Mod Summary
The primary objective of Reb's FRAGO is to accurately represent the weapons and equipment of WARNO without compromising their quantifiable capabilities for balance. Every weapon statistic, from accuracy, to unit speed, dispersion, effective range, damage, suppression, reload speed, aim time, cyclic rate of fire and area affect radius are all copied or calculated from real life data to maintain full consistency. Balance is done through curves in calculation of interpretive factors, (ie, RNG accuracy, suppression) and economy changes.
RebsFRAGO attempts to model weapons and assets accurately so that that real world experience and strategy can be directly translatable to the game. As the mod creator for this and other "realism" mods for many other games, I believe that "realism" doesn't prevent balance but is actually the best basis for it when it is applied with consistency. Consistency is accomplished by taking real life data, and, if necessary, applying calculations to them in order to appropriately translate or scale them to a game. If there is an "imbalance" with a particular item or unit, then I will check its attributes for consistency with my calculation, and if it is correct and persists as an issue, then I will create a new calculation and reapply them consistently across the board for all items of the same type. No value is entered arbitrarily. Fine tunes to balance are then adjusted through the game's economy, such as the command point price of units.
This methodology to mod creation can be extremely time consuming and takes much more effort than many game developers actually spend themselves on the modified items. However, it saves time on the back-end from an endless loop of knee-jerk "balance" tunes, and players get a quality product that produces consistent result from their knowledge of the game's real life counterparts. Real life experience becomes translatable, and makes the game easier for more people to master.
The second objective of this mod is to facilitate the slower, more tactical style of game-play for WARNO with the new realistic weapon values. Skirmish parameters are changed to allow longer games (1-3 hours), so that players can develop front-lines, cause attrition victories, use small unit tactics, and coordinate grand combined arms attacks.
Mod Changes
Weapons
- Weapon maximum ranges based on real weapon maximum effective range, including infantry antitank and radar guided missiles. Range is still scaled by vanilla, this is not something I have been interested in changing in order to maintain viability of all units and diversify strategies on maps,
- All ballistic weapon damage is based on real projectile size.
- Explosive weapon damage is based on real warhead/blast charge size.
- Ball, SABOT, & APFDS no longer have area of affect radii and must hit the target to kill.
- HEAT/HESH projectiles have halved blast area of affects in composition to equivalent size HE projectiles.
- Explosive area of effect is based on warhead/blast charge size, with the damage at the outer radius of the area of affect scaled to 1% to model shrapnel.
- Area of affect distances are in general around half vanilla size. Armored vehicles no longer get blown up by 155mm shells 50+ meters away.
- Suppression radius is based on area of affect.
- Suppression damage based on weapon damage with a curve.
- Weapon dispersion is based on effective range, two direct fire weapons will have the same dispersion radius at each of their respective maximum effective ranges.
- Reload times calculated by weapon type and ammunition size. Auto-loaders can reload 25% faster than a manually operated gun of equivalent size. Auto-loaders take extra time to reload their salvo when the auto-loader is depleted.
- All weapons have their correct cyclic rates of fire.
- RNG accuracy calculated with cyclic rate of fire and weapon size. Higher rate of fire weapons of the same type and caliber have a lower accuracy per shot, but better damage efficiency due to their rate of fire.
- Limit on successive RNG hits removed.
- ATGMs can be fired relatively rapidly in a salvo, but have long reload times.
- Disposable AT rockets take longer to aim than their reloadable counterparts due to the necessity for the rockets to be prepped, but can be fired in a rapid salvo.
- Moving accuracy unstabilized is about half of static accuracy. This is to both cushion micro and account for fire and manuever, as well as help offset the tremendous defensive bias this game has.
- Units have appropriate combat loads of ammunition.
Detection
- All optics levels are graduated evenly.
- Thermal optics are modelled by an additional optics level.
- Time to identify target increased to better model the fog of war.
- Stealth levels are graduated evenly on an exponent, infantry can get within 200m of a tank without being detected.
- Radar units have correct maximum detection ranges.
Terrain
- Light forest and all buildings block sight.
- All terrain types modify all weapon damages.
- All terrain types modify all units speeds.
Infantry
- All infantry and crew served weapons movement speed reduced to a realistic speed.
- Infantry hitpoints increased to two per soldier. This is to appropriately model the ability of infantry to utilize micro-terrain cover.
- Concealment level scaled by unit size.
