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Attack - whats harder? Defending or attacking?


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Austrian Strategist also said (later) "The key to defending in CM, imvho, is fortifications. Minefields -especially my beloved AP mines-, bunkers, barbed wire, AT guns, machine guns, artillery, infantry dug-in and well hidden, ambushes, ambushes, ambushes"

I agree that mines are one of the defender's key assets. TRPs are another. Hidden guns, AT or otherwise, are also key defender assets - and bargains in CM. But bunkers are undermodeled and overpriced, while MGs are significantly undermodeled, making them marginal for CM defense schemes.

MGs still matter because they can pin scouts in the open without revealing heavier guns or main infantry fighting positions, and they can take a heck of a pounding in spent-ammo terms before being silenced. But the amount of actual damage they inflict is trivial.

Wire I find only effective against the AI, which isn't saying anything because anything works against the AI. The problem is the ease of spotting it, after which humans just go around. As a result it denies small areas of cover, but nothing more. In QBs you can't afford to spend gobs on the stuff, because the fighting force odds rise too steeply if you do - e.g. 1/4 of your budget spent on wire etc and you are facing 2:1 fighting force odds - about the outer limit of livable.

You are better off with AP mines for the denial-of-cover mission. They are likely to actually hit something, and after discovery humans will still have to go around, just like with wire. It is true engineers can clear paths through AP but not wire, but they are rare in human QBs and if the field is covered by fire actually doing it successfully is not at all easy. Wire might occasionally be useful as a bluff, to lure attackers to something nastier when they go around, but it is marginal in CM.

TRP artillery is very important for defenders. Along with AP minefields, TRP artillery provides an unsuppressable area fire ability. Meaning, the effect multiplies the more attackers bunch up. That is vital to prevent the attacker just overloading a section of your front with his superior odds. Fully armored AFVs can sometimes pull this off too, but they are too fragile to count on for it, when the attacker has his own armor out looking for them. AP and TRP arty can also serve to shelter broken infantry by seperating attackers and defenders.

The problem with TRP arty is that you run out of shells before the attacker runs out of men. It is easy to suppress enough men to pay for the stuff, but very hard to kill the attackers dead. They come back for a second try, fighting "ugly" (in remnants, half-squads, etc), and the shells don't.

E.g. a typical German medium arty module costs 102-113 as regulars and gives 2-4 minutes of effective fire. Add 2 TRPs and multiply by the attacker's odds ratio, 3:2, and you get 180-200 points. (US modules are more expensive but give more minutes of fire, while German infantry is cheaper). 1.5-2 platoons of attacking infantry.

You can easily break a platoon in 2 minutes of such fire, so breaking the equivalent point cost is achievable, and that does help you shape the battlefield and run the attacker out of time. But you can't kill a whole company of attackers with one medium arty module and 2 TRPs, so you are really just "exchanging off" pieces, in chess lingo, not winning a combination. You will run out of arty ammo before he runs out of platoons.

Guns (plus infantry AT, a related item) are the part of the defense that can give truly disproportionate payoffs. AT minefields are that way too, with a low cost and potentially high return if you bag a full tank with one. Especially if you buy cheaper guns, or only a few AT mines - higher "variance" plays compared to lots of AT mines (will hit something, but only an exchange) and multiple super-powerful guns (will kill something, but often only cover their costs again).

With infantry, German uber types do have defense potential, the SMG heavy types in particular. But defending infantry faces three basic problems, only one of which is really fixable by clever play, and one of which can be mitigated but not really solved. The fixable one is avoiding the superior range and firepower of attacker overwatch forces, especially AFVs, and the solution is reverse slopes (including inside treelines rather than at them, yada yada).

The one you can limit but not solve is attacking artillery. Defenders just can't afford enough infantry to lose whole platoons to indirect fire before even engaging, and still win the later game infantry firefights. You can limit it by having alternate positions, bugging out when you see spotting rounds, avoiding predictable locations (especially at set up), and not firefighting the attackers from any one position too long.

But these don't really solve the problem in CM, because you run out of room. On small maps you don't have enough to start with, while on bigger maps you still get backed up, and have only a few choices of covered locations able to defend along route A or route B. Then the attacking artillery knows where you have to be unless you plan to just give up and get out of his way.

So you will get pounded. If the attacker is hasty or careless, you may deceive him into wasting part of his arty early or on small unimportant targets, when you have time to recover from its effects, etc. But any competent attacker (note - does not include the AI) is going to hurt something with his fat shells, because CM QB maps are small and the flags are quite close to your allowed starting positions.

The third problem defending infantry faces is ammo. The logic of facing 3:2 or 2:1 infantry odds is pretty unforgiving. If the rest of the support weapon war has not improved things significantly, down to more like 1:1 or 5:4 infantry odds in the decisive engagements, or you have uber-infantry against vanilla at its magical ranges (80m or less for SMGs, e.g.), you can't win negative odds infantry firefights without running out of ammo.

