CLOSE COMBAT
TACTICAL TIPS
Here are some tips about this game (copyright Pascal Ode 1996)
You can make copies and download it freely provided:
A- You just mention the author and this site URL
B- You do not use it for commercial purpose
Please contact me (100257.1375@compuserve.com)
if you need to use it differently.
1- Be patient:
Choose your point of attack (my preferred is the church) and supress
the defenders for a while with some fire concentration: you have more
teams, more MG, more mortars, and maybe one tank. The germans AI
just can't hold the ground after a while. You can see the germans have
problems from the color of the shooting line: if you can see more
blue shooting then the german are beeing softened. If you see many
red shooting lines never, never move your units especially using the
fast move mode. You can also (kinda cheat) looking the statistics of
enemy teams, if you have troops close to them you will get a lot of
info about enemy teams.
2- Concentrate your firepower:
You want to attack the church? Fine have the majority of your troops
in the southern woods. Just keep a few teams/MG north to help
supressing other german teams in different building and avoid cross
fire. Do not move the northern teams, just keep them shoting from
good defensive terrain. Soften the defenders with mortars/bazooka/MG/
Rifles fire concentration in the south.
3- Be very very conservative with your tanks:
Stay in good cover, far away from the front until you have spotted
all the panzerschreck positions. Once it is done just move them into
blind panzerschreck spot and use your tanks to supress/kill German
MG or Teams. If you only have half tracks just hide them until you
have spotted/supressed all panzerschrecks *and* all MG. Remember it
is much better not to use them than losing them since it will
influence your moral and moral is much much more important than
victory hexes in this game.
4- Use intermediate objectives:
For assaulting the church a good intermediate objective is the wall.
Once the defenders are supressed move your troops to the wall and
concentrate a few teams here (take care to supress also all flanking
shots).
5- Use the overwatch technique:
During the assault on the church send a team to assault and have the
rest supress the defenders. Drop some smoke on the flanks for good
measure.
6- Assault *only* with fresh troops:
The color of the team must be green. Fresh troops assaulting fatigued
supressed enemy will make great job without any casualty. The reverse
will end with no results and a bloody mess (for you, not for the
opponent). If you haven't any fresh troops let them rest before assault.
Also you assault team should have some grenade left therefore be sure
it didn't assault previously.
7- Reinforce immediately after the assault has been succesful:
The german may organize a counterattack against your succesful team,
therefore you should immediately send another fresh team to help
repelling the bad guys.
8- This one is very important. Focus on making enemy casualties and
avoid casualties on your side:
You are not in a hurry. You can take all the time you need to soften
the defenders before moving. Controlling objectives is not important
for wining *provided* you manage to get the enemy in the "red". You
will get a decisive victory and save many good guys lives.
9- Try to save ammunition:
When shooting make sure the LOS to target is bright red, not dark
red you will get more efffect from your very limited ammunition. If
the line is not bright red try moving (very carefully) to better
shooting places. Use the overwatch technique during the move: one
team moves others give protective fire.
10- Try to get flanking shots at enemy teams:
Teams can't get good cover from every angle therefore try to maximize
cross fire at wide angles against enemy teams.
CLOSE COMBAT FEATURES
COHESION/LEADERSHIP
From: wargamer@atomic.com (John Anderson)
There is a Team Cohesion that changes color gradually as the team goes
under more stress, losses men, etc. The soldiers will show morale
states of either Normal, Panicked, Routed, Herioc, Fanatic, or Berserk.
You just never know when someone is going to be Berserk, but you can
usually tell by what quality the team is, how much fire they are
undergoing, and how much friendly support they have whether the
soldiers in the team will start panicking or not. In this game, you
cannot send a Green team by itself to rush a building and expect them
to make it all the way there before they start panicking and soldiers
start running back to where they came from. Or, even worse, if they
do make it, they may very well surrender.
The Soldier Monitor also lists the weapon each soldier is using, which
ammo is loaded for that weapon, the amount of that type of ammo the
soldier has and will tell you if the weapon has jammed or been
destroyed. The physical status of each soldier is shown as either
health (Green) hurt (Yellow), severely wounded (Orange) or Dead (Red).
His fatigue is shown as rested (Green), winded (Yellow) or fatigued (Red).
Thus at a glance, you can see how well the team is doing by the colors
in the Soldier Montitor for that team.
