How to deal with groups of tanks?

Based on Atomic Games’ award-winning Close Combat series, Close Combat: Wacht am Rhein brings together the classic top-down tactical gameplay from the original series and plenty of new features, expansions, and improvements! The Wacht am Rhein remake comes with a brand new Grand Campaign including a new strategic map with 64 gorgeous hand-drawn tactical maps, over 70 scenarios, tons of new interface and unit graphics, countless engine improvements, and much more!
eddy1514
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How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by eddy1514 »

Hello everyone,

I have played many CC games, but i was not a fan of CCIV because you could pick you troops for battle. now with WAR, that changes it, and I am having lots of fun. I have a question though. I am playing the campaign on the american side, and there are lots of battles where the germans have 4-5 tanks, and the americans have none. What do you do here? I can sometimes pick off 2-3 at the most with very well placed AT guns, and well hidden infantry, but the remaining tanks destroy everything. And I can only do that with extream patience, letting the germans move around while I have everything on ambush, not giving away any positions until a tank is close. As soon as my troop gives away his position, he is demoilished by others. What ways do you guys deal with lots of enemy tanks on the battlefield? Any suggestions would be great.

Thanks in advance
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Andrew Williams
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by Andrew Williams »

pick them off slowly until they run out of tanks
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GoodGuy
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by GoodGuy »

In villages or urban environment:

Use your rifle squads or BAR teams and place them (SNEAK) in the middle of a house. Make sure that the enemy tank crew doesn't have a line of sight on your teams. Then move your teams around (SNEAK) and adjust positions, so that the tanks have no proper LOS. Tinker with the FIRE command to check your squad's LOS, adjust the position if necessary to avoid detection, then order an ambush issue. When a tank passes this house, either let your squad fire at the tank (they'll use their bazooka round, engineers will use their explosive charges if the tank is close enough) or order a defend order, so that they attack the tank once it appears in their LOS and if they have a clear line of fire.

Also, make sure you protect your AT teams. Put rifle teams or BAR teams in front of your AT teams, to avoid that enemy inf wipe out your AT teams even before enemy tanks are in range. Sacrifice one or another inf team to distract the enemy tanks and to get a clear shot with a bazooka. You can just shuffle around inf teams (move fast) to keep the enemy tanks busy while you pepare your attack with the zooka or AT gun.

Combine 2 AT guns: Put them in positions where they can cover the very same area. If the enemy takes out 1 AT gun, the other one should be able to send a few vital rounds his way, at least. Set AT guns to DEFEND instead of ambush, but make sure they don't target infantry, as they will change to HE rounds, turning them into sitting ducks if a tank comes into LOS. Set them to ambush if they target infantry, but let them reload first. Be aware that when firing a first round at a tank, they may be firing a HE one.

I am playing the Germans right now and i use to do this:

In villages, I let my inf squads (the ones equipped with one AT round - the Panzerfaust) run towards the tanks, i place the MOVE FAST marker right on the enemy tank.

While this may sound like a suicide mission, my inf squads will throw all their grenades/explosives and sometimes one guy will even stop his run in order to fire his AT round. This is very effective against US tanks with open turret (the lightly armored tank destroyers), as you can even wound or kill parts of the crew with an MG squad from a distance (given, that would be toast once spotted hehe).

Open terrain: Well, that's a tough one.... still, try to use the terrain to your advantage. There are hills and steep slopes on quite some maps, so you should make sure to position your infantry behind the top of the hill/ridge. Once enemy tanks or infantry pass the ridge they are in for a nice surprise.
"Aw Nuts"
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December 22nd, 1944
Bastogne

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crushingleeek_slith
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by crushingleeek_slith »

you sound like you are underequipped to take on the german panzers. you feel like the AT guns are underpowered. and you're platoons are sitting ducks without good anti-tank weapons.
 
my suggestion: relish it...this is the battle of the bulge!
TheReal_Pak40
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by TheReal_Pak40 »

ORIGINAL: eddy1514
I have played many CC games, but i was not a fan of CCIV because you could pick you troops for battle. now with WAR, that changes it, and I am having lots of fun. I have a question though. I am playing the campaign on the american side, and there are lots of battles where the germans have 4-5 tanks, and the americans have none. What do you do here? I can sometimes pick off 2-3 at the most with very well placed AT guns, and well hidden infantry, but the remaining tanks destroy everything. And I can only do that with extream patience, letting the germans move around while I have everything on ambush, not giving away any positions until a tank is close. As soon as my troop gives away his position, he is demoilished by others. What ways do you guys deal with lots of enemy tanks on the battlefield? Any suggestions would be great.

