Russian Training Scenarios 320/321 AT defence

[Der Alte Fritz]

Advanced AT Gun Defence 320

I played this one twice, firstly with the infantry set to 150m arcs and the AT guns 500m arc. The German attack split with three tanks and some infantry attacking the right hand platoon and the rest the centre platoon. The right hand platoon managed to hang on in the rear of the position and knocked out two tanks but the centre platoon was over-run but the rear platoon stopped any further advance. So not so good. The second time, infantry arcs were set at 100m and the AT guns at 400m keyholed to specific positions with the right hand platoon hiding with 30m arcs. The entire German force drove into the central area and started attacking the central platoon. Then I opened up with the entire force and quickly knocked out all the vehicles and stopped the infantry advance, although by this time they had destroyed the central platoon and occupied the trenches. The keyholing sort of worked, the gun on the far left accounted for 3 PzIIIJ which were facing the wrong way but the rear gun did not do so well as he targeted a half track that went into the arc but got killed by the tank that was just behind it but outside the arc. So you have to anticipate potential problems! Range did not seem to be the factor but the fact that all the guns engaged at once with overlapping fields of fire and so survived longer before the return fire knocked them out. Lost one gun to a mortar, one to MG fire and another to the artillery with only one knocked out by tanks. Wasted the AT mines because I lined them up alongside the ones on the road as a last ditch defence to catch any support vehicles that went forward with an infantry attack on the rear platoon. So they never got used but if they had been further forward, the tanks may not have advanced so far into the gun zone which was the problem in the first try.

Advanced AT Combined Arms Defence 321

Great! Just when you get used to the game at a certain level, you get a nasty shock. Where are my lovely AT guns? What is this thing - a wheelbarrow! Lend Lease bah! Call this thing a tank - what were the British thinking of? What is that coming towards me – help!

Well I used the same tactics as in 320 but obviously I was going to have to be careful with the AT Guns. Good start Move 6 a Stug spotted the Valentine and killed it dead at 700m. Personally I would have put him behind the wood for use later on in the battle but I thought I would see how he got on in case he surprised me. :confused: German advance proceeded against the central platoon and infantry attack was stopped by the HMGs and mortars as I husbanded most of the infantry for close range work as the few that stuck their heads of the parapet got shot up by the Stugs. Lost my nerve a little and killed one of the Stugs with the 57mm AT gun. :eek: Almost as good a gun as the 76mm but he died in the return fire. The ATR were duelling with the half tracks keeping them at a distance. Infantry were at the wire of the central platoon. The mountain gun on the right opened fire on a Stug which was side on at 200m, missed and the Stug went hull down. The gun killed the Sdz 251/9 but died in the return fire. So now I have lost 3 of my 4 AT guns and only killed one of the three Stugs. The attack went on and the Stugs came closer and came under ATR fire. One got a track hit on the Stug on the left hand side of the central platoon so he turned around to retreat. Soviet Hero Sergeant Kapev saw his chance and fired his mountain gun at the Stug at 240m and killed it. Fired again at a Sdz250 and knocked him out and then silenced a mortar. The final Stug advanced and the two were duelling it out on Move 30. The mountain gun cannot penetrate the Stug frontally but he had a slim chance to disable the Stug and with his luck it was worth a try!

I suspect that the 57mm AT and the Valentine have to work together but need to get the Stugs all together and fairly close so that they can kill them quickly before they can turn. Not sure where best to put the Valentine? Could he be dug in as a static AT gun? The mountain guns need to hide so that they can get a decent side or rear shot. Once you have dealt with the Stugs you should have at least one gun left to kill the half tracks.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Was planning to add 322 Tiger defence to this one but have just installed a new graphics card and my PC is now doing odd things and sounds like a jet aircraft so this afternoon may all end horribly!

[JasonC]

On 321 - first of all, the 57mm ATG is not "almost as good as a 76mm", it is a vastly superior AT weapon. If you try the 321 fight with only 76mms you will find it quite difficult. Possible against the AI, if it is dumb and gives you lots of flanks. But basically, the 76mm can't hurt a StuG from the front.

The 57mm can and does. Only real risk is a low behind armor effect "roll". The Valentine IX carries a slightly less impressive 57mm, the Brit 5-pdr, which is still sufficient to punch holes in StuGs frontally. It is an "eggshell with hammer" anti-tank fighter, however, rather like a Marder in tactical terms. The StuGs will kill it easily themselves. It needs to stalk a single vehicle at a time with keyholed LOS or brief appearance or both, and get the first shot because the other guy is facing the wrong way or engaged by something else etc.

