Lightning War Posted December 11, 2006 Share Posted December 11, 2006 I haven't yet had the opportunity to defend using artillery but I have used armour to attack guns plenty of times. I usually lose badly, it has to be said. What's the best strategy for attacking defensive artillery using primarily armour? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wicky Posted December 11, 2006 Share Posted December 11, 2006 errr... off map arty is a bit hard to attack - do you mean AT guns when you say "arty"? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Enigma Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 HE fire in there general direction while attempting to keep your tanks out of there LOS. If you are in there line of sight, mass HE fire by tanks will destroy the gun line. Poor Old Spike does it to me all the time lol As for off map arty, it will in most cases not damage the tanks thus it does tend to be a waste of time firing it at them imo. (I mean they can destroy tanks but in my exp, your wasting shells lol) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 (1) don't primarily use armor. Guns are paper to armor's rock. You use scissors - indirect HE - mortars especially, plus FOs. (2) when you do have to use armor, fight only a few of the guns at a time by exploiting your mobility and the terrain to put only one or two enemy guns in LOS of all of your tanks. Then repeat. Keep front facings. Divide them with smoke or (in CMAK) artillery or vehicle generated dust. (3)related to (2), avoid obvious kill sacks and the middle of the map. Game-ily work up one edge so you can show only front facing with a 30 degree turn inward. Flank the tough positions, take them from the thin edge between them and the map inward, not outward. The thing to avoid is *converging* enemy fire. Break the guns on one edge or wing first, then turn toward the others. (4) related to (1), send infantry first to scout and to uncover the first guns along the edge you want to advance along, before it gets nice shots at your tanks. (5) move forward only to get LOS to a known enemy, to kill it. The goal is not to gain ground, it is to systematically kill the defending guns one at a time. The farther forward you push, the more his greater stealth helps him and the easier it is for him to get converging fire. Do not try to penetrate, instead annihilate, leaving nothing living to flanks or rear. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lightning War Posted December 12, 2006 Author Share Posted December 12, 2006 Wicky: Yes I do mean AT guns, not off-map art. JasonC: Something I don't understand, however, is why do guns beat tanks? Tanks have armour. Guns don't. ...Is that a stupid question? lol 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Schwabian Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 guns present a very small target, and are very hard to spot/ VERY easily hidable. can't kill what you can't see... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Stealth. The best armor is not to be seen at all. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Enigma Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 If you have them slapped on the reverse slope of a hill they can be nigh unkillable. If there also of a low caliber, 2pounder-6pounder range, your opponent can be very unlucky to not be able to spot them for quite some time hehe 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Don't spread the reverse slope bug, it is a bug not a feature. The game doesn't know that guns have height because it uses the HE model for them not the direct fire, AP model. Knowingly exploiting that is cheating. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soddball Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 As opposed to your 'Game-ily work up one edge', which is sporting and gentlemanly? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 lol. Touche. But exploiting the reverse crest business is far worse. Short of having a mortar, there is nothing the opponent can do about it. (Edges can be mined or TRPed etc). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvidae Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 JasonC I was not aware the reverse crest tactic was a bug in the game, I always assumed it was a tactical placement to take advantage of a hill's thickness. The hill itself providing cover, rather like the hull down position with tanks and armor. I rather like placing my guns just behind a crest. It just always made sense to me, Also, I recall you were eventualy able to kill most of my guns despite their being so positioned.(correct me if i'm wrong here) ******************************************** As for the rest Lightning, Yes, Guns beat armor. Guns eat armor for breakfast, and then wait for more. Think of it this way, A tank is a 7 foot wide by 7 foot tall, square cutout. It moves, and draws attention to itself by movement. A gun is MAYBE 4 feet wide, and properly dug in, is as small as 1 foot tall. (showing above ground). Which one is easyer to spot?..... or hit?? AT guns are tank killers, and only mortars, guns, and snipers can beat AT guns without being mauled. Most AT guns also have at least some anti infantry ability, so storming an AT line with foot sloggers is a bad idea. But AT is vulnerable to indirect artilery fire. The best tactic for beating AT with tanks is to put your head between your knees, and kiss your own arse goodby, because you are truely screwed. