Tactical Lifehack

[Oleksandr]

One more thing - I will not talk, react or support any toxic stuff. I don't have time or willing to do that. 

I found out that something was said about me just because Mr. Steve quoted. I've blocked few individuals long time ago and I have no intention to keep in touch with them.

If they are saying something here (which I dont see) it is your right to listen or to ignore them. There are few people with whom I have no desire to talk to, and I will not. Now they can say anything they want - there will be "0" reaction from my side. I do what I do - they do what they do. 

[Artkin]

It's pretty ridiculous how often the forum has to be regulated nowadays. It's nearly March... SF2 time !

[JM Stuff]

Really appreciate your job but, more the time that you take to explain, with lot of text, giving some examples, defined in details situations, added somes personals infos, take time to respond to some posts...ignore the others one... and almost every week, a beautiful mod...man... YOU alone, let working the forum...😊👍👍

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Maybe work up some less than ideal scenarios? 

It's a better test of your concepts, flexibility should always be part of any plan.

 

[MOS:96B2P]

15 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

While using mortarts use this rure - when setting up a combined strike - use all of the mortars shells on a target while using only half from other guns. Why? It will be a mark for you to start advancing. Meaning that when your heavy arty will end its thing your mortars will still be shelling those bad guys and you will charge in that direction constantly keeping your enemy under fire from the above.

Olek, is this a truck mod that you made ?  I don't remember seeing this one.  It looks very cool. 

Also the artillery = 1/2 the mortar barrage is an interesting idea.  Similar to the artillery pinning the OpFor and then the mortars maintaining the pin while the maneuver elements move up to close and hose.  

 

11 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

So take your time while preparing hell.  

Your mods look really cool in this screenshot.  +1

[Erwin]

9 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

And what I like about losses in general is that they teach us more than our victories.

Agreed.  The WW2 tutorials are fine for WW2 era.  While I am a very experienced player of both CM1 and CM2, I find CMBS particularly challenging and very hard to get a handle on when playing Red (or Ukrainian) forces with Red-type vehicles - and that is vs the AI. 

One simply has to forget everything about what one learned about how to use NATO forces.   It takes a different mind set - especially when playing the large missions where one has around a Battalion sized "kampfgruppe".  Olek's attempts to help are the only ones I am aware of that deal with modern era tactics and so am certain that many of us appreciate his ideas - even if one doesn't necessarily agree with all of them.  As someone who helps gamers with tactical ideas rather than an "academic" dealing with weapons systems comparisons, Olek is a wonderful asset to these forums.

 

[Erwin]

1 hour ago, MOS:96B2P said:

Also the artillery = 1/2 the mortar barrage is an interesting idea.  Similar to the artillery pinning the OpFor and then the mortars maintaining the pin while the maneuver elements move up to close and hose.  

Is this referring to the duration of shelling, or the number of shells used?  As mentioned earlier in CMSF tests I found that long barrages using HARASS seemed much more effective than a short HEAVY barrage.

And yes those are all Olek's mods.  It's his Ural you're liking.  All available at CMMODS.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Erwin

[MOS:96B2P]

5 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Is this referring to the duration of shelling, or the number of shells used?  As mentioned earlier in CMSF tests I found that long barrages using HARASS seemed much more effective than a short HEAVY barrage.

I think @Oleksandr is talking about duration.  I'm not sure what type of mission (Heavy, Medium, Light, or Harass) he recommends.  I generally use a low tube, light, maximum duration mission and walk it around the map as needed.  However with this set piece Russian type attack my method would probably not really fit in.  For practical reasons it may also depend on what your playing against.  Against the AI a long slow mission will probably have good results (ignoring the current 4.0 issue in this discussion).  In a PBEM a human opponent will Hide in place or Fast out of the impact area or a combination of the two.  So in a PBEM a heavier Artillery mission may work to catch & pin your opponent with a continuing lighter mortar mission to try an maintain the pin after the artillery stops or shifts.  And if your mortars are very heavy they are likely to run out of ammo before this set piece attack can be completed.  Interesting stuff.       

