Infantry Fighting in woods

[WarHawk]

During my on going AAR at MZO, I have found out you need to keep a tight unit fromation in a woods fight. Also to have HQs near by within command radius. The infantry us alot of grenades. Also that mortors are useless.

What is your experience?

[Lucho]

Especially the AI tends to run from time to time through the woods. When possible, I created a nasty ambush, preferably at the enemies side. Fast moving squads under fire will not face the initial ambushing squad when surpressed. The AI tends to send through woods stream-like columns and moves them mostly at the edges of the woods. Mortars are of use, especially the light ones with shorter minimum range, you only need a HQ unit (with command/range bonus)in contact to a mortar team. This way mortars will add more surpressive fire on ambush points or on stubborn Resistance groups.

[WarHawk]

Thanks for the tip

[Slappy]

TRPs are particularly nasty if you can catch some tight infantry formations in the woods due to treebursts.

I recommend scouting with half squads.

[Joachim]

Listening posts and TRPs...

SMG troops, Tank hunters with SMGs (small teams are harder to hit), Pioneers with demo charges, flamethrowers. FTs are extremely useful as they can suppress/panic numbers - quick enough to ensure their own survival.

The most dangerous part is the edge of the woods- FOs can target the edge and even half of the rounds coming down inside the forest will lay waste due to treebursts.

TRPs as mentioned above. TRPs even worked for unmoved on-board mortars.

Follow the scouts closely - they need immediate support. If you allow the ambush party to redeploy, you lost the scouts for no real info.

When facing SMG troops - let them waste their ammo on the pinned scouts and wait. Don't advance on SMG troops that still have lots of ammo without your own SMG troops or FTs. Poor scouts, but you will suffer less casualties total.

Gruß

Joachim

[YankeeDog]

One more really nasty trick when defending in the woods: Wire.

Placing a wire unit in tall pines, woods, or scattered trees turns the narrow strip of terrain underneath the wire into a 0% cover area. I guess this is supposed to abstractly represent a strip of terrain that has been cleared to allow open fields of fire. Put the wire just at the edge of LOS to your defensive positions. Any enemy infantry trying to cross the wire will get slaughtered. Even plain bolt action rifle squads can easily repulse SMG infantry in the woods if they have the help of wire.

Of course, human opponents will usually stop advancing the moment they see the belt of wire and try to go around. This can be useful as well, though. For example, you can leave a gap in the wire to funnel your opponent's advance, and then mine or TRP the gap. . .

The trump to this wire-in-the-woods tactic is FTs. In the dense cover of woods, once you've discovered the positions of the enemy foxholes beyond the wire, you can usually sneak a FT up to the edge of the wire, just out of LOS of the enemy positions and then area fire at a point just short of the foxholes -- the flame's area of effect will usually extend into the foxholes. This is tricky to implement, though, since FTs are quite fragile and not very stealthy. Advance him 1m too far, and your FT will be dead.

Cheers,

YD

[Ogiwan]

Yeah, i find that SMG squads are lethal in forest fights, due to the disgusting amount of firepower they can put out at short range. Usually, though, i end up assaulting the enemies....

Oh, i think an infantry platoon's mortars are damn near useless in forests. Even the 60mm ones have that 60m minimum range or whatever, which means that even if you send them as far back as possible while still remaining in command range of the HQ, the bad guys will be just SLIGHTLY too close.

[Dschugaschwili]

Originally posted by Ogiwan:

[QBEven the 60mm ones have that 60m minimum range or whatever, which means that even if you send them as far back as possible while still remaining in command range of the HQ, the bad guys will be just SLIGHTLY too close. [/QB]

It can be done with +1/2 command HQs. A regular HQ with +2 command has a command range of 50m without LOS, so you can keep the mortar further back. I agree that it's difficult though.

Dschugaschwili

[Joachim]

If you can bring them to bear, they are deadly. Well worth the effort. If you have only one HQ with sufficient command range - combine all mortars under its command.

Don't forget to cancel their area fire when you assault. A move command with a pause will cancel their fire in the middle of a turn if you want to arrive on top of the enemy immediately after the barrage.

Gruß

Joachim

[Guest Manstein22]

Hi all

Combat in forrest is very much different from normal combat as is the same with combat in densely tilled urban area.

Try my new map on The-proving- grounds.com for a fight on both areas

Manstein