Clearing forest full of infantry

[Kommissar]

JasonC - how do you call artillery in deep woods? You need LOS on the target to call it in, and you're not seeing more than 50m ahead in the forest, which means you're calling it in on your poor spotter more than the enemy.

[JasonC]

I don't need LOS to call artillery on the center of deep woods. I call the FDC on the radio and I say, battery, fire mission, target reference coordinates XXXXYYYY, 6 rounds per gun HE, fuze quick. And the red legs do the rest. I don't know what your problem is, but in the real world it is just as easy as that.

OK so I am being slightly facetious. It isn't a problem in real life to drop artillery a known distance back from any visible reference point, particularly when that distance back is much smaller the plume of dust put up by a shell explosion. If you can't see the plume you have to adjust by sound ranging and that isn't perfect. But being unable to call the mission at all unless you can see the ground where the intended aim point is, is purely a limitation of the CM game engine and in no way reflects military reality.

[Childress]

But being unable to call the mission at all unless you can see the ground where the intended aim point is, is purely a limitation of the CM game engine and in no way reflects military reality.

Yes. If the game engine can currently drop artillery a few meters behind a hedge it can surely be modified to lay some rounds x number of meters beyond a point lying within LOS.

[YankeeDog]

I generally agree with this statement, but the Augostow Plague Boil scenario is essentially a "clear the forest of Soviets" where you derive most of your points from casualties inflicted on the other side...

[spoilerS: AUGUSTOW PLAGUE BOIL]

Now, this is where a close reading of the scenario victory conditions is important.

Only 1/3 of the possible points available to the German side in Augustow are for Soviet casualties; 1/3 are terrain objectives and 1/3 are friendly/enemy condition points.

Further, most of the Soviet forces are arrayed near the edge of the roads and open areas of the map, and/or in areas of the the forest that are less dense and can be traversed by vehicles.

Overall, I'd estimate at least 75% of the Soviet force is in locations where you can bring vehicle weapons fire to bear on them, if you read the map carefully.

So you don't need to run around trying to hunt down Soviet SMG infantry deep inside the woods to win that scenario. In fact, considering how vehicle-heavy and infantry-light the German force is, attempting to force an infantry-only fight very good way to lose that scenario...

[Childress]

Yes. If the game engine can currently drop artillery a few meters behind a hedge it can surely be modified to lay some rounds x number of meters beyond a point lying within LOS.

On second thought maybe not a great idea. It opens up a Pandora's Box of gaminess. How does one know that a platoon of smg units is lurking in a forest patch? The player is firing on speculation in media res. You see merely the treetops. And it presupposes a perfect cartographic knowledge on the part of the attacking side, an unavoidable gamey element already built into the game. The hedge example represents a few meters. A more liberal distribution of TRPs may be the better solution.

[Kommissar]

Overall, I'd estimate at least 75% of the Soviet force is in locations where you can bring vehicle weapons fire to bear on them, if you read the map carefully.

So you don't need to run around trying to hunt down Soviet SMG infantry deep inside the woods to win that scenario. In fact, considering how vehicle-heavy and infantry-light the German force is, attempting to force an infantry-only fight very good way to lose that scenario...

In my playthrough (and there may be different AI plans), there was an SMG company that tried to flank me in the woods. I agree that it probably only represented about 25% of the enemy force, and that there were plenty of forces along the edge of the forest that the tanks could fire on, but I found that the infantry would generally retreat deeper into the woods after taking hits from the tanks, and that a mop up force was necessary. Also, I ended up killing almost all of the flanking SMG company by using a combination of the tactics identified in this thread (target light, carefully driving tanks into the woods), and I don't think you could force a surrender without doing some serious damage to that force.

So, in the end, I agree that you can (and should) try to avoid fighting in the forest as much as possible, but you are going to need to to a limited extent. Also, there's a pioneer platoon at the final objective (I never got that far before AI auto-surrendered), so even if you stayed strictly to the map objectives, you'd have to deal with them, and they seemed to be fairly deep in the woods.