Oh, you can pin or break the attacking platoon over there since it doesn't have good cover. But you have only 2-3 such occasions in you, in ammo "wind" terms. Then you are tuckered out. And the attackers rally, with plenty left over from each "break". Cover alone reducing the incoming can't do it, because you don't also have twice as many shots to dish out, outgoing.

Which is why defending in CM is hard. There are a number of ideas that can still work from time to time, though. One is to do something risky at the force mix stage, and live with the resulting handicap. The idea is to get parity with the attacker in either armor-war terms or in infantry-HE terms, and then rely on winning only one or the other to hold out.

So, an infantry defense might guess how much infantry the attacker will bring, and match it, and guess how much arty HE he will have, and match that too, plus TRPs and some AP mines. Then fight the armor war on a shoestring, with a few cheap guns and infantry AT teams and the odd AT minefield against numerous attacking tanks. Try to keep the infantry out of sight with reverse slopes and fight an infantry-HE war, while using the guns and such as "risk-sacrifice" items to neutralize as much of the enemy armor as you can, cheaply. This effectively neutralizes the enemy infantry and HE, while leaving his armor superior but ineffective because of the breakdown in combined arms.

Or, an armor defense might figure what the attacker will bring in number of tanks, and match that with strongly armored defending AFVs - not just guns. Preferably types with good HE abilities against infantry, or with a few such HE chuckers added (like Priests or Hummels). Then you try to win the armor duel fast, after which your surviving armor shoots up the abundant attacking infantry whenever it comes into LOS. This effectively neutralizes the enemy arty points (because arty does little to AFVs), kills his armor points, and leaves his infantry superior but unable to proceed because of the breakdown in combined arms.

If you don't pull off such a "disarticulation", it is hard to win at defender's odds. Attacker mistakes, like bunching up too much under artillery, or not scouting for ambushes, or rushing armor all-at-once into kill sacks of hidden guns - can still give you an "unearned victory". But those are really "own goals" by the attacker, more than anything else. The AI will let you do them all day long, and clobber the attackers "without moving a piece". But humans are not that simple, by a long shot.

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I would like to see, in concert with Jason's point above about the ease of spotting wire, some sort of special spotting rules for wire in future versions of the game engine. Not only is wire easily spotted, but it is always spotted in exactly the place it really is, and as such, you immediately know how wide the obstacle is.

Real wire is just not strung like that. Would like to see some of the same logic that is used for spotting tanks - just because a squad in heavy trees blunders into a stretch of wire, in real life that squad would not know for a certainty where the wire obstacle started and stopped - or that it was in a straight line, come to that.

In CM terms, would be neat to see wire slow down a unit, but not be revealed - or only partially revealed - until "spotted" by infantry actually making a conscious effort to find the end of the obstacle, once it was encountered. In open ground, the current rules work, in woods and other foliage they don't. Wire in a hedgrerow should be nigh well invisible, with no clue where the end points are until infantry actually try to find it.

Even better would be the ability to "wire" a position in by giving the player X number of feet/metres, and allowing him to "unspool" it - perhaps by drawing with the mouse where he wants it to go? This would allow him to customize the wire, avoid straight lengths and predictable wire obstacles.

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Originally posted by JasonC:

Or, an armor defense might figure what the attacker will bring in number of tanks, and match that with strongly armored defending AFVs - not just guns. Preferably types with good HE abilities against infantry, or with a few such HE chuckers added (like Priests or Hummels). Then you try to win the armor duel fast, after which your surviving armor shoots up the abundant attacking infantry whenever it comes into LOS. This effectively neutralizes the enemy arty points (because arty does little to AFVs), kills his armor points, and leaves his infantry superior but unable to proceed because of the breakdown in combined arms.

In a current game this is what i tried to do. german defense, only had 100pts to spend on armor. i took a crack hetzer, and assumed he would come at me with 2 76 shermans. given that the map was going to be relatively open i gambled i could win the duel at that range. 2v1 with them being regulars.

once the armor was gone i intended to use the hetzers limited HE to sure up which ever flank he hit the hardest, in combination with a good 81mm spotter. given that the terrain was rather poor for defense i figured this was my best bet. in fact i still think it was.

unfortunately i got oh so very unlucky. in the first exchange between my hetzer and his 2 sherm76's(i guessed right hehe) my commander was hit by a richocheting shell, shocking the tank. as it sat there taking hit after hit, all non penetrating, eventually the armor began to flake, and after a second casualty the crew bailed.

i dont know why i'm typing this, the game isnt over, which is btw why i havent given specifics on my infantry numbers, locations, and types. it does look however like he will win, the 2 sherms are taking their toll on my infantry, which is slowly being eaten up.

