Re: Back with a question

[womble]

Like others have said, it seems that hide is not best for ambush. It's useful for keeping troops hidden at a distance when you really don't want them engaged at all and/or to minimize damage from artillery. But of course, hiding AT guns, depending on size and cover may be seen while a crew/team alone in the same place might not.

True, but AT guns which haven't moved since setup do get a bonus to their concealment. I was running some tests the other day of Italian AT vs Shermans. The Shermans were Regular, Fanatic and "tacking" towards a line of various Italian gun platforms. The ground was flat and "hard" with no concealment whatsoever, and still the ATGs were remaining unseen, even while firing at less than 200m, and that's while generating enough dust cloud from muzzle blast to lose LOS to the Shermans...

[Sublime]

I hide troops for ambush. I almost never ambush with a single unit however, so I leave one up. With experience you can time it, and unhide them when appropriate - a turn before the ambush. At that point it's usually too late, and they're already in position.

Movement attracts the eye more than anything, it seems true in game too, with noise contacts as well. I notice people under-use slow quite a bit. I did too but I don't now and it makes a huge difference. You have to be careful with the distances though, your troops tire almost immediately.

The important thing about ambushes and defense is falling back and repositioning. This is an art and properly done is a mess of way-points littered with smoke commands and pauses. You want to fall-back almost when it seems too soon, usually only one or two minutes after the ambush is sprung. Fire, inflict casualties, then fall back before the enemy reacts and starts to maneuver around you. By disengaging and laying another ambush you give yourself the advantage of seeing them, and almost certainly inflicting casualties. Whether they kill in return is less certain. Couple of points though first - This isn't always appropriate. You may have positions you would rather fight for. Or you may see an end to the fall-backs. You may have a river at your back, or the map edge. You can try to reposition in another direction which is much riskier, or stand and fight. You have to keep the bigger picture in mind.

Second, you want overwhelming fire power. The only units I let engage on their own are ATGs, snipers, mortars, and tanks. Otherwise it's usually an accident. You want overwhelming firepower to kill the enemy quickly. This reduces how many positions or troops he ID's positively, and how long he can react. It also reduces his reaction with stress and suppression. Most of my ambushes are at least a few squads, or a platoon. A heavy weapon included is great. Often its a form of a tank, engaging the enemy, with infantry on a likely approach route, hidden. An opponent will try to sneak AT teams or troops near and they get hammered. Or even enemy armor flanking.

Finally, be very wary of very aggressive players. I often play like this, and nothing pleases me more in those games than timing my rushes right and gunning a bunch of enemy troops down in the back while they reposition. They drop like flies. In this case you have to disengage extremely fast, and you can often turn the whole situation on it's head. You can withdraw a unit or two and let the rest sit and when he rushes expecting you to withdraw the bulk next turn - Wham! Timing is really important, especially in PBEM's, and weaker and/or newer players often have a tougher time with the WeGo timing. This is another advantage you have once you get practice in.

[womble]

I hide troops for ambush....With experience you can time it, and unhide them when appropriate - a turn before the ambush.

This is certainly the key to using Hide to set up an ambush: you have to manually execute it by UnHiding the ambushers when the enemy have advanced in the kill sack. Which requires observational overwatch and good timing.

[Sublime]

It can certainly be risky. I had a German platoon hiding in a wheat field, most in foxholes. Only about 9 men total in the platoon weren't hiding, though all had cover arcs, to spot. My opponents US troops have spotted them, even though no fire was traded from at least a few hundred meters. They're being shelled, so now I have to extract them. I debated riding it out on hide, which is the best option sometimes. Especially in heavier cover. In FI however the only cover is usually hills or buildings, as opposed to the bocage, and heavy vegetation of France. In this case of FI, the troops I guess are more exposed and want to pull them out before they're shelled to nothing. If it was BN, I'd seriously consider riding it out, it's 60mm fire and I could 'play dead'. Though obviously for ambushes the position's blown. FI's open spaces go both ways however - my two on map 81's have LoS to most of the map and so are going to lay a smoke screen to cover my withdraw, which will consist of at least 45 second pauses for the first group, then a second, a third, etc. My opponent also is shelling a Pz IV trying to immobilize it with his 60s as well. Some damage and now hoping to pull it out before it's stuck.

I hate to give up the foxholes 'unused' though, and I think on reflection they're too expensive given their being spotted easily, and the relatively little protection they offer. The same with trenches, which are worse in a way, as has been pointed out they're much too wide for my tastes...

[timmyc69]

When I originally posted "Back with a question" I had no idea that it would spawn such a rich reply to my original dumb-ish question spanning so much more. The forum is a double-edged sword...you can spend an incredible amount of time here leaving less time for playing. A real Catch-22 for the newbie who is impatient and wants to "get it on" but needs to know most of this to do so. It is a good thing that I do have a lot of time on my hands, and yet I have barely scratched the surface of all the various strings and resulting off shoots of the original topics.

Anyway, the message here is that now I understand the forum a lot better...one thing just leads to another and a surprising amount of information on the initially posted topic is treat enough, but the tangents that occur add so much more.

Once again I thank all you guys...you are like a think tank here.

[Michael Emrys]

...you are like a think tank here.

That's nice. the Peng thread is rather more like a septic tank.

Michael