Shoot & Scoot & Pet Hates

[Gordons HQ]

Hi All,
Seeing as there is a thread going about armour facing effects, I thought I would throw my pet hate into the arena, Shoot & Scoot.
Although I realise this can be a valid tactic in some cases, there seems to be nothing else now. Everytime I play someone every tank is shooting and scooting, I mean come on, we all know the war wasn't fought like this. This is purely in my opinion a gamey tactic that everyone has to adopt, because if you don't the other guy will and you'll lose.
It's the win at all costs bend the rules a bit mentality, I mean was the game meant to be played this way. I think not, does the AI ever use such tactics and the answer is NO. Does the AI play the game the way it's meant to be played, as a war, I think so.
To me it just looks a big joke when I see all these tanks coming out having a shot and then vanishing. Talk about a ghost army it's utterley unrealistic.
The only time you get a shot at one is when a tank comes out of hiding and accidentally uses up all it's movement points after firing.lol
This and other what I would call gamey things is one reason I hardly ever play CS anymore and prefer much more realistic war games.
Another pet hate is disrupt and surround then overrun. It's just too easy and too clinical. Units are automatically lost in cases like this, not so in real life, you still have to finish them off.
There I've done it, I've set the cat amongst the pidgeons now.
Cheers,
Gordon

[Hawk Kriegsman]

[McIvan]

The surround, disrupt and capture is just too easy, way too easy, that's my problem with it. You can annihilate screeds and screeds of enemy. It shouldn't be an automatic retreat result for disrupted troops.

I don't have any problem with scoot and shoot in contrast....standard military tactics. I know it doesn't give much of a chance to shoot back, unless you're using op fire and it's a brave man that does, that's the major fault, but there are perfectly good counters to it. All that hiding reduces the number of spotters so the attacker can end up hiding just as well.

[Mike Abberton]

While I shudder to use "realistic" in any discussion of a wargame ;), I think there is a difference in realistic-to-gamey spectrum between the 1-hex shoot & scoot and the multi-hex shoot & scoot.

1-hex S&S - In this a unit moves to a hex with LOS to the target, fires 1 or more times, then moves one hex back the way it came out of LOS. Because of the LOS limitations of a hex-based game, this tactic to me is a decent representation of a unit, say a TD platoon, moving up to a ridge, peeking over to take a shot and moving back behind the ridge before the enemy can fire back. That was standard tactics for many nations/armies.

multihex S&S - This is when a fast unit dashes across multiple hexes in full LOS to the enemy (often to take advantage of armor facing), fires, then retreats multiple hexes again (all in LOS to the enemy) to get back out of LOS before the end of turn. It's a little harder to visualize a real-life analog to this situation on the battlefield. I'm not saying there aren't isolated cases of similar things happening, and I've probably read about a couple of them myself, but it's a little too Hollywood for me to consider a "tactic", i.e. the bold hero maneuvers his tank gallantly out into the field of fire, incredibly dodging incoming fire, to boldy kill the enemy's command tank, then ducking back into cover at the last possible moment.........every six minutes. Oh, and all his buddies in the company do it too.

[Digger]

Shoot and Scoot - I agree is a perfectly reasonable use of armour..roll out have a peek take a shot and bail hiding behind poor infantry who get the job of copping retalitory fire next turn. These are the guys I feel sorry for the footsloggers who have to put their bodies on the line just to protect the armour.

Surround and Assault - I agree that the instant death of sometimes up to 20 SP of troops in a hex is often brutal and somewhat unrealistic considering the timeframe involved, but this often happens as a result of poor play. Despite the fact that the game engine allows it, this can be countered by good flank security, not overstacking and OP fire selection. Sometimes yes It cannot be avoided and it is often those big bags of prisoners that really hurt. Try turning OP fire off for one or two units in a hex so they are still present when the enemy thinks they have all the units in the hex disrupted, Don't block angles of retreat by overstacking and leave units (even trucks will do) behind or adjacent to positions that must be held so that assaults don't end in total extermination.

