Comments on Factory Town by JasonC

These are JasonC's comments on my AAR entitled Factory Town.

First, notice that the fight revolved around the approach march through open countryside, instead of a fight in the city as you had hoped. This is a quirk of the QB system for urban terrain.

Instead of giving an actual city, it puts a small block of built up city in the middle of wide open terrain, in a thick border around the city area. Which is typically a ridiculously small 400x400m area. If you want an actual city fight using a random map, you have to go through a number of steps to get a proper map. To start with, select urban terrain and large map size. Then "crop" the random map on all sides, to remove the open "borders". Save the map. Import it as the map for the QB.

Next look at your force selection. You took a company each of regular infantry and pioneers. That is OK, a bit heavy on the pioneers, who have poor small arms but do get demo charges. They are needed most against mines rather than buildings. Normally you'd only take a company on them in a battalion sized fight, to get 3 small pioneer groups to clear mines or use demo charges on several routes of advance. With a fight this small, one platoon of them would be more typical, with the balance spent on a 4th regular platoon or a recon platoon.

The choice of 3 82mm mortar FOs was unrealistic and not very effective for the terrain you were up against. Understand, those are battalion level mortars. You'd typically see one FO at a battle, or none, but not a flock of them. They are too light to handle heavy buildings effectively. You'd have been better off with heavier caliber FOs, 120mm, 122mm, or 152mm. The delays on those types can be long (120s are a livable 5 minutes), so you may want to use a first turn fire plan. Urban maps tend to be small as to the actual building area. The buildings near the flags or on the route to them will generally be well stocked with defenders, so you can guess where to aim fire plan arty.

As for the HMG teams, they are fine as support weapons, and a truck to help move them is an OK idea. You should appreciate that their firepower is limited against stone buildings, however. They can still be useful when sighted down streets to stop enemy repositionings. And as they get closer their firepower and ROF rise. The best place for them is 1-2 streets back from the area reached, so most defenders can't see them, they can cover long avenues, and with slight keyholed angles can hit one or two occupied enemy buildings at reasonably close range.

But neither HMGs nor light 82mm mortars are going to deal with large numbers of enemy infantry in heavy buildings. That means the heavy lifting was left to your 3 tanks, whose direct fire HE is very effective against buildings, and to your squad infantry (especially the better armed regular type) at close range, across streets. For the last to work you have to make it into the city, though. Which is not at all easy with that default open border, as you found. So much for force selection issues.

Then we come to your initial plan. It wasn't exactly inspired. You didn't pick a real point of attack, selected for its vunerability. You didn't pick areas of cover from which to fight your ordinary infantry. You didn't have a plan to get the men into the town. You just walked forward across the open with a few HMGs to reply to enemy lighting you up. As you saw, that did not work very well.

You have to start by analysing the terrain. The church is the most exposed heavy building, and the first really good cover available in the town. It has a few buildings and patches of trees on the way, just to the right of the road. There are only two other significant bits of cover short of the town, the modest block of pines on the direct route to the first row of buildings, and the large patch of scattered trees over on the right edge, with some brush and scattered trees on the way to them. Together these flank the church.

Then there is that first row of buildings. Just look at them - what a deathtrap. They are surrounded by open ground, which is flat. All of them are small and low. There is a long line of defensive positions opposite them. The combo means no dead ground - each building creates only a tiny "shadow" against only a few enemy positions, while others can easily sight through the gaps between, crossing fires on your side of each one.

A frontal attack by infantry looks pretty suicidal. A much better idea is to first seize the church, suppress the nearby buildings, and then go after the right side (from your point of view). If you can get the church and one large building beyond it (diagonally across the street), you will have views that cut the defense into three sectors. Before going past the church, heavy building near it (which you can thus suppress) block significant portions of the view beyond, making the church a decent place to shelter.

On the right, the line of heavy buildings just across the street from the factory shields most of the right side from the factory itself. There are small buildings for cover beyond the scattered trees. Past the diagonal road on that side, views from the center are limited - you mostly only have to worry about the guys straight ahead in the "right suburb".

Now, imagine your whole tank platoon positioned between the church and the scattered trees on the right. They could hit all the relevant buildings holding up an infantry advance on the right. T-34s have a lot of HE. You could afford to blast building after building on that side, to shoot through the "up", forward defenders. Then the main body of the infantry would go forward into the resulting rubble, and clear out the survivors.

The tanks still have "overwatch" of that line of buildings masking the factory, without moving. They help shoot your infantry into it. Only after that do they have to move forward. You'd be clear through the right side suburb by then. So one could swing all the way around to the street behind the factory parallel to your original start line.

