Tactics

# SR2020 Warfare Guide - Chapter 22 - Tactics

Submitted by Balthagor on Fri, 01/04/2013 - 19:31
As was explained in previous chapters, tactics are what win battles. Your grand war strategy is executed using intelligent, efficient, aggressive tactics.

Tactics are generally classified into two types: Defensive and Offensive, and there will be discussed at great length. However there are some other more general tactics that are vital to both classes.

## Supply

Before you deploy your military units you need to first consider the tactics that you will employ to supply them and keep them supplied. The more units that you are marshaling the more robust your supply tactics must be.

Supply flows from land, sea and air units and from your Region's infrastructure. Keeping your units within your Region's or your ally's supplied hexes and your supply needs will generally be met automatically by the infrastructure. Supply will flow from your cities, bases and factories via your seas, roads and railroads and most of your in-country units will be kept healthy and supplied with fuel and ammunition. But desolate locations far from roads have poor or no supplies.

Once you units cross enemy borders you receive no infrastructure supply at all. Initially your units will be forced to consume only the supplies that they carried in. Before those run out they need for you to move in supplementary supplies using mobile supply units. At this point you need some serious supply tactics to keep fuel and ammunition flowing to your invasion forces, and to protect the supplying units.

Newly captured enemy cities take two days be become supplied and these supplies must then spread across the former enemy's infrastructure, if there is any. If your captured Region lacks good roads and supply sources, then you must build some.

Land units will freeze-up and refuse to move once they run completely out of supplies, even if they have sufficient fuel to move. Their current orders will read "Awaiting supply". Any land or sea unit that runs out of fuel will come to a halt until it is at least partially re-fueled and re-supplied.

Land units on the battle-line can be re-supplied from land or air. Your supply tactics here reply upon supply trucks that can patrol between the battle-line and supply-points located behind friendly lines. Otherwise a good tactic is to arrange for supply aircraft to fly over-head and air-drop critical supplies to your ground-units.

Another supply tactic is to set your unit's ROE for high initiative which will allow them to seek out supplies on their own automatically, if they are under DM command. Aircraft will do this without special ROEs. However this can present a problem because once the unit is withdrawn from the location where you placed it on the battle-line, it will not return.

Naval units on patrol or on the gun-line can be supplied from transport ships or from aircraft. You must either have you ships escorted by supply ships, make re-fueling calls at friendly ports or arrange for rendezvous with supply aircraft. Aircraft carriers are also supply ships, so a good tactic is to have them supply their escort ships and embarked aircraft.

Most aircraft can only obtain their fuel and ammunition while landed on an air-field or aircraft carrier, so a good tactic might be to have the aircraft patrol between an air-field and some other important location.

Some aircraft can be supplied with fuel from tanker aircraft while air-borne. So your supply tactics could involve stationing air tankers at convienient locations where you air-refuelable AC can access them.

Helos are the most fortunate since they automatically re-supply while landed on friendly supplied ground or aboard oil platforms. The non-attack helos are also supply aircraft themselves and can go on and supply other units.

Most supply units are nearly defenseless so your supply tactics must include ways to keep safe from enemy attack.

## Repair

Units on the battle-line are constantly in need of repair and so you must establish tactics to provide for these. The first part of this is to supply plenty of barracks, air-fields and sea-piers for your units to repair at.

You can set the ROEs to grant your units sufficient initiative so that the DM will automatically order them to move to repair facilities when the units require it. The degree of damage that a unit will accept can also be configured via the ROEs.

## Defensive

Defensive tactics are those devoted to protecting your Region, its units, cities, facilities and resources from enemy attack. Border patrol, combat air patrol, garrison defenses, anti-aircraft defenses and sentry duty are all examples of routine defense tactics that can be performed to defend your Region's assets.

Each unit has an inherent defensive value for each of the four forms of attack: ground, air, close combat and indirect. A unit's stealth is a measure of how difficult it is to spot and target the unit. Some of these defensive qualities can be amplified with researched technical advances in armor and stealth.

A great defensive advantage is that when defending on your own supplied territory your units are automatically re-fueled and re-supplied without supplementary supply units.

Terrain lends a defensive advantage in terms of reduced mobility and spotting ability for attackers. Bases, cities and facilities add a defensive advantage as well since attackers are forced to attack using their close combat values.

Good defensive tactics will take all of these factors into consideration.

Because of the SR2020 diplomatic system, all DOWs are announced via E-mail, so it is unlikely that you will not receive prior warning of the beginning of hostilities. However due to the FoW, if you lack good surveillance then it is possible to be surprised by a land attack or an unexpected enemy amphibious invasion.

1. Garrisons
2. Radar Coverage
3. Borders
4. Capital Defense
5. Defense-in-Depth
6. Fields of Fire
7. High-Ground and Stealth
8. Artillery
9. Anti-Air
10. Defeating the Buzz-Saw
11. Coastal Defense
12. Fleet Operations

## Offensive

Offensive tactics are utilized to actively pursue and destroy enemy units. Here we will explore various types of offensive tactics for all three groups of units - land, air and sea.

The most important over-all offensive tactic is to pursue and overwhelm enemy units with larger formations of more powerful units.

In both defensive and offensive situations, enemy units should be destroyed, not just damaged. Damaged units will often attempt to disengage and retreat for repair. They should not be permitted to repair and then return and fight again.

When you capture a hex with enemy bases any enemy reserves in those bases will "pop-up" out of reserve and deploy. But since the hex is no longer supplied the newly deployed enemy unit is without fuel or ammo supplies. Enemy aircraft may fly away, but land or naval units are defenseless and are easily destroyed.

1. Capturing Enemy Capitals
2. Capturing Facilities
3. Supply Lines
4. Unit Mix
5. Artillery Use
6. Lure, Isolate, Destroy
7. Demolition
8. Defeating Garrisons
9. Airborne Assaults
10. The Zerg Tactic
11. Attacking Super-Bases
12. Offensive Anti-Air
13. Close Air-Support
14. Anti-Armor
15. Bombing Missions
16. Defeating AA Sites - Wild Weasel
17. The Buzz-Saw
18. Missile Attacks
19. Naval Attacks
20. Submarine Warfare