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To Fionn - it is not a matter of whether someone chooses to "rely" on artillery or on infantry rushes. It is a point about small maps, which the previous fellow said favored the defender.

Infantry rushes do not work on small maps, and he was quite right about that. The reason they do not work on small maps is the few covered approaches the infantry rush can be delivered over are easily blocked by TRP artillery or AP minefields, which do not care how many guys are rushing and just bust them all the harder the denser they are packed.

So the previous fellow was right that small maps trumps infantry rushes. Since some seem to think infantry rush behavior is the thing that favors attackers in CM, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that small maps will eliminate the attacker's edge.

My point was that this does not follow, because the same multiplied effectiveness of area weapons that small maps create for defenders - which enables such effects to beat infantry rushes - also can be exploited by attackers, by using artillery instead. Small maps are high force to space ratio situations. They favor attritionist firepower strategies and area effect weapons, over maneuver strategies and shock action (which are relatively more effective in lower force-to-space situations, e.g. larger maps).

Attackers can react to TRP and AP blocks by just not putting their head in that noose, and instead standing off and letting HE do the heavy lifting. Because the same conditions that make the first effective against infantry rushes, makes the second effective against infantry defenders. And at attacker's odds, infantry defenders generally can't afford the losses.

These are not optional personal preferences. Somebody trying to attack mainly through infantry rushes on a tight map against TRP-HE and AP mines will get his head handed to him. They are move and counter in response to a changing military variable, the ratio of force to space. Small maps effectively mean already concentrated defenders - there aren't many places to put them, so just about every reasonable place will be occupied. Spread defenders you can go after with shock action, but concentrated ones you go after with fire action. You can hardly miss.

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Originally posted by Fionn:

Austrian,

Ah but I fear you may have missed my central points. My central points were as follows:

1. An aggressive defence is superior to a passive defence ( if properly executed).

Fionn,

I do understand you perfectly.

What I was saying is I disagree with (1) above theoretically and in principle.

What you call 'Aggressive defence' is really another name for Counterattack, and IF Clausewitz is right -and I am perfectly sure he is!-, then a Counterattack is only the correct move if

a) the Attacker has already spent his forces -Napoleon at Waterloo!-, or

B) the Attacker is inept in the first place.

A competent Attacker WANTS to be counter-attacked, because in counter-attacking the Defender forfeits his most important advantages -defensive installations and being hidden.

I do not doubt your method works for you -because you are probably a superior tactician-, but your theory is scientifically wrong regardless. Given an equal amount of ability/experience, the defensive mindset will win all the time. smile.gif

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To Patgrod - I don't think that really fits the idea I was talking about. You had only ~100 pts against 300-350 for his improved Shermans. The Hetzer has very limited HE, so it can't really fufill the second half of the mission.

A better example might be a defense built around a single Tiger I using the available armor points, plus 2 SPW-251/9s (75mm halftracks), and perhaps an AT gun or two to help the Tiger win the armor duel. With minimal artillery and limited infantry.

The AT guns try to start with a simultaneous ambush, and the Tiger hunts into LOS the same turn they open up - perhaps turn 4 or 5, as soon as you think you've seen all his armor. You gamble on "running the table" in that intense armor duel. The SPWs are out of LOS in the rear. If you win the armor duel, then you park the Tiger somewhere with commanding LOS, and bring up both SPWs. You chuck direct fire HE at anything that moves. Your infantry just tries to keep enemy AT teams from getting close to the vehicles, which back up as the attacking infantry advances.

If you win the armor war, you might have only 2-3 platoons of relatively cheap infantry, without any artillery support to speak of, against a reinforced company with a 105 FO for the attackers (say). But you can still hold, because your vehicles have 150-odd HE firecrackers, a third of them 88mm, to break up the attackers with, and are nearly invunerable to replies (beyond close range). Plus on the order of 300 MG bursts combined. Not 10 HE shells in one Hetzer.

I hope this explains what I meant by building a defense around the idea of winning just the armor war, and carrying the infantry-HE fight on a shoestring.

The one good Hetzer idea is actually more in keeping with a focus on winning the infantry-HE war. The attacker spent 300-350 on tanks and you spent only 100. That means the overall point odds in everything else was more nearly even. Perhaps you bought as much infantry as he did, and just have somewhat lighter arty made up for by attackers being in the open and a TRP or two. Then, if your shoestring armor-war force (the Hetzer) won the duel with the attacking tanks, you'd have an even-odds fight for the rest of it - about. And might thus overcome the defender's odds problem.

So yes, that was a way of gambling to break up the attacker's combined arms and match him in something. But it wasn't the armor-force version of it, it was more like the infantry-force version of it. Although typically an infantry force might rely on a few towed guns, AT minefields, and infantry AT teams instead of one high quality Hetzer. It is still fighting the armor war on a shoestring and hoping for a chance good result there, in return for a bearable-odds fight on the infantry-HE side of things.