Basically, you're supposed to lose these battles in the early days of the Campaign - that's the history behind why there are these match ups of 5 panthers vs 2 AT guns. If you're taking out about 50% of his tanks then I'd say you're doing pretty good.

Like Andrew suggests, you will need to keep picking off these tanks little by little until the German's force pool starts to be depleted. You have to look at the big picture. You may be loosing these battles, but by taking out just 2 tanks per battle you will be setting yourself up down the line. However, you will need to also ration your own AT guns so that you don't run out of them eventually.

One tip I can give you to help the survivability of your AT guns is to set them as far back as possible. Some maps are better suited for long range AT gun ambushes. For example, I'm playing as the Germans in the Grand Campaign. One particular rural map has a single bridge in the middle of the map that my tanks must cross. The Americans placed it's AT guns far away but had LOS of the bridge and beyond. When the Americans opened fire the AT guns could not be spotted because they were so far away and in the brush/trees. I was eventually able to advance across the bridge but at a high price. I never did spot those AT guns, although you can see the puffs of smoke when they shoot; however, the AI can't return fire to a puff of smoke.


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mavraamides
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by mavraamides »

Some things that have worked for me:

1) Hide your AT guns and put them on ambush so they don't give themselves away shooting at infantry. If they do, the Germans will take them out with mortars.

2) Bazooka teams can be very effective at very close range. Hide them behind buildings and try to ambush tanks as they go by. I try to have at least 1 AT gun and / or bazooka team per enemy tank if possible.

3) If you have artillery barrages, wait till you see a nice tight grouping of tanks and hit them hard. They can destroy or immobilize the tanks. Even the off board mortars can sometimes immobilize them.

4) If you have Shermans, remember, they are overpowered in this game. If you can get a side or rear shot on a Panther, you can take it out.

5) Keep the bulk of your forces hidden and use mortars to hammer away at enemy infantry to make them much harder to screen for their tanks. This greatly increases your odds of a successful ambush. The AI is much less aggressive with its tanks when it doesn't know where you are.

6) Don't forget when you run out of AT guns that you get one re-enforcement per battalion. Use it till you have nothing left and then hopefully by then another battalion can be brought up to replace it.

Lastly, hide, delay, ambush and inflict as many casualties as possible while exposing your own men as little as possible and hold on as long as you can because help is on the way!

Using these tactics on default settings, I've yet to be forced off a single starting map for the first 3 days. And the battalions that did get in trouble have been replaced by armored ones coming up from the rear.
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Klahn
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by Klahn »

I wouldn't say the Sherman is overpowered. Remember you are generally dealing with 76mm armed Shermans, not the earlier 75mm version. The 76mm, with it's weakest round, (APCBC) will penetrate 88mm of armor at 1 kilometer. The Panther doesn't have that level of armor anywhere other than the turret face and gun mantlet. The Sherman with 76mm M1 should be able to penetrate the hull easily from the front at the engagment ranges typical in this game.
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Andrew Williams
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by Andrew Williams »

see the video

http://closecombat.matrixgames.com/WaR/ ... nther.html

if it is overpowered it is only slightly so.... count the hits from the 75mm shermans.

The Sherman was destryed by the Panthers 1st shot.

We are addressing this question in the upcoming patch
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by GoodGuy »

ORIGINAL: Ryvan

I wouldn't say the Sherman is overpowered. Remember you are generally dealing with 76mm armed Shermans, not the earlier 75mm version. The 76mm, with it's weakest round, (APCBC) will penetrate 88mm of armor at 1 kilometer. The Panther doesn't have that level of armor anywhere other than the turret face and gun mantlet. The Sherman with 76mm M1 should be able to penetrate the hull easily from the front at the engagment ranges typical in this game.
Nope.
The Sherman is overpowered. The Panther's regular AP round could penetrate 111 mm of armor at 1 km, where the special round (with tungsten core) could penetrate 150 mm of armor at the same distance, the production of these special rounds had to be halted in July 1943, due to the lack of sufficient amounts of tungsten, though. The Panther's 75mm gun had more penetration power than the Tiger's 88mm gun.