[A Canadian Cat]

11 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

But loss can happen to anyone

Indeed. I always remember what my son's hockey coach used to say (and now I say it:-): winning is nice and all but if you cannot have fun while you are loosing you need to find a different game cause you *are* going to loose.

[Oleksandr]

3 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Maybe work up some less than ideal scenarios? 

It's a better test of your concepts, flexibility should always be part of any plan.

 

I will this last one is just to show how I see management of an entire battalion on macro/micro. Its not about that battle itself - its about principals. 

[Oleksandr]

1 hour ago, MOS:96B2P said:

I think @Oleksandr is talking about duration.  I'm not sure what type of mission (Heavy, Medium, Light, or Harass) he recommends.  I generally use a low tube, light, maximum duration mission and walk it around the map as needed.  However with this set piece Russian type attack my method would probably not really fit in.  For practical reasons it may also depend on what your playing against.  Against the AI a long slow mission will probably have good results (ignoring the current 4.0 issue in this discussion).  In a PBEM a human opponent will Hide in place or Fast out of the impact area or a combination of the two.  So in a PBEM a heavier Artillery mission may work to catch & pin your opponent with a continuing lighter mortar mission to try an maintain the pin after the artillery stops or shifts.  And if your mortars are very heavy they are likely to run out of ammo before this set piece attack can be completed.  Interesting stuff.       

With 2S1 platoon (3x 122mm) you should follow this logic - if you planing to use it 2 times - use "medium" in terms of duration (less than medium will not hit anything really). Always use "heavy" in terms of intensity of a firemission - because all those "harrass" "medium" and "light" will not be effective. This relates only to 2S1 arty. I mean you might hit something with any type of a fire mission but what I've discovered from using those 122mm bad boys is that they are working good 2 times during your battle - once in the begining and once when called out in a process. Now not all arty works same way - during some time I will show/tell all the differences between arty systems what I've managed to notice. Example - compared to 2S1 - 2S19 is whole another level. The reason why I'm using 2S1 in this demonstrational mission - is because oftenly mechanized battalion is supported by 6x 2S1. 

[Oleksandr]

33 minutes ago, IanL said:

Indeed. I always remember what my son's hockey coach used to say (and now I say it:-): winning is nice and all but if you cannot have fun while you are loosing you need to find a different game cause you *are* going to loose.

I bet your son does what he can and I'm sure he will be a champion in what he does one day! 

[Vet 0369]

On October 12, 2017 at 1:43 AM, Machor said:

Re: "Death Mill"

Interesting idea, but we'd need input from a real tanker to establish if this would work irl or if it's being 'gamey' by taking advantage of the Tac AI. I mean, if you have a tank appearing at the same spot over and over, wouldn't a real enemy simply take aim there and wait for the target to reappear?

There was something similar mentioned in the Novaya Gazeta interview with the Russian tanker who was wounded in Ukraine, but it isn't the same. I'm quoting both the original and The Guardian's translation below:

"Мы играли в карусель. Это такой тактический метод боевой стрельбы из танка. Три или четыре танка выезжают на рубеж открытия огня, стреляют, а как у них заканчиваются боеприпасы, им на замену отправляют также три или четыре танка, а те загружаются. Так и менялись."

"We played carousel, a tactic of tank fire. Three or four tanks would go out to the edge [of the area] of open fire, shoot, and when they ran out of rounds three or four tanks would take their place while they reloaded. That’s how we rotated."

https://www.novayagazeta.ru/articles/2015/03/02/63264-171-my-vse-znali-na-chto-idem-i-chto-mozhet-byt-187

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/25/russia-ukraine-soldier

Sorry about being late to the party, but as I understand it, this tip is basically saying to use "shoot and scoot" when possible. LT. Colonel Abrams ( the commander after whom the M1 Abrams tank is named), used this tactic outside of Nance to stop a superior counter-attacking German armor column. It is a well known maneuver. I don't know how applicable it is to the CMBS battle field though as I haven't used it there yet.

[Erwin]

1 hour ago, MOS:96B2P said:

I generally use a low tube, light, maximum duration mission and walk it around the map as needed.  However with this set piece Russian type attack my method would probably not really fit in. 

Yes, completely agree. 