[ May 29, 2002, 08:12 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

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Originally posted by JasonC:

3:2 odds, or 3 minus some scouts against 2, are still livable. But 3 minus a few scouts vs. 2 minus 155mm treebursts often isn't. What defenders can't afford is feeding the attacker's guns. On a bigger map it is easier to avoid artillery, but harder to cover everything, while the attacker's expedient in that case is to fight only part of the defenders ("right half", e.g.) with nearly his whole force.

Good analysis. But have confidence in my ability to put my forces into places unpredictable. smile.gif

I say, on a 1500pts small map, there is space enough to hide. If attacker fires blindly, he will waste more #pts ammo than kill #pts men. This is, so far, my experience. :cool:

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Oh, he doesn't have to fire completely blind. I agree that wastes ammo. But a few half squads search around, and LOS is established to a few places, and perhaps one firefight is started in earnest - and suddenly the remaining reasonable space for defenders is a whole lot smaller than it was during the set up phase.

The attacker picks his line of attack, and he can see what areas have LOS to it. He has already crossed the areas not actually covered by defenders, with his scouts. Almost by definition, he can only be stopped by contact. The relevant number of areas to put people has then shrunk to a managable figure.

A few scouts here, a fire mission there, and he searches the space. He will hit something. For a while it may be 4-8 big shells a turn, with a lift each time. But eventually his heavy shells are going to hit defenders. I agree the problem is most pronounced in smaller battles, though, and in terrain types with less cover (more cover has different problems, e.g. with infantry rushes). In 500-1000 point defenses in moderate tree farmland, attacking artillery is nasty, because there just isn't room to hide.

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Fionn: 1. An aggressive defence is superior to a passive defence ( if properly executed).

(snip)

AS: What I was saying is I disagree with (1) above theoretically and in principle.

(snip)

AS: defensive mindset will win all the time.

I disagree with your disagreement. ;)

First, I wonder if "carefull" or "cautious" would make a better argument than "defensive."

An attack - or counterattack - happens when you think you have some sort of local superiority and can hurt the enemy more than you'll be hurt. (And "hurt" doesn't necessarily refer only to casulties.)

If I'm understanding Fionn correctly, then you could rephrase his basic argument as "Be quick to take advantage of any local superiorty to (counter)attack, and when you setup/buy your forces try to foster the creation of local superiority."

Someone in a "seige mentality" could easily overlook most opportunities to counterattack, which would certainly make defending far more difficult.

I think AS, though, would argue that against a sufficiently carefull attacker it is very difficult for the defender to create enough counterattacks to carry the day.

Much, though, depend on the amount of time the attacker can spend scouting the defender's positions. I think good CM mission scenarios/QBs don't give the attack the time needed to explore the defender's positions to that extent. Not unless the attacker is willing to take some risks...

Furthermore, from what I've seen it is quite possible to set up a scenerio/QB in which the defender would have an extremely difficult task. (The posts on small maps, fortifications (or the lack), artillery, etc.) However, I don't think those are the most realistic (or enjoyable) scenarios.

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Originally posted by JasonC:

But bunkers are undermodeled and overpriced (1), while MGs are significantly undermodeled, making them marginal for CM defense schemes(2).

(1) No.

(2) Undermodeled, perhaps; marginal, no.

The rest of your analysis has very many good and important points, but misses one critical fact: A Combined Arms Defense is *more* than the sum of its parts.

True, a single bunker, for example, is not particularly strong. But a bunker that is part of a checkerboard of mg/minefield/AT/wire/mortar defences can be literally invincible. Such defences, if perfectly using the terrain, do not simply add up: they multiply, like the abilities of an RPG Ueberhero.

And this is the part you are overlooking. Your defending units and structures should work together in a harmonic and cohesive manner like the pieces on a chessboard. The power of 'The Position' should be an order of magnitude greater than the power of your individual units added up.

So my Zen of CM Defense is:

(1) Never think 'Unit', always think 'Position'.

(2) Never underestimate the power of the checkerboard. smile.gif

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Great debate folks. I have a (still) unfinished document I was writing for the now defunct "Combat MIssions" site about my personal experiences in the multitude of Assault-Defense pbems I played. Most every time I play it is this type of game, and I definitely enjoy being the defender, though I also take the Assaulting side every once in a while so I can win occaisionally, LOL!

Sadly, I know I am not the greatest tactician around, so my theories are all based on what the 'average' (me) player has to work with. If I had the finnesse of a Fionn my article would assuredly be different than it is.

