Suppressive fire in TacOps

[johnma]

While I'm at it-- I'm sure this topic has been covered before, and that the Major has better things to do than re-answer the same queries--

but I was playing the old Team Kremp scenario, the hard one with just US infantry vs. a MRR platoon dug in on a hill, and making my squads advance up the long slope; Javelins took out the BTRS, mortar the grenade launcher. But once the smoke ran out, the only way the US units could fire on the remaining OPFOR infantry was by advancing and getting shot at. This is one situation where just having the MG teams open up and lay suppressive fire at the entrenchments in the treeline (their position is known and clearly marked) would have been practical, and (I think) realistic.

[Guest MajorH]

>This is one situation where just having the

>MG teams open up and lay suppressive fire at

>the entrenchments in the treeline (their

>position is known and clearly marked) would

>have been practical, and (I think) realistic.

I agree. Adding some sort of optional 'area suppressive fire' button to the unit orders window has been on the wish list for a long time.

It is a tough thing to implement realistically without introducing loopholes that allow undesired 'gamey' tricks.

In real life, suppressive fire from direct fire weapons against area targets is seldom used for more than a couple of minutes because achieving meaningful suppression would require a tremendous amount of small arms ammunition - far more than would be available to a typical attacking unit.

Let me give you an example that shows the difference between what folks want to do and what actually can be done. When I was a weapons platoon commander on an exercise, a new company commander (with little real field experience) briefed a dismounted attack on a static position. He wanted me to place the M60 machine guns on a bit of high ground that was somewhat to the flank of the objective and to maintain continuous fire on the objective as he took the rifle platoons from the line of departure to the final coordination line. The problem with his plan was that it would take the rifle platoons 30 or 40 minutes to advance to the final coordination line. To do the kind of fire that he expected for the time that he wanted, I would have needed several hundred thousand rounds of ammo and would probably have burned out all my barrels. Even if I had the ammo, there would have been no way (if it were real life) that I could have fired machine guns continuously for 30 minutes from the same position without getting shelled off the ridge line. Either way he would have been without my supporting fire long before the close assault happened.

What he could realitically have (and should have called for) was (a) a 60mm mortar round somewhere on the objective every 20 to 30 seconds ( machine gun bursts at point targets on the objective when enemy movement or fire was observed, and © a one minute machine gun sweep of the objective just before the rifle platoons started their close assault.

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Best regards, Major H

majorh1@aol.com

[This message has been edited by MajorH (edited 10-15-99).]

[johnma]

The Major wrote:

"In real life, suppressive fire from direct fire weapons against area targets is seldom used for more than a couple of minutes because achieving meaningful suppression would require a tremendous amount of small arms ammunition -far more than would be available to a typical attacking unit."

In Team Krempp, I wasn;t asking for a 30 minute stream of M60 fire, but just some suppressive fire so I could get my poor three squads (and even the by now useuless Javelin teams), already pretty shot up, within 500 m of the tree line. Then they could have moved forward by mutually supporting each other (two squads as fire base, one squad moving), while the MG teams would have fired at enemy movement or fire. Not too unrealistic or gamey, I hope ?

[Guest MajorH]

Brought in from another forum where this is being discussed...

>...accessed by a button ... much like the DFTRP button.

>The first press of the button

>brings up a cursor for setting the point you want suppressed, but no

>radius selection. However, once you select the area, you have

>efectively given the unit a 15-second order, as seen in the incremental

>change in the number of orders. Hitting the button again will add more

>15-second intervals ...

Interesting ...

I particularly like that this approach would eliminate the need for the player to have to remember to 'turn off' firing units.

[Guest Michael emrys]

For what it's worth, I like that too. Especially if you could intersperse hits on the Fire button with hits on the Pause button so that the unit would fire, say, every other impulse and thus conserve ammo.

Michael

[Oliver]

One shot one kill. If you can't hit it, you cant suppress it. It takes well aimed fire or you are just expending ammo useless (in most cases) and the enemy can figure that out, ASAP.

Now, I have seen the rate of fire jacked up in the attack or defense, in order to gain fire superiority. But, there is a penalty to this, higher rate of ammo expenditure. If TACOPS emulated this increased rate of fire, there would have to be a draw back to it, and that would be a much more depleted ammo supply.