Stratagies of War - Economy of Force

[JasonC]

Shooting and then disengaging is useful if you permanently kill something, which in CM generally means against a lone enemy vehicle that stays dead once hit. Against infantry, it can matter for delay or misdirection, at best. Otherwise you just spend ammo and he rallies and he's ahead on the deal. If you engage infantry, you want to finish it, not tickle them. The rally power of infantry is its greatest strength and can absorb nearly endless amounts of ammo without any serious or lasting lost, if only the bits of firing at spread out enough, over time and units.

And yes I can tell you are quoting a precept when you say fight many to one and then do it over and over. I can tell you aren't reporting what works in CM because it doesn't. Infantry has maybe 2 such fights in sequence before it is ammo blown, even if it took no hits itself, which typically doesn't happen. The one thing infantry is good at lopsidedly (besides sucking up enemy ammo) is wading it to point blank against men already cowering, to finish them off permanently before they can recover. But even that they can pull off only a couple of times before their ammo counters run down to zero. Your checkers piece doesn't have an ammo counter, does it?

And no, you can't make anybody make boneheaded mistakes by telling yourself you are in charge and have "initiative". You can initiative your tanks right into his kill sack or initiative your infantry right across the clever dead ground route he set as a trap before you hit "go", that's about it. He can screw up if he wants to, but you can't make him. And professionalism is all about avoiding the clearly avoidable mistakes that lopsided results almost always turn on.

Smart attrition fighting is not a brilliancy razzle dazzle in which you can ensure you are better than an opponent. It is a competency test, and if you pass and he passes, the fight will turn on other matters. If either of you fails and the other doesn't and exploits the difference competently, that's it, game over, nothing else will matter.