That said, I would have to agree with the Austrian fellow. By its nature, defending against the assault is a SET-PIECE battle. This is what it is set up to represent in reality. The defender is given time to make a prepared position, while the attacker builds up his forces until he is ready to ASSAULT. I believe that was the intention when BTS made this type of QB, and it does its best to mimic (within the game) what an actual assault would be like, i.e. a large force attacking a weaker but dug-in defender.

I cannot understand what Fionn means by his technique. Do you mean that you do not have a static defense? Does your strategey differ from that of current or past military thinking? Anyways, "playing by the rules" to me means that in an Assault-Defend quick-battle, it is the defenders duty to have a line, and it is the assaulter's duty to crack it. That said, I will use any gamey tactic at my disposal to achieve those ends. Let me dig out my old half-written article and I will post it here (LONG - 4 pages) for your entertainment. Actually I will start a new thread since it is a rteal monster and not totally on the subject of this here topic, but rather lays out guidelines and options of how to play this type of scenario.

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Originally posted by Fionn:

1. An aggressive defence is superior to a passive defence ( if properly executed).

I think that is highly game-dependent.

In CMBO foxholes are very weak, especially foxholes outside tree where you avoid treebursts. Foxholes can't be dug in rough, infantry can't use cellars. So the advantage of staying in the prepared defenses is not very big in CMBO. If the advantage was bigger, a balanced attack/defense scenario would give you fewer forces and counterattacking would be less possible.

The weak vehicle MGs also make a breakout of the defender's infantry easier.

The small maps also make a difference, both in favour and against counterattcking. The defender's vehicles are not likely to find a covered route to attack with minimal threat to their sides. But on the other hand the attacker can't just step back by some distance with his AFVs to shoot up the counterattackers. I have repeadently seen pure-infantry forces, in fact pure squad forces, literraly pushing AFVs into map edges and kill them with Panzerfausts.

All that is different in other games, amoung them reality.

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Time to chime in.

First off I think we are all talking about some different things. Jason is concerned with small maps and in game issues, Fionn and Aust are talking about higher level ideas on tactics, and some AARs are thrown in for good measure.

Jason, in QB small maps you are correct, the solution is to play scenarios or even better operational games. This is similiar to the French tank fiasco on the SC forum. The tools are there to fix this, I think you are looking at a worse case scenario.

Fionn and Aust, I think you are both right. That being said I am one of the folks Fionn has demonstrated (mostly through AARs, you never really got a chance in CPX) that an aggressive defense is a good defense. I of course have my own spin on it, but that is realistic. No one attacked exactly like Rommel but a lot of other commanders used the same principles. Can static defense work? Sure! Can aggressive defense work? Sure! It depends on the situation and the commanders involved, because it always depends on the situation and commanders involved. Not to mention the troops and so on and so forth, but in CM it is really the sitaution and commander (players) that are involved.

Everyone else, cool, I love to know how other people are playing! I like the Hetzer buy myself btw, but I would have bought an ATG to support it. Maybe a 50mm or two.

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I will substantiate my claim that bunkers are undermodeled and overpriced. First the log bunker, which is the most extreme example. It costs 50% more than an HMG team.

I have seen HMG teams withstand the fire of an entire attacking company for minutes, with 2 men down and middling suppression. Light mortar rounds can typically pin them with a dozen rounds fired, or break them in more like the whole ammo load of the firing mortar (but the MG crew may still rally later). A bazooka has essentially no chance of taking one out. 37mm light AFV fire slightly suppresses them. 75mm HE from serious tanks will pin the crew and can break them over a number of shots, but sometimes one will last through a full minute of aimed tank HE, in building cover. They are nearly impossible to spot if hiding in cover until they choose to open up, although their fire discipline becomes spotty under about 100m. They shoot in any direction, can relocate though at slow speed, and can use any form of cover. I have seen some shoot over 80 times in a single QB. And they suck away attacking infantry ammo in large quantities.

Log bunkers, on the other hand, are destroyed by 81mm mortar rounds, any direct fire HE, including 37mm, bazooka rounds, and any indirect artillery. You can spot them clear across the map even if placed in tree cover. It is a rare log bunker that fires 40 times before it dies. If weapons capable of KOing them were scarce, they might have some value for their resistence to small arms fire, but they are not and they don't. They have limited covered arcs outside which they are defenseless, and cannot move. For the price of 2 of them you can have 3 HMG teams which are superior in essentially every practical respect.

Next come MG pillboxes. These are actually protected against light mortar rounds and indirect artillery fire. They are major fortifications with the price tag of a superior ATG. However, they can be KOed by bazooka and 37mm cannon fire from the front. At least they can reply to the bazookas. They can deny open ground to unsupported infantry within their limited covered arc and LOS, and so have the potential to play an important role in an integrated defense. But a little examination will show that in practice they can essentially never do this very well.