The 76mm mountain guns are much cheaper than the full ZIS-3s - 3 of them cost less than 2 of the other. They get large HE loads and are mostly HE chuckers, like the 76mm infantry guns. But their AT ability is considerably better than an infantry gun - or a comparably priced 45mm ATG. Less than the long 76s, though. The key thing is it is more than sufficient to kill all the vanilla variety Panzers from the sides, including StuGs. Even out to decent side angles. (Behind armor effect is better than a 45mm, too).

So the key to the 321 defense is the 57mm, as it can get frontal kills, and getting the sort of multiple flanking engagement you used in 320 second time through, for the rest. The 76mm mountain guns can get 1-2 with flank shots, and the 57mm can kill all it manages to isolate on. The Valentine can kill with first shot or be killed if its first (couple, sometimes) miss or fail due to a bad behind armor effect "roll".

A human player knows how to exploit the thick front, thin side StuGs, much better than the AI can. They will keep them back in overwatch positions, and not readily show side armor. They will get mortars and FOs into positions that scan the locations that can see the StuGs, to kill any guns that unmask. Having weapons that an kill a StuG frontally is therefore extremely important, more so that AI attacks can suggest (because it advances thick front vehicles too far too readily, showing sides unnecessarily).

In that situation, the Valentine IX has another key role - bait. It threatens individual StuGs. It also gives the others an incentive to hunt forward, by picking locations they can't get LOS to from clear at the back of the map.

In 322, the threat is upgraded to Tigers, which means thick sides as well as fronts. Now even the Valentine IX 6-pdr is marginal, so the lone "eggshell with hammer" role falls to the "Zookeeper", the SU-152. Which has quite a hammer but needs to be used careful because it also has a very low ROF. 57mm can still hurt the things. But mountains guns or even long 76mm towed won't, even with flank shots. Therefore more of the work has to be done by other assymmetric means - AT mines and pioneer ambush for example.

On your rig sounding like an airplane, that usually is the result of an overworked or unbalanced fan. Some video cards need an on-board fan of their own, and they can also make the CPU work harder sometimes, increasing its necessary fan rate. You should first make sure you get all the current drivers and have all the software settings correct for the card and the monitor it is driving. Then see about video card cooling issues. Me, these days I run with the case cover open to improve circulation, because the placement of the video card leaves it not a lot of room near grill holes and it gets hot with the case closed. Just some troubleshooting ideas, good luck with it.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Success. Actually it was the NEW driver that made the graphics card fan go into overdrive. But another install and some adjustment of the settings has cured the problem. It was only a 128 card - nothing fancy - so slightly worrying that it should go mad. Actually I upgraded it to play Rome Total War. One feature that I like of that programme is that all the basic data that runs the game is held in easily accessed files that you can modify with Notepad. This has spawned a huge mod community and people have converted the basic ancient Rome programme to Napoleonic, Renaissence, Fantasy, etc versions. I hope that CM2 will adopt this programming approach because it would allow easier correction of say the underpowered 85mm gun issue.

One follow up question on the 57mm gun, I should aim to kill a couple of Stugs with it before it gets knocked out? At the minute I open fire, kill the target and then get knocked out by a support weapon. Should I conduct a long range duel with the Stugs or wait until they are really close so that I can kill a couple quickly before the support weapons get the gun? Currently I engage at 400m, well within MG range and mortars.

I assume that the scenarios are set up with more or less ideal starting positions so I shall leave the Valentine in his position in the hollow and see if I can do better this time.

cheers

[JasonC]

With the 57mm the main thing is you want all the StuGs dead if it works. So you wait, and wait, for the perfect sight-picture. Meaning, a moment when one of the Mountain guns has a flank shot, and the Valentine is set to hunt into LOS, and the 57mm has another one lined up. Or after one StuG was KOed by infantry and another could be hit by either 76mm or Valentine etc. Occasionally the 57mm will get "hot" and KO 2 of them in a row, but you can't count on it.

As for the placement of the Valentine, it is by no means optimal, just one plausible place to put it. The idea there is simply to avoid initial LOS, but have the option of establishing LOS with a short movement, while hull down himself. Standard "top-hatting" tactic. It isn't the only thing you can do on this map. You can look for a keyhole instead, or a way to bait the StuGs to face it and show a flank to a hidden 76mm in the process, etc.

