Occupying Towns: A Guide

Understanding town mechanics can help you make the right decisions that turn the tide of a war. Here is a brief overview.

Garrisoned Houses

 

The backbone of a town's defense is the Garrisoned House. They can be built with a CV and 150 bmats on a specially designated ghouse spot that look like ruined houses. The sector's town hall must have occupied town teched however.

Ghouses have AI powered firing ports that target enemies in range. When the TH has Large Garrison, the ghouses can fire AT rifles, which counter armored vehicles.

Oftenttimes there is a side of the ghouse without firing ports, which means it's vulnerable from an attack from that angle. Also, if you're quick, you can hop inside enemy ghouses because they do not target anything inside itself.

 Safe Houses

 The safe house is like a garrisoned house that provides respawns and supply stockpile. Even though it's a strong defensive strucutre, in order to properly protect it, you must surround it with a layer of actual bunker base-connected defenses such as rifle garrisons. This creates a buffer zone that is easier to repair and rebuild, and also give defenders something to shoot out of. Later, it can be upgraded to include AT garrisons and even howitzer garrisons to be arty/gunboat proof.

Town Hugging

How do you protect a town when it does not have occupied town teched? Enduring Wake is a prime example of a town that is very difficult to defend from a southwestern invasion. The city center is paved and not suitable for building, and the land outside the city itself to the southwest is in the rapid border decay zone. However, there is one spot in between 2 ruined buildings at the spot marked in the picture that can fit a 2x3 bunker, and you're able to extend a line of bunkers all around the city from it. In this way, we can "hug" the town with solid bunker defenses (as opposed to foxholes, that get 1 shotted by 30mm or 2 shotted by HE nades), and powered by the AI from town hall. Something like this can be thrown up in half an hour with a small detail of engineers, and be the difference between keeping a town overnight or losing it shortly after.

Saltbrook Channel is an example of a town that requires a more comprehensive defense plan before it gets occupied town. The entire box in red is unbuildable, and that's just the area south of the river. (There is a hacky spot inside the urban area where you can fit a BB by using corner tiles however). This means you need at least 3 separate bunker bases covering the west, south, and east sides of the Liegehearth industral complex in order safely make use of the factories. Beacuse it's out of AI range from the town hall, it will take at least a full day before the bunker bases get tier 2 AI and there is no guarantee they will survive until then.

In this case, you make the best of what's available. There are a few things that can bolster a defense of urban terrain. Barbed wire can serve as effective walls against infantry, and can be built just about anywhere. To allow friendlies through, build a gate (requires CV) on the roads, which also stop enemy vehicles. Emplacement guns such as the EAT and Flak can hold a lane very effectively with minimal investment. (only costs bmats). Use curved tier 1 sandbags to provide your side with an advantage in urban combat. Because it's curved, even if the enemy takes the sandbag, they are vulnerable from a wider angle of fire. Even in a town, you can find patches of green that allow building foxholes, watchtowers, or as spot for a tier 2 sandbag and a box behind it, which serves as a firestep that protects the gunner almost completely. Mines and tank traps can provide additional defense, but be cautious that they do not hurt the friendy vehicles.

Abandoned Ward is notorious for being a giant mess for builders, fighters, logi, and vehicles alike. Deadlads is very hilly and there are not many suitable places to build. This makes the securing of AW all that more difficult. In order for either side to be able to say they truly "own" the town when they don't have "occupied town", they need bunker base defenses on the side of the river that the enemy is likely to attack from. Even if AW is painted your team's color on the map, and even if it has tier 2 AI, there is almost no spots to build foxholes inside the town itself, so the smart enemy townsniper team can wait until low pop hours and drive a truck full of HE grenades to the town hall and blow it up. 

The marked spots on the image above are popular spots for building a bunker base that can help either side form a buffer zone for the town itself. Site B is unintuitive and hidden in plain sight, and it can only fit a single bunker which serves as a respawn point across the river. All the other sites are hilly so their expansion potential is limited, but it's the best you got, so it's wise to make the most of it. 

Industry

Lastly, an important consideration for a newly captured town is the options that teching "industry" (tier 1) offers. It is teched rather quick, just like provisional garrison, and once complete, you can rebuild factories, garages, seaports, depots, and construction yards. Oftentimes, there may be lot of random players in a front that could be rebuilding the said structures, but aren't. So if it is up to you, consider the following effect of each structure on a front.

Factory: You only need to take in bmat supplies from your logi, and you could be producing your own shirts, gunss, ammo, gas nades, radios, binos, wrenches, and all the things that are lacking on a front.

Garage: In a frontline garage, you can benefit from being able to build slow moving field guns (FMG or Wolfhounds) near the combat area, making flatbeds unecessary for transport. Also, while you may not need more logi trucks, motorcycles and ambulances can be built right where it's needed for mechanization of infantry and more effective engineering.

Construction Yard: This may not seem important, but on a frontline, a Yard can churn out flak and AT emplacement guns which are cheap, and whose only hindernace is transportation to where they're needed.

Depot/Seaport: Usually not a priority on a heavy frontline because people are wary of storing things in a risky  depot. However a seaport is very valuable because it adds a naval dimension to the available methods of delivering logi, which can supply a beleagured area and also in bulk.

 by Mountedantman