The problem is that two aspects of MG pillboxes pull in two different directions. Their limited covered arc counsels placement to cover wide areas in one direction, with long LOS lines. Because otherwise the area they cover is so trivial that once spotted (which they will be rapidly, having no stealth at all) they are easily avoided. But such long LOS lines invite countering AFVs, which trump them outright without loss. The way to avoid vunerability to AFVs is to use reverse slope or angled deployments that limit the zone they can be fired at from, and preferably require any AFV that can see them to come close by, and thus potentially into range and LOS of some supporting AT weapon. But such deployments give tiny total LOS footprints in their forward arcs, making them easy to avoid.

So either they don't cover much area and the attacker just goes around, or they do cover a lot of area and the attacker can safely put any gun-armed AFV in any part of that area, and they die. Meanwhile, with attacker's odds the size of force they must account for to pay for themselves is a tank or infantry platoon, neither of which they have any serious prospect of actually killing. No human is brain dead enough to march so much infantry through their covered arc for so long, in open ground, that they might actually kill an entire attacking platoon. To deny a modest open ground area, you are better off with a large AP minefield. As a positional ranged shooter, you are better off with a serious AT capable gun, or several cheaper guns, either of which the enemy will have greater actual difficulty (or will have to risk, spend, or lose more) (1) detecting (2) avoiding being killed by and (3) actually neutralizing.

Which leaves as the only truly useful pillboxes the gun armed ones. These are indeed capable items. Unlike MG pillboxes, they can kill the item that can easily kill them - direct fire HE shooters. They are protected against artillery and infantry fire, and they are dangerous to AFVs. The only problems with them are (1) limited covered arc combined with being stationary and (2) cost. Of which the last is the more important.

The limitation of LOS can be dealt with by interlocking their sighting cone with that of another long-ranged AT shooter, AT gun or another pillbox. Two gun armed pillboxes that cross their fields of fire can indeed form a significant military barrier. The problem is, creating such a barrier costs 260 points for a defender outnumbered 3:2. And 1-2 minutes of artillery smoke will let attackers run through the crossed fire lanes. The 88mm pillbox is not vunerable to another potential counter, Jumbos or Churchills just crawling up and putting HE through the firing slit. But it costs 50% more than the 75mm one in return for this.

For the cost of 1 75mm pillbox you can have 2 75mm PAK dug in rather than pillbox protected. The PAK are vunerable to artillery, true. But they can also hide, while the pillbox can't. And they can fire in any direction they can see. And there are two of them. Each of which, and especially all of which, make them much harder to bypass with just smoke.

It is generally more practical to build a defense around 2 75mm PAK with crossing lines of sight than around 1 75mm pillbox. You are more likely to get a flank aspect from one of them if a Churchill or Jumbo comes along. They are less likely to always face you since they don't know where you are, since you can hide.

Meanwhile, to actually take the PAK out with artillery is not as easy a counter as it may at first appear. First, they usually fire to reveal themselves, meaning they have often already killed something by the time the artillery counter is reached for. Second, just 75mm or 81mm fire is unlikely to KO them - though it will pin them - in just a minute or two. It takes medium artillery, or sustained fire (a whole module) from lighter stuff, to stand a good chance of neutralizing one dug in PAK (without exposing anything to it, I mean).

Which means the point cost to the attacker is around 100 pts, after whatever the PAK killed. The attacker can exchange off a discovered PAK, yes. But he can blind a discovered pillbox. I'd much rather have two exchangable guns that hide, than one blindable gun that sticks out like a sore thumb.

What parts of this are undermodeling? Far too easy to spot, and far too easy to KO with firing slit hits even with tiny HE rounds. What part of it is overpricing? Twice the cost of stealthier gun in guns, in return for indirect artillery invunerability which is not as useful as it first appears, "economically" speaking, in the existing CM price structure for towed guns vs. artillery ammo.

Notice that the last is wholly a CM price issue, not an historical reality one. In reality, attackers could easily expend thousands of rounds of artillery HE per day and defenders could not afford to lose hundreds of towed guns per day. CM shells are expensive compared to their historical availability, and that makes the cheaper towed guns they counter relatively more useful in CM than in reality. Also, smoke is more readily available for all artillery and in any quantity desired than it actually was historically.

It is also worth noting that AFVs can be a more effective and less expensive way of getting gun firepower protected against indirect artillery and infantry fire. For 64% of the price of a 75mm pillbox, you can take a Hetzer instead. With the same gun, essentially the same defense against infantry and artillery fire, and the ability to move around. It is also invunerable to 37mm and 75mm guns from the front, while the firing slit of the pillbox is not. For 87% of the price of an 88mm pillbox, you can have a Tiger I, which is tough to take out even with 75mm or bazookas even from the side, let alone 37mm from the front. It also has a turret, 2 MGs, and moves. Yes, 76mm Tungsten will KO it from the front more reliably than it would KO the pillbox - if fired first. But an 81mm smoke fire mission will not neutralize the Tiger.