I did read someplace that generally all tubes would be used in RL and so wonder if using one or two tubes to save ammo when there may be 3+ available, is being a bit gamey(?).

[Oleksandr]

Part 13. First Element on point. Placement of AGS in a right (protected) place in your battle order.

Note: This mission got perfect conditions for a reason of showing some core principals. In real battle you should expect involvement of heavy armor (will talk about it later), aviation (will talk about it later), intell will not always be there from the very start (will talk about it later), and so on. The reason for this series is to introduce players who werent using massive amounts of units with some basics related to managment of huge force at once. Again - in real battle you will not have these conditions but by viewing this topic you might pick up something what you can further adopt to your own battles. Last but not least - fair and unfair scenarios will be shown here within time. This topic is not for days its for years to come so be patient - feel free to share your tactical lifehacks and feel free to ask questions. Critics are welcome as well - but a constructive one (imagine we are all sitting in HQ and thinking how to do things better together). 

So lets get down to this - you made through feild towards your first objective - one of your companies first platoon made it to the point where its infantry will start making sence. What do you do and how do you place it in first moments of not moving? 

This is how I did it: 

Blue highlighted areas are showing areas where infatry squads will be placed at first.  Red Square shows where AGS will be placed. What principal thing we can notice from that screen? Is that our infantry is placed in between our IFV order - so that the heavy weapon systems of our IFV are sort of protecting our infanty sides while it moving to its place. Now some might ask what will protect our corner IFV's right? That will be explained in following post. 

This is the reason why AGS is placed in between IFV's and in between of Infantry order. Why? Because its needs time to deploy. Moreover that Ifv with AGS is close - it has ammunition for it and if you will need to reposition your units you will  be able to do so because they are near by. With that being said - our first platoon reaching the point where infantry starst to make sense is not going to push forward. It will be a sheild and a spear for those units bhind what will pass by to further assault. So the first element can be used as an attacking but I would reccoment it to stay put, dig in and supress your enemy while other units are pushing through. Note: remember not to intercross your order lines - this is one of the most important thing while managing battalion level battle. Intecrosing of infantry orders is ok - intercrossing your vhicles will lead to slowing your units down and remember you are on the open - our enemy still got ATGM's, major forces are suppressed but you can still be hurt. 

After placing your AGS you will be able to start working on those defencive structures. One of the most dangerous ones are foxholes - they are keeping those bastards alive way longer than trenches (from my experience) and foxhole is providing better cover from arty... so even if you will have an arty strike you will need to hit those holes directly - and it is hard to do. AGS will do the do way faster. Few shots and most of those hiding guys are dead. Note: always notice where your enemy moves while runing away from you (and what are they carrying like do they have an RPG on their back, do they have a backpack, or they moving something heavy and slow). 

End of Part 13. 

[A Canadian Cat]

47 minutes ago, Oleksandr said:

I bet your son does what he can and I'm sure he will be a champion in what he does one day! 

LOL thanks. He is doing well in school and probably heading for grad school. I hope he keeps playing hockey but it will not be professionally.

[Oleksandr]

Part 14. Adjusting your order, forming a frontline, preparing positive conditions for further action. 

Note: This mission got perfect conditions for a reason of showing some core principals. In real battle you should expect involvement of heavy armor (will talk about it later), aviation (will talk about it later), intell will not always be there from the very start (will talk about it later), and so on. The reason for this series is to introduce players who werent using massive amounts of units with some basics related to managment of huge force at once. Again - in real battle you will not have these conditions but by viewing this topic you might pick up something what you can further adopt to your own battles. Last but not least - fair and unfair scenarios will be shown here within time. This topic is not for days its for years to come so be patient - feel free to share your tactical lifehacks and feel free to ask questions. Critics are welcome as well - but a constructive one (imagine we are all sitting in HQ and thinking how to do things better together). 

Now in part 13 we were placing our first platoon into position from which it can be working on closest targets, we supported it by AGS to force our enemy run through those feild where it will be easier to finish them. But we should always remember that everything we do should be balanced - if we are attacking in one place - we should get a little deffensive in other places. 

