AT guns

[Gothkrieger]

I seems like the only way to spot an AT gun is offer up a tank to the gods of war as a sacrifice. If the tank survives the first hit, may be the gun can be taken out by said tank or one of his buddies if another has the same line of sight etc. Would be nice to be able to locate enemy by observation sometimes, not always after they have taken the first shot.

[ArgusEye]

That is something infantry scouting is great for. The AT gun is usually well camouflaged, and will only be spotted at close range. Alternatively, you can pre-emptively blast any good AT gun location to bits if you're really worried. In the end, it's just one of the pitfalls of WWII warfare. Not everything can be countered.

[Joachim]

Well, it would be great to know what your opponent in a game of rock-scissors-stone will do before showing your own fingers to him. But it would ruin it the game

Same with ATGs. They are pretty expensive in CM. Much more expensive than in RL (due to their higher chance of actually getting a tank into their sights in CM than in RL).

They are usually dead a few minutes after they are discovered. Now think of their value if they would be easily discovered before they have a chance to fire.

What you can do is offering a cheap lightly armored vehicle (RL tactic!). Or send infantry first like AE suggests.

[Gothkrieger]

True, but hardly sounds like tanks leading the attack when they are following the infantry. The scout is a good idea but you dont always have one

[Sergei]

True, but hardly sounds like tanks leading the attack when they are following the infantry. The scout is a good idea but you dont always have one

I think you may have a bit skewed understanding of doctrine there. Tanks lead the attack until they meet something that impedes their advance. COMBAT MISSION is a game that mostly deals with the "something that impedes" part. The other part consists mostly of tank columns crushing supply trucks while driving forward as fast as they can, this wouldn't make for a very interesting tactical wargame!

Also, consider that tanks are huge targets and the crew has very limited view of the outside world (unless it's an open-topped vehicle like Marder), whereas AT guns (88 Flak excluded) are small targets where the whole crew is able to guard every direction for hostiles. On top of that, most of the time the AT guns are defending units so they start dug in and camouflaged. It follows that it should be no surprise that tanks always lose the 'spotting game'.

If my Spidey sense is warning me of possible AT guns up ahead, I will, if I have any infantry support, try to use them for suppressing the enemies - possibly reducing their hit chance. The other key is to use Fast movement orders and not stop at an exposed positions. The most important thing is to reduce the likelihood of first shot hits!

[Cuirassier]

Gothkrieger,

I think your expectations regarding own-side losses are overly high. Sure, if you call down a well placed prep-barrage or if the enemy has a poor defence layout that allows your infantry to overrun his AT guns then you might take them out before he has a chance to shoot at your tanks. But against competent play this rarely happens and it is dangerous to assume that it could be the expectation.

Instead, you must be willing to trade armor for AT guns. The attacker will generally have more tanks than the defender has AT guns; that is why he has the initiative and is attacking. So you trade a couple of tanks for his hidden AT guns along a given route. If you are exchanging 1:1, the end result will usually be that the defender runs out of AT guns on the chosen route while you still have one or two tanks left. That is often enough to shoot your infantry into the defence (provided your tanks are decent HE chuckers like T-34's, Pz. IV's, etc)

Thus, you need to accept that the ATG vs tank match up is generally an exchange, rather than a lopsided duel going to one side or the other.

And as for the fact that ATG's generally pull triggers first, well that is entirely realistic. In a tactical environment, first shot almost always goes to the stationary, hidden guy with his finger on the trigger. Read any tactical AAR's from the real war if your doubt this.

There are also some basics that help you exchange through an enemies ATG network more efficiently.

First of all, attack with armor concentrated along routes where the defence can't have its LOS entirely integrated. This allows the tanks to gang up on segments of the defence in sequence, rather than fighting it all at once. This often leaves some ATG's out of position, since a defence is often forced to cover multiple routes.

Use mortars as your primary ATG killers, once they are spotted. Firing from defilade, mortars are the perfect counters to ATG's; a single 8 cm type can KO an ATG in 1-2 minutes typically without being spotted in return.

When you have serious armor (eg a company or more), stay concentrated and use bounding overwatch. The idea is that you will always have at least a platoon of tanks stationary and that your entire company (because it is concentrated) has los to all the same areas. The defender can open up with the ATG or two he has on your chosen route, but will be rapidly suppressed since all of your tanks will be in LOS with at least half of them sitting still looking for spots and ready to return fire.

When you only have small amounts of armor, or it is thin and/or and SPG, you need to be more careful. Keep it well within the infantry main body and keyhole so it can only see one enemy at a time. Fire HE at the target and then back away once the task is done. You want the tank to live as long as possible to deliver its fire against good targets. Caution, keyholing, showing only a frontal facing for a limited duration, etc increase the odds of this happening.

Finally, uber armor is also an option. Thick plate AFV's like the KV in 41 and the Tiger in 43 are impervious to most ATG's, making them much more survivable and rendering the enemy's ATG network not nearly as effective.

[Joachim]

True, but hardly sounds like tanks leading the attack when they are following the infantry. The scout is a good idea but you dont always have one

Tanks leading the attack works - but only when they massively outnumber the ATGs. Most tanks will not be koed beyond repair, so even if you lose 1:1, the gun is overrun permanently while the tank will be repaired. And this is during the breakthru action. The real value of the tank is during the exploit.

The RL tank losses happened when the tanks were unable to capture the battlef field (and thus abandoned tanks could not be salvaged by the owner) - or when repair shops were overrun during exploits, tanks had to be given up due to fuel shortages while retreating, ...

This is not modelled in CM.

What is modelled in CM: A lone tank in Russia is lost.

If you disperse your tanks to support a broad front attack - well, the Allies did that early war. It didn't work for France in '40, and it didn't work to spread out T34s in '41. It doesn't work in CM.

I fully expect an entrenched veteran PaK front in CM to shoot up a similar number of tanks if all guns are well placed, can see all tanks, some guns can penetrate from the front and all are in medium combat range.

In RL the guns were spread out to cover the whole front while the tanks were able to quickly concentrate. FOs were with the leading tanks - once the tanks encountered a threat, they went into reverse. HE from tanks kills guns at long range. AP from guns doesn't penetrate beyond a certain range. and you had a company of tanks vs a plt or so of guns. An armor company was the smallest formation for an attack.

Now if you complain that standard QBs in CM don't mirror this - play special scenarios. Or use tanks the way they were used when they did not have massive odds. Then they were used like assault guns - well behind the inf, in a support role. The inf finds something - the tank keyholes, trying to get LOS to that part of the front only. Which means nothing else gets LOS to the tank. Once you discover an ATG and can't bring in a mortar - close counts with HE. But not with AP. Just area fire close to the ATG from a location where the ATG can't get LOS to the tank. And no, that ain't gamey.