Recon with vehicles

[chris h]

This is how I use scouts. They will walk but I prefer to load them onto any vehicle perfeably a H/T with their small arm protection and dismount out of LOS, moving formward with zero range set. Ideally the vehicles should also be armed, fast (then a md tank) and preferable a scout vehicle.

Now my question. How do you use armour cars. In game they do not have any recon ability (or do they?) and are easy prey to almost anything this AP. In real life they were used as recon units, in game I'm very reluctant to pick and type of ac simple because I don't know how to use them.

This is porbably something I should know baring in mind I've been playing this game on and off in all it versions but have never got to grips with it.

Is it only units with the word 'scout' in it's class that scout?

[Mobhack]

At this level - the battalion - recce vehicles aren’t really much use since their job has already been done for you pretty much. You know the enemy is in that direction, that he is here etc. That is because a battle in SP means he is there - there is no doubt about it.

Reconnaissance is a brigade and higher function - if this game was a corps level game then cavalry and so on would be of more significance, zooming off down the country lanes till they bump into the enemy, or out covering screens to detect an flank moves etcetera.

That being said - on large maps they can be handy to go out and find whee his thrust is, or to screen your main thrust in case he is trundling down your flank as you go to your initial point.

But chiefly - they provide cheap fast units which can blitz an unoccupied objective and maybe do a delaying action while you move reserves to deal with any problem they identify. A recce unit with decent armament can tear up say an opponent who made a move with unsupported APC infantry - like in BTRS for example - with no tank support.

But I hardly ever "go large" on light recce vehicles. Exception might be the South African bush wars, where I like to play Cubans v South Africa - a platoon of 37mm armed armoured cars and a platoon of tanks in support of a motor rifle company is a useful force, the tanks deal with 90mm armoured cars and centurions, the armoured cars eliminate enemy APCS and the occasional eland 90 or 60.

[sigeena]

If you play on maximum map size, they'll be useful to cover gaps in the line, or screen flanks.

Usually in a meeting engagement, the fast units, hence scout cars, are out skirmishing first. If you knock out the EN scout cars, your scout cars can then harass the EN main line.

On Defense or Delay, screening helps to reduce your main line's exposure to artillery.

[cbo]

The British 1944 TOE for the Armoured Division had the divisional Armoured Regiment equipped with Cruiser tanks, i.e. Cromwells and, I suppose, Shermans. Until 1943, the regiment was equipped with armoured cars and apparently the cruisers was considered something of an overkill for the role.........

But it did give the division a fourth armoured battallion, allowing it to create combined arms formations of one tank and one infantry battalion and two brigades with each two tank battalions and two infantry battalions (the motorbattalion of the armoured regiment being one of them).

I have played som rather enjoyable "recce"-battles in SPWW2 along the lines of armoured recce bumping into its opposite number in a meeting battle or into recently arrived enemy forces that have not organized a proper defense yet. Gives you an opportunity to play around with some odd formations like armoured cars, recce vehicles of all sorts, motorcycles, bicycle troops and what not