Adjusting our frontline in order to create positive environment for further actions is now our main priority. What will you feel in that moment - you will be happy that you've made it that far without casualties and you will think that moving forward with same massive concentration will be a god idea right? Nope. You need to calm yourself down and start slowly going from macro to micro management. Let us look on a general picture of our left flank and our center formations.

As you can see our first company on the left starting to spreading up. Its main goal now is to secure and prepare conditions for another company (in a red highlighted area) for attacking that factory. It is actually a dualistic situation - from one hand distance is working for us - but our infantry isnt that effective - its mostly using their MG's. Yet, if we will move our company on a left further - we will give chances to our enemy to use infantry weapons as well. One MG placed right can cause troubles, few guys with RPG can burn down our BMP. And we dont want that - it is only first objective. We got city to fight in waiting for us.  So what do we do at this stage?

We should adjust our front line. We should be confident in our left flank - knowing that nothing will shoot in our red company what will do the hard work of breaking into the Factory. 

This is an example of how you can adjust your front line. You place one platoon in center - then another on a left. Third platoon stays a little behind because terrain there got hills and from those hills that platoon can work on target what are infront of our order without hitting our own units. 

And this is another point to remember - if your order is placed close to some tree lines - always put a squad or two there to prevent your forces from attack from that tree line. I've done it myself many times - I allowed my enemy to move comfortably and then was burning his tanks and BMP's from RPG's. So if you closer than 200 meters to some tree lines - secure them. 

Note about forests - if you place your squad there - and it will not move - it will be deadly - the one who advances in forest looses. You took position and you stay put - if something will move on you your squad will take care of it. There were times when I was stopping 2 squads in treeline like that simply by placing 1 squad of my own in a static poistion. 

End of Part 14. 

[Erwin]

It is interesting to see how you deploy the inf and the vehicles.  I have generally used the inf as the flank shield for the vehicles rather than letting a vehicle be the flank guard. 

The other critical thing is to ensure your inf never moves between a vehicle and a target.  In the CM2 game, vehicles will happily mow down their inf comrades if they get in the way.

[Oleksandr]

1 minute ago, Erwin said:

It is interesting to see how you deploy the inf and the vehicles.  I have generally used the inf as the flank shield for the vehicles rather than letting a vehicle be the flank guard. 

The other critical thing is to ensure your inf never moves between a vehicle and a target.  In the CM2 game, vehicles will happily mow down their inf comrades if they get in the way.

I use that only if I know that there is another platoon on the left. If its would be one platoon itself - I would use infantry to guard those vehicles. But then I would not rush through the open I would run through the jungle and work from the jungle if you know what i mean) sneaky peacky. Large forces - bigger freedom, small forces - more accurate and hidden tactics. 

Small units better run through the jungle... he he 

 

[Oleksandr]

Little Note. 

If you see your enemy runing - do not move units to finish it - dont change your plan just to take out few soldiers. They can wait till they die later on when it will be on your plan list. 

So do your thing step by step. Do not get cocky when you dont need to. By the way maybe we will talk about mines here as well. 

 

[Erwin]

10 minutes ago, Oleksandr said:

the one who advances in forest looses.

True.  But, often one has to advance into and through a forest (eg you only have inf in a forest scenario or clearing a way for vehicles along a road).   Be good to discuss best tactics for that at a later time.

Also, you are not using covered arcs.  One wants to have vehicle turrets facing in the direction of the enemy - so esp on flanks.  And often you want the individual vehicles' turrets facing in different directions.  Currently, it's a PITA to have to create a whole bunch of unique covered arcs for a company+ of vehicles.  A reason why I hope we'll eventually get the "one click" 180 degree arc feature that was so easy to do in CM1.

"Do not get cocky when you dont need to."

Words to live by.  Impatience and hubris are the real killers in this game.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Erwin

[Oleksandr]

4 minutes ago, Erwin said:

True.  But, often one has to advance into and through a forest (eg you only have inf in a forest scenario or clearing a way for vehicles along a road).   Be good to discuss best tactics for that at a later time.