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieseltaylor Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Arriving at a battle without a mortar is a shooting offence : ) But I thought this bug was sorted out anyway? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FM Paul Heinrik Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Originally posted by the_enigma: If you have them slapped on the reverse slope of a hill they can be nigh unkillable. If there also of a low caliber, 2pounder-6pounder range, your opponent can be very unlucky to not be able to spot them for quite some time hehe I don't understand this statement because it seems my guns are always spotted on the first shot. I got 1 shot at the beginning of the ambush to knock out or seriously damage the AFV before every enemy on the map opens up on my hiden gun. If there are more targets than guns I usually lose and some times even when I have more guns than targets I lose simply due to suppressing fire from the AFV machineguns. Of course the inverse is not true. The AI guns are almost never id'ed until after the battle or until my infantry is sitting on top of it. But I still manage to take them out with mortors or other indirect HE attacks on the contact marker. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FM Paul Heinrik Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Originally posted by JasonC: Don't spread the reverse slope bug, it is a bug not a feature. The game doesn't know that guns have height because it uses the HE model for them not the direct fire, AP model. Knowingly exploiting that is cheating. I haven't encountered this. Why can't AFVs target the ground around the AT gun and take them out with indirect HE? Or are the odds stacked to high against you in this situation? Anyway, cool!! I got something to bug the heck out of my brother the next time we play, hehe. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lightning War Posted December 12, 2006 Author Share Posted December 12, 2006 Originally posted by Corvidae: As for the rest Lightning, Yes, Guns beat armor. Guns eat armor for breakfast, and then wait for more. Think of it this way, A tank is a 7 foot wide by 7 foot tall, square cutout. It moves, and draws attention to itself by movement. A gun is MAYBE 4 feet wide, and properly dug in, is as small as 1 foot tall. (showing above ground). Which one is easyer to spot?..... or hit??In my mind this calls into question the realism of the game. In a real life situation guns have to be able to score a direct hit on the tank using AP whereas a tank can use HE area-fire killing the crew regardless of whether the gun itself is hit. Only just now I watched a documentary which claimed that the German-88 was equal to the T-34 in terms of it's battle-effectiveness. Originally posted by Corvidae: But AT is vulnerable to indirect artilery fire.Goes to show my lack of experience. I didn't think artillery could fire indirect in CMAK/CMBB. I noticed the British 25pdr howitzer couldn't fire indirect so I assumed this to be the case with all artillery other than the off-map variety. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Other Means Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 He means off-map arty. Indirect = off map. The best way to kill ATG's with tanks is to move to a position where the ATG can't see the tank, but the tank can see within a few meters of the ATG. Then plaster it with fire. If you move your tanks en-masse, as you should, when an ATG opens up at your tank, try to target it with all the tanks in the group. The ones that can actually target it - get them out of there. The ones that can't - stay where they are and HE as close to the gun as possible. If you have to use smoke to get your tanks out of the way, that's fine. Keep the others there for when it clears. But as others have said, the best counter to an ATG is an on-map mortar. The British 3 inch is ideal for the task. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Enigma Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Jason, i have to admit am in the same camp as Corvidae. I have been unaware of any bugs regarding basically slapping an AT gun "hull down" ... which does make sence lol. Although i do favour trees and rough terrain more 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Enigma Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 FM Paul Heinrik: My comment comes from my own ingame exp. I have had 2 or 3 6 pounders in some trees. They killed a few tanks and had provided quite alot of annoyance to my opponent before he seemed to have found them and opened up. Same has happened to me quite a few times. Again, in my exp i have found that the higher cal stuff (although more important in mid to late war fights)aka 88s, 17 pounders etc get spotted quicker. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdstrike Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Originally posted by FM Paul Heinrik: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by JasonC: Don't spread the reverse slope bug, it is a bug not a feature. The game doesn't know that guns have height because it uses the HE model for them not the direct fire, AP model. Knowingly exploiting that is cheating. I haven't encountered this. Why can't AFVs target the ground around the AT gun and take them out with indirect HE? Or are the odds stacked to high against you in this situation? </font> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 The specific bug is that HE fire only effects a gun if the HE round hits the ground - height zero - exactly where the gun is, to within a few meters. If the gun is on a falling slope, falling faster than the shell can be falling at that point of its trajectory, then it is physically impossible for the shell to impact the falling slope. If it is short it hits the hill well in front of the gun. If it just grazes over the hill, it will sail hundreds of meters farther before encountering the (falling away with the slope) ground again. The reason this is a bug is the gun is effectively being modeled as having zero height. In reality, it is not possible to place the gun so that it can fire at the tank, without exposing the gun itself to reply fire. The way the game treats "peeking over crests", though, it allows a unit within about 10-15m of a crest line to "bend" its LOS beyond the crest line. The shells coming in the other way do not so "bend". In the real deal, the tank gun that can hit a tank "on the fly" because it has a sillouette and is properly modeled as 1.5-2m high, could just as readily hit the gun "on the fly", a meter high. Modestly lower hit chance if you like, but there is nothing magical about being a gun that makes you height zero and unhittable. But the game does not model direct hits on the gunshield or gun itself. This is a bug, caused by the bifurcation of the ballistics model into two separate treatments, vs. vehicle and vs. infantry unit types. The latter is resolved as HE-fp fire vs. a soft target. You can hit a building - it has vertical height. Mortar rounds or off map artillery can hit trees and cause tree bursts. But on map non mortars do not detonate from hitting trees, and certainly not from hitting a gun itself. Early in the life of CMBB, this was noticed. Entirely companies of tanks could be parked 400m from a single 45mm gun and expend their entire ammo loads without ever harming said gun, if only it were properly placed on ground falling sufficiently rapidly just behind a crest line. The designers patched it and made hits right at the location of the gun marginally more common, beyond what the ballistics alone suggest is possible in such cases. But it was a bandaid not a fix. You can still have a whole Tiger platoon empty their HE at once gun and leave it alive - which is nonsense. Some players know the specific conditions that bring this about and deliberately exploit it. They think they are being clever or something. They aren't, they are just cheating, exploiting a known unremoved inaccuracy in the game engine. The solution is that guns must be placed on or ahead of the military crest. A gun in a trench is still plenty tough. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 birdstrike - no it is simply a cheat, pure and simple. Deliberate exploitation of it is falsifying physics for in game advantage, and is no more legitimate than hacking the executable to make a unit unkillable. Guns aren't height zero, and if the gun can hit the tank then the tank can hit the gun. It is not so in CM, and deliberately using that is entirely beyond the pale. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Enigma Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 .___* /.....\ So plonking the gun under the * in the crude drawing above, (sorry about the full stops) would essentially be abusing this foul up? Even if said hills, crests etc are very tiny (ingame height 8 for example) or are of made up of gentle slopes? Edit: Since it has been stated that this, was spotted in CMBB has it been removed or drastically improved upon in CMAK? [ December 12, 2006, 01:21 PM: Message edited by: the_enigma ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Originally posted by Lightning War: JasonC: Something I don't understand, however, is why do guns beat tanks? Tanks have armour. Guns don't.There was a saying, in WWII A-Tk units, that the gun will always beat the tank. Primarily, they depended on essentially ambushing the tanks, every time. There are a few factors, of course - a 37mm doorknockjer is never going to beat a late-model Churchill, regardless of ambushedness. But assuming that the gun can actually KO the tank, it should win a duel. Which is not to say that being an A-Tk gunner was an easy or safe role. Quite the opposite. The gun will beat the tank but it isn't much chop against artillery, MG fire, mortars, rifle fire, etc. For example. Oh, this post has very little to do with game mechanics But the basic in-game model of guns defeating tanks is valid (bugs excepted, natch). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Enigma Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Wait no, am confused. We have positioned the gun so that the barrel is poking over the crest but the rest of the gun (bmp wise) is on the reverse slope. So its hard for the tank to kill ... and this is a cheat because? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.