Defending/Spotting in bad visibility

[MethodGamer]

WARNING - spoilers if you haven't played Die Patrouille yet.

I just finished an FB game with IanL, and my MG team got completely destroyed in a matter of seconds. They were located in a fox hole over looking a bridge, when a German scouting team popped up and wiped out the MG team in just a few seconds. the MG team had the bridge under target arc, and the German popped up almost in the line of fire. My MG team did not react at all.

What's the correct way to defend against this? The only thing I can think of is area fire at the sound contact.

Here are a few screenshots.

Here at 20:10, you can see the MG team, fully rested, completely calm.

Three seconds later, at 20:07, two Germans have popped up and caused two casualties.

And here at 20:00, another casualty. The fourth MG team member would be out action a few seconds in the next turn.

[MOS:96B2P]

1 hour ago, MethodGamer said:

<Snip> I just finished an FB game with IanL, and my MG team got completely destroyed in a matter of seconds. They were located in a fox hole over looking a bridge, when a German scouting team popped up and wiped out the MG team in just a few seconds. the MG team had the bridge under target arc, and the German popped up almost in the line of fire. My MG team did not react at all.

What's the correct way to defend against this? The only thing I can think of is area fire at the sound contact.  <Snip> 

From the screenshots I'm guessing the OpFor came up the creek from your right and then used Slow to approach the wall.  The wall probably did not allow your troops to have LOS/LOF to their right.  Until of course the OpFor popped up above the wall and it was to late.  Your troops needed the dead area on their right flank covered.  They maybe could have been placed along the wall so they could fire over it or another unit could have covered that approach.  As for area firing I wonder if that was even an option since your troops probably did not have LOF into the dead ground between the wall and creek.  

Just FYI.  The Target Arc seems a little short for a MG team.  I don't think this played a role in what happened but if some OpFor troops had come over the crest directly to the front it seems the arc was to short to reach them.  Target Arcs are a frustratingly double edge sword.   

Just my guess from looking at the screenshots.  @IanL is a veteran player and participated in this so would probably have the best understanding of what happened.  Maybe he will happen along here and tell us how he did the dastardly deed.          

[Bulletpoint]

Your MG team had very poor leadership (-2). I think that is a factor in their reaction time.

But that being said, I think it could also be a case of the German team being just outside the covered arc.

One of the soldiers seems to be inside the arc, the other outside, but CM is a game fundamentally based on squares, and maybe what matters here is if the covered arc passes over the centre of the square where the enemy appears.

[c3k]

Squares: my understanding is that the actual LOS/LOF is independent of action spots and is drawn/calculated based on the unit's position.

Die Patrouille (sp?) is a tough one. The low visibility and the steep terrain make long shots almost impossible. I've played this one a lot...from both sides. The first unit to fire will tend to win. Surprise counts. Plus, the Germans have a lot of automatic weapons. Popping up next to the MG foxholes at point blank range gives them the advantage, and that matters. If you saw any "?" contacts near the bridge, you should've fired, then repositioned. If you never saw any "?", and those two Germans were the first indicators you had of the enemy's presence, then you didn't outpost very well.

Fog, snow, undergrowth, terrain undulations mean that you won't get much early warning. I've sent some guys down to the landing next to the bridge. Sometimes they get the drop on the Germans crossing the bridge, sometimes not. Playing as the Germans, sometimes my guys get shredded by unseen Ami's, sometimes not.

One technique to help is to use Target command. Pick your MG team and Target various locations around them. You'll see just how far they may see, and you'll see all the blind zones around them. That covered arc is not a bad idea. However, it has a lot of blind zones. Just because yellow is draped over it, doesn't mean it is in LOS. Walls are bad that way. (There are foxholes on the other side of the road which can cover that side of the wall. I've had mortars wipe out my US teams as I've tried to man them. Other times, I've been successful.)

The machinegun is a lot of your firepower. Use J or T to lay down suppressive firepower against "?" spotted by other units. Is the at-start location a good one? If not, move them.

IanL is a slippery opponent, full of dastardly surprises. I doubt his men were whistling and singing marching ditties and came straight up the road.  

In short, a close-range ambush is what occurred. Your men will die. It's hard to react effectively to point blank ambushes with automatic weapons firing at you. Your best defense is to use sacrificial outposts (tight 360^ covered arcs) as listening posts. They can hear footsteps and orders ("?"). You, the all-seeing player, will then know that your enemy is coming and can act accordingly. Stick a scout team down by the bridge, off to the side, with a 10-20m circular arc.

