All too often I see people just rAMBO'ing it up and it's really inefficient as hell. For taking towns, having AI troops with you massively increases your firepower especially in the early game. A sniper and a few MG troopers (Or an AGS30...) covering your advance into a town will do wonders to your survival chances, as will having a line of riflemen running ahead of you to screen for enemies and spot targets for the support team. When that support team has TOW/METIS added, they will wipe out any armor in the area in short order. With the correct tactics, you can take over the big towns like Stary Sobor or Zelenogorsk by yourself as long as you have an effective plan. This does not have to be limited to just using infantry either. I've been using T-72's en masse (like they should be!) to take over towns and it's just a complete bitlzkreig of town captures one after the other. Even if one or two get knocked out, you can just call in more as you move along. Even a few tanks can be useful in this regard, sending off two tanks to cap a town from light resistance (such as Gugluvo) is a much better use of resources then detailing player(s) to focus on that task.
For the past several nights when me and some opposing players have been fighting over a town, it's my Ai soldiers that manage to pull off a win or bring about a stalemate in that location. Several times I've been in a skirmish over Vyshnoye and have been killed. But my Surviving troops in the town would just kill the enemy players again and again until I arrive from base with new reinforcements and secure the town.
Another example was when BLUFOR was pushing hard into the Sobor Gap (tm
) with Tanks. At the time most of my team mates were busy in other areas of the map so it was mostly down to me to stop the onslaught. What I did NOT do was try to be a Hero of the Soviet Union (in Gold) on my own in a T-90. What I did instead was send in a constant stream of T-72's and ATGM-BRDM's to turn the area into a meat grinder. I might have been loosing three T-72's for every two M1A1 TUSKS that I killed, but that is still a quite favorable result when you consider that the TUSKS were crewed by players and the T-72's were just Ai. If one of mine got knocked out, I'd just shrug and send for more tanks from base, for them they would have to wait out the respawn timer, rebuy the tank then drive to the battle again to just get bogged down in fighting expendable Ai tanks, instead of capping towns or achieving a breakthrough into our lines. I of course participated in the battle with my T90 as well and even setup a few infantry in Stary Sobor to snipe at people hopping out of their tanks. In the end, I achieved my objectives and the enemy did not. Thanks to my Ai as well.Hell, let's take a case study from tonight's match. Me and some other players were approaching Falar from the north, while BLUFOR approached from the south. A typical meeting engagement.
As you can see one of my tanks have already been knocked out by Baskerville, but that's OK because the tank was free, the crew survived and it meant that I did not eat those rockets instead. What ensured was my infantry sweeping into the village and past it, rooting out BLUFOR as they went. During this I lost the 2nd T-55 and a few troops, but I still had the advantage.
This is a shot showing this towards the end. About where my GPS is where the enemy Ambo was. Using Ai to cover me and suppress enemy players I RPG'd it. After this I got sniped from the hills, but Having taken on several players practically on my own (the other opfor players had been killed early on). I was quite happy. That ragged line of infantry managed to delay blufor for a few more minutes as well after my death.
I'll post some more stories and tactics tomorrow.
My Linebacker last night manage to shoot down Xerxes' KA52 and Daleskis Su34 without too much hassle, so it is possible.
Luckily I had the GPK full of AI and simply told one of the guys in the backseat to man the gun.
Should see if we can get it added.