Also, you are not using covered arcs.  One wants to have vehicle turrets facing in the direction of the enemy - so esp on flanks.  And often you want the individual vehicles' turrets facing in different directions.  Currently, it's a PITA to have to create a whole bunch of unique covered arcs for a company+ of vehicles.  A reason why I hope we'll eventually get the "one click" 180 degree arc feature that was so easy to do in CM1.

"Do not get cocky when you dont need to."

Words to live by.  Impatience and hubris are the real killers in this game.

Dont get me wrong we will still kill them all lol But there is time and place for everything) 

Yup target arcs are amazing at times. Especially in city when u use buidlings as cover and setting up intercross street fire. That I will do next))) 

[MOS:96B2P]

1 hour ago, Oleksandr said:

 

1 hour ago, Oleksandr said:

 

 

 

Nice video .

[Oleksandr]

Little observation of mine: 

In CM games infantry always exchanging information with one another. Units are not standing there on their own they do communicate. 

One of the greatest examples can be cooperation between infantry and vehicles

And what is even more important communication between regular infantry and heavy weapons systems like AGS. 

If your units are mixed and placed together that makes their work more effective. 

For example regular infantry as I understood can give a signal to AGS that there is an infantry unit what cannot be reached by weapons of regular infantry and then AGS will work on that target. 

Although it is an educated guess of mine. I've seen units operating alone and Ive seen them being placed together. When units are placed together they act faster. Like 2x times faster actually. Radio and electric warfare are also affecting this process. 

[Oleksandr]

Part 15. Assault Preparation. Identifying and taking down possible threats. 

Note: This mission got perfect conditions for a reason of showing some core principals. In real battle you should expect involvement of heavy armor (will talk about it later), aviation (will talk about it later), intell will not always be there from the very start (will talk about it later), and so on. The reason for this series is to introduce players who werent using massive amounts of units with some basics related to managment of huge force at once. Again - in real battle you will not have these conditions but by viewing this topic you might pick up something what you can further adopt to your own battles. Last but not least - fair and unfair scenarios will be shown here within time. This topic is not for days its for years to come so be patient - feel free to share your tactical lifehacks and feel free to ask questions. Critics are welcome as well - but a constructive one (imagine we are all sitting in HQ and thinking how to do things better together). 

So lets say you are about to take some area under your control. Lets say that it is some sort of a urban area - with buildings, towers, walls etc. First of all you should identify and decide what can be a threat to your forces. Is it a threat to your armor? Or to your infantry? Or to both? Will there be mines? Can some buildings being used against you, and what buildings you decide to save for your forces. Lets look at this example: 

We got 300 + meters to that building. Its first floor is covered with that wall. We know that we just hammered our enemy and that his infantry was on the run. Can it use that building as a cover? Yes. Another question - for example there is an MG team in that building but we still cant see it somehow - is it possible? can it sitting tight on the first floor and then move on a second floor? Yes. Is there a chance that some infantry units are hiding around that building? Yes. So that building is a potential threat to us right? Yes. So what should you do when you are in a situation like this? You should look if that building is worth of fighting for and if not. You should lower that thing down. In this particular case there are other buildings what can be interesting for us - towers, hangar etc. So by taking that building down we will not loose any opportunities for ourselves. 

Pleace notice that buildings like this are pretty hard to lower. Start working on it while pushing your assault group closer tho those walls. Remember when few BMP's are working on that second floor all those units inside will be pinned down or will run away. Yet because there is a second floor do not stop working on that building. 

It will take few minutes for you to lower this thing down - so dont waste them - while you working on that building push your units forward. 

The reason why I've decided to take this building down is because of this hole in the wall - some of those retreating units were runing in there. 

While that building is getting hammered move your assault platoon along with units of support (in my case RPOs and Sappers) closer to that wall. 

You see how that BTR checking that other building? Its for the same reason but there is a difference. I've decided to use that building later on. So I've marked it for myself as a buildig what is worth of fighting for. After taking over that factory I was planing to put there my HQ units for further correction of my artyllery. Moreover I was planing to clean up that area from all possible mines and  then relocate my mortars there (by that time they were already out of shells but those Tucks could serve as a resupply units for infantry what would storm that factory) + I like those towers - placing scouts with optics on those roofs would give me better look on a battlefield. 

End of Part 15.