Sivodsi Posted January 3, 2006 Share Posted January 3, 2006 In infantry fighting, the best way to render your enemy's units ineffective is to concentrate many of your squads onto just one of his until it breaks. But what is the best way to counter this? Do you hide and hope that his squads lose sight? Do you sneak your unit another position? Do you target the squads that are targeting your squad? Looking forward to some learned opinion here! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joachim Posted January 3, 2006 Share Posted January 3, 2006 Depends on the situation. If I have just one squad there that needs to hold ground vs a company or reinforced plt, I probably made some mistake. Either a) showing too early (ie taking lucky shots instead of hitting the enemy on the move at short distance getting out too late c) setting up forward posts without evacuation routes d) setting up dispersed troops There might be circumstances where it pays - you sacrifice a team, halfsquad or squad to delay the enemy for a few crucial turns. But they won't get out. If you don't want to sacrifice them for time and they can break contact quickly, do it ("withdraw" command). If they can retreat thru good cover - withdraw. If they are alone in a trench with nothing but open ground around them for the next 30m and the enemy is closer than 100m - they are dead meat when running. Staying in their trench will at least cost the enemy time and ammo. So stay there. Usually sneaking doesn't work for me - troops tend to panic faster when not stationary IMHO. If the enemy concentrates all of his firepower on one unit - shoot with the others. You should be in much better cover. The cover differential can offset numbers. Your beaten unit breaks. The enemy concentrates on the others. The first unit rallies. If the enemy has enough firepower to hit each of your units with multiple shooters - tough luck. See the errors above. Hopefully you have some reinforcements to take advantage of the situation or some smoke to reveal your withdrawal. Gruß Joachim 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sivodsi Posted January 5, 2006 Author Share Posted January 5, 2006 Yeah, by the time you reach this stage it usually is a no-win situation. I'd have thought though, if your guys were being targeted while in a trench you could hit 'hide' and they would go to the bottom of the dirt to recover out of sight. Doesn't seem to happen. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 Get out of there. Any unit caught in a many on few without help is in deep trouble, probably going to die. You should consider it beaten already and save what you can, even if routed. A half squad might rally 5 minutes later. So "withdraw", if you can't "sneak" to break LOS in a short movement. This is, incidentally, a good reason to position your men near the edge of LOS, instead of all the way at the front of cover. Breaking LOS when hit many-on-few is much easier if you are 8m deep in a building than if you are right at the front windows. As for how you help them, shooting the guys shooting them is the only reliable way. Smoke can try to separate them from some of the shooters, but typically takes a minute to set up, only being effective the following minute. Short advances can be used to get other shooters in sight of their attackers. Ideally, you want your own many-of-few on one or two of those. You save a half squad of survivors by pulling yours out, and make him pay for the success with an equivalent loss to part of that force that did it. In e.g. woods or factory fighting, this frequently takes the form of hitting one flank of the enemy many-on-few "arc", while pulling out of its mid-section. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joachim Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 I would not pull out in any case: If you are in a trench and the enemy is firing at 100m, IME the chance of surviving in the trench is bigger than outside (except when you have a covered line of retreat.) So if you can bring in reinforcements before the enemy closes on the pinned unit, I'd stay. Having a unit in the best available cover once your reinforcements arrive helps those reinforcements. Nothing worse than having half a plt in the open advancing on a trench when your supporting forces get distracted and the pinned unit in the trench recovers. If you can't support the beaten unit - get out. The enemy will close in and wipe you out once close. Hiding in trenches does work sometimes. In a current PBEM I have several units with LOS to enemy trenches. Distance around 100m. Several pinned (?) enemy units manage to hide, several remain id'd. Hiding/pinning behind walls or crests works. Gruß Joachim 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 If he hasn't beaten you yet or is too far away to really hurt you, sure, you can stay and try to fire back and absorb his ammo while friends come help. The wall point is a good one, just stay down. Most of the time though you do have a covered route out if you picked a good defensive location. If he is far away you can break contact normally, suffering pin-boosted command delays to avoid any immediate morale hit. But once he has a whole platoon hitting you at 100m, your good order expectancy is measured in shots and your life expectancy is about a minute, so just withdraw-run and save what you can. The men will probably panic, but also probably get at least a half squad out, sometimes almost all of them. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joachim Posted January 7, 2006 Share Posted January 7, 2006 In a current PBEM I have a 1 1/2 plt firing at some entrechend British "inf squad?" (inf firepower 700-800 at 7-8% exposure.) Distance is from 50 to 100m. Of course I have two 75mm chuckers targetting the Brits (damn, one of those has canister and doesn't use it). 3 or 4 tank MGs all below 100m. The Brits are still up and firing. If they head towards the house to the rear, they'll quickly die on those 10m of open space - even if they don't pin. It will take longer to die in the trench. Retreating them doesn't help any more. It is too late. There is some function of exposure of where you are, distance to safety, speed, exposure in terrain to cross till safety and firepower you encounter that decides about survival (expected percentage of surviving squad members). Plus some random factors. You can simplify the equation by mulitplying firepower with exposure to get the "effective firepower". Integrate the effective firepower over time to get a function that depends on only one variable. You can easily show that for any small epsilon (e.g. 0,00001%) there is some effective firepower over time that has an expected percentage of surviving squad members that is lower than that epsilon. Read: The expected percentage of surviving squad members converges to zero. The function works for squads running as well as squads staying where they are. One should be able to compute the time it takes till a squad in place is expected to be below some epsilon (read: effectively destroyed). Or the amount of firepower it takes to have a 99,999% chance that a squad doesn't get away. But my main point is that there are situations where you won't get away. Example: Entrenched German squad with 40m to safety across a street vs 2 vet Soviet SMG plts and a plt of T34s at 50m-70m distance. Chance of survival? Only when surrendering. Advantage of not running: The SMG plts might run out of ammo on that squad. The same situation with the Soviets firing at a distance of 150m? Run and save the most of that squad. Between those two points in the function, your losses will rise the longer you wait to run. It depends on the overall situation and what you can gain for their sacrifce what to do with the squad. Gruß Joachim [ January 07, 2006, 06:52 AM: Message edited by: Joachim ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sivodsi Posted January 8, 2006 Author Share Posted January 8, 2006 Thanks for the tips guys, very useful. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 Joachim - I've got a much simpler rule of thumb. Never try to run away if you are going to get shot in open ground doing so. Only when you have a covered route - whether cover on the tile itself, or intervening LOS block, reverse slope dead ground etc. Set up defenses in places with covered routes of withdrawal. If or when the attack threatens to cut those routes, you should be pulling out even if not directly pressed. If you don't have a withdrawal route and are in cover taking fire, stay and try to fire back. You absorb enemy ammo. They will rout eventually anyway, and die trying to get away, but you will use up more enemy firepower staying longer in cover. But this is a distinctly second best caused by a poor choice of defensive location, one without a covered route out. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joachim Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 Ok... some misunderstanding on my side. I thought you'd suggest to run even across open space when there is a minimal chance to reach cover. Guess we share the same point of view on this then. Gruß Joachim PS: the brits in my example above only died when my SdKfz 234 (?) finally run out of HE and used canister. Two turns of heavy incoming did not finish them. Staying put was the correct choice for them. They cost me a turn and 2 men. [ January 08, 2006, 03:20 PM: Message edited by: Joachim ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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