Axis - CMBN Buying The Farm - Crowd-sourced DAR

[c3k]

Hedges (passable) are knee high. If you see sticks in the artwork it is bocage.

[A Canadian Cat]

• Similarly, is there anyway to figure out ahead of time if a piece of terrain is passable or not?

You can tell if an area terrain type is impassible - you will get a ghost buster symbol when you hover over the area. Only water and deep marsh is impassible for infantry but vehicles have more that are not passable.  However barriers that are impassible cannot be detected with the move tool.   Here are some that you might come across:

 

Medium and heavy tanks: Fully tracked vehicles cannot drive through bocage or high walls.  They can drive over low walls, fences and hedges.

 

LIght tanks, trucks and Half tracks: These vehicles also cannot drive over low walls but are still able to drive through fences and hedges.

 

Infantry: They need gaps to be able to go through bocage and high walls but can jump over low walls and fences as well as are slowed down by hedges.

 

You have a bunch of responses on bocage vs hedges but here is a summary.  BTW if you look way back in my post history you will see me being confused and asking for better differentiation between them is one of my first posts.  Nothing has changed except I figured out how to tell them part.

 

High bocage: Not really difficult to notice.  It has a berm and a really tall bush on top - it looks formidable.

 

Low bocage: A lower version of the high bocage.  However I find the berm seems lower too and I often cannot find it at all.  Quite frankly I still think this guy looks like the ugly unkept hedge at my previous house.  My personal desire is that this guy get taller and wider (including making the high bocage wider too) so it does not look like you could just push on it and get through.

 

Hedge: A nice square manicured little bush that looks like you can almost step over it.

 

If there is hedge around suddenly the low bocage looks nasty.  But without the hedge as a counter point I find my self thinking "this is no big deal". Without hedges around I tell the difference by the way the graphics look - as Ken said - if it has sticks, it is bocage.  The low bocage also does not have that nice neat square look it has stuff sticking out at all angles.

 

Looking for gaps:

 

I do it by getting down at camera level 1 and moving the camera parallel to the bocage line a short distance away.  Watch the berm for spaces - you will see them.  Note if you are looking at the low bocage chances are you will see the odd phantom gap too.  These seem to be places were the art work has a bit of a space and not a real gap.  Sometimes the only way I can tell is to swing the camera around and watch what happens.  If the gap seems to be there no matter the angle it is probably a gap if it disappears then it is probably not.  Many map designers put dirt terrain at the gaps to make it look like people have travelled there on a regular basis.  This makes spotting the gaps pretty easy.

[MethodGamer]

Small side question: I played my turn and took a few screenshots, however, when I try to upload them, the system says that I only have 3.04kb left. What's the attachment size cap? And is it by by thread or by individual image?

[delliejonut]

You can use imagur to host the pics. Not sure what attachment cap is on the forum.

[A Canadian Cat]

That is a new one. I'll ask...

[MethodGamer]

Minute 28-27

I was waiting for contacts, and I received plenty this turn.

The first contacts were two armor sound contacts coming through the trees in southern section, within seconds of the start of the turn. Not too long after than, there were several infantry sound contacts. At the 30 second mark, there was a confirmed sighting of the first tank, followed by several visual contacts on infantry. They're close. The infantry can be heard at 30m in front of my line.

In the road, the unit I moved in to check out what was going on with the mines is seeing an eye full, at least 15 men. They have line of sight on all of them, but they're 190m away. The HQ is close, but doesn't have LoS on them, so a fire mission isn't possible just yet.

 

Minute 27 Orders

I have a few options, and I'm not sure what to do at this point. But first, a question about LoS.

 

The tank indicated by "4" is visible by the ATG's ammo team, but not by the ATG itself. How is this possible? Both have a clear field of view to the tank, both are roughly in the same position. I get that the LoS model wants to try and deal with borg spotting, but I don't understand how the ATG ammo team doesn't whisper to the ATG team about 2m away "pst, there's a bloody tank in the field 150m away from you!".

 

With that out of the way, I have a few options that I'm not sure about.

 

First, I have a rifle team with perfect view down the road, and they can see Ian's guys clearly. My HQ isn't quite in place yet, so I can't call down mortar fire. At this point, should I get the rifle team to start firing and pin the enemy down, to give time to the HQ to set into position and call artillery, or should I wait and ambush them, given that I have a few other squads near the road waiting on ambush? I'm thinking the latter, but I'm not sure.

 

 

The enemy at "3" are visible by the ATG. My plan is to NOT fire the ATG at them, and wait for a shot at the tanks.

