PBEM Player Guidelines

[Bannon]

I wanted to see if there are any generally accepted guidelines for PBEM play? One I live by is to not call artillery or air into what may be my opponent's setup area during the first turn.

[Erwin]

Am surprised that this first turn "gamey" arty fire is still an issue. Most designers have arty arrive as a reinforcement to avoid this.

[Bannon]

I can attest that it is still a thing.

[Vanir Ausf B]

14 minutes ago, Bannon said:

One I live by is to not call artillery or air into what may be my opponent's setup area during the first turn.

Except for the attacker in attack/defend-type battles. Some people also allow it in meeting engagements but I prefer not to. As always, prior communication is the key.

Edited March 27 by Vanir Ausf B

[Bannon]

1 minute ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Except for the attacker in attack/defend-type battles. Some people also allow it in meeting engagements but I prefer not to. As always, prior communication is the key.

Prior communication is definitely key.

[Artkin]

Dont area target your enemies infantry with vehicles that dont have a spot. 

Remove the area target command for MP. 

[Bannon]

1 minute ago, Artkin said:

Dont area target your enemies infantry with vehicles that dont have a spot. 

Remove the area target command for MP. 

I've never seen that guideline before, but I understand and respect it.

[Halmbarte]

7 hours ago, Artkin said:

Dont area target your enemies infantry with vehicles that dont have a spot. 

Remove the area target command for MP. 

Ehhh, area fire at obvious superb places to put infantry is ok in my book. 

If you put an FO in that church tower that provides great observation to the entire match, don't get upset when I blast the snot out of it as soon as I have a LOS. 

H

[StieliAlpha]

4 hours ago, Halmbarte said:

Ehhh, area fire at obvious superb places to put infantry is ok in my book. 

If you put an FO in that church tower that provides great observation to the entire match, don't get upset when I blast the snot out of it as soon as I have a LOS. 

H

Yep, the same goes for „suspicious“ buildings, dwellings, forests or hedgerows etc.

I usually only rule out first turn fire on „the small set-up square at the end of the map“.

[Brille]

My rules are as follows and agree to most of the Community, I guess:

- No artillery or air raids in the setup zones or close to it for the first turns (except on defenders setup zone)

- No preplanned arty or air raids for meeting engagements. 

Just 2 simple ones Id like to have for every engagement. The last one can be discussed with the oponent, so it is not set in stone.

Everything else is optional. Some I like to take for more immersion and a more realistic feel, some I like to take to make matches more balanced. (e.g. italian vs everyone else )

12 hours ago, Artkin said:

Dont area target your enemies infantry with vehicles that dont have a spot. 

Remove the area target command for MP.

In general I like that one but in my opinion it would be wrong to cancel area fire all together.

However I have sometimes seen players standing behind with their tanks and blast everything at an instant as soon as their infantry has found the enemy.

And while Im guilty of this myself to a degree I really try to play like that more often than not.

Keeping a good C2 between infantry and tanks to make them notice contacts faster is one way to go.

In general though I find the disadvantages of keeping no command structure not great enough.

Would be cool that you could only area fire with a delay when no contacts are noted by the unit itself. Imagine it pretty much like calling artillery. On the other hand you could call for fire at an instand when a tank knows that enemy troops are around that point.

Another thing I wish for CMx3...

[Ultradave]

16 hours ago, Artkin said:

Dont area target your enemies infantry with vehicles that dont have a spot. 

Remove the area target command for MP. 

Can you explain more? I don't get this one. If you are on offense, you would call fire along a treeline, hammer a village you plan to assault, etc. On defense you'd target areas where the enemy could be assembling for an assault. Can't hit a whole patch of woods because you can't get a LOS to the middle of it. I suppose you could target the open in front of the woods and overlap into it. 

I see nothing wrong with targeting an open area the enemy has to cross to attack you with everything I've got, and hoping that that timing of the FFE works with the enemy crossing that area. Catching enemy in the open with artillery is a goal, not something that should be eliminated. 

Maybe I'm missing your point or objection (certainly possible - it's early, I'm wet from walking the dogs and need coffee  )

Dave

[Artkin]

14 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

Can you explain more? I don't get this one. If you are on offense, you would call fire along a treeline, hammer a village you plan to assault, etc. On defense you'd target areas where the enemy could be assembling for an assault. Can't hit a whole patch of woods because you can't get a LOS to the middle of it. I suppose you could target the open in front of the woods and overlap into it. 

I see nothing wrong with targeting an open area the enemy has to cross to attack you with everything I've got, and hoping that that timing of the FFE works with the enemy crossing that area. Catching enemy in the open with artillery is a goal, not something that should be eliminated. 

Maybe I'm missing your point or objection (certainly possible - it's early, I'm wet from walking the dogs and need coffee  )

Dave

It's raining here too, same area as you. 

Brille already explained it but yeah using your tanks to kill things without seeing them.

