to crunch or not to crunch...

[Cobra2]

ok, how do you use infantry in SB. both mech and light infantry.

also, how best would you equip them in say you were making a sce.

in infantry-heavy sce, which are few, how would you use infantry to best advantage? how would you make em survive long enough to do some damage. especially in inf vs inf engagements, what is the key stroke or BP that helps you win?

[ShermansWar]

I do quite well with my grunts.I use one of maybe 4 different tactical sets, depending on their mission

1)I spread them out, and push them well forward( about 1200 to 1500 meters) from their parent carriers.
i will use a single brad platoon to cover a front 2.5 kilometers wide. they can get plaenty of soundings contacts, and, concealed in woods( if available), i wait for tanks to pass, and pursue them and attack them from the rear and flanks. I may lose some, but i usually get a few kills a game with them.
i use them for what they were meant FOR, even if I dont use them HOW they were meant. I use them for scouting, intells, and antitank assault and ambush.With my tanks stationed in good BPs with nice hull down positions, i send the grunts out in front, , and once they get far enough out it in front, then I send the APCs, empty, to the positions that the grunts find are clear of enemy, then I send the grunts farther forward still. I use them in the advance of all other units, I let them die first, and then the PCs, and laslty, the tanks, preserving the cutting edge of my forepower as long as possible. I am loathe to scout with my tanks, but will do it if I think the situations warrants. Quite often, I am out of grunts, almost out of APCs and halfway through the scenario befoe I lose my first tank. And I usually have about 3 or 4 kills to my credit, by the platoon of brads and grunts I burnt up.it's all about the math.

So, if my apcs are out about 1200 meters in front of my tank, after 20-25 minutes of game, and my grunts are out 1200 meters in front of them, I have eyes on the ground about 2.5 Ks in front of my mainline of defense, I have intel about anything approaching, andn i have plenty of time and warning to react. Not to mention that the enemy often does not expect my infantry as far forward as they are, and often, when they turn to kill them, am able to snipe the enemy tank with a tank of my own from a great distance.I find this approach gives me superior intel, lets me get inside my enemies decision cycle and allows me to attrit a few enemy units at no cost to my tanks, an edge in early attrition which gives me yet another advantage that I can capitalize on if I am skillful.
this approach, which is somewhat dependent sometimes of another part of the system I use, which is to get to early good BPs with great LOS and get an early edge in attrition on an eagerly advancing enemy who thinks he can catch me off balance early in a scenario. If all goes well, sometimes I am up a great many units before I ever even began a serious armored thrust. I consider this shaping the battlefield, something I find it wise to do before committing the bulk of my force., enabling me to have a tank heavy schwerpunkt at hand when i finally do find a gap in the enemy defense and move to exploit.


2)If in a scneario where you have a great amount of infantry, deploy them en masse to an area of heavy expansive woods you wish to deny control of to the enemy. The presence of 24 squads of grunts in a wood a few square ks can make it uninhabitable and very expensive for an enemy to move into. You may then employ the parent carriers also en masse to cover a certain hill or objective with many missiles, so that even if an enemy tanks sights them and picks a few off he will still, more than likely fall victim to a TOW. You can thus deny a vital sector of the map to my enemey, with only a few tanks in support, thus allowing you to use a heavy schwerpunkt again somwhere else.

3) If you have to assault a Known enemy strongpoint frontally, if, say for instance there was no other avenue of approach available,,you may use a simnilar assult to the last one,a Human wave assualt( under covering and supporting fire to gain a toehold on a particularly difficult objective, get the enmy hung up tangling wiht my grunts, who were used as a sacforce, and then launch my direct assault on it. All those grunts usually screw up the defender, particulalry as he tries to gun against me and his TC keeps swinging him onto closer grunts.


4) They can be used to guard a blinside of a critical BP so my tank doesnt get suprised and has time to eaithe react or evacuate. In a related mission they may also be used as a lsitening OP on a mapedge i'm not worried about enough to commit significant assets, but yet want some warning against an unexpected enemy thrust.