- Speed scaled by max unit size.
Vehicles
- All vehicles have correct speeds/road speeds.
- Aircraft have correct low altitude speeds.
- Wheeled vehicles perform worse off-road relative to tracked vehicles by a consistent factor.
- All vehicles have correct fuel tank capacity and fuel consumption rates based on real consumption rates.
- Hitpoints all normalized to 10 points regardless of vehicle size. The reasoning behind this is to provide better consistency with the game's armor penetration indexing system. All things considered, a vehicle is a hollow box that only needs to be penetrated to be destroyed regardless of its size or weight. Vehicle survivablity is solely based on its armor and armor type.
- ECM modifiers increased by 50% to compromise with the new realistic radar missile ranges.
- Logistics vehicles carry real life weight in supply.
- CAS air assets cost around twice as much command points due to their sheer power.
- Fixed wing concealment is calculated with a curve based on radar cross section. The F117 is very difficult to detect.
Artillery
- Indirect fire units require a 30 second period for aim time.
- Smoke barrages shoot longer salvos for better obscuration sustainment.
- Mortars shoot much more rapidly than howitzers, but have lower range and accuracy.
- Rocket launchers have correct cyclic rates of fire, but take a long time to reload.
- Rocket artillery has half the accuracy of howitzers.
AI
- AI has higher resource multipliers per difficulty level and are evenly graduated.
- AI artillery will most greatly prioritize counter-battery fire and establishing artillery superiority.
- AI has a longer duration memory of player assets and positions.
Other Changes
- Stun time reduced to 3 seconds.
- Veterancy changed from additive to multiplier modifiers to correspond appropriately with the new weapon accuracy values.
- Veterancy and cohesion have a higher range of effects, including optical strength.
- Units per card doubled.
- Higher veterancy levels reduce unit availability only by 25% each level, increasing viability of veterans.
- FOBs have 100000 supply for longer skirmishes.
- Higher max match time options.
- Higher victory point threshold options.
- Lower command point income options.
Units
Below I will outline the utilities of various kinds of units as they are currently modeled in the mod.
Infantry/Crew Served Weapons
Infantry and crew served weapons are the bread and butter of your forces. You cannot expect to win a game without them. The role of infantry is to find and hold key terrain, defend strong positions, screen vehicles in an attack, scout and detect enemy positions, and to close with and destroy enemy positions. While infantry have a very low movement speed, and their antipersonnel weapons have a very low time to kill at range, they are vital due to their ability to be concealed and staying power when in cover.
Armor
With the relatively slow speed and killing power of infantry, armor is vital for maintaining velocity in an assault. Without armor, breakthroughs will have less penetration power, and will generally fizzle out after just a couple hundred meters gained. However, vehicles have a very difficult time traversing woods and hills, and rarely see enemy units before being seen themselves. Armor must be screened by infantry and only brought to bear when anti-armor threats are already effectively suppressed or neutralized.
Do not discount the power and ability of cheap armor. The only tactical difference between a cheap tank and an expensive tank is the expensive tank's ability to take on other tanks.
Artillery
Artillery is still the queen of battle but its main value is in suppression. Artillery has higher damage but a lower are of effect radius than vanilla, meaning that it must hit a target directly to ensure complete destruction. Additionally, the the dispersion of the artillery is larger, which takes more time and ammunition on average in order to produce a hit.
Different types of artillery also specialize in various roles and tasks. Howitzers are the best for counterbattery and point targets, rockets are good for punishing blobs and area targets, and mortars are the best for area suppression and smoke.
Recon
The role of recon feels largely unchanged from vanilla, but it becomes more of an emphasis in this mod due to the exponential concealment system. Good recon is necessary in order to multiply destruction of enemy assets by air and artillery. Recon with air and ground radar also provide bonuses to both spotting range and optics levels.
Air/Antiair
Similar to artillery, air is an alternative capability of high casualty producing assets. However, CAS assets are expensive and require a nearly uncontested airspace in which to operate.
The biggest change in this mod is not the range of the missiles, but the range of radar and concealment. WARNO does not distinguish between radar and line of sight as both require a direct line of sight of the target in order to reveal it. For this reason, the concealment factor of aircraft is made relative to their real life radar cross sections. Additionally, the max sight range of fixed wing aircraft is also relative to their radar range, and the longer the range, the higher the optics levels. Efficient detection of aircraft is highly contingent on players compounding radar assets.