[Kommissar]

Also, you get condition points (and deny them to the Soviets) by causing casualties and breaking their morale, which you need to engage their infantry to do. So it's not only 1/3 of points that relate to causing casualties. Simply bypassing their flanking forces and going straight for objectives will probably give you a win, but not a total victory.

Finally, and I am going on memory and don't have access to the briefing on the computer I'm on now, but IIRC part of the idea behind the scenario is that you are conducting mop-up operations. It would seem a little silly to bypass the forces that you have been tasked with clearing, even if you still came out alright in points by simply holding the objectives.

[Andrew H.]

Maybe for a very limited amount of woods and you won't run out of ammo or time. Not very doable when you have a large map with a lot of woods. One still needs to send suicidal recon teams.

No, this is just an approach to mop up a small patch of woods with infantry while taking as few casualties as possible.

If you have a 1km x 1km forest, you'll need another approach. I don't think suicidal recon teams are the answer, since IME, they tend to be 8 parts suicide and two parts recon. And you rarely know what's in a forest that size - maybe it's just a FO or a LMG team. Or maybe it's an SMG company, split into halfsquads and arranged in a checkerboard pattern throughout the forest...

If your tanks and heavy stuff are keeping everyone off the actual treeline, why go into the woods at all? The Russians inside are powerless unless you step on them. Don't step on them.

Simple.

In many cases, I think that this is just the right answer. In CMBN, I would always approach the objective through woods or similar cover if available. In RT, I never do that anymore; I bypass any large parcel of woods and try to screen myself in other ways. (RT does seem to have some woods that are long and narrow (~50 meters wide); these aren't hard to kill with armor on the outside shooting in and a couple of squads hunting through the center.

But sometimes there is a critical patch of woods in the VL that needs to be cleaned out, and I'm working on the best way to do that with infantry.

[JasonC]

Childress - historical officers are gamey bastards who do whatever works. And if there aren't enough enemy in those woods to justify a big shoot, aw shucks we wasted a few dozen shells. Players can make such calls - they will get some right and some wrong, and take the consequences. Why make an exception here?

[pnzrldr]

QB options:

1. Buy TRPs.

2. Buy Grilles.

3. Buy (more) STuH 42s.

4. Don't go into the woods - <big sign> "Here there be Dragons! Abandon hope, all Ye (Germans) who enter Here!"

[c3k]

Why go into the woods? Why? To KILL der enemy. If dey are hiding dere, dat ist vere you must go! Hunt dem down, track dem by der schmell of dere fear, und slay them! If it takes every last man under my command, I vill find dem and KILL dem!!

[LukeFF]

Buy some Begleit Grenadier platoons.

[YankeeDog]

Also, you get condition points (and deny them to the Soviets) by causing casualties and breaking their morale, which you need to engage their infantry to do. So it's not only 1/3 of points that relate to causing casualties. Simply bypassing their flanking forces and going straight for objectives will probably give you a win, but not a total victory.

Finally, and I am going on memory and don't have access to the briefing on the computer I'm on now, but IIRC part of the idea behind the scenario is that you are conducting mop-up operations. It would seem a little silly to bypass the forces that you have been tasked with clearing, even if you still came out alright in points by simply holding the objectives.

Trust me, I playtested it.

[spoilerS, AGAIN, FOR AUGUSTOW]

If you go for, and then defend the objectives, in the process you will be presented with the opportunity to kill more than enough Russians to get plenty of casualty points and *also* get a good chunk of, if not all, the enemy condition points (note that some of the condition points are actually awarded for good condition of your force, so not sending your infantry off on wild chases through the woods will actually help you retain these "friendly condition" points by keeping your infantry relatively sound and not burning all of your ammo).

