Tanks on urban areas

[Cooked]

So I was told to not use tanks in urban warfare as their gun range advantage is going to be cut down, and infantry was the better solution. So I did just that.
However, came to meet situations where ATGMs were either quickly killed off by machine guns and close range rocket launchers not having enough range or buildings with good location to host them(they tend to die real easy without buildings). Both type of anti-tank infantry squads I tend to take one in each unit and take multiple units to prevent waste of fire. Should I stop doing that and take bigger units? Also, how much squads do people tend to put in their line infantry, and how to they handle their tanks?

I'm relatively new to the game and just read Sandy's great guide, so put in any advice as you see fit. Thank you!

[Randy]

It's actually pretty easy. First rule for tanks: stay away from anti tank guns, like the ones Infantry carry. Tanks are not unbreakable. So always keep a distance of 900-1000 meters from the enemy Infantry. Drive backwards, if you have to.

As for ATGMs I always go for the highest accuracy. Firing ATGMs means you want to kill that tank as fast as possible, or he will disappear. One or two will do the job most of the time. But remember that these guys can't take arty hits or fight enemy Infantry, so you need another squad for these purposes.

[Zapp Brannigan]

Never send tanks into a city against infantry. Also, do not send ATGM infantry into a city against infantry. Really the only thing that works against infantry in a city are other infantry (by which I mean infantry designed to fight other infantry, spec ops can be very good at this but are expensive). Best thing to do is to drop smoke onto the target city and rush your infantry in. Unload them just outside the city limits and get them into a city block as quick as possible to engage enemy infantry. Then bombard the enemy infantry with mortar and artillery rounds.

Easier said then done, but that's how you do it. One caveat with tanks and cities, they can sometimes be useful in city assaults if the enemy doesn't have good ATGM defenses, and you keep the tanks outside the city, but just in range of their main gun. This will provide some nice direct artillery support for your assaulting infantry. But again, never take the tanks into the city.

[Cooked]

I'm not really driving tanks into city but rather having trouble holding off tanks that barge in cities. T-80s in large squads tend to just break throught my lines of German Milan 2s. The Milan 2 has an AP value of 24 I believe but it doesn't seem to kill a T-80 straight away when it hits, usually it takes 2-3 hits to kill one, but in the mean time, the tanks using terrain shape as cover comes close enough and kills my ATGM squad. I was really surprised the first time when it happened since I expected the squad to last longer inside a building.
Any suggestions on how to deal with these kinds of situations?

[◔ᴥ◔ MagicPussyCat]

the only reasonable way to use tanks against urban areas is to keep them out of range of RPG's and whatnot and make extra special certain there are no ATGM's on your approach.

just running them right in there is a bad move unless you are 100% certain there is nothing in the city with AT

[Cullen's Hound]

Cities are what grenade launchers are for

[Cullen's Hound]

Originally posted by TreeHumper:

I'm not really driving tanks into city but rather having trouble holding off tanks that barge in cities. T-80s in large squads tend to just break throught my lines of German Milan 2s. The Milan 2 has an AP value of 24 I believe but it doesn't seem to kill a T-80 straight away when it hits, usually it takes 2-3 hits to kill one, but in the mean time, the tanks using terrain shape as cover comes close enough and kills my ATGM squad. I was really surprised the first time when it happened since I expected the squad to last longer inside a building.
Any suggestions on how to deal with these kinds of situations?

Put line shock or militia infantry behind your atgm's, also a lot of launchers have an unstated minimum range so make sure they have max line of sight.

[Shoshon The Elegant]

gl are okay but the 7rpgvp or smaws are some the best at hold town thay have to set up so give them some breathing room, but once set up you take out full group of 40 men in like 10s great ant inf wepons.

[Traffic Conez]

Actually sending in 5-15p APCs/IFVs armed with autocannons while risky is very rewarding. They can essentially panic any infantry within a couple of seconds giving your forces a better chance of winning. In all cases however they need to be supported with Infantry, and lots of it.