Macro Strategies
At the beginning of each game, you will have to devise a macro strategy in order to win. A macro strategy is one that is executed over the course of the game that directly contributes to victory. What you choose as a macro strategy will be based on the assets you have access to, terrain and objectives, and likely enemy composition.
Army general campaigns obviously don't give you a wide latitude of choices in terms of your army composition, so you will have to determine the strength of your deck and how you use them. Skirmishes on the other hand do give you that freedom, and different decks are stronger in different areas. While this mod adds viability to all units that are largely ignored in vanilla (ie., ATGM cars), do refrain from the temptation of focusing on "one-size-fits-all" decks. You will need a variety of assets, but you will have to try to achieve dominance in a specific area.
Common strategies for dominance are:
- Fire/Artillery Superiority
- Air Superiority
- Forward/Air deployment
- Recon/Intelligence
The list of strategies is theoretically limitless, not all are created equal. Having either artillery or air superiority is generally essential for victory, as it is in real life. While you can win without one, its difficult to win without both. Because of this, in smaller 1v1 or 2v2 matches, you will likely have to emphasize one of these two strategies. Larger games can give you more options, and the more players, the more specialized roles they can take on with coordination with each other.
While it may be possible to win using multiple strategies, (i.e., air superiority and behind lines infiltration), spending resources on multiple high-cost strategies will possibly cost you superiority in all of them. It is very difficult, for example, for a single player to exercise both complete, unchallengeable air and artillery superiority.
Strategies - Fire Superiority
Fire superiority is probably the easiest strategy for new or inexperienced game players, given the "fire and forget" nature of artillery. Artillery superiority players will try to achieve dominance through overwhelming indirect fire from howitzers, rockets and mortars.
There are two phases to this strategy. The first is gaining fire superiority. You cannot rely on destroying the enemy in objectives and key terrain with indirect fire if first your artillery is themselves to suppressed to fire. Fire superiority depends on a robust counterbattery element. Players that want to do fire superiority must build decks that accommodate them. These decks will emphasize the use of long range howitzers. In this mod, all shot dispersion of every weapon is consistent and directly correlated to maximum firing range (i.e., a mortar with a range of 5 km is going to have the same dispersion at 5km that a howitzer with a range of 30 km has at 30 km). Therefore, range is the primary stat to look at. You will want to use artillery that shoots the furthest and most accurately.
Towed howitzer artillery is generally preferable when it is available because it is cheaper and more of it can be deployed. Towed artillery should be dispersed in woods as far back from enemy batteries as possible. While this makes it more difficult to hit enemy batteries, it also makes it more difficult for them to hit your batteries. Your primary goal is suppression of their batteries, keeping them moving so that they cannot physically shoot back or shoot back accurately. Since towed howitzers cannot move quickly, they are better off taking advantage of the cover and concealment of woods. However, some of the best counterbattery guns for a deck may be self propelled (ie., the 152mm S25 Giatsint or the 175mm M107). Keep these assets in the open behind cover so that they have the freedom to displace when being counterbatteried.
Rocket artillery can make for decent counterbattery, and can generally kill what they shoot at, but they will not have the effective rate of fire to keep up against another dedicated fire superiority player who uses towed artillery.
Counterbattery artillery should be deployed first before all other indirect fire units and in order of their range. The longest range howitzers should be deployed first.
Achieving fire superiority is the conditions set for second stage of the strategy can begin which is the suppression and destruction of enemy frontline assets. At this point, cheaper, lower caliber, lower range, more rapid firing howitzers, mortars, and rockets should be deployed. Operating safely under the umbrella of the larger counterbattery howitzers, they can be deployed close to the frontlines, and deliver rapid and accurate fire on enemy positions.
While these assets are being deployed, sighting and contact should be made with the enemy as much as possible, even in some cases where your ground forces may be outnumbered. The more enemy targets gives the artillery more opportunity to shoot, and bolsters their efficiency. With an ability to deliver high casualty producing effects to any part of the battlefield, offensives can be safely made, and the artillery can cover any shortages of local fire inferiority that ground troops may encounter. With enough time, fire superiority is a sure way to win the game.
If fire superiority cannot be achieved, then the player should plan to use self-propelled artillery pieces. Most SPG artillery doesn't have a long enough range, accuracy, and power to pose a serious counterbattery threat, but moving and shooting with a couple of SPG's can occupy the time, ammo and attention of the enemy artillery from your frontlines to your guns, allowing you to shift resources into another strategy and leading them to over-invest in their indirect fire assets.