I also think you have a mis-impression of the scenario premise. So-called "mop-up" operations to completely eliminate an area of enemy stragglers, isolated teams, etc., are slow, tedious affairs and largely out of the scope of CM, usually requiring many hours and even days. What you're really being asked to do in Augustow Plague Boil is break Soviet forces in the area by (a) seizing the critical terrain, and ( forcing the Soviets off of their good defensive positions, and (d) causing enough damage to the enemy force that it loses cohesion and is no longer able to fight as a unified force.

"Mop up" would come after all of this, and if you get too obsessed with chasing down every single team of Russian infantry you see in the woods in this scenario, you will lose. Kill the enemy you need to in order to achieve the objectives (which is actually quite a lot). Once you've done this, if you see easy opportunities to kill more Russians, by all means take them. But keep your eyes on the objectives and don't get drawn into the enemy's fight.

Another way to look at it would be how things would be scored if the Russian player simply gave up the fight, moving all his forces deep into the woods and conceding the terrain objectives to the German player. By my tally, in this case the German player would win by 1500-500, a pretty handy victory. Any additional points the German player gets by achieving a good casualty ratio is just gravy.

[Kommissar]

Trust me, I playtested it.

[spoilerS, AGAIN, FOR AUGUSTOW]

If you go for, and then defend the objectives, in the process you will be presented with the opportunity to kill more than enough Russians to get plenty of casualty points and *also* get a good chunk of, if not all, the enemy condition points (note that some of the condition points are actually awarded for good condition of your force, so not sending your infantry off on wild chases through the woods will actually help you retain these "friendly condition" points by keeping your infantry relatively sound and not burning all of your ammo).

I also think you have a mis-impression of the scenario premise. So-called "mop-up" operations to completely eliminate an area of enemy stragglers, isolated teams, etc., are slow, tedious affairs and largely out of the scope of CM, usually requiring many hours and even days. What you're really being asked to do in Augustow Plague Boil is break Soviet forces in the area by (a) seizing the critical terrain, and ( forcing the Soviets off of their good defensive positions, and (d) causing enough damage to the enemy force that it loses cohesion and is no longer able to fight as a unified force.

"Mop up" would come after all of this, and if you get too obsessed with chasing down every single team of Russian infantry you see in the woods in this scenario, you will lose. Kill the enemy you need to in order to achieve the objectives (which is actually quite a lot). Once you've done this, if you see easy opportunities to kill more Russians, by all means take them. But keep your eyes on the objectives and don't get drawn into the enemy's fight.

Fair enough. I take your point and agree about the objective being as you've described and not requiring you to go hunt down every last trooper. I suppose "mop-up" was a poor descriptor for the scenario.

Broadly speaking, however, I think that OP was really interested in how to deal with forest fights when they do happen. I'm probably as responsible for this as anyone else in this thread, but it seems like we've digressed into been snooty about how bad a commander you must be if you find yourself in a forest fight. I agree that as the German player you should play to your strengths and avoid forests as much as possible, and we can debate to what extent that is possible on each map, but I think given the terrain of the region they are unavoidable in some circumstances. I'm sure even the best players sent some troopers into the woods in Augustow. I think we need to move beyond what we all agree is the best option and focus on what to do if you do find yourself in a forest fight.

[YankeeDog]

...but it seems like we've digressed into been snooty about how bad a commander you must be if you find yourself in a forest fight...

Good point; it wasn't my intention to be snooty; fighting in dense, good cover terrain is indeed an interesting tactical problem.

What I was trying to say in a rather roundabout way is that I think people often look at scenarios where they are, say, attacking across a map with lots of dense woods, and assume they need to "clear the whole forest" of all enemy presence, when actually this isn't a requirement to win the scenario at all. The proper thing to do in any dense terrain (e.g., woods, urban) is choose the critical routes and pieces of terrain you must control to achieve the objectives, and leave the enemy elsewhere to rot. Once you control the critical terrain, any remaining enemy have the choice of either staying where they are, in which case they become irrelevant, or coming out to engage, in which case you can fight them on your terms.