 

The sound contact at "1" are within the target arc of the unit right in front of them. I take it the right thing to do is wait for them to become visible, rather than change their order to Area Fire? Also, the TRP is close enough that I can call in fire from the INF gun on those sound contacts. Should I do that? If I were not getting advice, I would.

 

No orders given yet, waiting for the wisdom of the crowd!

[Bil Hardenberger]

MG, I like your setup, though it would be nice if you had an HMG to cover the road approach, still, I think Ian will have a rough time getting across those fields on your left... do not fire at those sounds contacts, let them come to you... you will only unmask your IG for little appreciable gain and then your gun can be isolated and destroyed by Ian.. so I would wait until I had a good firm contact, or better a bunch of contacts, and preferably in the fields and away from the cover of the woods to maximize the effectiveness of the fire from that gun which could be short lived.

 

I see a danger though.. you are so concentrated on your left that if he feinted on your left and instead attacked through the fields on your right you would be in serious trouble.  If I was attacking I would have scouted your entire line prior to deciding where to attack... only after I had a loose picture of your defenses would I then commit to a attack route.. though I would still attack with fewer units on your left just to keep you from displacing to your weak side.

 

Good stuff, looking forward to seeing how this unfolds.

[MethodGamer]

The scenario time is quite short, 30 minutes. On the other hand, the map is quite small, I think just under 300m end to end. I don't know if that afford Ian enough time to probe the entire line and figure out his best approach to the farmhouse.

[c3k]

MG, I like your setup, though it would be nice if you had an HMG to cover the road approach, still, I think Ian will have a rough time getting across those fields on your left... do not fire at those sounds contacts, let them come to you... you will only unmask your IG for little appreciable gain and then your gun can be isolated and destroyed by Ian.. so I would wait until I had a good firm contact, or better a bunch of contacts, and preferably in the fields and away from the cover of the woods to maximize the effectiveness of the fire from that gun which could be short lived.

 

I see a danger though.. you are so concentrated on your left that if he feinted on your left and instead attacked through the fields on your right you would be in serious trouble.  If I was attacking I would have scouted your entire line prior to deciding where to attack... only after I had a loose picture of your defenses would I then commit to a attack route.. though I would still attack with fewer units on your left just to keep you from displacing to your weak side.

 

Good stuff, looking forward to seeing how this unfolds.

 

If you'd put your HMG up on the line protecting the large minefield on your north, it could now move down to cover the road. I think I suggested that upstream in the setup.

 

ATG not seeing what the ammo team can: I can see why. You failed to move the branches of the bocage out of the way of the gunsight. Easy to forget.   Give it a few minutes, that ATG should find the tank. Make sure you've got it set with an Armor Arc oriented that way. Tight arc on your ammo team so they don't give away the position.

 

The team looking down the road? Tight cover arc. Where are Ian's men on the road going to go? That's right: either towards you, or back on the mines. Let 'em come closer, then when you hit them, some may panic and run back over the mines. That's always fun!

 

On your left, again, tighten your arcs. Call in that fire using the TRP. Target zone 1. Make sure your guys near zone 1 HIDE with a tight cover arc before the shells start falling. If you don't, you're guaranteed to get a short round in their foxholes. If you do, nothing will come close. Murphy does it.

 

 

The gist of what I'm suggesting is that you withhold small arms for as long as possible. MG 34/42 fire out to 200m can get guys in the open, inflict casualties, and pin. 100m would be the similar range for rifle fire. Does the team looking down the road have an MG? Using your IG will slow down the units near zone 1. Short, light, area target should do it. Get a few shells on 'em. Ian will then avoid that zone.

 

If any of your guys open fire, that location will become a death-zone in about 3 turns. Be ready to relocate...  Make him bleed for each meter, then displace and repeat. He's only got 30 minutes to get the farmhouse. That's not a lot of time.

[Bil Hardenberger]

The scenario time is quite short, 30 minutes. On the other hand, the map is quite small, I think just under 300m end to end. I don't know if that afford Ian enough time to probe the entire line and figure out his best approach to the farmhouse.

 

That explains a lot.. thanks.  Personally I will not play games with such a short duration.. but that's just me.  

[MethodGamer]

Ian and I decided on a short game since we knew turns would only be played every 2-3 days, given our little learning experiment. But I agree, 30 mins is a bit short.

[A Canadian Cat]

Yep, Bil the short time is why I picked an attack plan instead over probing first. I still have options of switching forces between my two routes.

Interesting amount of spotting going on. I see you have lots of advice what I was going to say has already been said.

Question about the AT gun, does it have an armour '?' icon where the tank is?

[A Canadian Cat]

That is a new one. I'll ask...

Did something change to allow you to attach more images?

