Infantry Casualties at 50m

[Uncle_Joe]

Hang on, are you saying that Area Fire is effective (and targetable) in hexes that you cant possible draw a LOS/LOF to? If so, I'd consider that a major flaw in the game.

I thought that Area Fire allowed you to target hexes without visible targets, but not hexes that arent visible to the unit.

Using Area Fire as you describe allows you to shoot through multiple buildings? Over hills (ala indirect)?

Thanks for the heads up though.

Edit: Ok, I tested it and it works like you describe. You can indeed fire into places that would not be possible to hit. I'm not sure if I like that or not, but it is effective. Again, thanks for the heads up on it. It should make the city assaults a little more possible. I suppose it could simulate little skirmish teams and whatnot because it does seem limited to 2 hexes range if you dont have LOS.

The best thing they could do for the AI would be to 'teach' it to area fire on places where it's taken fire from over and over previously. Obviously that is probably far easier said than done.

That said, casualties still seem too high at 50m (in terrain). Moving in a building 50m away (with smoke in many cases) should not be as fatal as it is now.

I guess at this point it just time to wait and see the results of their analysis, testing, and changes.

[czerpak]

well, basically saying - yes.
It has limits though. E.g. you can fire thru one building, not two or more, up to 150m (IIRC) in the forrest. Cant fire thru hills IIRC.
All of above info comes from memory, dont have time to check now.
BTW it is a feature, not a bug.
Play around with it, when you get some time.

You are welcome, thats what we are here for.

[Smersh]

I ran a little test scenario, of a company attacking a tree covered hill guarded by a plt. I used the mg, at the base of the hill to area fire into the hill top. this pinned the infantry guarding the hill.

I then assualted the hill, while not totalling stoping enemy opfire they were pinned enough were I could return fire.
in the end, I took the hill and suffered about 30 casualties about equal to enemy casualties. (using no artillery, only a single company level mg team)

I did notice that since the area fire is not as accurate as regular firing, it caused some suppression to my own troops near where I was area firing the mg.

properly using area fire my be a solution to attacking prepared unpinned enemy in built up terrian.

[Mustang]

The most effective tactics here in real life are small teams of infiltrators. In WinSPMBT your scout units, having only around 4 men, are hard to spot and will often be able to sneak adjacent to an enemy unit without getting fired at. I don't know if this is also true in WinSPWW2, but these scout units are good for getting the first shots while advancing in close terrain.