NEWBIE: tactics against AT guns?

[maus011]

Hi!I'm having serious trouble defeating AT guns and all kills i make come at a heavy price.I know that in real life AT guns were considered a primary threat,so if anyone can offer some general tactics against them?Any help appreciated,

Regards,

maus011

[Redwolf]

1) area fire against suspected locations

2) highly supressive, quick firing units like sharpshooters in within 600 meters of suspected gun positions so that the gun won't get a second shot off

3) always have enough binocular or good optics units observing suspected gun positions to be sure they are getting spotted the moment they open fire

4) try to use units that can't be hurt back to knock them out, especially mortars, maybe artillery

5) move as many AFVs as you can in LOS of the gun at once, but only in LOS of that one gun, not several. If you can from as different angles as you can safely get

6) shoot up everything else without getting in LOS of the guns

7) if you have a high-HE units, move into LOS of a spot near the gun, but no LOS of the gun itself, then area fire on that spot to hurt the gun from the blast

8) smoke the gun, then cross its LOS canal if it has a narrow one. If it has wide LOS, make it turns endlessly via scoot-and-shoot.

9) break the dikes and flood the area

10) all of the above

[Beta1]

Mortars, mortars and more mortars.

If you can try and set up a fire base with a couple of decent mortars (3"/81mm/etc) with a good HQ spotting for them with good LOS to where you think AT guns may be lurking.

As soon as you find a gun you can then call in very accurate and fast mortar fire onto the position. If the gun is not entrenched you often KO it within a turn, espescially if its in trees where the treebursts make the mortars more effective.

You can also put the mortar with LOS to the suspected position and with a cover arc on it, that way the mortar will open up when the gun reveals itself rather than having to wait for the next orders phase. This risks having your mortar spotted and KOed with return mortar fire of course.

[maus011]

Thanks for the replies,Redwolf and Beta.I had some similar ideas but i was never skilled with mortars [they got KO'd way too easily] so at least now i know for sure what i need to work on.

Regards,

m

[Nippy]

Originally posted by maus011:

Thanks for the replies,Redwolf and Beta.I had some similar ideas but i was never skilled with mortars [they got KO'd way too easily] so at least now i know for sure what i need to work on.

Ah, I see the problem. What you need is a spotter for the mortars. Any HQ unit will do. Just set the mortars on a reverse slope (and out of harms way) while the "spotting" unit creeps into a good location with LOS on the target.

Failing that, a 75mm or 81mm mortar FO will work wonders too.

You can see how to do this in my AAR of when I fought Hansson. Read it here.

[Redwolf]

I have reasonably good luck to direct firing mortars. If they are deep enough in woods to be at the edge of LOS they are not easy to spot.

I also had 88s choosing to shoot up my 60mm mortars first while my tanks were crossing their killzones and my 155mm spotter was having a nice chat with his battery.

Overall, all anti-gun tactics depend to a large degree on the choice of gun placement philosophy. Half of the players like wide open LOS, expecting the gun to die after few kills anyway and the other half wants keyholed LOS. The tactics to counter these variants are vastly different.

And then there are the "special" gun placement people but I don't want to scare you

[SFJaykey]

You have already gotten replies from more experienced folks than me, but here goes with some things I have learned about keeping my tanks and etc safe from AT guns:

On-map mortars, as has been said, are the most effective weapons vs ATG. I make sure I have at least a couple of them in even the smallest battles, more in large battles, and I spend their ammo carefully when I expect to have to deal with ATGs. If you buy infantry in larger formations (company, batallion) you will often get mortars "included," but even more importantly you will get extra HQs which are very useful for spotting for the mortars.

If you are on a fairly open map and expect ATGs, start by pushing some infantry and scouts forward, keeping in cover as much as possible, while your tanks stay out of sight. Check to see which units have binoculars: they are most effective at spotting. HQs, artillery FOs, sharpshooters, and HMGs all usually do. These are the units you want to have forward, in cover but not hiding (because that reduces spotting ability), with LOS to suspected gun locations. Sharpies are especially useful because they can Move fairly close to the enemy, even in open terrain, w/o being spotted. For the HMGs and FOs, your primary concern is moving them into places where they have LOS to support your infantry; their spotting of ATGs is a bonus.

Also get your mortars into position...I like to use indirect fire so I keep them on the back sides of hills, behind thick patches of wood, etc. The HQ assigned to the mortars moves or sneaks forward until it has LOS to places you suspect ATG might be placed...check the red line to make sure it retains command of the mortars! If you don't have enough HQs to spot for all your mortars, move the mortar into LOS of the suspected target but keep it in cover and well back from the enemy, hundreds of meters.