[JasonC]

It is not snooty to have a brain and fight intelligently. It is not unpretentious to stubbornly fight the enemy's war, it is flamingly stupid. A real officer who throws away his men's lives to no purpose doesn't get to excuse his needless butchery of his men by claiming he was just trying to avoid being a high brow elitist. Stop excusing stupidity and resisting sound advice, and instead get unsnooty enough to learn something from what you are hearing. If you ask for a smart way to commit suicide, the advice not to is on point...

[General Lee Irked]

Russians in the forest!

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way"

[Collingwood]

Yep YD, there have been times when a scenario required me to advance across a map to take objectives, and the path of advance comes down to two choices (or a mixture of them) because the map has 'islands' of forest throughout.

Infantry could at times skirt around the forest patches - and therefore can be within some scarily open lanes. This exposes my infantry to longer ranged fire, as well as any opposition infantry which may not always be deep inside the woods. Furthermore my men are now definitely spotted.

Or, I can avoid that exposure by sending them through some woods. Of course as people have been discussing, that can turn into disaster too. Sometimes the 'unknown' of the wooded approach is preferable to the certain death of open firelines outside of the woods.

I agree that bypassing wooded infantry is the way to go but it's not always feasible. I've not had any total disasters when striking defended forests - but I'm sure that's only good luck so I'm interested in how to approach the problem 'when it does happen'.

[Apocal]

I don't need LOS to call artillery on the center of deep woods. I call the FDC on the radio and I say, battery, fire mission, target reference coordinates XXXXYYYY, 6 rounds per gun HE, fuze quick. And the red legs do the rest. I don't know what your problem is, but in the real world it is just as easy as that.

OK so I am being slightly facetious. It isn't a problem in real life to drop artillery a known distance back from any visible reference point, particularly when that distance back is much smaller the plume of dust put up by a shell explosion. If you can't see the plume you have to adjust by sound ranging and that isn't perfect. But being unable to call the mission at all unless you can see the ground where the intended aim point is, is purely a limitation of the CM game engine and in no way reflects military reality.

I consider scenarios where attackers get mortars/arty but no TRPs to be slightly broken for just this reason, although I understand the balancing considerations involved. Part of the problem is there is only one kind of TRP, which acts as a well surveyed, registered point rather than a vague bit of geography on a map, so giving the player lots of TRPs is essentially giving him lots of accurate, responsive fires above and beyond the ability to blind fire.

Guess we'll have to wait for another engine update before getting artillery mapfire.

[Redwolf]

3 SMGs do all that damage?

I thought anything below 7.62 rife doesn't have enough punch in foliage. That's what they told us after Vietnam.

[JasonC]

Redwolf - would you wear leaf armor to a gunfight? Would it matter if the other side promised to use pistols and pistol caliber carbines?

[JonS]

But being unable to call the mission at all unless you can see the ground where the intended aim point is, is purely a limitation of the CM game engine and in no way reflects military reality.

In this you are quite simply wrong. Wrong both in fact and in emphasis.

You are wrong in fact because in the game it is more than possible to fire missions centred on a location that is out of LOS. There are two mechanisms - pre-battle bombardments (ie, set up during set up) and TRPs.

You are wrong in emphasis because, where one of the above two mechanisms do not apply, the inability to fire indirectly on a location that is out of LOS has nothing to do with engine limitations, and everything to do engine design. In other words, for the hard of thinking out there, the good folk at BFC know full well what's possible in the real world, and made a conscious decision to - in this case - exclude it as an anytime anywhere free for all. IIRC, free for alls anytime anywhere were in at one point, and got yanked because in practice it quickly became obvious that it was an absurd capability to have in this game.

[c3k]

Augustow Boil and Baranovichi

SPOILERS follow (very light and very brief)

YankeeDog did a great job explaining one reason why Augustow Boil players should not follow the Soviets into the woods.

