How to Close Assault?

[Blackcloud6]

How do you get a unit to close assault an enemy unit?

[Mobhack]

Be in the same or adjacent hex to the target vehicle
Be better than pinned status with your assaulting infantry (rally up if not)
Have sufficient remaining movement points (2 or 3?) to assault (new requirement come last version or the one before)

Then "fire" on the target vehicle, and if the infantry pass a morale test, then the assault happens. (Open fire by putting the cursor on the target and clicking as usual, or using the T key to select it and pressing F subsequently, whichever you prefer)

- movement to the target is not good for the assaulter
- suppression is not good for the assaulter
- lack of men is not good, as is damage. - Being an inf-AT class element is slightly better for an assaulter, being crew or snipers or observers or other small units, not so good. (The inf-AT class is not penalised so much for small number of people). Being a depleted (50%+ damage) infantry element is probably the worse case situation.
- lack of either morale or experience is not good to the attacker
- lack of a useful assault weapon is not good for the assaulter (hand grenades at a pinch, but a proper anti-tank weapon or flame weapon is best - ie a weapon with at least some AP pen). Units lacking a proper A/T weapon are more prone to retreating in "Tank Panic" on failing an assault
- being unspotted is best for an assaulting unit, if known about, less good
- If target is buttoned up or worse, very good for the assaulter. If the target is not closed down, try pinning him with fire from a covering unit of yours before going in with the assault. However, any misses may drift onto the prospective assaulter which is not good..
- If target is open-topped, very good for the assaulter. Open top AFV are grenade buckets.
- If the target AFV is immobilised (track or engine hit) - better for the assaulter
- If the target AFV is damaged, it is better for the attacker
- the thicker the side armour of the tank, the better for the defender, especially against non HEAT weaponry (hand grenades, HE charges etc). Negated if the AFV is open topped though, those types of AFV are toast to assaults.
- If the target has riders or passengers, they may defuse the assault especially if the vehicle is left unsuppressed before assaulting. The defenders may suffer casualties, or drop off and shoot you in the face on occasion.

[Blackcloud6]

Thanks much for the comprehensive explanation; I was unaware of a lot of that.

[Warnevada]

- being unspotted is best for an assaulting unit, if known about, less good

Is there a way to tell whether your assaulter is spotted or not?

[Mobhack]

Of course not!

You only know that if the enemy fires direct at you, just as in real life. And sometimes you move, and nothing shoots at you and you think your not seen, but he just did not think you worth a shot. And sometimes his response will be a stonk some time later on, not the direct shot.

There are some wargames that tell you that you are subject of the "evil eye" by putting say a "*" character by your unit designation or some such tell-tale. But that sort of stuff and nonsense is totally unrealistic and more in keeping with fantasy land stuff where your wizard "knows" you are being s scried on by another magic user. I vaguely recollect that was one of the killers for me of playing SP3, along with the fact that 60mm mortars that caused what would have been a track hit M-kill in 2 and 1 were treated as K-Kills, even on say tiger 2s. SP3 armour simply "melted away" under even light arty stonks.

[jivemi]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

- If the target has riders or passengers, they may defuse the assault especially if the vehicle is left unsuppressed before assaulting. The defenders may suffer casualties, or drop off and shoot you in the face on occasion.

Didn't know this, thought it was only in the game derived from SPWW3. My (limited) experience has been that riders don't affect CAs--as in the case with a Russian sniper in Totenkopf Attacks, when he blew up my precious Tiger while the hitch-hiking infantry played spectator.

So what are the chances that riders will absorb the assault? What particular variables? I'd given up loading infantry for that purpose but your post has renewed my interest in the practice. Any useful pointers? Thanks.

[Imp]

Originally Posted by jivemi

Didn't know this, thought it was only in the game derived from SPWW3. My (limited) experience has been that riders don't affect CAs--as in the case with a Russian sniper in Totenkopf Attacks, when he blew up my precious Tiger while the hitch-hiking infantry played spectator.

So what are the chances that riders will absorb the assault? What particular variables? I'd given up loading infantry for that purpose but your post has renewed my interest in the practice. Any useful pointers? Thanks.

I would not call using riders to help protect from an assault a useful tactic.
They may save the day for the vehicle if your lucky but normally get slaughtered in the process. Even if riding in a vehicle rather than on it they have to get out to fight.

If you want to use riders to protect from assault use them proactively.
More useful in modern era as most armies have Mech formations though if you have them in your WW2 battle.

Typical use send a Mech Platoon along with your tanks to act as eyes as they see way better.
Use bounding overwatch so if you have 4 squads 2 dismount while the other 2 load & move up.
The dismounting units may also draw fire revealing positions though that's not a good way of finding out.

[Griefbringer]

I also would not count too much on tank riders to protect the tanks from assault, since a vily opponent will use small arms fire to force the tanks to button up before they get within close assault range. This will typically also result in the tank riders jumping off and running for the hills (as well as taking a couple of casualties).

Bundled up Soviet tanks packed with tank riders tend to make for juicy targets for MG units...

[Mobhack]

Tank riding is a very poor tactic to use, especially in our versions as opposed to the original SP.

I think it was the original SP that "popularised" tank riding, since they were such a useful tactic in that version of the game. I think (it is a long time ago!) that the SP1 riders were protected from HE fire, and so did not fall of if hit by shell fire and MG bursts. And they were quite good at defusing an assault, even if the vehicle (and thus the riders) was suppressed.

In ours - Tank riding is rather suicidal for the riders once fire starts coming onto the tanks (direct or indirect). It is therefore really only of use for an "administrative move" - in the rear, or behind cover of a hill, wood, etc.

Once you are out in the open, within say 1000m of where you know/suspect enemy to be, then you should have deployed them on foot as a skirmish line either ahead of or just behind the AFV.

In our version, a tank rider party that gets all its ducks in a row in terms of suppression, experience, and lucky dice rolling, while being assaulted by a smaller squad, which itself is perhaps low quality (exp, mor, damage) - might just manage to defuse the assault, take only 1-2 casualties, drop off pinned, and shoot the lesser quality squad in reply in the face. Might emphasised!. I have only seen it happen rarely, with experienced Soviets in a Long Campaign, who were veterans, and it tended to be in response to beaten-up stragglers "jumping" my tanks where I had not expected any survivors to still be around and so was still mounted-up, and drove by some half-eliminated remnant grunts who "jumped" the vehicle in an assault while it was completely unsuppressed.

Tank riders do act as a sort of "reactive armour" - but generally this reduces them to a puddle of strawberry jam spread all over the tank's outside!. So its not the "must do" thing that it was back in Ye Olde SP1 days!.