There are 4 types of leaders. The company commander (you), 1 to 4
platoon leaders, 1 to 16 squad leaders, and then numerous team leaders.
Team leaders can only affect soldiers in their team. Squad leaders
primarily affect soldiers in their squad and so on.
Leadership is evaluated for the quality of the leader, the rank of
the leader and the proximity to the leader. By keeping your teams
grouped with a high ranking leader nearby, the teams are less likely
to break, more likely to obey orders, and rallying any broken
soldiers is quicker.
ELEVATION/WEAPONS
From: keithz@atomic.com (Keith Zabalaoui)
You seem to have a grasp of this game design b'ness. (You commented
on features that can wait until CC2.) BRAVO! Those are the designs
issues we had to contend with from the begining.
1) Men from one team will not pickup/man weapons from another team, but
men within the same team, a spotter for instance, will takeover an MG
(for example) if the gunner buys it. Same with vehicles, and field guns.
2) No hills or second level buildings. We will probably never do multi-
level buildings, but we do have hills on the list for CONSIDERATION in
CC2. But that's not to say we don't deal with elevation now. We handle
foxholes, trenches, gullies, low obstacles (like stone walls around a
churchyard), medium obstacles and high obstacles. Each of these
offers its own line of sight and line of fire rating.
RALLY AND HEROISM
From: keithz@atomic.com (Keith Zabalaoui)
1) will your men try to regroup and pull back reasonably to a safer
place and hold there for further orders?
Yes. Absolutely. And if they still have a previous order, they will
continue to try to achieve it. So for instance, you order a rifle team
into the grainery. Someone from the gate house starts firing on them.
They will have to decide if they should hit the ground, run back to
where they came from, or make a dash for the grainery. Let's say they
drop to the ground, then they have to decide which way to go.
And each man decides, based on how he's feeling. At this point (at any
time really) you can tell them to go someplace else and they'll try to,
but let's say you don't. They are still trying to get to the grainery.
Sooooo you open up on the Germs in the gatehouse with your .30 cal
and a BAR. This tends to suppress or pin or even kill some of the guys
that had been firing on the first team, allowing the first team to make
it to the grainery - where they find a full German rifle team hiding in
wait for them - but that's another story.
2) And IS there a possibility in the game for super-freaking-god-
fantastic-amazing-he-did-that-all-by-himself feats of HEROISM once in
AWHILE?
To Hell and Back - The Game. They can (but seldom do) go berserk, fanatic,
and heroic. Berserk is the most fun. The soldier screams this gawdawful
scream, drops his weapon, and runs toward the enemy. And dies.
MOVEMENT
From: keithz@atomic.com (Keith Zabalaoui)
I listed the 6 commands you can give, earlier. The reason those commands
work so well is that your guys do act with their own intelligence. You
can tell them to MOVE to a location and they will pick their way there,
taking the safest route. You can tell them to MOVE FAST to an location
and they will double time in the most direct path. If they get fired
upon, they will go prone and crawl for cover. If they stop taking
fire, they'll get up and try to make it to where you told them to go.
They will do their best to get there, but if enough of them die and
the rest start to panic, they might surrender to nearby enemy troops or
flee or just stay right where they are.
This philosophy applies to all aspects of the game. Let's say you have
a Sherman 76 firing at infantry. Then it spots a StuG IIIG. It may - on
its own - stop shooting at the infantry target you gave it and begin
firing on the StuG. Now, it was probably firing HE ammo at the
infantry. When it targets the StuG, it would switch to AP, although
the first round it fires at the StuG may be an HE round it had
already chambered for the infantry. Whew! I think you get the idea.
Now if it were firing at a Marder, it may very well continue to fire HE.
The point is that we have developed a very detailed game here, but
we have refined the interface so that you can concentrate on PLAYING.
REPLAYABILITY
From Keith Zabalaoui
For each map, we have several pre-defined setup "options" for the
computer player. He randomly chooses from these, based on how many units
he has. Also, we provide the computer player with "probable" locations for
the human's units. Sometimes, you'll see the computer player firing on
an empty building. That's why. So the short answer is that you'll see
similar set ups each time you play, but there is diversity built in.
