do you use HUNT?  Some sort of SLOW and COVER SECTOR combo?

Grunt GI, I go into methods of recon in the Approach March and Platoon Scouts post.. hopefully those will help.

A quick answer is to use listening halts as much as possible.. ensure you have one or two scout teams sitting still for every one you have moving... and yes I use Hunt a lot for my scouts, rarely do I use covered arcs (for scouts at least), unless there is an area I really want to concentrate on.

[womble]

...rarely do I use covered arcs (for scouts at least), unless there is an area I really want to concentrate on.

Target Arcs don't do much for infantry "concentrating" on anything. They're far more important as full circles for controlling the fire of your sneaky, concealment-hugging scouts. As segments, they're useful for making sure the scouts are pointing the right way, without setting them to "free fire" as a Face command would, particularly in urban situations.

[Bil Hardenberger]

Womble, agree to a point.. I have found that you can get yourself into trouble using covered arcs for infantry, so I use them sparingly.  Usually only for setting ambushes, locking an AT team to an armor only target, managing engagement ranges, etc.  

However for armor I use them a lot to control the focus of the tank and the turret orientation, especially during movement and when in a keyhole position... I have had good luck with using them with armor. 

Now that I think about it Covered Arcs would be a good subject for a future blog post.

[womble]

Entirely concur that you have to use TAs for the right thing. Managing the engagement range of your scouts (as opposed to point men) is a key means of allowing them to see without being seen; without that control, as soon as your scouts spot anything they can hurt, they'll open up on it and be seen themselves. It's also a bit of a micromanagement task, as you have to alter the TAs as the element's environment changes.

Too-narrow TAs are, in general, failures-to-fire waiting to happen, of course. 

[grunt_GI]

Thanks...I do use HUNT a lot and try to  use short movements of scouts with some on overwatch...I also remember using TA for exactly the reason womble described...keeping your scouts from opening fire TOO soon...the operative word is TOO.

Thanks for the tips...hope to try them this weekend.

[womble]

There have been methods described which combine Quick or even Fast movement legs with longish waypoint pauses, combined with very short Hunt movement legs, so that the furthest the "exposed" element will go while under fire is "the next Hunt section". So from their current location, they Fast (say) 16-32m (2-4AS), then Pause for 15s, and then Hunt 8m (1AS) followed by another short dash (with no Pause at the end-of-Hunt waypoint). If during their dash or their "observation halt", they come under fire (if they've a short circular Target Arc, they'd have to spot something within  that arc to react to it), they'll cancel the Hunt and everything after it.

[Bulletpoint]

There have been methods described which combine Quick or even Fast movement legs with longish waypoint pauses, combined with very short Hunt movement legs, so that the furthest the "exposed" element will go while under fire is "the next Hunt section". So from their current location, they Fast (say) 16-32m (2-4AS), then Pause for 15s, and then Hunt 8m (1AS) followed by another short dash (with no Pause at the end-of-Hunt waypoint). If during their dash or their "observation halt", they come under fire (if they've a short circular Target Arc, they'd have to spot something within  that arc to react to it), they'll cancel the Hunt and everything after it.

Is all that necessary? I just do a series of QUICK orders with some pauses at appropriate places, and I find that my scouts automatically cancel all further orders when they come under (serious) fire.

[womble]

Is all that necessary? I just do a series of QUICK orders with some pauses at appropriate places, and I find that my scouts automatically cancel all further orders when they come under (serious) fire.

Depends how serious you want the fire to be before they go to ground. Generally, it has to be pinning fire to cancel future commands. With Hunt, and cunningly chosen "halt points", they'll go to ground, for sure, even under light incoming. Probably not entirely necessary, but sometimes it's satisfying to try and keep casualties as light as possible, rather than just accepting that the scouts are goners as soon as you send 'em out.

[BarbaricCo]

@Bil Hardenberger Your blog is already small battlepedia. Can You recomend any battle drill for bridge assaults - having problems here, or my pixelmans with my orders 

[Combatintman]

@Bil Hardenberger Your blog is already small battlepedia. Can You recomend any battle drill for bridge assaults - having problems here, or my pixelmans with my orders 

I'm not Bill, but can offer some generic advice given that each situation will be unique. The trick (as with many CM problems) generally is suppression, obscuration, aggression and synchronisation. First of all you need to secure the important areas on the home bank and in particular any spots that give you good overwatch. Once you've done that you need to hammer likely defended areas close to the crossing point and once you think you've achieved suppression, chuck some smoke around and send your lead element across. Generally once you've got the lead element across you've pretty much solved the problem so long as it is strong enough to look after itself for a short while and you don't do anything dumb with it.