Yes, I am perfectly well aware of the combined arms aspect of defense systems. Attackers seek to dismantle such constructions one piece at a time, of course. Which makes the single-counter match ups each unit type faces still highly relevant. The defender can rarely afford to simple firefight the whole of the attacker's superior firepower from the word "go", at range. Many defenders are hiding, and the attacker has a larger force to begin with. What I dispute is not the need for functionally articulated defenses, but any serious role in such defenses for bunkers (or much for wire, in CM QBs as they stand).

I have already explained why AP mines typically outperform wire in CM conditions. Undoubtedly this is primarily a pricing issue too. It was historically much easier to stake out wire than to sow hundreds of hidden AP mines. And wire itself was not scarce; time and manpower were the real limit on amounts of it used. You might see more realistic field fortifications if 10 pts bought a 40x40 tile of AP mines or a 100m string of barbed wire. As it is, wire is overpriced compared to AP mines for what it does (especially its lack of stealth).

A typical effective defense is based around infantry, guns, TRP registered artillery, and minefields. Infantry AT complements infantry and occasionally acts as a poor man's AT gun - it is a marginal but useful suppliment rather than a major arm. HMGs complement guns by suppressing scouts without the guns needing to reveal themselves, and by wasting attacker's ammo by drawing fire - again a marginal useful suppliment rather than a major arm. (Note that the last is due to undermodeling, not historical reality). Occasional AFVs can stiffen a defense and give it some adapting power and counterattack possibilities, but they are not essential and sound defenses can be built without them.

In the items that matter, infantry counters close approaches by enemy infantry and lives inside bodies of cover tanks can't get at ("reverse slopes" of one kind or another especially). Guns cover areas of more open ground between such areas, and provide ranged AT defense. TRP artillery and minefields provide area fire effects that cannot be suppressed by local attacker firepower, countering attempts to mass into a narrow spearhead.

Those roles are essential, and a defense that can't do one of them will collapse if the attacker has the right weapon to bring to bear. Bunker and wire are twiddles and not essential. AFVs can perform the role of guns with mobility and less vunerability to attacker artillery, but are a luxury item. HMGs are only needed to stop scouts without revealing more valuable things (because they are undermodeled - otherwise they would have the gun-like role of covering open ground, but specifically against infantry).

For what it is worth...

[ May 29, 2002, 10:34 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

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But a bunker that is part of a checkerboard of mg/minefield/AT/wire/mortar defences can be literally invincible. Such defences, if perfectly using the terrain,
"Literally invincible"? Oh, come now.

My problem with your, ah, position is that you seem to be overemphasizing the power of the _static_ defense. Or, maybe just overestimating the ease of setting up a practically invincible static defense in CM... at least with the map sizes and force sizes I play with. I'd like to see you and Fionn comment on what map and force sizes you prefer to play with. It'd also be interesting if one of you tends to play QBs and the other scenarios.

do not simply add up: they multiply,
"Synergy"

like the abilities of an RPG Ueberhero.

"Too little to do on the weekend." ;)
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My take on the problem of pillboxes best killed by 37mm light armor is to pair them with a 37mm Flak. Due to the extreme hit propablity the Flak takes care of armor up to a Stuart nicely and the pilllbox gets used for what it is meant to, Shermans and up. TRPs are a must to buy with gun pillboxes, otherwise they are wasted.

The best thing is that in the CMBO world pillboxes are vehicles, which are transparent - so to ensure same LOS for Flak and pillbox you can put the Flak right behind it and shoot through it :D

pillbox-flak.jpg

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More points on the pillbox post:

Pillboxes can be hulldown. Placing them appropriately so that likely target positions are seem from hull-down increases their survivability substancially. Of course, this is a slight gamble since the LOS without an actual target, which is all you have in setup, does not show where you can see while being hulldown to the target.

The Hetzer is not really invulnerable to 37mm or 75mm fire, gun damage is a common occurance. I would have to measure but I think it is about the same probablity for gun damage and firing slit penetration (while the weak spot penetration is more rare on tanks without shot trap). The pillbox also comes with substancially more ammo, it is a useful HE shooter. It is no question that the Hetzer is one of the price/performance cherrys in CMBO. The comparision of Jagdpanther and 88mm pillbox is similar from capablities, but they have almost the same price.

A very tough pillbox is a dug in Tiger 1E. I know it is hard to believe that the CMBO Tiger is good for anything, but yes it is. When dug in it is hard to hit, hard to kill and it covers an angle of 360 degrees with a "short" 88 and a coaxial MG, both with lots of ammo.

[ May 29, 2002, 11:22 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

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This is an interesting discussion.

