Fire then move command sequence?

[wyskass]

After playing for a while I still can't figure out how to fire THEN move. I want to get into range, fire, then reverse.

The Pause seems to pause firing as well as movement. If I get into range and set fire with a pause and reverse on a humvee it won't fire at all and just reverse. I don't want to stay exposed for 3 minutes to execute a TOW missile attack. Can't use pause because it won't fire, but If I target and move without pause it also won't fire.

Any way to execute a shoot and scoot?

[Brille]

Tow/atgm vehicles are a difficult topic in Combat Mission if you want to shoot & scoot. 

In CM as long as you have a move order set, the Atgm will be deactivated. You can see it in the status panel of the vehicle too. The TOW launcher will be greyed out as long as you have some sort of movement order applied. Regardless if the unit is on Pause, it will not fire the atgm. Secondary/additional weapons will work though, if the vehicle has any (e.g. M2 Bradley). 

Realistically you can't fire most if not all tube launched Atgm on the move, so that's the way the game tries to portray this handicap,though it does it not perfectly. 

A work around would be that you give your vehicle a, for example, 30sec pause at the start of the turn, behind some cover and let it move to it's firing position. You should time it so that the crew has at least 10 seconds (or more) of spotting time in their new position at the end of the turn. 

In the next turn you can then decide if you want to move back/further or let the vehicle engage a spotted target. 

Usually the tac ai decides to back of and pop smoke (when available) on its own if they fired all their tubes and a threat is still present. 

Though that counts only for spotted threats of course. 

 

The only vehicles that can do a shoot and scoot with atgm are the ones that are able to barrel launch them, I believe. Bmp 3, T72, M60 A2 (Starship), to name a few. 

Edited April 21, 2023 by Brille

[Dr.Fusselpulli]

This is correct. To be a bit bland here, Battlefront was lazy.
ATGMs rarely can be fired on the move, so what Battlefront did, to check if a vehicle is on the move or not, is to check if the vehicle still has waypoints available. And if it does, then the vehicle counts as on the move, and it will not fire it's ATGMs.

@Brille describes the work around perfectly, this is how I would do it as well. You can get berm drill with an ATGM vehicle, if the shooting cycle is at the end of the turn, and you just reverse at the beginning of the next turn.

[womble]

It's the same check being applied, I would hazard, as is used to determine whether mounted pTruppen with movement orders pending will dismount and begin their own footslogging. I think a vehicle has to be at the end of its movement path, not "just Paused", for troops to dismount. They can mount up onto paused transport, sure, but not get down.

[Chibot Mk IX]

that is correct.

[wyskass]

Ah yes, good explanations and suggestions. The pause until remaining turn time is a good solutions, which I didn't consider. Just shifting action to end of turn so kind of working in reverse, but pretty much same result.

While I wasn't expecting to fire a TOW on the move, I expected the Pause to be for just movement giving opportunity to fire. Maybe would be useful to distinguish move pause and engage pause.

As to mounting / dismounting, yes  did notice that, after finding the ptruppen abandoned by transport after not giving enough pause to mount.