[BarbaricCo]

@Combatintman Thanks! Any good YouTube link to see this in practice 

[Bulletpoint]

Depends how serious you want the fire to be before they go to ground. Generally, it has to be pinning fire to cancel future commands. With Hunt, and cunningly chosen "halt points", they'll go to ground, for sure, even under light incoming. 

Maybe it's because I only ever play US against the Germans. With the amount of MGs and SMGs they have, there's no such thing as "light incoming"

Probably not entirely necessary, but sometimes it's satisfying to try and keep casualties as light as possible, rather than just accepting that the scouts are goners as soon as you send 'em out.

Definitely. That's the way I always play. I've become quite good at it, and take very few casualties in most missions. I enjoy reuniting the scouts with their mates later in the mission, especially if they've done a good job.

[Badger73]

I'm not Bill, but can offer some generic advice given that each situation will be unique. The trick (as with many CM problems) generally is suppression, obscuration, aggression and synchronisation. First of all you need to secure the important areas on the home bank and in particular any spots that give you good overwatch. Once you've done that you need to hammer likely defended areas close to the crossing point and once you think you've achieved suppression, chuck some smoke around and send your lead element across. Generally once you've got the lead element across you've pretty much solved the problem so long as it is strong enough to look after itself for a short while and you don't do anything dumb with it.

"Pop smoke" button - likely the most forgotten, overlooked, and under utilized squad resource available in the game, especially within urban areas!  Concealment is good.  Fine advice, Combatintman.  Thank you.

[Buzz]

"Pop smoke" button - likely the most forgotten, overlooked, and under utilized squad resource available in the game, especially within urban areas!  Concealment is good.  Fine advice, Combatintman.  Thank you.

Yes. "..chuck some smoke around and send your lead element across...." but make sure you know which way and how strong the wind blows  I have forgotten to check and smoke got in my eyes ... and my lead element did not do to well exposed on their crossing.

[BarbaricCo]

Yes. "..chuck some smoke around and send your lead element across...." but make sure you know which way and how strong the wind blows  I have forgotten to check and smoke got in my eyes ... and my lead element did not do to well exposed on their crossing.

unless you're playing with soviets :(

[Bulletpoint]

It's not so much the bridge itself that's the problem - it's the lay of the land around it. Some bridges will be walkovers.. (pun intended).

Basically, you need to analyse if there are any potential places where the enemy could be shooting at the guys crossing the bridge, without you being able to hit them from your side. Also do this check for the area immediately on the other side of the bridge, because it won't help you to get across the actual bridge safely just to get minced on the landing.

So many tactical problems in this game boil down to you having to send some units into an area where they themselves are too weak to fight, and their buddies can't help them because there's no line of sight.

Edited November 25, 2015 by Bulletpoint

[womble]

I can count the number of times I've made "Throw smoke" work the way I (and the squad leader chucking the thing) wanted it to on the fingers of one foot... And that's not because of the wind...

[BletchleyGeek]

Womble, agree to a point.. I have found that you can get yourself into trouble using covered arcs for infantry, so I use them sparingly.  Usually only for setting ambushes, locking an AT team to an armor only target, managing engagement ranges, etc.  

However for armor I use them a lot to control the focus of the tank and the turret orientation, especially during movement and when in a keyhole position... I have had good luck with using them with armor. 

Now that I think about it Covered Arcs would be a good subject for a future blog post.

I find Covered Arcs to be all but indispensable to ensure fire control of units providing supporting fires or when in the defense (basically because the infantry orients itself in the correct direction always and they "hug" the terrain). Using covered arcs when "moving to contact" is a mistake more often than not. For tanks and ATGs are also very useful, very much as Bil suggests.

So many tactical problems in this game boil down to you having to send some units into an area where they themselves are too weak to fight, and their buddies can't help them because there's no line of sight.

I find that to be quite frustrating sometimes, too.

[markshot]

Bil,

 

I haven't read this thread, but I thought to post here just the same.  CMRT:  Dead of Night.  A great game of cat and mouse, but with guns!  DIFFICULTY=IRON

 

So, I have my two man recon teams out front.  Hunt, zig-zag, pause, even crawl to the next crater and stay there and listen.

 

I don't get sound contacts or spot anything.  Men die.  It seems in the darkness; sitting still is a great advantage.  I can be practically on top of them.  Things seem pretty much binary.  Either it is peaceful or you are dead (and then it is peaceful).

 

Also, interesting ... is light from weapon flashes modeled?  Why do I ask?  Well, if only the flash was modeled, then you would have a contact, but once they start shooting, then I pickup trenches and sandbags.  I can only imagine the reason that I failed to see them before was due to a lack of ambient light ... which resolved with gunfire.

 

Thanks.

[marka]

Bil:

I just read through all the posts in Tactical Problems, and put together an brief outline that summarizes the major points.  If it is OK with you, I'd like to make it available here for anyone who is interested.

TacticalProblems.CMBN.txt