[womble]

In the road...The HQ is close, but doesn't have LoS on them, so a fire mission isn't possible just yet.

My feeling is you're only going to get to use your mortars once, because of the 8 minute call time. By the time your HQ gets eyes on the road, Ian will have advanced some, and by the time the strike lands, he'll be right on top of you unless he hasn't got any tanks to suppress your team in the hedgerow. Also, an indirect strike on the road is mostly going to hit the fields either side of the road, with the berms of the bocage lining the road providing cover to the dogfaces who will quickly cower or be put on Hide orders as soon as Ian realises they're in the footprint of the strike. I feel it would be less effective than you need. What you need is to slow him down, and I think the best way of using your mortar to achieve that is to have it lay a linear mission on the low bocage in front of the contacts you've labelled 1 and 3. Your entrenched positions ought to be able to hold him there long enough for it to start falling. Make it Light (Harrass is probably not going to be dense enough to cause enough cowering in the timeframe) or Medium weight, and Maximum duration.

 

...a question about LoS.

 

The tank indicated by "4" is visible by the ATG's ammo team, but not by the ATG itself. How is this possible? Both have a clear field of view to the tank, both are roughly in the same position. I get that the LoS model wants to try and deal with borg spotting, but I don't understand how the ATG ammo team doesn't whisper to the ATG team about 2m away "pst, there's a bloody tank in the field 150m away from you!".

 

You have trees turned off. That's not a field 150m away, it's a fairly dense wood. The foliage is probably getting in the ATG's way, but not the ammo bearers'. As Ken says, a little patience will probably show the Stuart to the ATG, as it moves forward, and there will be firing.

 

The enemy at "3" are visible by the ATG. My plan is to NOT fire the ATG at them, and wait for a shot at the tanks.

 

 

Good plan. The ATG should have a pretty all-encompassing (400m range, circular wouldn't go amiss here) "Target Armour Arc", to make sure it doesn't fire at infantry, especially now you know there are armour targets to be engaged over thataway.

 

I have a rifle team with perfect view down the road, and they can see Ian's guys clearly. My HQ isn't quite in place yet, so I can't call down mortar fire. At this point, should I get the rifle team to start firing and pin the enemy down, to give time to the HQ to set into position and call artillery, or should I wait and ambush them, given that I have a few other squads near the road waiting on ambush? I'm thinking the latter, but I'm not sure.

 

Your instincts are, once again, good. Wait until you can see the whites of their eyes, and break them in one minute. Don't let them get into the nooks level with the hedgehogs, but sometime just short of there... Set a Target Arc at that sort of range, it can be circular, since you're already oriented the way you want, and just to not get into bad habits of overfocusing.

 

The sound contact at "1" are within the target arc of the unit right in front of them. I take it the right thing to do is wait for them to become visible, rather than change their order to Area Fire?

 

Again, yes. Since they're already within the TA, you'll open up as soon as you get a spot, and that's a murderous range to open up.

 

Also, the TRP is close enough that I can call in fire from the INF gun on those sound contacts.

 

It's about 3 minutes call time for an IG indirect mission, IIRC? Something of a tossup/dilemma, here. Having 75mm shells start to land while he's having to cope with setting off an ambush might give you the chance to extricate your tripwire. An indirect mission would have more options of geometry than simply plotting a Target Light into the woods, but direct HE is killer, so you might want to wait until he's settled into that hedgerow before starting up with the IG to keep him there. Assuming he hasn't suppressed the bejazus out of it.

 

I think the most important thing I want to get across is that now is the time to start calling a delayed-by-8-minute mission from your mortars: you have plentiful contacts in the wood and you can adjust or cancel it if something else crops up, but get it started now.

[womble]

 

I see a danger though.. you are so concentrated on your left that if he feinted on your left and instead attacked through the fields on your right you would be in serious trouble.  If I was attacking I would have scouted your entire line prior to deciding where to attack... only after I had a loose picture of your defenses would I then commit to a attack route.. though I would still attack with fewer units on your left just to keep you from displacing to your weak side.

 

Good stuff, looking forward to seeing how this unfolds.

One thing you might have missed, if you've jumped in at the end without ploughing through the whole thread, is the relatively dense mine belt in those lightly-defended fields. That, combined with the short timeframe allowed to clear the building-heavy objective makes the very low bodycount in that area feasible as a defense. The biggest risk is if Ian diverts his road force to his left using engineers to get off the road, and comes, by fortune, out behind the mine line... That would be bad.

[MethodGamer]

Question about the AT gun, does it have an armour '?' icon where the tank is?

Yes it does.

 

Did something change to allow you to attach more images?