COMBAT
From: wargamer@atomic.com (John Anderson)
rcrane@unicorn.it.wsu.edu (Bob Crane) wrote:
>> From what I've seen in the demo, I have little doubt that Close
Combat will win all of the game of the year awards from the major gaming
magazines. This is a truly amazing SIMULATION, imo. My only major beef
thus far has to do with the fragility of the armored vehicles. The
american halftrack is too easily killed by the German medium-light
machine gun. Basically, if it gets shot at it dies. I even had an M4
tank get taken out by a MG once. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is
very unrealistic.<<
I doubt that the M4 was killed by the MG but killed by the Panzerfaust
that the loader in the MG team carries.
Rule #1 of survival with American armor: Never move closer than 60 meters
to a potential german location. Even 120 meters is too close if there
is a Panzerscreck team near.
As for the MG killing the halftrack, this is why the M3 HT series was
known as "Purple Heart Boxes". With only 6mm at a 20o slope of frontal
chasis armor (10mm effective) and 12mm at 20o slope frontal upper
structure (17mm effective), the German MG42 could easily penetrate it
at close range (less than 200m or so).
While the MG won't necessarily destroy the M3 HT at this range, it can
injure or kill the occupants resulting in a soft kill.
Also watch out for the MG42 when you are in a wooden building at very
close range (50 meters or so). That gun (as well as the US 50cal) can
rip right through the walls making it much safer to be outside the
building in some nice big shellhole or foxhole.
One of the strategies a tester came up with is to deploy a couple of
MG42 teams in the interior of a large stone building so they could
not be shot at by the Americans until they entered the building, at
which time the MG42s opened up, shredding the interior wooden walls
between them and the Americans as well as the Americans themselves.
UNITS STATISTICS
From: wargamer@atomic.com (John Anderson)
I'll try to give a quick rundown of some of the displays:
Team Monitor:
Scroll list on the far left bottom. Sorted by the team type with the
exception that the Company and Platoon Commander Teams are always at
the top.
Left side: Contains Team Icon (pict of soldiers/vehicle), and Team
Quality (a set of bars ranging from none (Conscript) to 4 (Elite).
Top Center: Contains the Team Type Name (general description). Background
color represents the team's cohesion, or ability to fight. As the color
drops from Green to Red or Black, it represents that the team is taking
losses.
Bottom Center: Contains the Team's Strategic Order. If this order is
Green, it is an order you gave. If it is white, the team is doing it's
own thing. If it is Red, the team is disobeying you.
Right side: Enemy Threat Compass. It represents the direction that
team sees the enemy. If the center dot is red, then that team is alse
being shot at.
Soldier Monitor:
I won't go into a lot of detail here, as there is so much to explain,
but I will cover the high points.
Top Right: Firepower Graphs. These are graphed at 10s of meters at the
number listed, thus the column with an 8 represents firepower at 80
meters. Green, good firepower, grey line, no firepower. This color will
also show up on the Fire Line as you drag it across the screen.
Soldier List:
This has the soldier name, action, status and weapon info. Most of
this is pretty obvious, the key here is to see if the soldier action
is Green, Red, or White (see Team Strategic Order above).
Message Monitor:
Remember you can click on a message and it will center on the team
that issued the message. You can also restrict which priority of message
will appear by deselecting the color associated with that message priority.
FORCE CONCENTRATION
From: robear@access5.digex.net (Robear)
I'll take my guys and assemble them in the woods, say. Then I set the
tank up top, to mess with the two buildings up there.
As the game starts, they just sit and take shots to try to drop the
German morale. I'll pound the gatehouse with mortars until fire from
there stops, then shift the mortars to the church and move out.
At this point, I've eliminated the main support building (the stone
gatehouse, tied down the enemy left flank with the tank and maybe an
infantry unit as well, and I've got my main assault underway to the
church. With this plan, I can get to the rectory on Easy, and to the
church, gatehouse and the other building on Normal, while still
winning. I take around 13 KW, Germans about 24.
All this, and usually all I mess with are the mortars and the tank, to
keep them focussed. Everything else is done by the units...but I stack
the deck with the initial setup. So far, it seems to work, and to me,
the Op Orders fall out from the initial setup and the established goals.
This is a very challenging game. I've gone from losing to winning, and
the only way I did it was by recalling the stuff I've read about real
tactics. Simple plans, covering fire, preparatory fire, and a light
grip on the units. That is what seems to do it.
YMMV, but I think I'm going to love this game. :-) David Pipes
David,
You've got the idea. Combined arms is the key. And patience. The
Americans can mass rifle fire far greater than the Germans can. Once
you've mortared the guys in the east-most wing of the church, try
MOVE-ing the guys from the woods to the wall. MOVE causes them to
take the safest path in the safest mode. MOVE FAST sends them on
the fasted path at a run. And don't forget your smoke!