[Chipaev]

I found by putting the 57mm in that short patch of wood towards the SW of your deployment zone (top left corner if looking top-down facing the enemy, there is also an ATR there initially) and keeping the valentine in its initial position you get a nice angle between where if one is engaged, the other has a flank shot on whatever it is engaged with. I made short order of both the Stugs and Tigers in this fashion. The mountain guns I put in the infantry strongholds in the center of deployment and strictly used them as HE chuckers against german infantry out in the open.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Things are looking up the more I play this series. In the last one, I caught 1 Tiger in a minefield and then waited until the Tigers had gathered just in front of the central platoon. Then I tried a combined attack with both the SU152 driving up the slope into their flank at 330m and one 57mm ATG at about 250m. When the dust settled, I had killed 1 Tiger with an SU, a Sdz251 to the 57mm and another to the Stormovik. But I lost both the SUs and the 57mm. But it had set one of the two remaining Tigers up for a flank shot at 150m from the remaining 57mm who killed him a move later. So pretty good really but I need to practice my driving and sighting skills with the SUs.

cheers

[JasonC]

The last AT one against the Tigers is meant as a confidence booster, frankly, and to show off the Russian ways of killing ubercats. 57mm ATGs, SU-152s, AT minefields and Sturmoviks, are the Russian's big guns, their cat killers. The point above all is that you don't have to bounce T-34 and ZIS-3 fire off them helplessly. Special German weapons demand special Russian ones, but when you have them they are just enemy tanks. Dangerous themselves to be sure, but perfectly killable and subject to all the usual rules of tactics.

[Der Alte Fritz]

I suppose that this situation remains more or less true for much of the latter part of the war. The rare but potent big cats being countered by asymetric means until the arrival of the IStalin series. I was reading Zetterling again and his tables clearly show the superiority of the 57mm gun over the 76mm and also it's rarity. He also mentions the 85mm D5 being specifically deployed to meet the Tiger threat. So I will replay the scenario with the 85mm to see the difference.

Have saved ny game just before the SU152 attack and will play it through several times. I am interested in the actual mechanism of the attack. Set one to HUNT forward and then fire and the other to SHOOT AND SCOOT by driving forward into sight and then straight back again. Since both died, have not formed a view as to which was best. I find the only way to get a proper view of LOS is to get down to Level 1 and "walk" the ground yourself. The LOS sight tool does not seem to indicate where you will gain sight along its length.

I think a little table of penetration and armour values is a big help in judging results until you can gain experience. I have now made one and it has shattered some illusions!

[JasonC]

The 85mm is seriously undermodeled in CM, in 1943 in particular. Historically it was used in special antitank battalions attached to each tank or mechanized corps, 12 guns. Not many. But in CM, its shots in 1943 will bounce from a 30+50 StuG front at anything over 500 yards, let alone from the 100mm stuff on Tiger I hull or Panther turret fronts. Nobody can defend that ammo modeling underperformance (which appears as endless "shell broke up" results), since it is well known the 85mm routinely did penetrate such plates.

In 1944 the ammo is better and the modeling accurate enough. Of course, by then there are T-34/85s and IS-2s etc, and nobody needs an SU-85 or towed 85mm AA anymore. The historical period when the 85mm was the solution of choice - with much better rate of fire than the 152mm for example - is not present in CM, and trying to replicate the historical solution will not work.

As for the rariety of Russian 57mm, there were altogether about 4 times as many as there were Tigers on the German side. Yes there were lots more 45mm than 57mm, and lots more 76mm than 57mm, but there was also lots of German armor without thick front plates. And Russian ATGs were far more plentiful than German armor of all kinds, let alone the cream of uparmored cats.

Incidentally, the 45mm is also undermodeled in CM, particularly early. Its real performance was comparable to the British 2 pdr or US 37mm. In CM, those are much more dangerous, while the Russian 45mm is modeled as nearly useless beyond point blank range and flat angle. Historically the Russians also made significant use of subcaliber ammunition for the later 45mms. In CM that is available but rare. In reality, they used it to extend the useful life of the improved 45mm to quite late in the war.

As for the most common 76mm, towed varieties and on the T-34, its performance specifically against 80mm plates is very harsh in CM, under what Russian reports themselves say it did. More, it is under what German tactical reports say it did. Those routinely say the 80mm front of a StuG would not stop the Russian 76mm inside 500 yards. In CM, they bounce down to point blank. There is a big difference between a range difference and frontal invulnerability. And in the case of the Tiger, this become near invulnerability from the sides as well.

Russian commanders in CM simply have to adapt to these modeling problems. Using the 57mm is one way of doing so. German players dramatically overuse the overmodeled and underpriced StuG, and to a lesser extent the cats (the Tiger in 1943, in particular). Those get small rariety values even at times (e.g. late 1942) when they were the best 2-3% of the German AFV fleet. Russian 57mms get high ones, even when there were thousands of them out.