I switched to imgur, as delliejonut suggested. Hopefully imgur doesn't delete images after time, it's irritating to go read a post or thread and the screenshots are missing.

[LukeFF]

Yes it does.

 

Then that means the gun should pick up the tank shortly, as it knows something is there. 

[Heinrich505]

Please, fire zee verdammt PAK....zee zuspenze ist killing me!!!   

 

All good stuff here.  Very much enjoying the discussion and tactical planning.  You both had a really good idea to do this.

 

 

Heinrich505

[hobo]

Enjoying this so much that I decided to play the battle yesterday.  I believe there are 2 keys to success for the defense.  First which has been discussed several times is the 30 minute time frame as there is little chance that the farm can be held by a sustained attack by the US force.  The second key is the experience of the opposing forces  which I have not seen discussed.  The way you defend against a veteran force is very different than how you would defend against a green set of troops.  Fire at veterans too early and you just hasten you death.  Fire at newbees early and perhaps you buy yourself a couple of minutes while they cry for their mommy.

[womble]

Enjoying this so much that I decided to play the battle yesterday.  I believe there are 2 keys to success for the defense.  First which has been discussed several times is the 30 minute time frame as there is little chance that the farm can be held by a sustained attack by the US force.  The second key is the experience of the opposing forces  which I have not seen discussed.  The way you defend against a veteran force is very different than how you would defend against a green set of troops.  Fire at veterans too early and you just hasten you death.  Fire at newbees early and perhaps you buy yourself a couple of minutes while they cry for their mommy.

It's definitely a case of "when" not "if" the Amis kill all the Germans and occupy the VL, the time limit is the OstBattalion's saviour

 

The OstBattalion is surprisingly good quality. Almost as good as the "average-for-just-after-D-day" dogfaces. While it's true that distant fire might briefly disrupt a team's movement, nothing makes them cry for their mommy like having Sarge and half the squad cut down at close range. There's a bit of a game of "chicken" to be played regarding how close you let them get, but Bocage helps...

[MethodGamer]

I finally had a bit of time to sit down and take in all the latest advice in this morning. Here's a quick update on the orders I gave for this turn.

 

• Narrowed but lengthened the target arcs of the rifle team looking down the road. They were initially set to 120-180 degrees, 30m, as I didn't know where they would show up, but now that I have a good sight on them, I changed the arc to cover just the road, but out to 80m.
• Similarly, the teams on ambush have had their target arcs narrowed and positioned so they're overlapping each other. A pretty devastating kill zone if anything enters there. I'll adjust if a different route is taken.
• Left the ATG's arc to armor only, fairly wide, 200m
• INF gun did not get orders. I'm going to try direct fire when they see something. They're on top of a hill and have good visibility on the field, so it seemed like a better plan.
• Called in mortars on the line just in front of 1. It might be too late, given how close Ian is, but at this point it's a learning exercise in artillery missions as much as anything else. Ian's artillery is usually pretty painful, I'm hoping to return the favor.
• Everyone else is left on stand-by

[womble]

Personally, and I think Ian will agree with me ( ) I don't like to make target arcs any narrower than they have to be. It's too easy for a unit to slip out of a narrow pieslice, and a minute is a long time at 30m to be trying to have TAs which trigger defensive elements too precisely: you need to be able to shoot back at any contact at that range: once you're nestled into a hedgrow pointing the right way, it's almost better to have a circular Target Arc so that you aren't missing anything... Hopefully you won't get seen as far away as 30m; I'd've put them a bit deeper than that (50-100, even; it's the vegetation that will control whether you see a given enemy or not) just to make sure that you get the drop on the movers.

 

I don't think your mortars will be too late; even if he brushes your piquet aside, he's got to settle in for a firefight with your entrenchments. If he brings his tanks up to overwhelm you (quickly, so he has the chance to get out from under your bombardment before it falls), he won't have neutralised your ATG (hopefully), with his road-bound assault, so you'll be taking flank shots at Stuarts (as far as you can see) at less than 200m, which is a good place to be for a PaK38, and if they're neutralised he'll have to bring soft-shell infantry up to the Bocage line to shoot you out of the trenches, and that won't have been achieved before the mortars start to fall, I'm pretty sure.

[Lanzfeld]

Womble nailed it. Once your guys are facing the correct way you are way better off going a full circle TA over a wedge 9 times out of 10.

[A Canadian Cat]

Yep, totally agree about using circular cover arcs. I only use circular arcs except for pointing turrets in a different direction than the hull and then I create 180 degree arcs - well close to 180.

[Migo441]

Clarification from the circular cover arc advocates:  why use an arc at all?  Why not simply use the Face command?

Is the idea that you do want to control fire for range but not direction?