Keith Zabalaoui
BATTLE REPORT
From: e-mote@ (E-Mote)
So I got lucky, but I finally got a Decisive with the Germs on Hard.
I take back what I said before; they are fun to play, even if most of
it is based on luck, and you don't get to do very much.
In this one play, I got 5 teams, 2 MGs, 2 rifles (one is understrength),
and 1 AT. Total of 19 guys. The Yanks have 72 guys, including that
nefarious Zabaloui along with his cohort Szymonik in the rolling
coffin, otherwise known as a Sherman.
The MGs go into the gatehouse and the far-end of the church. Rifles
on the flank at the granary and the near-end of the church. AT sits
in the middle of the granary, busy engraving Zabaloui's name on a
Schreck shell.
This one opened fast. The Yanks started charging right away. The
halftrack got blown away within the first minute, by one of the two
MG teams (both are elite, BTW). Zabaloui dude rolled up about 80m in
front of the granary and started beating up on my poor rifle guys,
who re also taking 81mm mortar fire and all the inf stuff. AT FORWARD!
And about a minute later, Zaba and Szym were exchanging their tanker
suits for ones with wings and a halo. (Hey, wassup with the 100% crew
casualty? Crews get so sentimental about their tanks that they don't
bail or what?)
My 4-guy rifle team by this time had lost 2 guys, so the other 2 broke
and ran for the back door. The AT guys were holding the northern
rampart with a toothpick and a knitting needle.
On the southern front, I had set the 6-man rifle team back inside the
building a ways, so may be that's why the computer decided to make the
brunt of its attack there. They charged with about 3 teams, using the
patch of woods as a jump-off point. The majority didn't make it to
the stone wall, as my rifle guys hustled into their firing positions
and doing the duckshoot. The MG teams also had their fun. Some Yanks
did make it to the wall, and there we were, lobbing grenades back and
forth. Since I was inside a bldg and he just got a stone wall to hide
behind, I was winning most of my serves and he didn't.
What was strange, and which probably decided the game, was that the
2 American 81mm mortars keep targetting my routed rifle team up
north, following them to the back of the bldg, and leaving the MGs to
wreak havoc on the rest of the Yanks. With their AFVs knocked out,
they had nothing else to challenge the MG42s. The MG guys didn't
even break a sweat.
Anyway, after a while of shooting back-and-forth, I finally ran
outta MG bullets, so then the computer decided for another go at the
church, with another 2 teams to help out the survivors at the wall.
My 6-guy rifle team (2-stripe dudes) by this time had had their fill,
and by this time and routed to the back of the church waiting for
God to deliver a miracle (like a Tiger tank or something).
So then I double-timed the one MG team from its position at the other
end of the bldg to the front lines. Got there just in time to stop the
Yanks from getting a foothold in the church proper. Knocked off another
4-5 guys. At this point, I'm in the yellow, and the Yanks were way in
the red, and the thing was flashing so we knew we'd live to see some
Iron Crosses at least.
At the north end, the AT guys were still holding, and the mortars
killed one of the 2 panicked rifle guys and the other guy--Otto his
name was--finally ran into the orchard behind the granary (Otto finished
the battle with 4 cowardice points, but if I had my say, he would've
gotten about 10 medals and a trip to Paris, since he diverted all
the mortar fire away from the MG guys). So then we ended the game
with 7 casualties and 40 enemy KIA/WIAs, along with 2 AFVs (why does
the game list the halftrack as a truck?).
Turned out that we didn't get any Iron Crosses after all, just a
couple of crummy assault badges. Guess I have to pay the 40 clams
before I can get my paws on some spiffy crosses.
Questions to Atomic:
1- What happens to wounded guys during the campaign, are they gone
for good, or do they sit out a few rounds?
The guys that get wounded with one yellow cross come back. The 2 red
cross guys don't, with the exception of your commander. He never dies
and always comes back, albeit with reduced physical ability. (If he
gets wounded during play, he's down until the next battle.)
Keith Zabalaoui
2-Also, can you play the campaign with 2 players?
Absolutely! One reason we picked the 29th and 352nd was that they were
in constant contact for the duration of these battles covered by this game.
Keith Zabalaoui
