How to withdraw infantry under fire?

[Tigrii]

These seems to me to be quite impossible, especially with CMBB's highly sensitive infantry. Trenches work in theory but when I try them my guys just get pinned. The Germans had lots of devilish tactics in WWII that I want to try to replicate, which involve withdrawing infantry. One example is: You have some inf. The enemy attacks. You fight for a minute or two, and then retreat. The enemy occupies your position. You call down presighted arty on them. You counterattack the panicked troops and reclaim your position, enhanced by craters. This would work really well in CM with TRPs, trenches, and fallback foxholes, but I just can't extricate infantry under fire. How do you do this? :confused:

[PiggDogg]

Tigrii,

The BB "withdraw" command is not as useful as the BO "withdraw" command. In BO, use the withdraw command all of the time.

However, in BB, with anything other than really great morale troops (elites, cracks, & maybe vets), the withdraw command is the only useful and rational alternative for getting out of Dodge quickly.

The choice is use don't use withdraw and get a few panicked men surviving, Or use withdraw and get more panicked men surviving.

I suggest, that at the first (and I mean the first) signs of being out firepowered, use withdraw. Every second (and literally every second) that you are outfirepowered, your body count will mount and your chances of getting away diminish.

Further, whenever you move your guys, try to ensure that they have a covered and relatively safe place for them to retreat to. :eek:

This above has been derived from my BO & BB experiences.

Cheers, Richard

[ November 30, 2002, 03:34 PM: Message edited by: PiggDogg ]

[Redwolf]

You need to leave some units in place to supress enemy units.

The only way to do a complete withdrawl is firing smoke in front of your position, but of course that works both ways, the enemy can try to overrun your now. In addition, you need a turn firing the smoke and it will tip the enemy off to what you are up to.

In CMBB Steve said the assault command works in both direction, that means assaulting to the back will have leapfrogging and shooting at the enemy. Don't know whether that is true (nor do I care anymore).

[ November 30, 2002, 08:45 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[xerxes]

If you don't let the enemy get too close you can use sneak to get out of LOS and then use Fast Move to put some distance between you and the enemy. The key is to not let them get too close. If you pull it off right you'll leave the little "crosses" in the defensive position.

Having mgs cover your withdrawal is a good method.

[Chad Harrison]

They always seem to do it free of charge for me!

Best way to do anything with infantry moving in the open is lots and lots of covering/suppressing fire or smoke. CMBB requires a whole new bag of tricks when compared to CMBO.

Chad

[Major Jerkov]

Originally posted by redwolf:

You need to leave some units in place to supress enemy units.

The only way to do a complete withdrawl is firing smoke in front of your position, but of course that works both ways, the enemy can try to overrun your now. In addition, you need a turn firing the smoke and it will tip the enemy off to what you are up to.

In CMBB Steve said the assault command works in both direction, that means assaulting to the back will have leapfrogging and shooting at the enemy. Don't know whether that is true (nor do I care anymore).

I'd probaly use "advance" to the rear, but as others said, have some kind of suppression fire available. ie mg's, mortars, arty... Hey redwolf, what dont you care bout' anymore?!? :confused:

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Tigrii:

Trenches work in theory but when I try them my guys just get pinned.

Do you say you layed a trench system so that your guys could move to the rear in the trench and they didn't do it?

Can you post a screenshot? Or mail it to me (jpg, not bmp) so that I can post it.

[Redwolf]

I did some trench testing myself, see screenshot.

Don't tell Steve, but I don't like the trench model

First of all, the trenches are spotted at 200m, not matter what. The fact that the rightmost trench is in woods didn't have the slightest effect on its spotting.

Then, moving units in the trench are easily spotted. I don't think this is realistic, one point about a trench in first place is to move undetected. In CMBB you would have to sneak to move undetected, which will exhaust you quickly.

Then, the left Pz IV is firing one machinegun (no main gun) at the trench edge nearest to him, in the middle between the two left squads. It pins the whole platton. Including squads 50m away and that in a zigzag-formed trench. The unit I tried to move is now pinned and doesn't move at all, and it is already tired from sneaking I never ordered.