Weaknesses
Fire superiority does have several weaknesses. Time is probably the biggest factor. It takes time to develop a robust artillery cover that accomplishes both of the aforementioned tasks. Less resources on the frontline mean that it is difficult to mount an offensive early game, and units in defense will likely be widely dispersed and susceptible to a concentrated push. Terrain is also a large consideration. Dense terrain, such as urban, hilly, and wooded environments will keep unit velocity slow and make them susceptible to artillery suppression, even if the cover does mitigate the effects of impacts. Defensively, artillery helps fulfill the role of QRF (quick reaction forces) since shells will be able to get on target before ground relief arrives in such rough terrain. Open terrain, while making the impact affects of artillery more effective, tends to favor faster, more armored units and it can be difficult to bring artillery to bear on a properly executed, fast-moving enemy offensive.
Strategies - Air Superiority
Air superiority is the second big strategy that competes with artillery superiority for control of the battlefield. Unlike artillery superiority, accomplishing air superiority is highly contingent on a variety of assets: Air superiority fighters, SEAD, radar SAM batteries, and longer range IR SAM batteries.
Attempting to accomplish air superiority is done at the beginning of the game, especially before ground anti-air can be moved to fill the center of the battlefield. An air superiority player will have to survey the map for key terrain (hills, specifically) that would be strategic for the deployment of anti air batteries. Anti-air batteries should be a mix of both radar and IR. Manpads are not preferable for IR because they have a short range and low explosive content, and it is difficult for them to decisively engage fast-moving fixed-wing aircraft. Manpads should be reserved for countering helicopters, which fly low to the ground and may be difficult for bigger radar batteries to sight and shoot.
Additionally, the air superiority player should deploy air superiority fighters and SEAD early on, but not too much that it sinks their economy. Success in air superiority is contingent on maintaining supremacy with the fewest number of assets possible. The purpose of this early air deployment is to provide an immediate counter to any other aircraft (particularly those wily air assault infantry and recon elements), a show of force against enemy aircraft, and most importantly, as aerial radars (optics) to detect those air threats. Like in fire superiority doctrine, the first air superiority fighters that are deployed first should be the best and longest range. They should be used conservatively (do no fly them within at least 5 km of enemy lines) and maintain a constant rotation to ensure full-map air radar and air-to-air missile coverage.
SEAD deployment is fairly simple, SEAD should be deployed early on and, if possible, kept in a constant rotation well behind your lines (~15 km). Doing so will limit the active enemy anti-air threat to IR, and therefore limit the range that they can accurately engage from.
After air dominance is achieved, CAS can be deployed for the destruction of enemy assets. As with fire superiority, constant sight and contact with the enemy must be achieved in order to generate targets of opportunity. In an uncontested air space, and a full roster of CAS assets deployed, precision munitions from CAS can reduce enemy strength much faster than artillery.
Air superiority does have several weaknesses. No amount of fixed wing air dominance will be able to control the amount of SAM assets that are deployed or where they put them. SEAD may force enemy to turn off their radars but those threats can still be reactivated at inopportune times. Additionally, a surplus of radar anti-air batteries in a layered defense can still overcome a single SEAD plane. The goal of the side that cannot accomplish air superiority will be to try to turn the map into a no-fly zone as much as possible.
Strategies - Forward Deployment
Forward deployment/air assault is a common strategy that is used in vanilla. The purpose of this strategy is to seize the center of the map first, and to put the opposing side on the back foot, and force them to be defensive. While the mod does reduce forward deployment distances to balance them with the lower (realistic) movement speeds of the units, it does not reduce this strategy's viability. Additionally, most transport helicopter speeds are faster (realistic) than vanilla, and air assault can be extremely decisive for grabbing lots of ground fast.
Players that emphasize forward deployment should be very careful about the speeds of the transports that units are deployed in. Air is faster than ground, and motorized is faster than mechanized. Since early armor is not an option, strong, self-sustaining infantry and fast moving logistics vehicles are necessary.
Controlling key terrain and objectives is this central to this strategy. Key terrain may include but aren't limited to hills, woods, towns, and probably most importantly, roads. Control of the roads controls the enemy's ability to advance or reinforce rapidly, and the further forward you can control the roads, the earlier the enemy will have to disperse from them and clear around them, which burns alot of their time.