For instance you have a tank with red optics, but you still use it to area target known infantry locatioms across the map. I'm sure you can imagine other situations where this is abused. 

Theres no way to allow area fire but prevent people from snipinging infantry this way, so a hard rule - removing the feature for MP- would be the way to go. 

It's the lesser of two evils.

[Bannon]

An example that comes to mind is infantry spots an iTOW in the woods so other units, which cannot see the iTOW, area fire into its location or close enough that you hope to suppress it while other units close for a kill.

[Centurian52]

18 hours ago, Artkin said:

Dont area target your enemies infantry with vehicles that dont have a spot. 

Remove the area target command for MP. 

I think I've mentioned before that I strongly disagree with this one. You can't implement realistic tactics without area fire. Without area target you can't maintain suppression on enemy positions when the enemy takes cover and your own troops lose the spot, you can't conduct recon by fire, you can't use speculative fire on suspected enemy positions, and you can't use fire to deny an area that you think the enemy might want to go. Fire is a tool with a lot of uses. Only one of those uses is aimed destructive fire against clearly identified enemy units. If you disallow realistic tactics then what's even the point of playing the game?

[A Canadian Cat]

5 hours ago, Brille said:

My rules are as follows and agree to most of the Community, I guess:

- No artillery or air raids in the setup zones or close to it for the first turns (except on defenders setup zone)

- No preplanned arty or air raids for meeting engagements. 

Just 2 simple ones Id like to have for every engagement. The last one can be discussed with the oponent, so it is not set in stone.

I agree 100 percent. So much I'm replaying instead of just upvoting

[A Canadian Cat]

5 hours ago, Brille said:

18 hours ago, Artkin said:

Dont area target your enemies infantry with vehicles that dont have a spot. 

Remove the area target command for MP.

In general I like that one but in my opinion it would be wrong to cancel area fire all together.

Try this: 

 

 @Bil Hardenberger created them and I helped refine them. 

[Erwin]

24 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

strongly disagree with this one. You can't implement realistic tactics without area fire.

Totally agree with Centurian.  (One cannot see a dam thing especially WW2 night actions.)  It is a very normal RL tactic to hose down suspected enemy positions to allow friendlies to advance.

Am also unsure about the "no preplnned fire in Meeting Engagements".  If you know what your enemy is heading for why not bombard?  Also if you know what you are heading for, why not bombard?  

As mentioned earlier, most designers now solve much of this preplanned issue by having arty arrive as a reinforcement

Edited March 28 by Erwin

[Centurian52]

4 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Am also unsure about the "no preplnned fire in Meeting Engagements". 

I'm sympathetic to the "no preplanned fire into setup zones in meeting engagements" rule. Particularly if the scenario designer has not done a good job of making it non-obvious where the setup zones are (the 'no preplanned fire into setup zones' rule in 'Grieshof Meet and Greet' is basically a necessity, since the setup zones are fairly small and it is painfully obvious where they are). But I agree that preplanned fire into areas outside the setup zones should be fair game. Blocking barrages on known or probable enemy avenues of approach are absolutely a thing in real life.

@Bannon I was actually considering using some turn 1 preplanned fire to deny some of your more inconvenient potential avenues of approach. But I opted not to. We only agreed on no fire into the setup zones on turn 1, but I wasn't sure if your expectation was no fire at all on turn 1.

[Ultradave]

2 hours ago, Bannon said:

An example that comes to mind is infantry spots an iTOW in the woods so other units, which cannot see the iTOW, area fire into its location or close enough that you hope to suppress it while other units close for a kill.

Well, I have to disagree with this and @Artkin. What you describe is *exactly* what I'd do in real life. 

But, hey, make any rules you want in agreement with your opponent.

Taking away that capability, to me, would remove a perfectly valid tactic. I'd do that even without the TOW firing from the woods. Ooh, look, treeline ahead. Blast it with whatever we've got to keep their heads down, while I have maneuver elements close in. Is it really that much different than putting a smoke screen in front of the treeline even if you haven't spotted anything? Pretty much accomplishes the same thing.

Dave

[Bannon]

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

I'm sympathetic to the "no preplanned fire into setup zones in meeting engagements" rule. Particularly if the scenario designer has not done a good job of making it non-obvious where the setup zones are (the 'no preplanned fire into setup zones' rule in 'Grieshof Meet and Greet' is basically a necessity, since the setup zones are fairly small and it is painfully obvious where they are). But I agree that preplanned fire into areas outside the setup zones should be fair game. Blocking barrages on known or probable enemy avenues of approach are absolutely a thing in real life.

@Bannon I was actually considering using some turn 1 preplanned fire to deny some of your more inconvenient potential avenues of approach. But I opted not to. We only agreed on no fire into the setup zones on turn 1, but I wasn't sure if your expectation was no fire at all on turn 1.

I feel bad that you did that because I would have understood fire outside my setup zones. I appreciate your consideration though. Thanks.