Another could take the street in front of the factory parallel to your start line, by going to the near side of that row of buildings. And the last could look down the street to the right of the factory, by being near the second but "hugging" the building across the street. All three would be looking right at the area of the large flag, and you'd already have one small one in the right suburb itself.

Their MGs isolate the factory except on the far left. And they can dump in short range HE or canister on any "up" defenders trying to contest your infantry crossing the street. Once infantry is *inside* the factory, you can just proceed from right to left through it, with tanks able to see the front and back edges to help when heavy resistence is encountered.

Now, what are the hard parts of this approach plan? Getting infantry forward into the scattered trees on the right. You have some bits of cover and the ranges are long, but the early part of the approach is open ground. Getting into the church - there is some cover along the road route, but only enough for a thin line of men and with open ground gaps between each, until the church is reached. You only need a platoon and HMGs in the church area, but you do need somebody there, to suppress fire from nearby buildings when the right hook goes in.

So how can these approach problems be solved? Well, look at that planned area for your tanks to "set up". It is a modest gap between the church and the scattered trees on the right. Basically all the lines of sight from the town area to the open part of the right hook route pass through that one gap. So think "smoke mission there", for the minute or three you need to get infantry up into the scattered trees. In addition, the tanks can set up there, a bit back from the gap itself (slightly "keyholing"). They can then see and blast anyone shooting up your movers.

What about getting men down the right side of the street and into the church, early on? Well, you can overwatch with tanks from far back, to see the church itself and the first few buildings beyond it. Then you send one platoon through those bits of cover, using "advance" to cross the open ground bits, one half squad leading and the rest moving out one at a time. The leading guy will get shot at - but you don't expose much. The tanks then blow up the shooter. Repeat, another little bound. Taking time to rally if pinned, or sending the next squad back (rotating the role of "point").

HMGs farther back can sight down the road, too. Once you get someone into the church - near side of it at first, using its bulk to block LOS completely - you can bring up a tank behind it. That gives LOS over to the left, while sheltering from most of the town. Most of the remaining spots for shooters at the approach route can be hit from there. As you clear out positions, parts of the route get safe, and HMGs can move forward to the next bit of cover, closer to the church.

Eventually you can use the truck to bring 2 more HMGs up behind the church - probably off road to the right, using the dead ground the church's "shadow" creates. Then they go in the back, reposition, and sight down the road forward and off to the left front. If there are guys in the building right across the street, you deal with them first with T-34 canister from just behind the church, then squad fire across the street. This might all take some time, but it needn't involve high losses. And in the later portions of it, you can move out on the right.

Ideally, you want men in the church first, because otherwise your tanks are getting pretty close to the town ahead of infantry. All of these considerations thus lead to a choreographed "move order" for the right hook plan. 1. get men into the church (includes 1 T-34 up behind it, at first) 2. tanks forward to the gap. 3. scouts cross toward scattered trees, tanks suppress those who shoot at them. 4. smoke across the gap, with infantry rush to the scattered trees by the main body 5. firefight from the scattered tree area and first few buildings against right "suburb". 6. Advance into the right suburb, tanks overwatching. 7. Take last line of buildings right of the factory. 8. reposition tanks on either end of that block. 9. Outshoot defenders in the factory. 10. Cross into the factory and mop up.

That is a darn sight more complicated than "send out a half squad on each side and see who shoots that them. Expect to send one platoon forward behind each half squad. Have the rest of the force wait and decide which way to go later, after the defender picks how to mess up the scouts".

See how terrain analysis drives the planning process? How you think in terms of seperating defenders, reducing their lines of sight onto your men at every stage? How you think of the role of each weapon in the overall operation, with one type helping another into a better position? How the whole plan tries to fight limited groups of the enemy in sequence, from good cover and with good firefight conditions, all the way onto the objective?

You saw in the actual fight how much the firepower of your tanks constituted nearly your whole attack. You also failed to wait for broken infantry to rally after initial set backs, sending in additional infantry piecemeal, just because they were still in good order.

You only got infantry forward when your tanks outshot local defenders or the defender's own smoke missions on your tanks blocked his own LOS lines to the open ground beyond the town. You had trouble with a single MG because it was beyond full ID range for a long time.

You found enemy guns only when they shot up one of your tanks, which had to be far forward because your infantry was messed up and they were carrying your whole force. You had no other weapons ready to KO guns that went for your tanks. Your tanks were scattered, so others did not KO the guns when they fired at neighboring tanks. Your arty was too light to seriously help except against such guns, but instead you dumped light rounds all over creation without LOS.

You probably did serious damage to the enemy infantry only when it recklessly left cover trying to counterattack you, plus of course your tank HE. The enemy losses are what kept the defeat minor, and those were due to tanks with plenty of HE in a town, and a dumb AI leaving cover to come after you, when they did not have to.

I hope this is interesting.