Tank assaults

[HMG]

How do infantry defend themself for tank assaults? Tank assault is destroying all squad ):

[Mad_Dog]

They often can't defend. If they have any sort of AT weapon it can be hazardous to the tank, they can be easily immobolized. If you are the assaulter, then keep an eye on your tanks status, because after repeated successful assaults it can be immobolized as well.

[Jeff Conner]

About the only thing you can do is try to keep your infantry in covered terrain. This causes an immobilization check for the tank. Otherwise, you are pretty much just hamburger waiting to happen.

Jeff

[Ozgur Budak]

Check whether you have any antitank weapon, if you dont get out of the clear terrain. Apart from the advantages of the covered terrain Jeff mentioned tanks cannot enter some hexes (city, marsh, industrial etc) so you will be safe there.

[Stejones82]

If you are unsure what "covered" terrain is, and I was when I first ttok up ES two months ago, look at the hex information box. This is the area of the lower screen that gives the terrain, elevation, and visibility information. "Covered" terrain is any hex that has an attribute of "C" inside of parentheses. For example, you might see:

Town (OC) 4m
Protection 12
Elevation 45m
Visibility 30h


The "(OC)" means that the terrain, in addition to being a town, is obstructed which prevents helos from landing (not a concern in ES, but others games) and is covered.

As I understand it, Covered is an attribute back designed into the game to help protect infantry from the power of vehicle assaults. How it works is: if vehicles assault units in "Covered" terrain, they have a significant risk of immobilization. This should force the player owning the vehicles to carefully weight the benefit of the assault, and helps the ground-pounder live to fight another day (turn?).

Hope this helps!

Steve

PS - it is Lent which makes me incredibly busy, but I might could squeeze in a smallish ES game if you don't mind the chance of a day or three passing between turns.

[HMG]

Thank you all for your tips. I created some scenarios for testing tank assaults. as you say, covered terrain is causes an immobilization for the tanks

@Stejones82

Thank you but I want to finish my first game before take another

[TheBigRedOne]

The challenge of the SB game engine is that there are high prices to pay under certain circumstances. Tanks can be deployed as battering rams against infantry in the open, and they will absolutely devastate the ground pounders. Armor running around the screen crushing infantry with no corresponding infantry support is a touch on the gamey side, in my book. A combined infantry/armor assault, not as much.

Best defense is to have an AT weapon hidden from view and hit the armor as it tries to take out your infantry. Even better, never leave your infantry in the open at the end of a turn if you suspect armor is around. Not always feasible, I understand, but I always try to get my guys some cover at the end of each turn if at all possible...

[Dog Soldier]

Armor stacked with an infantry unit is much better than a tank alone to overrun infantry in the open. I would think the tank/infantry mutual support would negate the target unit's AT capabilities better than a tank alone. However, beyond the extra assault power I am not seeing any evidence this is taken into account by the game engine. Anybody know for sure?

Pretty good way though of dealing with infantry in trenches or bunkers is the combined armor and infantry assault, I have found. For both the armor provides the hitting power against the fortified position. Trenches can be overrun with a stack of an infantry and tank unit if the trench is in open ground. Bunkers need to be cracked first by the armor AP rounds then the infantry can rout out the dazed defenders. I found trying to set up several tanks so they can pop at the bunker all in one turn once the infantry are close enough for the assault works best. Do not want to hang around with the tanks if an AT weapon defensive fires. One good turn in most scenarios will do the trick.

WW and SCW really make the tactic of infantry assault with tanks show what a terror tanks were in the early years to infantry. There just was not a lot of AT weapons.

Dog Soldier