[Lonesome 77]

Originally posted by Traffic Conez:

Actually sending in 5-15p APCs/IFVs armed with autocannons while risky is very rewarding. They can essentially panic any infantry within a couple of seconds giving your forces a better chance of winning. In all cases however they need to be supported with Infantry, and lots of it.

To the OP: Here's what I did earlier regarding the sending in of IFVs, while playing the 2nd campaign (the one where China attacks USSR)--I was landing my Korean marines at Vladivostok. I decided to storm the large dock area on the left, figuring that the density of buildings and such there would allow my infantry (I first landed non-APC-using infantry) to be used to effect in case they had any armored forces nearby.

So I landed them, and WHAM-O the enemy had probably the bulk of their force right there, and it was a crazy fight. Most of my infantry got killed trying to push in to the docks (I had to land them to the left of the docks, on a beach)--I'm a noob, I didn't expect this lol--but I did have a troop of tanks that I was able to send in, and I landed them on the far left of the beach, so that they could stay out of range of enemy AT. Along with Naval Gunfire Support, I pretty much destroyed their forces and sent in reinforcement infantry with IFVs.

I disembarked the infantry and had them go through the building areas, with IFVs standing by, creeping up further as more areas were secured. There wasn't much resistance, so while moving through with infantry supported by IFVs in the docks, I swung around with more infantry with IFVs and the tanks (I had landed a few more as well) to advance past the docks. I wanted to guard against any ambushes so I sent in infantry to scour the surrounding urban areas, again with IFV support. I also had the tanks briefly hold at a distance with lines of sight on the areas being assaulted, so that they could give cover if necessary.

So in case I'm not being very helpful here, infantry are essentially what you want to use to assault urban areas. At least, this seems to be the best course of action. But sending in IFVs and such could be done, just make sure that the infantry seek out the enemy. Ideally if there's both enemy infantry and enemy AT that they detect, the infantry could target the AT, and then you could pull up your IFVs to blast the enemy infantry.

It's probably worth mentioning though that Soviet doctrine during the Cold War, IIRC, was to blast past urban areas with most armored and mechanized forces, and mop up with infantry.

[Vensalir]

The only exception I can think of to to the rule of not sending tanks in cities is when you're absolutely, positively sure that the only infantry there is equipped with napalm rockets and not standard ones. Tanks are actually quite good against spetsnaz, which are otherwise a huge pain to face with infantry, even if supported by IFVs.

[Lonesome 77]

Yeah that may be the only exception.

Napalm launcher? Are you sure you don't mean the RPO thermobaric launcher? I believe it's primarily an anti-structure, anti-light vehicle, and anti-entrenched/protected weapon.

[BeingThere]

Originally posted by TreeHumper:

I'm not really driving tanks into city but rather having trouble holding off tanks that barge in cities. T-80s in large squads tend to just break throught my lines of German Milan 2s. The Milan 2 has an AP value of 24 I believe but it doesn't seem to kill a T-80 straight away when it hits, usually it takes 2-3 hits to kill one, but in the mean time, the tanks using terrain shape as cover comes close enough and kills my ATGM squad. I was really surprised the first time when it happened since I expected the squad to last longer inside a building.
Any suggestions on how to deal with these kinds of situations?

Most ATGMs are user guided. The guy in the squad has to look through a scope and delicately guide the missile towards a distant target; any flinch or what not, and the attack misses. Now imagine guiding a missile toward a column of modern armor, and having them fire destructive salvos at the house your using as shelter. You would flinch, right?

For protecting the exterior of a town, use infantry that have "dumb fire" AT weapons, like the Carl Gustav, or the Pzf III, or recoiless rifles. The RRs and Pzf III have 850 range, compared to 550 like most infantry LAWs- they will can reach out and touch the enemy.

Also worth noting that you can put tanks in the town and fight back.

[Lonesome 77]

Originally posted by Cold Pimpin:

Originally posted by TreeHumper:

I'm not really driving tanks into city but rather having trouble holding off tanks that barge in cities. T-80s in large squads tend to just break throught my lines of German Milan 2s. The Milan 2 has an AP value of 24 I believe but it doesn't seem to kill a T-80 straight away when it hits, usually it takes 2-3 hits to kill one, but in the mean time, the tanks using terrain shape as cover comes close enough and kills my ATGM squad. I was really surprised the first time when it happened since I expected the squad to last longer inside a building.
Any suggestions on how to deal with these kinds of situations?

