Question for Bil about his tank tutorial

[Bulletpoint]

Hello Bil, thanks for doing all those tutorials and training missions. I wish you would explain the armour training better though, as I don't feel I'm "getting it" despite three replays

In your infantry training, your briefing and the tactics on your blog made me ready to take on the mission and learn from it. But in this mission, you say I should use the same tactics from the infantry training, and I am unsure how to apply those lessons to the tank platoon.

I hope you will take a moment to clarify some things:

FIRE BASE - You state that tank 1 & 2 are to remain in the forest to provide fire support. How do I actually do that? They start hidden in the forest, with no lines of sight. Should I move them out of the forest right away so they can get a LOS to suppress the AT-gun, then move in for the kill from the flank with tank 3 & 4 - or the other way around, shooting from the flank first, then roll out the fire base tanks?

FIRE AND MANEUVER - Infantry needs to be stationary to fire effectively, so it makes sense that one team fires, the other maneuvers. But tanks can fire and move at the same time, so why have them do this drill?

RECON BY FIRE - if an AT-gun spots your tank, it will fire, no matter if you shot at it first or not. If you shoot at an AT-gun that has not spotted you, chances are it will be suppressed, but you won't know, because you don't see it. So after firing at a potential AT-gun location, you're none the wiser. Firing at a suspected infantry position might make them shoot back, but ONLY if you are riding unbuttoned so they have a chance to shoot the commander. And if you are, they might have shot at you anyway - so what is this "recon by fire" really about in the tank world?

FLANKING - I understand flanking in general, but since tanks are so lousy at spotting, what is the benefit of flanking, say, an AT-gun? Won't the gun spot the tank first anyway, even when coming from the side?

Thanks again for your time, will be in overwatch on your blog for further training missions...

[womble]

FIRE AND MANEUVER - Infantry needs to be stationary to fire effectively, so it makes sense that one team fires, the other maneuvers. But tanks can fire and move at the same time, so why have them do this drill?

I can't answer to Bil's intentions, but I can offer this: moving tanks can't hit for toffee. Having them stationary gives far better results for their shooting. Sometimes you don't care too much (a company of tanks advancing towards a treeline plastering it with HE - it doesn't matter much if individual rounds miss), so you could ignore the drill, but most of the time you want as many rounds to have as good a chance of hitting as possible.

[Bulletpoint]

I can't answer to Bil's intentions, but I can offer this: moving tanks can't hit for toffee. Having them stationary gives far better results for their shooting. Sometimes you don't care too much (a company of tanks advancing towards a treeline plastering it with HE - it doesn't matter much if individual rounds miss), so you could ignore the drill, but most of the time you want as many rounds to have as good a chance of hitting as possible.

All comments are welcome, not just Bil's. I thought I'd post my questions here so more people could learn from it

As for the tanks: so the idea is to advance with two tanks in bounding overwatch, so that if tank 1 (moving) spots an AT-gun, tank 2 (stationary) can immediately get a good shot at it?

[Bulletpoint]

I just noticed there is already a thread about Bil's tutorials, maybe someone could merge this thread with this one?¨

Happy to read I'm not the only one being confused about the tank section tutorial I think I'm understanding more and more of that mission though, the fog is lifting...

[Erwin]

Bulletpoint: There is rarely one simple answer to any of your questions. It will depend on the circumstances.

eg: Flanking. CM2 guns have slow traverse, so if you are shooting at an ATG from the flank it will take them some time to rotate to be a threat to your flanking unit. If you have more than one unit firing at a gun from different directions, the gun can only respond to one target.

[Bulletpoint]

Bulletpoint: There is rarely one simple answer to any of your questions. It will depend on the circumstances.

I understand, but it would be nice with some pointers so I can better see what the lesson here is.

Trial and error is good too, but with the infantry mission there was a lot of great information to read before doing it.

For example your hint about the AT-gun turning speed. That's really useful to keep in mind.

[Erwin]

Unfortunately, it seems that one has to learn the game by trial and error. The manuals have been somewhat lacking in explanations. The CMRT manual is actually way better in explaining the basics to new players than any previous manual. So that's a good step. But even us longtime players don't know exactly what is going on. eg: There doesn't appear to be a definitive answer to the effects of minefields and how best to deal with them. You eventually just learn to roll with the punches and ignore the pain and suffering of not knowing basic things...

[A Canadian Cat]

It just so happens I tried out mine fields just the other day. I was trying to make sure that they worked so I only tried infantry hunting and engineers on move.

The hunting infantry would stop when a mine went off and lost one or two men. About a third of the squads made it through two AS of mines safely on hunt.

The walking engineers spotted the mines. I forgot it they stopped to or if I stopped them.

So hunting looks good for general moving in unsafe places. I'll play around some more when I am back to my main machine.