Weaknesses
While this strategy can be decisive very early own, and could net some great success with surprise ambushes, it also has several weaknesses. The further forward your troops, the longer it takes for them to be reinforced and resupplied. Additionally, airborne decks lack a FOB, which may cripple long-term sustainment especially in a 1v1.
Strategies - Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance can be broken down into three main tasks and roles:
Screening
Screening is probably the primary objective of reconnaissance units. As stated before, reconnaissance is even more important in the mod with the exponential optics values. Smaller infantry units are harder to detect than larger infantry units, while infantry units and crew served weapons in general are harder to detect than tanks. Screening elements are placed in positions of cover or in advance of key terrain in order to spot and engage the enemy before the enemy can find and decisively engage your regular combat units or force concentrations. Screening elements should be small, fast and highly concealable. While engaging a screening element may result in its destruction, its tactical value is still extremely high because it allows you time to concentrate forces and mass casualty producing weapons against their advance.
Spotting
Spotting is the secondary task of reconnaissance units. Complete air and artillery superiority only matters only if targets can be sighted and engaged without equivalent friendly losses. Armored pushes cannot succeed against a properly emplaced defense-in-depth without target first being actively spotted for their overwhelming firepower to engage. Sighting enemy artillery unit before they fire allows them to be decisively engaged by counter-battery fire before they can displace.
Infiltration/Ambush
Infiltration is the third and most active task of reconnaissance. Infiltrators may be used for the exclusive purpose of spotting important enemy assets, or they can be used for setting up ambushes on enemy soft targets. Infiltrators can seriously hamper an enemy's ability to reinforce and resupply, and most importantly give them a perception that an area is contested or compromised, which may consume lost of their time an resources in order to clear. Scout snipers, obviously, are some of the best infiltration units, and are virtually undetectable while static.
Weaknesses
Reconnaissance can mean all the difference between an attritional stalemate and decisive destruction of enemy forces - however it must be properly balanced with combat arms and supporting elements. Reconnaissance need to be placed and routed through cover and concealment, and most have good lines of sight in order to be effective, which requires a high amount of micro-management by the player. For this reason, especially for "casual" or "intermediate" WARNO players, sophisticated offensive infiltration tactics should be relegated to a coordinated team effort, that can take advantage of supporting fires.
Skirmish Game Settings
The settings of a skirmish is something else you want to take into account when you build a deck and plan a macro strategy. Your deck composition, particularly the kinds of units you have as veterans, may very will change based on the length of time played, as well as the size of the map.
The longer the game, the more that attrition matters. Hypothetically in an indefinite game, one side will run out of units before the other. In a short game, attrition is not much of a danger, the victory usually goes to the one who "gets there first with the most" and holds the center of the map.
Command point income and starting command points is also a factor. It is the pace of your game. Less income means that units mean more, which makes battles more decisive, while more income will likely make battles more grindy and attritional, with less emphasis on tactics and more on how fast you can point and click. Having more units on the map can make things difficult for newer players to the game, who may not be very experienced with micromanagement. While the combat in this mod is very slow paced, it does require a higher level of micromanagement than vanilla. I personally prefer to be beaten by someone who executed a better strategy than me rather than someone who just clicked faster than me, so I tend to favor slower, more decisive battles.
For Conquest game modes, I do recommend using a Command & Control option. Command and Control reduces the amount of Command point income by the number of units deployed by a particular side. The higher the Command and Control percentage, the more the income is reduced per unit. This is useful to prevent matches from being totally-one sided if one side starts off badly; the unit deficit will grant them extra command point income until those units become deployed.
Map size is also a factor. If you play a 20v20 map with 2 players, it will take each player alot of time and resources in order to fill the map sufficiently enough to feel comfortable pushing each other. In such a scenario, you may want to start the match with a higher starting income.
If you are a multiplayer host, it is recommended you select options that make game fun for the players and allow for sustained combat. The game is not interesting if one side Operation Desert Storms the other and the losing team surrenders in less time than it took for the match to be organized and started.
- Use appropriate size maps
- Use some level of Command and Control
- Try to balance team members by skill level or favorite strategy
- Start with enough but not an overwhelming amount of command points
- Let a game last 1-2 hours, but not forever because most people have other life commitments or lose interest.