Most ATGMs are user guided. The guy in the squad has to look through a scope and delicately guide the missile towards a distant target; any flinch or what not, and the attack misses. Now imagine guiding a missile toward a column of modern armor, and having them fire destructive salvos at the house your using as shelter. You would flinch, right?

For protecting the exterior of a town, use infantry that have "dumb fire" AT weapons, like the Carl Gustav, or the Pzf III, or recoiless rifles. The RRs and Pzf III have 850 range, compared to 550 like most infantry LAWs- they will can reach out and touch the enemy.

Also worth noting that you can put tanks in the town and fight back.

Right, which is why at long ranges, ATGMs seem to often spiral out of control. Unless it's something with the guidance in real life ATGMs at long range that conks out, the user (if less experienced) might mess up.

Yes, dumbfire LAWs might be useful since they're theoretically fire and forget.

[Vensalir]

Originally posted by Vikingr:

Yeah that may be the only exception.

Napalm launcher? Are you sure you don't mean the RPO thermobaric launcher? I believe it's primarily an anti-structure, anti-light vehicle, and anti-entrenched/protected weapon.

Yep, that's the one. I don't know that weapon IRL, but the game classifies it as a Napalm weapon. Probably just because it's easier to use a similar weapon effect than to create a new one altogether.

Also, keep in mind that in the current build of WGRD, ATGMs are quite bugged and their hit ratio is on average much lower than they should be in normal conditions. I don't use them much, but I find that the ideal solution is to put them on the side of your defensive line, possibly in a forest, so that they can target the side of advancing tanks while your tougher infantry rquipped with LAWs bear the brunt of the attack. Kepp in mind that ATGM teams are pretty small in number , usually just 2 to 5 per team, and panic instantly if just one of them is killed. Also, smoke is your friend. If you see heavy tanks advancing on your position, smoke ahead of them and you will nullify their range advantage

[Lonesome 77]

Originally posted by Vensalir:

Originally posted by Vikingr:

Yeah that may be the only exception.

Napalm launcher? Are you sure you don't mean the RPO thermobaric launcher? I believe it's primarily an anti-structure, anti-light vehicle, and anti-entrenched/protected weapon.

Yep, that's the one. I don't know that weapon IRL, but the game classifies it as a Napalm weapon. Probably just because it's easier to use a similar weapon effect than to create a new one altogether.

Also, keep in mind that in the current build of WGRD, ATGMs are quite bugged and their hit ratio is on average much lower than they should be in normal conditions. I don't use them much, but I find that the ideal solution is to put them on the side of your defensive line, possibly in a forest, so that they can target the side of advancing tanks while your tougher infantry rquipped with LAWs bear the brunt of the attack. Kepp in mind that ATGM teams are pretty small in number , usually just 2 to 5 per team, and panic instantly if just one of them is killed. Also, smoke is your friend. If you see heavy tanks advancing on your position, smoke ahead of them and you will nullify their range advantage

Yeah, napalm is a different effect I think but for the game, close enough.

I dunno, it seems like ATGMs are much more effective than the MILANs I was using in Wargame: European Escalation, unless either I was just implementing them wrong, which is very possible lol, or it may be possible that I am just implementing more at one time in Red Dragon than I was in EE and so with more missiles flying, it could mean more hits. In Red Dragon here I was using the armored vehicle-borne ATGM from the AT company in the second campaign that China has--maybe something about being in the vehicle settles the nerves while targetting lol--they weren't moving. Hit probability at long range wasn't great but I thought it was still good.

Or maybe I'm mistaking it for the vanilla M48 Chapparal in EE, which seemed to have horrible hit probability unless upgraded or used in large numbers (seemed like eventually I'd try to only get veteran upgraded ones) and don't have tons of missiles either.