[Artkin]

35 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

Well, I have to disagree with this and @Artkin. What you describe is *exactly* what I'd do in real life. 

But, hey, make any rules you want in agreement with your opponent.

Taking away that capability, to me, would remove a perfectly valid tactic. I'd do that even without the TOW firing from the woods. Ooh, look, treeline ahead. Blast it with whatever we've got to keep their heads down, while I have maneuver elements close in. Is it really that much different than putting a smoke screen in front of the treeline even if you haven't spotted anything? Pretty much accomplishes the same thing.

Dave

It's not possible in real life lol. 

Tanks instantly sniping infantry the second an infantryman sees them 1km away? A t-72 sniping the exact position your hidden atgm is in?

Lol, come on man. It defies reality and puts CM on a worse level than armored brigade. 

[Centurian52]

16 minutes ago, Artkin said:

It's not possible in real life lol. 

Tanks instantly sniping infantry the second an infantryman sees them 1km away? A t-72 sniping the exact position your hidden atgm is in?

Lol, come on man. It defies reality and puts CM on a worse level than armored brigade. 

It's not perfect. But you are overstating the problem (you can only issue orders once a minute in H2H play, and units still need to have a line of fire in order to use the target command), and ever worse problems would be created if you removed it.

To give an example of how much worse it would be without the 'target' command, in one of my battles in which I'm defending hedgerow country I sprung a couple of nasty ambushes against my opponent. I had my pixeltruppen hiding with short target arcs until his scouts were nearly at my end of the field, and then opened fire. Afterwards I repositioned my teams (which I think must have looked like I was abandoning the hedgerow to him), had them resume hiding with short target arcs, and I was able to repeat the ambush on the next group of soldiers to cross. If there was no area target command I would be able to repeat this tactic again and again with complete impunity. There would be absolutely nothing my opponent could do about it. You can't possibly tell me that that would be more realistic than my opponent firing into my hedgerows with everything he's got, spots or no spots (which he has very wisely, and very realistically, started to do)?

[Brille]

1 hour ago, Erwin said:

Am also unsure about the "no preplnned fire in Meeting Engagements".  If you know what your enemy is heading for why not bombard?  Also if you know what you are heading for, why not bombard?  

As mentioned earlier, most designers now solve much of this preplanned issue by having arty arrive as a reinforcement

The way I understand ME is that 2 forces encounter each other on the move, more or less surprisingly. So there is supposedly not enough time for preperations like mapping out the sector for almost instant artillery fire (and I count TRP´s in there too) nor predicted countermeasures.

From a gameplay preference I don´t find it that attractive to smash everything with artillery beforehand and round up the leftover. On small or medium maps at least this can turn out to be a problem when there is not much room to maneuvre.

But like I´ve said this one is not set in stone by me. On bigger maps with more room and more options to keep the opponent guessing it is not as much of a problem per se.

With this rule however you often ban those bigger artillery assets as they take ages to arrive, I know.

And I´m talking mostly about quick battles here because that´s most of my games actually. So you cannot just put it into "reinforcements".

[Jackal2100]

34 minutes ago, Artkin said:

It's not possible in real life lol. 

Tanks instantly sniping infantry the second an infantryman sees them 1km away? A t-72 sniping the exact position your hidden atgm is in?

Lol, come on man. It defies reality and puts CM on a worse level than armored brigade. 

Do you consider sound contacts a good enough spot for area fire? If I see an atgm fired from a position and hear the crew there, but don't see the crew itself, would you consider it wrong to fire at the area? I would imagine the area fire would be quite logical.

[Artkin]

1 minute ago, Centurian52 said:

It's not perfect. But you are overstating the problem (you can only issue orders once a minute in H2H play, and units still need to have a line of fire in order to use the target command), and ever worse problems would be created if you removed it.

To give an example of how much worse it would be without the 'target' command, in one of my battles in which I'm defending hedgerow country I sprung a couple of nasty ambushes against my opponent. I had my pixeltruppen hiding with short target arcs until his scouts were nearly at my end of the field, and then opened fire. Afterwards I repositioned my teams (which I think must have looked like I was abandoning the hedgerow to him), had them resume hiding with short target arcs, and I was able to repeat the ambush on the next group of soldiers to cross. If there was no area target command I would be able to repeat this tactic again and again with complete impunity. There would be absolutely nothing my opponent could do about it. You can't possibly tell me that that would be more realistic than my opponent firing into my hedgerows with everything he's got, spots or no spots (which he has very wisely, and very realistically, started to do)?

As I said it's the lesser of two evils imo. The exploit I mentioned is applicable in almost every situation whereas your example is very limited in scope (Thickly hedgerowed maps). You similarly can't possibly tell me that the area target command is more often used realistically in PBEM than not. 

In just about every PBEM experience I've had people use it to laser target my infantry teams with vehicles that have no buisness in that engagement.