Another battle which presents an excellent conundrum to the player is Baranovichi. In that battle, as the Soviets, you have to choose whether to use the cover of the woods or stay in the open.

end SPOILER segment

Either way (to go into the woods or not), knowledge of effective woods fighting techniques are needed. If you know what is needed to fight in the woods, then you can decide whether or not you should go in.

JasonC alluded to one of the requirements: massive firepower advantage. His comment about artillery is not applicable to some scenarios. A unit advancing ahead of the fixed artillery (or out of communications with it), cannot use map coordinates to call in fire. Without map-grid arty calls (which will not destroy units, only suppress them or knock them out of the fight for a period of time), use tanks.

You can keep the tanks around the edge of the woods, but since this is about fighting IN woods, you can also enter the woods. Ensure they are surrounded by friendly infantry.

In addition to firepower, you need a lot of manpower. Every team that goes into the woods needs ~2 teams behind it. Squads are better, but obviously increase the headcount requirement by 2x or 3x. The techniques have been discussed. It involves a lot of ammunition. Moving by HUNT, laying down area fire, and recognizing it will take...

TIME. To fight in the woods is a slow affair. Stopping and listening is crucial. HUNT one or two action spots and then wait. Next turn, move the overwatching units forward even with the lead unit. Then repeat. Every sound spot should get deluged with fire, and also the action spots next to it. Then move forward to mop up.

When you're done, your units will likely need ammo resupply.

There was a reason why so many partisan units and bypassed Soviet army units went into the woods and lasted so long. The Germans fought the East Front on a shoestring. They had nowhere near the resources needed to clear the vast forests in Russia.

In our battles, you've got to decide if you can commit your units into the woods. Once they go in, they'll be committed to the task for awhile. A small copse and a platoon? Expect to give up 8-10 minutes. Can your battle plan go without a platoon for that long?

Ken

[Apocal]

You are wrong in emphasis because, where one of the above two mechanisms do not apply, the inability to fire indirectly on a location that is out of LOS has nothing to do with engine limitations, and everything to do engine design. In other words, for the hard of thinking out there, the good folk at BFC know full well what's possible in the real world, and made a conscious decision to - in this case - exclude it as an anytime anywhere free for all. IIRC, free for alls anytime anywhere were in at one point, and got yanked because in practice it quickly became obvious that it was an absurd capability to have in this game.

...hmmm...

Elmar,

Not really We simply didn't have time to implement TRPs (complex UI coding) which is the primary means of firing blind out of LOS. CM: Normandy will have TRPs, so the problem is solved.

As it stands, you can buy TRPs and destructive artillery reasonably cheap and there is no "balanced" force limit in QBs on the amount of artillery and TRPs you buy. Not quite a free-for-all, but useful in a lot of situations where (realistically) inaccurate blind-fired arty wouldn't be since the TRP gives a massive bonus to accuracy and response time. Artillery lethality in-game being high is already pretty well established, so I see there are competing balance considerations at play, but I'd suggest dialing down artillery lethality and allowing blind fire.

[Collingwood]

Not sure if it has changed, but the limitation that strikes me most often is that although my FO can see for example the 2nd or 3rd floor of a building, he can't call mortar fire onto it - because he can't see the bottom floor. ("No LOS to target").

Similar with a forest I guess - why it is that fire can be called on the visible forward edge, but not called "30 meters south" (inwards) of that point is odd. It's not gamey to call for support fire from organic assets as happened countless times in real life.

One can't afford to buy TRPs for every action square the enemy could be, nor afford to send FOs into the hot zone so they eyeball the doorstep of a building that is clearly visible for a hundred meters or more.

This isn't criticism. I know and accept the answer to my question "why" - because of the way the game is coded. It is a limitation though, but I will be very happy if I'm mistaken and this is no longer the case.