How to hold fire?

[Keithious]

When I am trying to set up an ambush my men always fire and give away my positions. How do I make them fire on my command? Also, is there a way to move while prone or crouched to remain hidden? thanks a lot.

[KnightFandragon]

Yes, there is a way to do both...

I think hitting your Spacebar is the default key to get your soldiers from Standing to Prone or Prone to standing. Or else if you want to do it the slow way, you can click the little button on the right side of your screen(it should have a soldier icon).

Also, if you go into Options, there should be a change stance up and change stance down...I changed those to Page up and page down...so I select my men and if they are prone and I want them to simply go up to crouching, I hit Page Up, if I want them to go from standing to prone, I would then have to hit page down 2 times, 1 time to get them to crouching, thenagain to prone them....its much faster then trying to click the button on the menu to the right....JUst gotta play around with it...

As for Return/hold/open fire...there is an icon on the right that shows the firemode your currently selected units are on....

The big yellow explosion icon is OPEN FIRE
the black arrow with a red cross out thing over it is HOLD FIRE
the machinegun that is showing it firing is RETURN FIRE

OPEN FIRE is obvious...if the see something, they shoot it

HOLD FIRE is how you get your men to NOT fire...but they WONT fire even if fired at.....I rarely use this mode unless I truly do not want to fire back...they require extra micromanagement on this mode as they could get attacked and die at any time...

RETURN FIRE is my preferred option as it keeps your tanks and men from hopelessly firing at EVERYTHING they see BUT if something should shoot back, they will, as the name implies....FIRE BACK....sometimes you will have to still select them and go into and then quickly leave Direct control to get them to fire...they like to endlessly fire until they are out of ammo at times...unless AS fixed that...

HOLD FIRE is best used for im sure you know the obvious scenarios...if your sneaking behind enemy lines, or doing anything where you dont wanna be seen

OPEN FIRE I rarely have my men on unless im defending something and not microing those men....OPEN FIRE is good for mass attacks...mirco a few men while an OPEN FIRE tank is sitting behind just lambasting your target....just play around,' you'll figure it out. Have fun killing.