APCs Under Appreciated

[ShockUnitBlack]

One problem is either you have good coordination between separate APC and infantry squads in Mumble or you've got a mechanized infantry squad, which suffers due to having only four actual infantrymen.

I'm gonna push the following -

1 - Better APC survivability against LATs.
2 - Removal of helo crates (radical, yes).
3 - Lowered helo speed.

[ytman]

In unoffense: ytman, your strategy predicated that your opponent would not assume to deal with infantry and armored support as one package, which is a fair assumption.

Actually, the crux of the plan was that I deemed both CAS and MBTs to be secondary to Infantry on the map. My battleplan was more focused on what I thought was needed to have a very powerful and quick offensive capability. Plus a secret weapon rarely used in public play CO rally. The 5 man infantry squad + attached IFV allowed for me to move along with the IFV and Squad, get dropped off just outside of the battle and place a CO Rally.

There's a critical failure in packaging 8 people as a single unit in a team of 32, and while this may not be a problem on an open map like Kashan or a small map like Muttrah, anecdotal evidence shows that blobs, even multiple small blobs, can be outflanked and destroyed with relative ease, provided they can be identified. All it takes is one or two lucky shots to bring a Mechanized Assault in PR to a screeching halt for ten minutes, during which your infantry centered opponent is free to maneuver (mostly) independently of his assets.

Worse even, TG forces 31 players due to Supporting Memberships!

AASv4 changed a good deal of 4km map war fighting and made the battle lines progress realistically and reasonably. Every successful capture would set the team up for the next cap.

But you are entirely right that an enemy waiting in ambush would certainly ruin a Mechanized Infantry squad (as they have many a time). This is an unavoidable feature of the fog of war and can only be guarded against by the probing of enemy lines before commiting to an attack. Just like you never bring a Transport Chopper to the sight of the enemy's TOW/H-AT you don't roll up to a flag in an IFV and not expect to be attacked by AT.

However, even if an IFV goes down you still have that infantry squad that is at the very least capable of defending if not aggressively attacking from a nearby offensive FO. Risk is integral, and the payoff of Mechanized Infantry (when done right) is worth it.

On 4km maps manuever is much more difficult and time consuming. And then once the Infantry squad is detected it is incredibly hard to break contact if out gunned. Being tied to an IFV not only makes it harder to be out gunned but allows for quick retreat as well.

One can never truly balance around scrim or preorganized play in PR, as it is such a small fraction of total games fought. The best you can hope for is to have "most of" your team on board with your plan, and that they're competent enough to handle rapidly changing situations that don't fit into original tasking orders.

Oh definately. SLs who can think on their toes really make things work. Giving an SL not only a squad but an IFV greatly enhances his tools and capabilty to improvise.

APCs and IFVs are proportionally weaker than transport helicopters in PR. Limited by terrain and line of sight limitations, they cannot stand on level ground in the category of infantry transport.

Yes and no. On Wanda Shan, Shijia Valley, and even Yamalia I will take good powerful IFVs over a fleet of Air Transport. Clearly you are right they don't compete with the fast and quick insertion capabilities of Air Transport but they are a huge force multiplier in the land battle when used skillfully and in a supporting role (not a lets tard rush ahead of friendly infantry into the unknown).

They do bring significant volumes of accurate fire to a fight, but if the fight begins to shift or otherwise move away from easily accessed supply routes or other areas traversable by tracked vehicles, they lose their advantage, and can even become a weakness if a hamfisted commander or squad leader tries delay an assault to wait for the vehicle to catch up.

This is more the fault of an attack that was too slow or a defense that wasn't strong enough. Again, AASv4 will really give IFVs/APCs a boost in power due to the more fluid battle lines. Sure did on Shijia.

In addition, whereas these tracked vehicles carry four ammo footlockers, a single helicopter can deliver the core component of a forward spawn point at the same time it delivers the troops to assemble that point. It takes land vehicles an additional set of wheels that is much slower and much less maneuverable than the tracked vehicle that is supposed to protect it.

Yes. You are only stating the difference between the Support and Assault vehicles. An FO is clearly welcome but a Helo also surely reveals its drop zone due to noise and vertical take off. 8 times out of 10 I find that Logi Trucks prove more useful and less risky when trying to get a foothold. As you said before, things fail when detected, logitrucks are less detectable then a helocopter.

In the Shijia Valley Scrim we had NO dedicated transport chopper and instead relied on a dedicated Logistics squad running back and forth from main. We never had a lack of FOs. Of course the CO rally was a huge boost as well.

Consider also the requirements of the vehicles themselves. It is most effective (and indeed mandatory in most cases) to apply two squadmembers to an APC or IFV. Each must perform a separate set of duties in addition to keeping an updated picture of the situation at large. Contrast the helicopter, which functions best with a single squadmember. It may be outfitted with a navigator, but that second squadmember performs no actual duties in the vehicle. He manages no weapons, he controls no systems, etc. (I only talk about transport helicopters here, because just like tanks up yours merkava don't carry infantry, neither do attack helos carry cargo).

However, that transport pilot will also spend 90% of his time at main awaiting missions. This is one more reason why I did not have a dedicated Helo pilot in a 31 man team.

In fact the dedicated Helo pilot for the British was quoted;

Animal Mother

hindsight from my perspective would have been for us to have utilised the apache a bit more.

i felt bit useless when i was sat in the lynx hearing infantry squads reporting heavy armour contacts, perhaps if we'd been able to take out a few of your armoured assets would have relieved some pressure off our inf. especially if we'd nailed your APCs which we now know to have been a key piece in your gameplan

but then hindsight is a wonderful thing

-------

In short and in closing, yes APCs are under appreciated. It's because they underperform in most situations compared to their airborne counterparts, and require finesse and a large degree of skill to use, which most teams in PR struggle to bring to the table in even a fraction of a degree.

100% correct. There is a huge amount of ignorance among the community in the proper role of the IFV/APC. This isn't really the community's fault its that the nature of the asset is so counter intuitive to the average player and is harder to explore due to the 10 minute respawn.

I remember once telling my attached IFV in a pub match to attack some infantry. They decided to rush into them in a forest instead of supressing from a range. They died rather quickly to AT and we lost that round rather decisively.

But really... I've seen teams with stellar Mechanized Infantry components wipe the floor time and time again. The 64+ servers will mandate Mechanized Infantry as a core component of the successful and skilled team.

[ComradeHX]

The biggest reason why APC are so easy to take out is the fact that infantry is not working well with it.

In pubs, nobody ever bothered to recon an area to see if there are any deployed AT weapons... this caused the squad that actually moves into the area to be in a lot of danger...and usually get killed in the APC.

People need to remember that Infantry are the cannon-fodders...they need to run ahead and scout out the area before APC go in to drop some reinforcements/take out enemy infantry with better firepower. Blindly going into an area with just an APC-ful of people is suicide.