These are settings that I recommend for a 3v3 Conquest game, for example:
- 3000 starting Command Points (1500 for inexperienced players)
- 1x Command Point Income
- 2% Command and Control (every unit deployed by a player reduces their income by 2%)
- 90 minute time limit
- 9000 point limit
Deployment
After determining a strategy and building a deck, the third crucial step to you game is your deployment. Deployment may be restricted given the parameters of the game, but there are some general principles that can apply to everything.
Some tips for deployment:
- Place all units on roads at the beginning of the match. The more time a unit takes to get to a road, the more ground it will cost you.
- Favor units that have a forward deployment.
- Favor heliborne or motorized units early game. The speed of the transport is the biggest factor in the race for the middle of the map.
- Determine the enemy's MLCOA and MDCOA and plan accordingly.
- Deploy a healthy mix of assets: recon to screen, tanks and gunships as a mobile reserve, your biggest artillery battery, air superiority, antitank assets, anti-air assets, etc. You will want to put a hefty weight into the asset that you intend to dominate with early game, but do not compromise your position by only investing in it.
- Survey the map for key terrain. Just because something may not be painted as an objective by the game mode, doesn't mean that it is not crucial to hold. Key terrain usually is some kind of building or town, woods surrounded by open field, a road, a high building, or hill.
- Pre-order units to move fast, and unload before match starts, if possible.
Tactics - Holding An Objective
There are two main thoughts when holding an objective - static and mobile defense. A common term associated with static defense is defense in depth.
Defense begins with an assessment of what is called in the American military the MLCOA and the MDCOA - the enemy's Most Likely Course of Action and their Most Dangerous Course of Action. Sometimes both of these may be the same, but most often they are different and can be distinguished from each other. For example, you are presented with a long, wide forest parallel to a road. Given the obvious speed advantages of the road, it is most likely that the enemy will advance along it. However, the most dangerous thing they can do is to advance through the woods, under cover and concealment. The first and primary defenses placed should be on the MLCOA, and then if resources permit, the MDCOA.
Static Defense
Static defense, or defense in depth is traditionally associated with things like trenches and bunkers, spanning across entire frontlines, like the Maginot line or more contemporarily along the Dneiper river in Ukraine. Although the game lacks trenches and bunker, a static defense plan can be utilized, especially with tree or urban cover and concealment.
The philosophy behind static defense or defense-in-depth is to cause a disproportionate attrition to the enemy by making them trade lives for ground. High casualty producing weapons, typically dismounted and crew served, are placed in strategic places covering key terrain and roads from positions of good cover and concealment. These weapons are intended to cause massive casualties on initial contact and to slow the enemy's advance once their elements are suppressed. A large emphasis is placed on having a diverse array of assets to counter any threat, (antipersonnel, anti tank, anti-air) and that these assets, if possible, are placed with cross coverage to each other. Cross coverage is where the lines of fire of two different weapons from two different places converge, so that both can shoot at the same target. Cross coverage allows for (1) redundancy, the area controlled is not compromised by the loss of one asset, and (2) to ensure that the target can be engaged from multiple direction, so that the advantage of armor, formation or directional cover is negated.
Static defense, when properly implemented, can be very strong and difficult to defeat especially for an inexperienced player, novice tactician, or AI, and can incur high amounts of casualties on them.
Weaknesses
The weakness to static defense is that it can consume a large number of low-mobility assets that may be never utilized, and when the transition to an offense is needed, then time will be needed for new force concentration. Similarly, static defense lacks flexibility, if a breach is made in the line, its difficult to shift assets from the line to counter, ground must be given up.
Mobile Defense
Mobile defense is an alternative to static defense that relies upon mobile reserves in order to counter a threat. A screen of cheap reconnaissance is thrown up in concealment in strategic areas, and when an enemy threat is encountered, a mobile reserve is moved to it to counter. Having the advantage of the enemy units already being sighted and engaged, the mobile reserve can ensure that it can counter them with overwhelming firepower while risking the minimum number of assets necessary.
Mobile reserves can consist of armor and mechanized infantry but also can include aircraft. Helicopters, with massive arsenals of cannons, ATGMs and HEAT rockets, can make for great mobile reserves, quickly able to move to an engage a large variety of targets.
