Assaults and close combat

[Narwan]

Hi Alien,

the thing to remember about close assaults is that there are three distinct and different processes involved with close assaults. The first involves the routine which sees if the unit will even try to close assault the AFV. The second routine is about whether a unit that tries to start a close assault will go through with it. The third routine sees if the close assault is succesful or not.

An example of the first routine; an infantry squad is hiding in a rough and wooded hex and it is NOT SPOTTED yet. The reaction fire range is set to 1 and the unit has no AT weapons, just the standard rifles, lmg and handgrenades. If an AFV passes by at 1 hex distance you may expect the unit to fire at it or try a close assault. Not so though; an unspotted squad which has no realistic chance of taking out the AFV will tend to do nothing. They'll stay hidden and wait for a more appropriate target. Once they've been spotted they blaze away with all they have though.

Second routine example; a squad with some light AT weapons lies in wait to ambush a passing AFV. They do have a chance to kill it so the second routine kicks in. The squad leader rallies the men and they start their move. Before they can actually attack the vehicle the effort fails; nerves break, someone makes a noise, they get spotted, tankterror takes effect, something like that results in the men in taking cover prematurely or even fleeing the hex. Most of you have probably seen this in the game: a unit is ordered to close assault but immediately gets supressed and may even flee the hex popping smoke.
That's the second routine causing a close assault failure.

If the squad carries on with the assault and actually engages the vehicle, they can still fail to destroy or immobilise the vehicle. The third routine assigns a likely chance for succes/failure based on a number of factors. Some of these factors are; was the attacker spotted or unspotted before the attack, experience/morale of the unit(s), status of target (ready, buttoned, retreating, routed, immobilised), speed of unit(s), 'angle' of attack (close assaults against the front are much less likely to succeed than attacks from the rear), previous damage sustained by unit(s), available AT weapons (or not) for attacker, thickness of armor (in relation to available AT weapons), nr of 'eyes' of defending AFV. There are probably a few more but you get the idea.

What happens with the lone sniper without grenades is that a player orders it to attack (a player order will override the first routine so the second routine kicks in) and passes the check, then the assault is carried through and passe that check too. Think of it as hitting two 1% chances in a row.


Your third question refers to melee combat if I understand you correctly. The original game code requires a unit to use one of it's fire opportunities in order to be able to do damage to the other unit. So the defender needs an chnace of opportunity fire left to do damage back. It's not very likely you'll get your own unit into the same hex as an enemy infantry unit that has OP fire shots left. Your unit will get shredded trying to enter it or if you use an apc get decimated while dismounting in the same hex. That means melee combats are almost exclusively against units who have ro return fire left; and hence no chance of doing damage back to the attacker. And even if they did, the attacker 'fires' first in the game code and the resulting suppression will 9 times out of 10 strip away whatever shots are left for the defender. So effectively that means no units fire back in melee. While I agree that is indeed too bad, it should be remembered that most 'melee' combats in ww2 on this small unit scale were one sided too. To get this close as to be able to conduct melee combat you usually had either overwhelming numbers, total surprise, or an enemy already pounded into severe suppression. Casualties were usually onesided. But not always (the pacific battles on the islands come to mind in particular) and there the game does come a bit short.
BUT, it is possible for the attacker to get casualties! This is one of the few instances where you can get casualties by friendly fire; in this case it's even inflicted on itself by a unit. When in melee a unit will still fire its available slots at the enemy and with each slot used there's an added chance of inflicting casualties on the enemy by melee. But the target hex is the same hex as where the attackers are in which means the attackers may be affected by the splash effect of their own weapons! The best way to see that is to keep an eye on the suppression level which often increases when a unit engages in melee combat; that's the splash causing suppression. In rare circumstances this splash (even from rifles or pistols) can cause a friendly casualty. I've seen it happen. I've even seen a T34 hit itself in the back of the turret when firing a HE shell at infantry in it's own hex! ;)