Austrian Strategist, I take your comments to mean you've read Clausewitz, then? I've spent a few weeks studying On War in my time-- enough to know that I've only scratched the surface-- and the reading of it is something I take very seriously (and I suspect Fionn does as well, given the impact of On War on Soviet military strategy).

I think you're misunderstanding why Clausewitz considered the defense to be the stronger form of war. In his words, quoted from the Howard/Paret translation:

The one advantage that the attacker possesses is that he is free to strike at any point along the whole line of defense, and in full force; the defender, on the other hand, is able to surprise his opponent constantly throughout the engagement by the strength and direction of his counterattacks.
When he states that the defense is "intrinsically stronger than the offensive," it is immediately following this statement:

Tactically, every engagement, large or small, is defensive if we leave the initiative to our opponent and await his appearance before our lines. From that moment we can employ all offensive means without losing the advantages of the defensive-- that is to say the advantages of waiting and the advantages of position.
Finally, he also notes the following:

But if we are really waging war, we must return the enemy's blows; and these offensive acts in a defensive war come under the heading of "defense"-- in other words, our offensive takes place within our own positions or theater of operations. Thus, a defensive campaign can be fought with offensive battles, and in a defensive battle, we can employ our divisions offensively. Even in a defensive position awaiting the enemy assault, our bullets take the offensive. So the defensive form of war is not a simple shield, but a shield made up of well-directed blows.
So it would seem that a more close reading of Clausewitz does not support your assertions-- which has me puzzled. I think that you have some of the right ideas, but they are being poorly communicated. I think this in part because of your chess analogy; a strong defensive player in chess knows well the importance of initiative and reflexive control of one's opponent. So I suspect your approach is a cautious, methodical one, but not necessarily the "passive" one that it is being characterized as.

I do not believe Fionn is advocating a reckless course of action-- it is every bit as calculated as your defensive network of fortifications. Both, if done properly, can exert pressure on the attacker and force him to react to you; the advantage of Fionn's method is he isn't constrained to choosing where to force that reaction prior to the beginning of the battle. The (potential) disadvantage is that it can require a great deal more skill to execute.

I hope this is of some use.

Scott

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I would just say that it seems self-evident to me that the course of action which gives one the greatest leeway is the superior course of action.
What I think you're missing is the gap between theory and practice. (Or, alternatively, if all you're addressing is theory, then you aren't missing anything.) Not all courses of action are equally easy to followed, and its not always clear which action should be taken.

Rather than being only a matter of attitude, someone may be much less skilled at maintaining a fluid defense, as opposed to a largely static one. The fluid defense does indeed have more courses of action availble... more possible actions. The catch is that a huge number of those possible actions are _bad_ ones. Poor moves.

A static defense, OTOH, is relatively straight forward. If nothing else, less movement = less opportunities to make a foolish move.

I do firmly believe that a fluid defense is superior to a static defense... in theory. But a player has to know his limits. I, for example, try to fight my defenses as fluidly as possible, but I still rely on many static elements. I'm just not skilled enough to not take the "easy way out" pretty often.

A static defense can also easily be the best option if the troops used are low quailty - high command delays increase the difficulty of maneuver. And, outside the scope of CM, if you've got the time and material, a static defense is a safer bet than a fulid one. Fewer opportunities for the commander to make a boo-boo.

A very straight forward example would be digging in a tank. I've never dug in a tank at the beginning of a scenario... and sometimes I've lost that tank when a dug-in tank probably would have survived longer.

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A passive defender will have serious problems if the attacker is flexible. An active counterpunching defender is an attackers nightmare.

There is nothing more devastating/demoralizing to an attacker then to have their heavy hitter force counterpunched.

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there is no static defense i have played against that can not be defeated. It is just too easy to probe until a weak spot is found or pile up and attack 1 main spot. With flxible units and more specifically the ability to locally counter attack, a defense is bound to fall against even a smaller attacking force that can hit each defensive area peacemeal and slowly nibble it to death.

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Redwolf,

In your post with the snapshot of the pillbox, 37 killer AA, and soon to be dead Stuart, you are well aware that the 37 AA will get a turn or two of unabashed bliss of whacking Allied thin skins if they are foolish enough to hang around.

However, against a competent opponent with sufficient resources, probably in two to five turns, the 37 AA will assume ground temperature from off board arty, from on board mortars (spotted or not), and/or from a bunch of heavy skinned vehicles and ground pounders.

Indeed, your set up is finely done and I would use it, but is certainly not perfect or permanent. However, as we all know, in CM there is always a counter to everything. :rolleyes:

In general, he who kills and, thus, is seen soon is turned to ashes. :(:(

Cheers, Richard tongue.giftongue.gif:D:D

[ May 30, 2002, 12:28 PM: Message edited by: PiggDogg ]

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