AAR: Modern War "The First Battle"

[Rabbit]

Nice work! Seems like you had a little bit of Lady Luck on your side with those two successful assaults! Text book way of assaulting that fortified position. Excellent write-up. Questions: What rounds did you use with the M-1 and the SMAW?

I switched both to the vehicle only rounds. That is, I switched the SMAW to "83 HEAA (Vehicle Only)" rounds and the M-1 to "120mm AT/TK (Vehicle Only)" rounds.

Quoting the user guide, "Certain modern weapons have a high degree of specialization as anti-tank weapons, but are not as effective against infantry targets. These weapons are flagged as having an increased lethality against vehicles and targets in Bunkers and Pillboxes. When used against such targets, the lethality of the weapon is doubled. This feature is indicated by an ampersand (&) after the Fire value."

I honestly don't re-read the manual often enough. I recently made a post with the same text above - and while I remembered those weapons were effective against infantry in bunkers, I had already forgotten that the lethality would be doubled.

This means the M-1's vehicle only rounds would still have a penetration factor of 250, but the lethality would be doubled from 10 to 20 (which still isn't all that high).

However, it also means the SMAW's vehicle only rounds would have a penetration factor of 125, but their lethality would be doubled from 75 to 150 (which still is extremely high).

Also remember that the fire value is doubled if you a firing from an adjacent hex, so you can double those lethality values again (e.g., I believe the SMAWs would have a lethality of 300) if you can fire those weapons from one hex away.

This seemed to play out for me as the M-1's cannon occasionally would disrupt the Iraqis or get a kill, but its low lethality value meant it rarely caused much impact. On the other hand, the SMAWs were my primary means of inflicting damage upon the Iraqis. Apart than the SMAWs, I relied heavily on assaults to cause damage since none of my other weapons could penetrate the bunkers.