Regarding the Panther's protection, I don't know if you know the numbers regarding its armor, and you seem to forget to consider the slope modifiers:

The Panther Ausf. G's (March 1944) gun mantlet consisted of 120 mm armor (curved), the turret face had around 100-110mm of armor. The upper front's armor (driver/radio operator compartment) featured 80mm of armor (35°). The lower front (35° as well) had only 60mm armor, but a hit at this part of the tank was unlikely to happen, as it was part of the tub floor.

So, the only parts where a Sherman commander could hope to penetrate the Panther were those plates which were almost vertical (turret face, 80°), but the Sherman's shells then still had to go through 100-110 mm of armor.

The glacis, the driver compartment part, had a slope of 35° !

That said, in a frontal engagement, a Sherman with a 76mm gun (using regular AP rounds) could only hope to penetrate the Panther's armor if engaging at really close range (below 200 yards), aiming at the less curved/sloped parts of the mantlet/turret or at the nose (the small lower part with 60mm armor), although shells actually used to bounce off even the 60mm parts, due to the slope. The slope modifiers reduced the effectiveness of the ACP or ACPBC rounds tremendously.
ORIGINAL: U.S. Army Test No.2
Firing Tests conducted 12-30 July 1944 by 1st U.S. Army in Normandy.

7) 3-inch Gun, M5, mounted on Motor Carriage, M10
a) APC M62, w/BDF M66A1 will not penetrate front glacis slope plate at 200 yards. Will penetrate gun mantlet at 200 yards and penetrate sides and rear of the 'Panther' Tank up to 1500 yards.

b) AP M79 will not penetrate the front slope plate or the mantlet at 200 yards. It holds no advantage over APC M62 ammunition w/BDF M66A1.

http://www.wargaming.info/armour06.htm#2

The tested 3 inch gun (76mm M5) was mounted on a M10 carriage, so, when looking at this US Army test, you have to consider the fact that the M5 guns basically fired the same shell as the 76mm Shermans, but the M5's rounds had different chambers, providing a somewhat higher velocity.

The British 17-pounder and the US 90mm rounds had 100% more chamber capacity than the M1 shell, thus way higher velocities. Last but not least, the M5 was a pure AT gun, not designed to be employed in Shermans.

The 76 mm M1 employed in the Shermans really had a waaaaay lower performance regarding penetration.

According to the US field test, the M10's M62 shell did not penetrate the Panther's sloped frontal armor (80mm - 35°) at 200 yards (182.88 meters).

The US thought they had a great upgrade for the Sherman (75), but they were really disappointed regarding the 76mm's actual performance in the field, when facing Panther tanks. The british employed a different gun in their Sherman "Firefly" variant (the 17 pounder AT gun i mentioned before, which was the most effective Allied AT gun during the war), which had an actual chance against a Panther. Their loss/kill ratio was better. The US passed when the Brits offered to share these guns.

According to what I've read so far, the US Sherman's usage ratio of AP and HE ammo was 1:4 even until the Korean war, they often avoided to engage heavier enemy battle tanks (like the Panther) as they used to be destroyed before they could score a substantial hit, and they passed the job to the tank destroyer units or Allied heavy battle tanks, while they were focusing on engaging Panzer IV and providing Infantry support.

When a Panther was hit, the Sherman's M1 rounds mostly just bounced off. With Panther Version A, there were rare instances, due to the Panther's gun mantlet design, where rounds bounced off the mantlet deflecting the projectile almost vertically right down into the driver compartment, killing either driver or radio operator. These Panthers were usually still operable as they could still use their guns - engine or ammunition did not blow off, and they could be repaired. Version G's gun mantlet design fixed this.

The 76mm gun's performance was actually rather comparable to the gun of the Panzer IV and the late long-barreled version of the StuG III.

The effectiveness of the new HVAP rounds (July 1944) had been discussed somewhere in this forum i think, it had a somewhat better chance of penetrating the Panther's armor (I found infos stating HVAP T-4 could penetrate up to 120 mm of armor, I tend to think that these tests had been conducted using vertical steel plates - 90°, though), but the vital fact here is that this type of ammo was not available in sufficient numbers, the actual slope modifiers of the Panther reduced its effectiveness anyways, so even with HVAP the glacis could not be cracked at close range. The glacis of a Panther was still largely immune to 76mm HVAP, due to the slope.

Also, the distribution of the low numbers of HVAP was prioritized to US tank destroyer units.

