Jump to content

Help with urban combat tactics


Recommended Posts

The main problem seems to be when I move forward to the next building(s) I get ambushed by a couple of enemy soldiers while my squat is in the open running for cover. Before any supporting units have time to respond I already have lost 1-2 soldiers. The "ambushes" are fast and almost always I kill the shooters fast but the first couple of seconds already cost me a soldier or two. This happens almost every time crossing a street ext. (read:all the time) so after even a small town fight I could lose easily 50-75% of my infantry. (I rarely lose my tanks) I almost always have eyes on the buildings the enemy opens fire from but I rarely manage to spot them before they open fire to my exposed units.

 

So how do I advance in a city without getting ambushed this often while advancing?

 

My current ideas and tactics:

- I try to have a another unit always covering when I move a unit from a building to a building. (for example IFV and its infantry squat working together)

- Have MBT or IFV over looking the city ready to fire on hostile buildings. (and also fire controllers for arty ext.)

- Move slow and conservatively

 

 

My first post here, so hello to everybody.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Welcome to the forum.

 

You've already got some good ideas. Other folks will add more I'm sure, but if you have ammo, don't hesitate to shoot up any buildings that look dangerous before you advance and while you're advancing, if you can keep your troops from being impacted by the fire. If you use small arms, enemy units may respond to your fire, letting you know that they are there. With ordnance, they may just be suppressed without you knowing.

 

Some other ideas:

  • Never advance whole squads. Always break into teams. Have your MG teams area target briefly on likely danger spots while your other split teams advance.
  • Have your advancing teams pause for 15 sec at the door and fire into the buildings you want to enter first.
  • Once you get the enemy cowering (ie, have them suppressed), you can reduce your fire level and keep their heads down (mostly). So, for example, target briefly with your heavy stuff and then move an action square forward or back and then target light to keep them suppressed.
  • Don't forget you might have smoke grenades (check the wind direction and strength before using).
  • If you have demo charges, look for ways to flank and blast into buildings to reduce your exposure and take out potential ambushers.

That's all I have time for at the moment. I'm sure you'll get more ideas and/or have others expand on what I've given.

Edited by Macisle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you have demo charges, look for ways to flank and blast into buildings to reduce your exposure and take out potential ambushers.

AKA mouse-holing. Very effective.

- I try to have a another unit always covering when I move a unit from a building to a building. (for example IFV and its infantry squat working together)

- Have MBT or IFV over looking the city ready to fire on hostile buildings. (and also fire controllers for arty ext.)

- Move slow and conservatively.

Overwatch is a good idea, but is most effective at IDing the enemy that just killed your guys rather than preventing your guys from getting killed in the first place. Accomplishing the latter requires the placing of speculative fires on all unsecured locations with LOS to your moving units. This is effective, but is also slow, methodical and will burn through a lot of ammo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • When you're entering a building that can be seen from positions on its far side, use Slow to avoid being seen by any defenders there; on initial entry you're unlikely to have enough firepower assembled yet to come off best in the ensuing firefight.
  • When you're moving around within a building, you'll also stay unseen from even quite close ranges if you move Slow.
  • You don't always have to enter the location to fight nose-to-nose with the defender; drive them out with weaponfire.
  • If you can get sight down the flanks of the building you might catch fleeing defenders with bullets and stop them falling back and making your life hard a second time.
And to add a note of expectation-management: the limitations of the spotting model as it currently stands will make for some frustrating times when you won't be able to target the building that your harrassers are in, until those meanies show their ugly mugs at the windows. So you have to adapt to that.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

  • You don't always have to enter the location to fight nose-to-nose with the defender; drive them out with weaponfire.

 

+1. My point exactly. Shoot the building to the pebbles with as heavy shells as possible. Direct or indirect. So, that only thing your infantry needs to do, is walk easily to the ruins, smoke cigarrettes while kicking small stones and pebbles while looking for survivors. :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

walk easily to the ruins, smoke cigarrettes while kicking small stones and pebbles while looking for survivors. :D

Well that certainly matches with your avatar :)

You don't necessarily need to destroy the house - which can burn through your HE ammo pretty fast if you need to "clear" a lot of houses. Even a few HE rounds can be enough to dislodge the enemy especially if you have small arms fire on them too. If you know the enemy is in the building you can save a lot by only assaulting after you have seen some of the run away. Sure they might survive to fight in the next street but each time you encounter them there will be less of them and they will be less willing to put up a fight.