Finally, as I said, this is a tough one because of the LOS issues. It makes it play differently every time. It's a favorite of mine for quick plays.

Ken

[A Canadian Cat]

10 hours ago, MethodGamer said:

I just finished an FB game with IanL, and my MG team got completely destroyed in a matter of seconds. They were located in a fox hole over looking a bridge, when a German scouting team popped up and wiped out the MG team in just a few seconds. the MG team had the bridge under target arc, and the German popped up almost in the line of fire. My MG team did not react at all.

Yes, I was very pleased with their performance!

 

10 hours ago, MethodGamer said:

What's the correct way to defend against this? The only thing I can think of is area fire at the sound contact.

Ditch the covered arc! And by all means in low visibility stations like this you might as well fire on the sound contacts.  If visibility is good this it is less clear if you want to revel your location early but with crappy visibility you want to start firing early.

Think of covered arc this way - they are used to *prevent* your guys from shooting.  So, if you have a place where you do not want your men to shoot use a covered arc to exclude that area.  What?, you say, why would I want my men to now shoot?  Exactly!  Don't get me wrong they have their uses - prevent HQs, FOs and scouts from firing and exposing them selves.  And in the odd specialty case where you want to turn the turret of a AFV while it is on the move (even then remember arcs are for preventing engagement so you really want to use a 180 deree arc).

 

9 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

From the screenshots I'm guessing the OpFor came up the creek from your right and then used Slow to approach the wall.  The wall probably did not allow your troops to have LOS/LOF to their right.  Until of course the OpFor popped up above the wall and it was to late.  

Correct, Correct and Correct.  The crossed the bridge and crawled to just below the crest of the hill so they would not come under fire from the farm and have a look at what was in the field next to the road.  That had them popup outside of your cover arc right next to your guys.

There is something we all learned recently, in part thanks to @MOS:96B2P and his testing, that the visibility in the game is much better for us players than it is for the pixel troops on the ground.  So while we look at the screen and think - they can see the bridge area no problem, they actually cannot see it very well.  The LOS tool is more like a "could potentially see something" tool as well.  This applies to good visibility as well of course it is just that in good clear conditions units usually have no trouble spotting something there fairly quickly.  But in available darkness that get trickier.  Even though they could see something there they can miss things and it will take longer to spot soemthing.  The take away from that other thread was that fog, snow, rain, mist and darkness are significantly under represented by the game visually to us.  This by design since it would be very hard to play if we could only see 40 or 20m out with the game camera.  The downside is we do not have a good picture of the true visibility. And the LOS tool is showing the optimistic LOS distance too (which again makes some sense because you would not want to be moving where you think you cannot be seen only to find out your opponent can see your guys).

It has been suggested that the game actually do this on a toggle - like for example smoke.  If you get down to troop level in smoke you can quickly see that your guys will see nearly nothing but trying to actually navigate orders with smoke in is very challenging so you need to turn the smoke on and off.

@c3k has a good overall view of this situation IMHO.

 

[Pak40]

Never ever use a covered arc in limited fashion like that. Set it very wide or at 360 degrees. If you want your unit to focus on a direction, just use the face command. Arcs are best used to limit your units from firing at long range targets, thereby giving away their positions at a low chance target. In limited visibility, there's really no need to even use a covered arc because the unit can't fire at targets past it's visibility anyway.

[Ithikial_AU]

The HMG and MMG teams are that little bit more difficult to effectively control 'in the field' due to setup times and shifting LOS/LOF when they are on their tripods or not. In effect you think you are fine and then when setup is complete the wall is blocking most of of LOF. The one exception is the German MG34/MG42 HMG teams which can shoot either 'deployed' or 'semi-deployed,' highly versatile compared to the Allied units.

I agree with the target arcs mentioned above. A night mission like this, (with fog/mist weather??), with your forces on the defence it means if you are going to spot something, 95% of the time it's going to be danger close so you will always want your guys to open up. Your troops won't fire on sound contacts on their own volition until a confirmed visible contact is made so no risk there.

Regardless, in this paticular situation I don't think it would of made any difference since Jerry got the jump on your at point blank range with SMG's.

 

Edited August 1, 2016 by Ithikial_AU