With HVAP rounds, the Sherman 76mm had an actual chance to penetrate a Panther when firing at the less curved parts of the mantlet/turret at close range, as these parts had a slope of 80°, the question is whether the projectile then really got all through the 100-120 mm armor.

The Sherman was badly outclassed by the Panther tank, especially if you consider the Panther's effectiveness at long range (it could penetrate 111 mm at 1000 meters with regular AP rounds), with a clear LOS - a Sherman could rarely get close. SHAEF estimated a loss ratio of 8:1 and even 10:1 (means loosing 8-10 Shermans before 1 Panther could be cracked). Mass production and storming with sheer numbers was the Allied strategy here, as sufficient numbers of heavy tanks were not available (20 Pershings in the European theater?). The few Pershings had been distributed to several units, where each unit received 1 Pershing tank.

The real downside of the Panther was its side and rear armor, both were relatively weak, the turret's side consisted of 45 mm (65°) of armor only, the hull (upper part) 50 mm (60°), the hull (lower part) 40 mm (90°) and the rear had 40 mm armor (60°).
"Aw Nuts"
General Anthony McAuliffe
December 22nd, 1944
Bastogne

---
"I've always felt that the AA (Alied Assault engine) had the potential to be [....] big."
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by GoodGuy »

Oh one more thing, if i am correct, an armor plate of 60mm sloped back at 60 degrees from the vertical (or , if you will, 30 degrees from the horizontal) would be the equivalent in protection to about 120mm. So the 80 mm sloped glacis of the Panther proved to be a nut too hard to crack for the Shermans.

@ Andrew Williams:

The "Hetzer" ("Jagdpanzer 38(t)") had an MG (mostly MG 34, but MG 42 too) on the roof which could be operated and rotated from inside the tank (using a periscope and an extended trigger mechanism). It had a relatively small drum magazine, but it could be rotated 360 degrees! The crew had to open the hatch to reload the MG.

I don't know if that can be implemented in the current game, but you should include this for a future installment, at least.
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by Andrew Williams »

remote MG not there?

I'll check



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GoodGuy
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by GoodGuy »

While we're at it, the Hetzer had a firepower similar to the Jadgpanzer IV and the Panzer IV, as - even though it was a pretty light tank destroyer - it employed the powerful 75mm PaK 39 L/48 (930 meters/second using PzGr40 rounds), an AT gun.

Does it have similar penetration power as PzIV and Jadgpanzer IV in the game's whitebook, too?

I got the impression that it's pretty ineffective against Shermans. No?
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by Andrew Williams »

jagdpanzer had the L/70


It has the same as the MkIV


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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by GoodGuy »

I know. I meant, the Hetzer's Pak 39 had similar firepower. Does it have similar firepower in the GAME too?
"Aw Nuts"
General Anthony McAuliffe
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Bastogne

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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by Andrew Williams »

exactly the same

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GoodGuy
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by GoodGuy »

Cool. [:)] Guess I was just seeing things. Last question: [:D] The Hetzer's design was really flat, and while most calibres would bounce off the completely sloped 60mm front armor (there was no turret), it could be knocked out from the side and especially the rear easily. Is that rendered in the game?
"Aw Nuts"
General Anthony McAuliffe
December 22nd, 1944
Bastogne

---
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Andrew Williams
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by Andrew Williams »

yes

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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by GoodGuy »

\o/ [&o] [:)]
"Aw Nuts"
General Anthony McAuliffe
December 22nd, 1944
Bastogne

---
"I've always felt that the AA (Alied Assault engine) had the potential to be [....] big."
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by Cptn_Miller »

Thank you GoodGuy, for posting the facts of the sherman vs panther debate and how it relates to this game... something needs nerfing / fixing with the tank model in this game, no way my panthers should get knocked out by sherman 75mm at 500yds - no way.

Anyone thats seen the multiple history channel shows on tank combat in ww2 can tell you the sherman's only chance against a panther / tiger was to flank it.... end of story. Not a single vetern of that war interviewed in those shows would pick a sherman vs a panther or tiger.
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RE: How to deal with groups of tanks?

Post by Andrew Williams »

no way my panthers should get knocked out by sherman 75mm at 500yds - no way.

there is no debate about this, everyone agrees 100%


Shermans can shoot through Panther top armor though from any direction.  ie. that is when a Sherman is up on a hill and the Panther is down in a valley.
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