Hello,
As a disclaimer from start, this is possibly (and probably) a personal view, based on my own (limited) experience.
The first minutes, the fight for the first neutral strong point
- Of course priority number one is to always have a commander, if possible from start. This will allow a supply air drop to be finalized before you actually reach its location, for one possible garrison.
- Supply truck dispute, who should take it ideally, after playing commander, officer, support and engineer myself:
– Commander + support. Support will drop his own supplies as close to the target strong point, while on friendly territory, not wasting truck supplies, then the truck’s supplies can be deployed on future positions, in neutral territory, commander can stay on one of those locations, support returns to HQ for resupply.
– Squad Lead + support, same as previous, but this should be done if a team is set to provide the logistics for the entire game, otherwise the squad lead is more valuable in combat areas.
– Commander + engineer. While nodes are important on long term, I don’t think is worth loosing the chance to take the center strong point over 2-3 minutes of resources. On certain maps however resources might prove in more demand, like on Purple Heart Lane – ammunition/fuel (specially if strong points are set on the main road).
- Initial Anti-Artillery/Anti Flanking. Again, depending on map, artillery silencing can be vital. Also, coming back to Purple Heart Lane example, Anti Flanking can be extremely powerful if Anti Tank Mines are placed to 100% close side bridges. Terrain is perfect for mines camouflage, and once control over such an area is established, is very hard to lose it. Same closures can be done, with good results, on maps like Hürtgen Forest, Hill 400, Utah Beach(specially on the American exits coming from beach).
- Building fortifications from start
– On furthest owned Strong Point if it offers enough protection(buildings, trenches, vegetation walls, etc)
– On a point between furthest owned Strong Point and the next, disputed one.
There are two ideas here, one is setting a reset point in case you are pushed away/lose attacking garrisons, secondly, the more defenses built, the less people forced to stay defend, allowing more focus on attack.
The long run issues
1. Pick healthy team compositions and use roles properly. Useless to say how many teams I saw without officer, losing entirely the benefit of Outposts or the chance to be useful and deploy garrisons. As for using roles, don’t pick assault and then for the rest of the game drive a supply truck around. There are roles more suited for that, like engineers that choose to play defensively (because they also have a satchel layout that is intended to do a different thing), supports, officers, etc. Medics, infantry, etc, those are needed in front and second lines. Also a healthy distribution is required. You will need 3-4 Anti-tanks with bazookas to destroy enemy tanks that made it in the battle area, but you don’t want 7-8 doing same thing, you will want 2-3 preventing tanks and supply trucks to reach hot areas by mining. Same for supports, thing that I sadly rarely see, when engaging enemy territory you want supports to collaborate, because new garrisons cost 100 supplies, and air born drops might be too obvious, or at least you’ll have more options.
2. Don’t waste ! I see a lot of times supply trucks making a delivery then being abandoned. Supply trucks are costing fuel and are generating free supplies. Don’t waste, always keep the supply trucks working. If you are officer and your immediate need to build a garrison is fulfilled, assign and have with you someone to take over, be it engineer or support.
3. Read maps. This is also a mistake I see too often, leading again to two cases:
– Blind Squad Leader that pass near supplies because they don’t use map or don’t bother to zoom in when they can’t see details (and also not bothering reading chat when announced)
– Blind drivers that keep getting trucks stuck. Of course it happened and sometimes still happen to me as well. But that can not become a rule. As a precaution, when you are about to take a turn, pass some vegetation, anything that doesn’t have clear view of ground in front, slow down. After the bush you can drive through there might be a trench, if you don’t use map and go in at full speed, truck is 100% lost. Also, consider trying to unstuck supply truck. Evaluate the position, if there is a good chance to push it out of misery and is not far away from HQ, grab a useless transport truck and sacrifice it if needed to unstuck the supply truck (that doesn’t mean to overdo it either and transform a trench in your team’s car cemetery).
4. Defend garrisons and fortifications. Not only those are vital to you, but if you lose them many might be used later on against you.
5. Keep a healthy garrison distribution and act in response to losses. If you are attacking you need 2 garrisons for defense and 2-3 for offense. Losing defensive ones while not being 100% sure you are winning next one very fast should always switch attention on defense and rebuilding. Remember, not winning next point means 1 failed step, loosing the one you have means 2 failed steps.
That’s all for now, I’ll come back with edits if anything else blows my mind.
Thank you,Araanae
P.S. Feel free to destroy my feelings and make fun of my post 🙂 Or be constructive and come with better ideas 🙂
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