By the time all this is ready, my infantry advance will often have encountered the enemy and may need my tanks to come forward in support. If not, I will often "show" a tank to suspected ATG sites, if I can do so at ranges of several hundred meters where first-shot hits are unlikely. I "show" the tank by either moving fast from cover to cover, or moving into a hulldown position for about 1/2 a turn. Use Fast, or Seek Hulldown" and the "pause" key to time the movement and keep the tank from being exposed and vulnerable for a full turn. "Shoot and Scoot" doesn't work too well for this, as often the ATG cannot aim and fire before your tank reverses out of view...the point here is to draw a shot. This is risky, but if you can reveal the gun at long range you have better odds than if you are surprised by a gun at short range. If a gun fires while you have infantry, HQs, and other scouts forward, they are likely to spot it after a couple of shots and you can use your mortars to knock it out.

If I have to move tanks forward before guns are discovered and dealt with, I make sure I have mortars, infantry guns, or other tanks on "overwatch," set up and ready to engage ATGs that might pop up. You never want to have everybody moving forward at once, or nobody will be ready to deal with surprise threats.

When I started playing these games I tended to push my tanks forward first, and lost many of them to ATG. In fact, the longer you can keep them out of sight, and work over the enemy's AT network, the better chance you have of keeping them alive for when their mobile firepower will really be needed!

Hope this helps!

[ June 27, 2003, 04:34 PM: Message edited by: SFJaykey ]

[moneymaxx]

I had this anti-ATG tactic used successfully used against me (CMBO). My opponent bought some cheap 75mm infantry guns and hid them with LOS to suspected ATG positions. As soon as my ATGs attacked they drew fire from the inf guns. That was a very difficult problem because, as the defender, I didn't have as much arty or mortars as the attacker to take them out and I needed my arty to stop the infantry. So I was limited to fight the inf guns with my ATGs, which therefore couldn't target anything else and though ATGs fire more accurate they normally have less effective HE shells, giving the inf gun of my opponent the time to "zero" in on my ATGs and they don't run out of ammo as quickly as a mortar does.

Therefore I buy 1 or 2 inf guns, together with a lot of on-map mortars of course, in a scenario in which I expect enemy ATGs and a setup position from where I can see expected ATG positions.

I want to add that this tactic was used successfully in CMBO and I think that it might be even more effective in CMBB though I can't test it at the moment. The additional advantage the attacker has in CMBB is that those little inf guns should be hard to spot from a longer distance and, since the defender most likely doesn't move spotting units forward, they might survive longer than in CMBO or even stay undetected.

[Redwolf]

In CMBO I had great success with the 40mm Bofors as anti-gun gun.

FlaK guns in CMBO were more precise than in CMBB and the Bofors was the biggest AA gun in the game. Kinda expensive and hard to move but it once toasted three AT guns which opens up on me in one turn.

[SeaLion]

Here's another idea to add to the other good ones listed above. If you expect the other guy to invest heavily in howitzers or similar weaponry, invest equally heavily in infantry. I find the German sub-machinegunners to be excellent for this. Start them in a forest and run them toward the next forest, trying to keep them behind at least a little cover the whole time. By darting from forest to forest, you can get them pretty close to the enemy guns. Leave one round to get all the men together, then the next round rush in. Pick a destination point right beside the enemy howitzer. I have never failed to neutralize an enemy gun this way except on the very rare occasions when I encounter a hail of gun fire on the last leg of the journy. I find most players (if not all) don't put infantry in front of the AT gun to protect it -- they put the infantry in front of the flag to cover that instead. (Yes, I know, it won't work with little or no tree cover... )

[Beta1]

The out gunning the gun tactic works nicely with the big german 150s. But it relies on having LOS from your setup (or near it) to his.

As for the human wave option. Better not try that one in BB - a couple of HMGs will supress huge numbers of charging men. And if the gun your charging has cannister rounds.....

[Barrett]

Originally posted by Phobos:

One trick is that if the ranges are long, work "Top down". Duel with big tanks at long range first.

I have had a lot of success with this kind of strategy. By using tanks like Tigers you can KO enemy AT guns at long ranges without much danger to your lighter tanks or vehicles. I often use a few Tigers to clear out any long range AT fire, then moving light tanks, vehicles, and infantry in under the overwatch of the Tigers to finish off anything the heavies missed.

[ July 09, 2003, 06:15 PM: Message edited by: Barrett ]

[Redwolf]

How to you make the enemy AT guns show themself before you are moving in?

[HeinzBaby]

with AT guns, I've found they always got a short life expectancy so the buggers will always be hidden until they want to open fire on something worth dying for [techical term - fire discpline]]...To trigger their ambush I just bite the bullet and hunt with armour with plenty of overwatching friends, eg. rocks, mortars, knives, Mgs, kitchensinks, anything that will suppress them. Whatever you use don't go in with penny packets always use force overkill cause' there's always more than one of the buggers lurking in that treeline or whatever...