Unless you have only a small number of buildings to "clear" and lots of ammo then @wee's method can be fun. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My tried and true method is having two or more squads working in together.

 

Squad A area fires the building to be assaulted.  Wait long enough (about 15 seconds) for the volume of fire to put some serious suppression on the enemy.

 

Squad B quick moves to the building and into it.  Just before they enter the building, Squad A stops firing or shift fire to another nearby building.  If the street crossing is high risk, Squad B drops smoke into the street as Squad A starts their area fire.  By the time Squad B starts their move across the street, they are covered in smoke for the move.

 

Other squads and/or vehicles as required area fire into nearby buildings that may be a threat to Squad B moving into the building.

 

Rinse and repeat as required until you own all the real estate you need to take.

 

Using this technique, I have cleared multiple buildings without taking a single casualty.

 

Do note - trying to exactly coordinate the timing of this in WEGO is problematic, because correct timing is required to ensure correct suppression of the enemy at the time of the movement of friendly forces.

 

This technique is easy to do in real time using the pause feature.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do note - trying to exactly coordinate the timing of this in WEGO is problematic, because correct timing is required to ensure correct suppression of the enemy at the time of the movement of friendly forces.

Fortunately, it's not necessary to be 100.000% accurate with the timings in WeGo; a few seconds' overlap of the suppressing element's fire with the presence of the assaulting element won't cause significant harm*. Best to err on the side of caution, though: if you think 15s suppression is going to be enough, start the assaulting element's final approach after 15s, rather than trying to guess how long after they set out the support fires should begin, in order to achieve 15s fire on target before the assaulters get there. It's probably worth the assaulters taking a pause outside their objective too, so long as it's safe to do so, to contribute their own suppressive fire, and grenades. It's not as easy as using Pause in RealTime, but it doesn't take too much practice.

Edit:

* so long as it's small arms, not HE or larger calibre solid shot... Those would be messy.

Edited by womble
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My tried and true method is having two or more squads working in together.

 

Squad A area fires the building to be assaulted.  Wait long enough (about 15 seconds) for the volume of fire to put some serious suppression on the enemy.

 

Squad B quick moves to the building and into it.  Just before they enter the building, Squad A stops firing or shift fire to another nearby building.  If the street crossing is high risk, Squad B drops smoke into the street as Squad A starts their area fire.  By the time Squad B starts their move across the street, they are covered in smoke for the move.

 

Other squads and/or vehicles as required area fire into nearby buildings that may be a threat to Squad B moving into the building.

 

Rinse and repeat as required until you own all the real estate you need to take.

 

Using this technique, I have cleared multiple buildings without taking a single casualty.

 

Do note - trying to exactly coordinate the timing of this in WEGO is problematic, because correct timing is required to ensure correct suppression of the enemy at the time of the movement of friendly forces.

 

This technique is easy to do in real time using the pause feature.

 

 

I would like the ability to do coordinated attacks/assaults.   I have mistimed and the assault goes on to kill my own guys not funny.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would like the ability to do coordinated attacks/assaults.   I have mistimed and the assault goes on to kill my own guys not funny.

 

As in real life, there is always a chance that something is going to go wrong. However, with a little practice, coordinating building assaults in Wego is not hard.

 

As Dan mentioned, another good tactic is to try to have troops ready to take advantage of it if/when the the enemy bugs out of a building, rather than having to actually go in and weed them out. Depending on the map/situation, it may not be possible, but keep the possibility in your awareness.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1) Recon by fire. Have a small team shoot a burst (target briefly, but be careful not to waste any RPGs!) at an expected ambush position. If you are lucky the enemy troops break fire discipline and shoot back, giving away their position. It is very effective if you are doing it right. Note though that recon by fire does not mean randomly shooting at buildings, hoping to hit something.

 

2) Properly preparing the village/block/district you want to assault. A nice, long artillery barrage of multiple batteries can effectively reduce the defending troops and create small gaps in their defensive line which you can exploit. Alternatively dirct fire can do the job as well, but it is not as effective as large calibre artillery IMO. In CMBS there are no collateral damage penalties that i know of, so civillian casualties wont threaten mission success.

Edited by agusto
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, you can blast through any wall. It'll suppress the occupants.  Windowless walls are a great spot for this. You can also blow out the adjoining walls of buildings right next to each other. In cities this can be very useful to create a covered "tunnel" down the block without having to go out in the street to get to the next building.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From approximately eight years ago.