One machinegun firing at this zigzag trench will make movement impossible in the whole trench system shown here.

[ December 01, 2002, 09:05 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[YankeeDog]

A couple of other tricks that can sometimes help you on the withdrawal: Hiding and Redirection.

First, Hiding: This one assumes you are playing under "Extreme Fog of War." Say you have a platoon of infantry pinned down by heavy fire. If most of the fire is coming from fairly far away, and your infantry is in terrain that offers pretty good concealment, sometimes if you order your units to "Hide", the enemy units will lose sight of your units and stop firing at them. This will give your units at least a brief respite from incoming fire and allow them to hopefully regain some morale status, improving the chances of a successful withdrawal later. If you're in really good cover (especially buildings), you can sometimes then "Sneak" your units to the rear at the beginning of the next turn without them being re-spotted.

In my experience, human opponents will usually order area fire onto the spot where your units were last seen at the beginning of the next orders phase, but by this time your units have hopefully gotten the better part of a turn to collect their nerves, and in any event area fire is less effective than direct fire at supressing/killing.

There are at least two major drawbacks to using the Hide order to help break contact:

(1) You are taking the units out of the firefight, at least for the short term. They will not return fire for as long as they are trying to hide. If the enemy does not lose sight of the units, they are going to get shellacked. Eventually, they will stop trying to hide of their own accord and try to return fire (if they don't panic, that is), but in the meantime, the other side is going to get "free hits". Keep in mind that CM's "Borg spotting" means it takes only ONE enemy unit to maintain spotting of your units for ALL enemy units to see (and fire on) it.

(2) As long as your units are hiding, they aren't doing anything else, including withdrawing. While your units are hiding, your opponent may be bringing up more firepower, calling in an arty barrage, or moving to encircle and capture them. If you use hide to break contact, you need to have a definite plan for how you're going to get those units out of danger - bring support weapons up, smoke barrage, whatever. Just don't use 'hide' to delay the inevitable. Otherwise, you may find that instead of having a platoon with 50% casualties and 50% broken or routed, you have a platoon with 50% casualties and 50% captured, which is much worse.

OK, now my second suggestion for breaking contact: Sometimes it is possible to redirect your enemy's fire elsewhere for a short time, giving your units time to escape.

By way of example, suppose you have a Russian infantry platoon pinned down by enemy fire. The incoming fire is coming from several different sources, but the heaviest fire is coming from a Tiger tank. If you can at least temporarily eliminate the incoming fire from the Tiger, you can probably get most of the platoon withdrawn to fight another day.

Hiding in defilade behind a ridge you have a couple of T-70s. If the T-70s were to crest the ridge, they would gain LOS to the Tiger. The T-70's 45mm gun has almost no chance of taking out a Tiger from any angle. However, if you order those T-70s to crest the ridge into LOS of the Tiger, you can be damn sure the Tiger will turn it's attention (and it's turret) to the T-70s and away from your imperiled infantry squad.

Giving up a pair of T-70s to save an infantry squad is generally a poor trade, though. Fortunately, there's a way you can have your cake and eat it, too! Use that handy new "Shoot and Scoot" order to have your T-70s crest the ridge, pop off a shot at the Tiger, and then reverse back down into defilade. Given their high speed (and the Tiger's slow turret), chances are the Tiger will never get a shot off at them. Even better, use the "Pause" command to have them crest the ridge about 20 seconds apart - that way the Tiger will turn to try to engage the first T-70, then turn back to the infantry platoon, and then finally get distracted by the second T-70.

You get the idea. There's lots of similar things you can do to temporarily draw the enemy's attention away from a pinned platoon. They all require some finesse and luck to pull off, but when they work, it's really satisfying. The above Tiger/T-70 example is one I actually pulled off against the AI recently, and it left me feeling like a goddamn Napoleon.

