Urban Combat

[Criztian]

I really enjoy the urban combat in the game, and have become quite good at moving from cover to cover and making sure to give covering fire when ever possible. But I have a problem. As I understand urban combat using the corners of buildings for cover is a very important aspect of urban combat. But if I move my marine unit to a building they all line up against the wall and won't actually use the corner of the building to provide cover down the street. So my choice seems to be to either leave them there were they are almost totally ineffective. Or move them into the middle of the street. I like that the AI knows to take cover beside the building, but is there any way to take advantage of the cover to cover other units? I mean in large scale engagement I suppose I can just move them into the building. But for example in the first marine mission, obviously the purpose is to move across the map, and without much support getting into room to room fighting isn't an option.

But if I want to advance a unit, I have to either leave the covering unit completely exposed, move them inside the building, or just have the hide behind the building.

In case I'm not clear... what I mean is something like:

            \_____

           XX0000

Where XX are able to provide covering fire upwards, while the O's are under cover. Right now all i can get my men to do is

\_________

   000000

[Combatintman]

The 'cornering' problem has been raised before - it currently isn't possible to do it due to the way that the action zones work as I understand it. In terms of will you be able to do it in the future as the result of the patch I think the answer will be 'probably not'. To achieve a similar effect and minimise casualties I think the likely solution is the 'Split Squad' command in the admin menu but I'm sure there'll be plenty of people who are urban combat ninjas (I'm definitely not one of those) who can offer better solutions.

[RadioactiveMan]

In my experience infantry seems have a rudimentary ability to look around corners. As Combatintman pointed out- the waypoint system leaves a bit to be desired. What I have found to work is this: Tell your men to move right to the corner and issue a "face" command in the direction you want to cover. Often times the waypoint will appear to be in the middle of the street, but with the "face" command your guys should line up such they have protection against fire coming from the "Faced" direction.

It looks something like this, where X is the waypoint and \ is the face command:

.....l

.....l building

.\...l_____

..X.........

and then your guys should line up like this:

.....l

.....l building

....\l_____

.....OOOO...

and the guy on the corner will be able to shoot around the corner, although he doesn't seem to take cover very effectively. Sometimes, however, your guys will run right to the waypoint and then adjust to the face command, and run back behind the building. This seems to depend on a lot of "soft" factors like exact map design, incoming fire, and experience (?).

In almost all situations a much better way to cover a corner is from a position further back, like so:

.....l

.....l building

.....l_______

...........

.....\....

......OOOO

or:

.....l

.....l building

.....l_______

...........

.....\_______

.....l OOOO

.....l

.....l