 

I understand, but the constraint is simply silly. Of course if the ambush blocked the through highway and that is the whole point of clearing it, the Brads have access to the main highway, from at least one direction. "You have to go right through this boresighted opening" is tactical nonsense, it doesn't happen, there is always a way around if you know where the kill zone is.

The whole point of MOUT is to exploit the same LOS limits that the enemy is relying on for cover, to approach him in safety and to pick your shots, the match ups you want to see, and to string those together in a sequence that gets you more than your money's worth. Tactics one against ten.

Armor works in urban terrain not by standing out in the middle of the street and hoping the RPGs miss, but by keyholing on specific threats to clobber them, and then using their maneuverability (much higher than dismounts because much less vulnerable to most enemies) to reposition and isolate on the next enemy. All without stand out on the open vulnerability.

As for what the dismounts do in the approach I describe, after you clobber the front corner buildings and the first few up the right side of the road, the infantry would cross the main highway left of the ambush cross-street, at first into the left far corner building (already worked over by the Brads). From there they get spots farther up the street, Brads crawl farther right to unmask on those.

I also said to send one Brad up the alley left of that left corner building - the reason is, somebody needs to be able to blow up enemy infantry on the left side of the road, ahead of the US infantry. The procedure is, get into a house, put a squad at the right and the far windows.

2 Brads kill anything in the next houses down on the right side of the street, which the right-window squad can also see (and probably draws fire from).

The far window squad can draw fire from the next building ahead on the left side of the street, but shouldn't draw any from deeper in on that side, because the next house masks them. So you can isolate one on one on the next house. Then the Brad up the alley helps KO anybody in there. Half squad across, then another, reform at far window, another squad across and up to front windows. Repeat. Third squad trails a building and just takes over if the point one takes too many casualties.

The infantry are acting as eyes and exposing enemy if they try to fire at them. If the enemy does not fire, a couple men at a time threaten to step on top of them, and that makes them open fire. If only those at the very front do open fire, they fight alone against the whole US force and lose. If more from deeper in the position (e.g. right side of the street) try to help out, they will be seen by the front window infantry, and 1-2 of the Brads crawl just to LOS and blow each of them up.

When the Brads are using building cover to restrict LOS most of the way, the defender feels like he can't even get at them. They keep spitting out devasting firepower but won't advance into LOS of the rest of the defense. The defender can't send an RPG team closer, because the US infantry is in the buildings that would have to be used to make such an attempt.

So the Brads flat-out "eat" the whole defense, one bite at a time...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You only get friendly fire with things bigger than 7.62.  Its an abstraction to keep the AI workload manageable.  So you can have a couple of MMGs just keep up the suppression.  DO NOT USE GRENADES THIS WAY.  I will also point out that many IFVs have a LOT of 7.62mm.

You won't get blue-on-blue casualties from friendly small arms fire, true. You do get suppression from rifle-calibre and lesser rounds though. So hanging around in the "beaten zone" of the suppression team(s) is unhealthy for your ability to conduct a timely assault. It won't have much effect if it's 10-20 seconds, but if you don't stop the suppressive fire it will eventually pin your assaulting team, even if they've gotten into the objective.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

AKA mouse-holing. Very effective.

Overwatch is a good idea, but is most effective at IDing the enemy that just killed your guys rather than preventing your guys from getting killed in the first place. Accomplishing the latter requires the placing of speculative fires on all unsecured locations with LOS to your moving units. This is effective, but is also slow, methodical and will burn through a lot of ammo.

 

I cam second he mouseholing technique. While gamig the Gauntlets Crossed scenario yesterday I advanced the engineerr platoon to the wall where a Breech Squad had already blsted a hole. In the mentime a US infantrry sqaud in the building provided covering fire while other squads on my right flank which had manouvered and fought thei wy into the housing estate and what looks like an industrial estate provided additional fire support. Having achieved a high level of dominance in the fire fight by employing effective Fire and Movement the enginees were used to blast their way into the buidling and proceeded to clear the three apartment buildinggs usinng a combination of Assault and Blast orders, Total US Casualties 10 dead and 15 wounded mostly from the two rifle platoons (room for improvement there0 but, with the Russian  defenders virtually wiped out)  I had still earned myself a rare Total Vicory.

 

Urban combat is one of the most difficult forms of combat we can exect to encounter in this game. It takes a lot of skill and practive to get it ight. The Gauntets Crossed scenario is a very instructive one to practice on

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...