Of course, it's maddeningly frustrating when your opponent pulls a similar tactic off on you. Once while playing CMBO, I had a PBEM opponent save a platoon from certain death and/or capture by faking an 81mm mortar barrage - he happened to have an on-board 81mm mortar with only one HE shell left. When I saw the shell drop, I assumed that a full barrage was on it's way the next turn and had my infantry units that were pinning his platoon get the hell out of dodge to avoid getting caught. Boy, did I feel like a fool when the barrage never materialized, and his platoon strolled unmolested back into good cover!

'Tis a great game, yes?

Cheers,

YD

[Redwolf]

If you detract tanks with light armor the enemy will usually give a cover arc to stay focused on the original target.

That is turn can be very useful of you have an actually dangerous shooter somewhere outside his new cover arc

Or you can use flanking AT teams which can walk right up to the tank without getting shot at. Or other infantry can now move freely.

[Eden Smallwood]

Originally posted by redwolf:

In CMBB Steve said the assault command works in both direction, that means assaulting to the back will have leapfrogging and shooting at the enemy.

I think you mean *Advance* works in both directions; Assault makes no sense in reverse, right? Like you, I remember Steve saying that, but I have no clue where that is now.

Don't know whether that is true (nor do I care anymore).

Cheer up! Yes, it can be a frustrating game, and it can be a frustrating forum. But come on now- it beats the heck out of anything else- why not take the good with the bad, look on the bright side, yadda yadda QB-before-bedtime yadda

Eden

[PvK]

I have to agree about the trench model. Seems like as long as the enemy is in the right direction relative to the trench (that is, they're not close enough and in the right direction to fire down into the trench), then units in the trench should be nearly invisible and invulnerable to direct-fire attacks. Essentially, they should be able to go "heads down", without the usual penalties of Hide or Crawl.

It's also very slow moving along a CMBB trench, which doesn't make much sense to me. It shouldn't be any worse than "soft ground" to run along the bottom of a trench, and if it's a good prepared trench, it could be as good as a road.

PvK

[Olle Petersson]

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

First, Hiding: ... if you order your units to "Hide", the enemy units will lose sight of your units and stop firing at them. ... you can sometimes then "Sneak" your units to the rear at the beginning of the next turn ...

My variant to this is Hide-AND-Sneak;

1) Cancel any targeting for the unit to retreat.

2) Set it on Hide.

3) Order it to Sneak away to a point out of sight.

This will have all the benefits of YD's suggestion, but get your troops out faster.

Cheers

Olle

[aka_tom_w]

interesting thread

this whole "How to Disengage" thing has got ALOT of press/airtime lately

-tom w

[xerxes]

I'll reiterate PiggDog's advice. You can use withdraw effectively but not after the enemy has established firepower superiority. The trick is to use it BEFORE you're in serious trouble. I' m using it more often now with quite good results.

Very often CM commanders wait far too long to give up a position. Once the hammer is coming down, you can kiss it goodbye.

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Eden Smallwood:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by redwolf:

In CMBB Steve said the assault command works in both direction, that means assaulting to the back will have leapfrogging and shooting at the enemy.

I think you mean *Advance* works in both directions; Assault makes no sense in reverse, right? Like you, I remember Steve saying that, but I have no clue where that is now.

Don't know whether that is true (nor do I care anymore).

Cheer up! Yes, it can be a frustrating game, and it can be a frustrating forum. But come on now- it beats the heck out of anything else- why not take the good with the bad, look on the bright side, yadda yadda QB-before-bedtime yadda

Eden</font>

[Frunze]

Re Hide-and-sneak: the unit won't hide if it has a movement order. Maybe a short cover arc if you want to make sure it takes cover and doesn't shoot?

I've used withdraw successfully a couple times in a current PBEM to get out of an artillery barrage. Sometimes I used other orders if the delay wasn't too long.

I had my troops go sideways cause the barrage is longer than it is wide - turns out withdraw works in any direction now, at least in that QB, and I don't think I did anything to the settings to make it that way. Not on purpose, anyway.

Assault is best if you want to move a very short distance, otherwise it's just too tiring.

[ December 16, 2002, 12:15 AM: Message edited by: Frunze ]