Matt ~Digger

[Cam]

Hmmmm.....
Shoot and scoot seems reasonable to me
I read a book called " Fighting in Hell ", all about German tactics on the Eastern Front. They actually taught this philosphy. It was the only way they could survive against superior numbers. Hausser did it at Kharkov and was very successfull.
The problem is the AI, tanks retreated in reverse :)
Cam

[Gordons HQ]

I think some are misunderstanding me here, I'm not saying that shoot and scoot is not a valid use of a tank in warfare.
But consider this, we are playing with platoons of up to 5 tanks each here. Mutiply that by say up to 20 platoons and you have upwards of 100 tanks all shooting and scooting.
I am well aware shoot and move to fool range finding is a good idea and some tanks would be able to duck out of sight again. But 100 or more tanks doing that, is in my opinion just not a reasonable assumption of what happened on a WWII battlefield.
I think some penalty should be applied for this to happen and op fire from defending units should be madatory, they shouldn't just sit there and take it which is often the case.
Re the surround and overrun there are many instances in the history of the East Front where surrounded troops fight on for a long time tying up forces that could otherwise be used to attack. The fact that they surrender instantly to in some cases dubious attackers seems a travesty to me. I've had a Flak Waggon overrun disrupted 5 platoon ISII's, I mean come on if that isn't gamey I don't know what is.
I'm just trying to give food for thought here, with the hope that Matrix will improve the game.
Cheers,
Gordon

[John Given]

[Askari19]

I have to chime in here, in agreement with Gordon's original post. Let's call the game tactic what it really is, to strip away the comparison with valid real world tactics. In CS, it's "scoot-shoot-scoot".... and it works so well because opportunity fire in the game is so undependable. If we wanted realism, we should expect that units in defensive position, or in an overwatch mode -- stationary, searching for targets -- would detect and fire upon the "scooters" far more often than happens in the game.

(I suppose if we were designing (or re-designing) the game, we could enhance the probability of performing opportunity fire for units that haven't moved, or which are oriented toward a restricted field of fire, or in accordance with other factors... and thus restore some balance.)

It's easy to confuse the scale and apply tactical concepts that are inappropriate. Some apologists for the tactic seem to be referring to the perfectly valid technique of a tank laying in wait, turret down or concealed, then pulling forward a few feet or yards to a hull down position (e.g. on a ridge crest) to engage, and then reversing down again, perhaps to seek an alternate position nearby. Fine. But that's not what the game tactic is portraying. In the game, we have an entire platoon moving a nominal 250 yards (one hex) or more, from an unspotted position to one with LOS to their target, engaging in unison with perfect synchronization and effect (or as perfect as the game system ever allows that platoon to be) and then (usually) moving the same distance, out of sight and out of danger, before any of a potenital legion of waiting, watching enemies can detect any of the platoon and place fire upon them. Strains credibility, for me anyway.

Neither does "shoot & scoot" by artillery units avoiding counterbattery fire bear any relation to the CS game tactic, which is used by platoons of armor within LOS of direct fire-capable enemies. The resemblance is only in the name.

I could just as easily point out that an individual soldier or cop, properly trained, will not pop over or around his cover twice in the same place, unless he wants to get ventilated... and someone would probably say, "see, there you go -- shoot & scoot!" But at least in the real world, that guy (a) is much less likely to shoot effectively himself, compared to someone in a good position with a continuous view of his AOR, and (b) he does quite often get shot at least the second time he rolls out -- in a CS game, you can scoot forward out of the same hide an infinite number of times and the enemy is no more likely to engage you; and your own fire is not degraded at all by your movement (except, in some cases, for a reduction in ROF).

I won't go on so much about the "surrounded close assaults," but yep, they annoy me too. A silly artificiality of the game system.

Bottom line is, that's the way our game works, and if you're going to play it you have to "suspend disbelief", learn the tricks of the game, and use them to succeed. But we really shouldn't justify them as in any way realistic.

Bill Tallen
(BT)

[XLVIII Pz. Korp]