Mobile defense allows for much greater tactical flexibility than static defense. It is cheaper to use than static defense, allowing the player to better shift into gaining dominance in a macro strategy, such as air or artillery superiority. Additionally, a large reserve of armor and mechanized infantry can be easily transitioned to an attack force and able to exploit enemy weaknesses with having to spend extra time and resources for a buildup.
Terrain Considerations
Terrain can be an issue for both static and mobile defense. A high density battlefield with lots of wood, towns, and hills requires static defense to have a higher density of assets, and can bog the player down with the cost of deploying them so that he cannot organize a coherent offense. It also creates issues for a mobile defense, which may take a longer time to deploy against an enemy threat. Even air assets still have issues with ground cover, which forces them to get closer to the enemy in order to get direct line of fire to engage, and can put them at a greater risk of being sot down by small arms, antitank rockets, and MANPADs.
Tactics - Seizing An Objective
Taking an objective can either be the most satisfying or the most difficult task to accomplish. Alot of players who play this mod initially can come off with the impression that this mod furthers the defensive bias of the game. I would argue against that. That impression comes from a place of either inexperience or ignorance. When I observe the attacks that fail, including my own, there is always one or multiple discrepancies: a lack of strategic planning or failure to accomplish a macro strategy, a failure of reconnaissance and local fire superiority, and no attempt made to gain isolation or control key terrain around an objective.
There are five components to an attack. The first is force concentration and local fire superiority. Most players, even the most novice generally have a fundamental understanding of this. The more assets that are concentrated in one place, the more firepower that can be delivered to a single target, and the faster it is suppressed and destroyed. Forces should be concentrated at a staging area in concealment, and screened by smaller elements, so that it cannot be detected and destroyed preemptively by mass casualty producing assets. Please refrain from the temptation to "blob", otherwise you will be in for a rude awakening from a competant player.
The second component to an attack is reconnaissance. You should have some familiarity of what enemy units are there. You may be surprised by a lack of their presence, or a poor placement of their assets. There is no sense in spending half the game preparing for an attack when there is nothing there to fight. Reconnaissance is continuous, and during the attack it allows you to spot concealed enemy units so that local fire superiority can be safely shifted to them.
The third component to an attack is isolation. Isolation is, as much as reasonably possible, gaining visibility and fields of fire on all routes going into and objective. Ideally, the objective should be surrounded, but having control of two directions around it is generally all that is necessary. The enemy should not be able to quickly reinforce the objective without being decisively engaged. A failure to establish isolation before an attack can turn it to an attritional grind, and can seriously impair or even thwart the attack.
The fourth component to an attack is obscuration. Attacking forces should close via cover and concealment as far as they can, and be screened by smaller recon and infantry elements that are highly concealable. Smoke employment is optional, but can be highly valuable. Smoke not only can but dropped on or just in front of enemy elements to block them from engaging, but dropped in such a way to create a funnel in which your units can always have local fire superiority.
The fifth component to an attack is sustainment and exploitation. Sustainment consists both the velocity of the attacking force, as well as their supply. Exploitation is the ability to continue the attack beyond the initial objective. There must be a constant movement forward while maintaining local fire superiority. Resupply should be on the staging ground before the advent of the attack, and kept close to the frontline, so that units can quickly resupply without giving up their positions. Ground resupply vehicles are advised for this task, since helicopters run the risk of being seen and shot down so close to the frontline. If the attack is allowed to stall, bad things happen. At the very least, the enemy will have more time to trickle units into their defense or your isolation elements, and make you attrition more to take the objective. If the enemy has artillery superiority, then a stalled attack may be suppressed or destroyed by those fires. They may have time to set up a second line of defense and fall back to it, saving most of their forces. Worst, the enemy may have time to organize a cohesive counterattack, and anticipating most of your own reserves being depleted, counterattack.
Some some attacks can be successful without some of these components, but this can be more attributed to luck than anything else. If you have satisfied all five of these conditions for an attack, you will be successful. Often these kinds of attacks will require coordination with other players, so I will give them individual tasks to accomplish that fulfill each of these conditions:
- "Use an ATGM, occupy the woods to the west of Hotel and isolate the MSR" (Main Supply Route)
- "Inform me when all your counterbattery howitzers are deployed and enemy counterbattery is effectively suppressed."
- "I am deploying smoke obscuration to the west and east of Hotel. Impacts are conditions set for your troops to occupy the objective"
-"My assault on Hotel needs sustainment, commit your reserves and relieve my infantry.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3310752520
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