As for using the SU-152, don't "hunt". Hunting is a recipe for "tank cower", the tendency of AFVs to back away from an opponent they know can penetrate them. Those routines are written with the (historically quite false) idea that tanks only willingly engage enemies whose shells they can bounce. In reality, only a tiny set of special vehicles facing vanilla to inferior opponents, had that luxury. Most fighting took place between mutually killable vehicles.

A fast move into the location that has LOS is therefore the right way to engage. Shoot and scoot works fine for that, since the move portion is "fast". They won't cower. Thing is, they don't stop until they reach the waypoint. If that is far beyond the point where LOS first appears, the target has time to react after seeing the approaching vehicle, before it reaches the firing location. It will use that time to rotate to show front armor, and to align its own gun and try to fire first.

It is therefore important that the move from out of LOS to engagement point be made as rapidly as possible - without the hunt routine's "stop and fire on first LOS" trigger being available, because that comes with a "cower" catch-22 attached. To keep the movement fast, you need to judge where LOS begins accurately yourself.

It also helps to have some speed up - you don't want to be still trying to accelerate from a dead stop while going uphill e.g.. That way you enter LOS crawling instead of swiftly moving to the firing point. So give yourself some "run up" room out of LOS.

Last, it is critical that you not waste time rotating after reaching the firing point. Rotation of a stationary vehicle is very slow in CM, much slower than in reality. Turretless AFVs can aim their gun only in a narrow arc, and otherwise must aim the whole vehicle by slow rotation. You will engage fastest if the gun is already directly aligned with the target on the last leg of the actual movement, not afterward.

So, the recipe is -

Wait until he is pointing some other way, preferably engaged with a different target (thus likely caught reloading), and if at all possible butttoned (to increase the time from first LOS to reaction).

Then shoot and scoot as the order. From deeply out of LOS to just inside of LOS. Last leg of the movement must start outside of LOS aka the entire in-LOS portion must be perfectly straight - and short. The gun must already be exactly aligned with the intended target by the last leg of the move.

You can still miss your one shot. You should not stick around for another, because the reload time for an SU-152 is around 30 seconds, and a Tiger can fire 3 times in that period. So break LOS immediately after the shot, whether by reversing (most common) or continuing to a dead ground location. Beware of rotations at the firing point before the reverse leg. Easiest way to stay too long in the open and get nailed.

With more rapid firers (like a T-34/85 in 1944, or a T-34/57 in 1943), you can instead plan to stick around and keep firing, to multiply your chances of a hit as long as he misses you back. In that case, use a fast move rather than shoot and scoot. Turreted vehicles can align their gun before entering LOS by using an armor covered arc. By the 2nd shot, the target will be turning or turned, so don't count on the side aspect lasting very long. Unturreted targets you might make it to the 3rd, because rotation is slower than turrets. It is best to engage at distances where even a front aspect can be penetrated through at least one plate, if you are going to be around for 2nd, 3rd etc shots.

That means e.g. under 500 yards for a T-34/85 vs. a Panther. (Side aspect any range will go in, front you need a turret hit - prefer hull down target therefore - and 500 yards for a good chance of partial and some chance of a full penetration).

I hope some of that helps.

[Other Means]

Der Alte Fritz, this site may help:

http://cmbb.jemian.com/

It gives all the info from the game in one place.

To add to JasonC's advice, target the preferred target from out of LOS to decrease the time taken to acquire it.

[Der Alte Fritz]

This has helped enormously. In the last try I had replaced the 57mm with 85mm D3 but planned to use them under 500m. My ambush worked well and the 85mm killed one Tiger at 456m and the other at 220m while the SU-152s drove up the hill and killed another. The driving and LOS is getting better and the SU-152s regularly manage to make three separate attacks in a game, managing to fire and reverse before the Tigers can turn and engage them. LOS is still a bit hit and miss though, during one attack the SU lost the target sight on the Tiger during the drive up the hill and so proceeded to turn to engage a Sdz251/9 that it thought was a better shot? Best method seems to be to walk the route yourself, stop at the point of contact, press 'Q'to mark it and then go to level 3 or 4 to plan the reverse. Will come back to this one later as I want to have a crack at the 400 series this weekend. Also someone suggested immobilising an enemy tank with impassable terrain and no ammo and then conducting firing trials so that you get a feel for what works and how it relates to the penetration tables.

cheers