"Napoleonic Tactics in 40K" Warseer

[sonofccn]

I guess this goes here. As to why I'm posting a link I'm not sure. Guess I just found the discussion interesting doubly so Firaxin's response on the third page and since I'm not a member of Warseer, at least not anymore, I thought to send it here. Anyway here you go.

I don't pretend to be a soldier or know my rear end from an entrenchment shovel but to my gut getting your head down, spreading out so a single mortar shell or machine gun nest can't just wipe out your platoon makes sense regardless if your opponet is a German soldier with a Mauser or a green skinned soccer holigan. Thoughts?

[General Donner]

I don't pretend to be a soldier or know my rear end from an entrenchment shovel but to my gut getting your head down, spreading out so a single mortar shell or machine gun nest can't just wipe out your platoon makes sense regardless if your opponet is a German soldier with a Mauser or a green skinned soccer holigan. Thoughts?

Pretty much my thoughts too. The main reason for real life militaries adopting looser formations, far as I understand such things, was precisely the increase in precision, range and firepower of weapons in the 19th+ centuries. In a setting where the standard self-propelled artillery can supposedly drop multigigajoules of explosives in a single shell (meaning basically small tactical nukes), that point's more valid than in WWI or WWII, not less. Whether the enemy you're fighting is hordes of Tyranids or human waves of humans doesn't really matter much. A battlefield is scary enough a place to make people wet their pants as it is -- slavering aliens won't make it quantifiably worse than near misses by artillery and screaming, eviscerated wounded will already have made it, anyway.

(This is yet another reason why I'm skeptical about the very high numbers for 40k regular weapons some people on other sites put out, BTW. They simply don't seem to jive with the tactics the ground forces of the setting regularly and successfully employ.)

As for the guy's long post, he isn't really making very much of a point IMHO. You could change around a few words and make it be about a modern war -- Instead of spores, the Union of Soviet Socialist Tyranids are bombing you with tacnukes, FAEs, possibly nerve gas, etc. Instead of burrowing B-movie monsters, they send disguised assassination/sabotage squads, Spetsnaz and domestic terrorists after you. In the field, instead of hordes of aliens with occasional big monsters they throw the 20th Guards Tank Army at you. Etc. In fact, in most cases the modern analogue would actually be more effective than whatever the Tyranids use.

[sonofccn]

Pretty much my thoughts too

Good, glad I'm not the only one who thinks that way.

As for the guy's long post, he isn't really making very much of a point IMHO.

His point as I understand it is the enemy throws so much at you, and causes so much psychological damage, that you may not be able to make the right decision in a split second. And to combat this you should surrender all initative and bunch up in a close cropped formation so that your sergeant can baby feed you orders. Or whomever is controlling the gestalt he talks about.

You could change around a few words and make it be about a modern war -- Instead of spores, the Union of Soviet Socialist Tyranids are bombing you with tacnukes, FAEs, possibly nerve gas, etc. Instead of burrowing B-movie monsters, they send disguised assassination/sabotage squads, Spetsnaz and domestic terrorists after you. In the field, instead of hordes of aliens with occasional big monsters they throw the 20th Guards Tank Army at you. Etc. In fact, in most cases the modern analogue would actually be more effective than whatever the Tyranids use.

True as well in such a scenario entrenching like he describes likely would be the last thing you would want to do, infantry might be able to hide in the ruined wastes of the cityscape but trying to physically hold ground with tanks being bunkered would be aching for a smart bomb or failing that equivlent to a B-52. 70,000 pounds of explosives can move a lot of real estate.

But I've noticed in my trawls of the internet, at least on sci-fi type boards, if a guy posts a lenghty answer with an air of I guess gravitas it likely won't be questioned even if the basic premise of the argment is debatable. But then I'm a opinionated sort of bloke who's a bit of a know it all punk.