Question on tactics: Assault, assault and assault

[Mike Abberton]

I agree that units get surrounded. But they come out with their hands in the air because the units doing the surrounding are shooting at them not because they are running at them like banshees with their hair on fire. Perhaps a better way to program the assault is that all units assigned for assault shoot at once which multiplies their attack value and then the other unit get killed or dispupted or comes out with their hands up.

As I said above, I don't consider a CS assault as necessarily a manic charge on an enemy position. I look at an infantry unit's standard attack factors, even at a range of 1 hex, as long/medium distance weaponry, i.e. rifles, light machine guns, small mortars, etc. that are organic/assigned to the platoon. The AF at a range of one includes weapons effective to at least 250 m.

An infantry unit's assault factor is representative of everything they carry and includes, in addition to the items mentioned above, hand grenades, SMGs, pistols, bayonets, swords, rocks, fists, whatever.

Here all that happens is that the opponent waits for a unit to become disrupted then surrounds that unit so it cannot escape and the unit gets killed automatically because a disrupted unit's defense value cannot stand up to a undisrupted unit.

Like Erik, I certainly do not wait until after the units are disrupted to at least begin the surround process. I move units into blocking positions beforehand to pin them in place, then reduce them through fire, then assault. That all seems like standard tactics to me.

I do agree with you that assaults are too much a sure thing. Some people are much better than others, too, at determining the fine line of when an assault will succeed/fail. Because I don't want to take the time to figure out the math, I usually overcommit to the assault to get a good result more often than not. That does mean, though, that I tie up more units than are strictly necessary sometimes.

As I understand it, the original East Front system had much more variable assault results, but Talonsoft changed to the current system due to complaints over the unpredictability of assaults.