How to get my squads to throw a grenade or two into a building before assaulting?

[Peach Operations]

In CMSF, if you targeted a building at close range with area fire with one of your squads, they'd heave grenades into it. So, if you knew that a building was enemy-controlled, you could a) move up to the building, have a 5sec wait while they throw hand grenades into the building, and c) quick-move into the building afterwards.

That doesn't appear to work in CMBN. The target command will cause the squad to shoot small arms, bazookas, and rifle-grenades into the building (even at point blank range, which leads to friendly casualties!), but they won't throw grenades unless they actually see an enemy squad in the building. The target-light command will cause the squad to fire small arms into the building, but again, no grenades unless the enemy is spotted.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there some way to make your squads throw hand grenades without that squad having spotted the enemy?

[Jonny(FGM)]

Just did a quick test

A squad will throw grenades on target order but only once they have expended all rifle grenades/zooks

I personally think they should put it back to how it was in CMSF

[PhantomApple]

I wonder if assault orders, which IIRC wasn't particularly good when house clearing in SF, would do the trick. I don't remember my equipment state the last time I cleared out an enemy position with assault orders, and my memory is bad on a good day, but I remember nades being chucked. .

I don't remember ever moving into an occupied structure in Normandy yet, so haven't run into the issue yet. Will run some tests.

[MengJiao]

I wonder if assault orders, which IIRC wasn't particularly good when house clearing in SF, would do the trick. I don't remember my equipment state the last time I cleared out an enemy position with assault orders, and my memory is bad on a good day, but I remember nades being chucked. .

I don't remember ever moving into an occupied structure in Normandy yet, so haven't run into the issue yet. Will run some tests.

I have an experimental scenario with a battalion attack on a village. I finally got to the village with a relatively intact battalion. I shelled the place with whatever artillery I had left and then assaulted with 3 companies and the Pioneer Platoon and all the MGs following in. C company took the church, B company took the bakery and A Company captured a score of Fusiliers as they ran out of town. It looked like grenades were used in the big Church and the bakery since some of the Platoon level assault orders went right into those buildings. Elsewhere not so much since the Fusiliers were mostly running for it by the time the assault got to grenade range.

[Peach Operations]

I've seen grenades thrown, but only when the enemy is spotted by the throwing unit. Did anyone get squads to throw grenades using an area fire order?

[c3k]

Yes, grenades will be thrown with a Target order. The range is limited to 16 meters (I think. It's been a while since I ran tests). The issue with zooks/fausts area firing into an adjacent target is known and has been resolved.

I have not seen a correlation between rifle grenades and thrown grenades.

Most initial grenade volleys take 1/3 to 1/2 (usually 1/2) of the available grenades. This number, with Area Targets, is being worked on.

Ken

[Michael Emrys]

I've seen grenades thrown, but only when the enemy is spotted by the throwing unit. Did anyone get squads to throw grenades using an area fire order?

I've seen my troops throw grenades without a fire order a couple of times. The enemy was presumably spotted by them. I have yet to see them throw grenades into a building before entering. Since I very rarely give infantry fire orders, especially if the range is close, they have yet to throw grenades when ordered.

Just my personal observation of an as yet small number of games.

Michael