[Cobra2]

i think of the game units as made up of 3 elements. tanks , PCs and infantry. nothing new.

i do think of the 3 as a food chain.

tanks eat troops and PCs. inf eat PCs up close. PCs only eat other PCs.

so PCs are canibals, while tanks are sharks and inf are like rodents. (small, but deadly)

i usually send tanks in 1st because i think the other guy will send Troops and PCs 1st. this gives me a good kill ratio early in game. i do not think of winning as killing just tanks, but to view an enemy force as one unit.

this means i give the same priority to troops as to tanks. i do ignore a far off tank in HD to kill troops closer to me. mind you i do try to get out of the LOS of enemy tanks and PCs.

i usually use PCs to scout front of tanks or to hold an Obj. troops just fan out and take defensive BPs. tanks make up the fist with which i strike and defend positions. also, i usually give troops Arty priority. evens up firepower a bit.

the only time i use inf offensively is when i try to flush out an enemy. in mass i try to manuever my troops in a pincer action around an enemy element. here the intent is to kill tanks and PCs. i generally try to avoid troop vs troop battles. i believe the heavy armor of a tank was not made to survive enemy tank fire but to survive everything else. that includes infantry fire. so my primary IFV is actually a tank.

the only reason i use tanks to kill tanks is that i cant count on the enemy force to move into a trap. my tanks go through all combat action simply to put pressure on the enemy. PCs and troops are my reserve. that means i may lose my tanks first, but if that happens then i rely on ambush and flanking attacks. i can use ambush because at that point i know for sure the enemy would be attacking. that is all i need to kill his last tank. i would also point out that this tactic was met with some success.

[ShotMagnet]

ok, how do you use infantry in SB. both mech and light infantry.

They make great scouts. They're not durable enough for sustained combat, and they can be killed by anything, but they make great scouts.

I dislike leaving them in one place for very long; in this game, as in real life, the longer you sit in one place the more likely it is that someone will hit that spot with artillery. They don't even need to see you, they just need to suspect that you're there. Keep them moving, and scouting.

You'll find the occasion to pop a tank with your grunts, and there's nothing wrong with going hunting if the situation warrants. Don't expect the infantry to survive the encounter, though. If you really need that squad, don't send it to fight a tank. Infantry do better at killing PCs, but the same cautions apply.


Shot

[Cobra2]

i think troops can beat all other units. i mean just look at them! they pack ATGMs and RPGs. if there were planes in SB they would get SAMs too. the only reason troops as so fragile is not the fact they dont wear cevlar, rather they are so stupid.

they dont have the sense to stay in cover or even crwal. they have a meeting every time they get the flank of a tank 100m away. they draw straws to see who fires the ATGM/RPG and its always the guy leagally blind! they also seem to be so afraid that they leave cover when you shoot coax at them.

in any company-size action you should have over 100 troops, and never mind the mech inf. add some real AI to em and they will kill tanks, PCs and helos.

troops...bees with a nasty sting!

[Ludwigmeister]

i think troops can beat all other units. i mean just look at them! they pack ATGMs and RPGs. if there were planes in SB they would get SAMs too. the only reason troops as so fragile is not the fact they dont wear cevlar, rather they are so stupid.

they dont have the sense to stay in cover or even crwal. they have a meeting every time they get the flank of a tank 100m away. they draw straws to see who fires the ATGM/RPG and its always the guy leagally blind! they also seem to be so afraid that they leave cover when you shoot coax at them.

in any company-size action you should have over 100 troops, and never mind the mech inf. add some real AI to em and they will kill tanks, PCs and helos.

troops...bees with a nasty sting!

Well the thing is history has proben troops kill tank, and tanks kill troops. Troops kill tanks in Urban Warfare, being able to get close while not risking exposure gives them time to get into position, and effectively attack the tank. In the open though from greater distances, Tanks are invincible to troops, and thats what they are made for oringinally. Then eventually the development process leaned toward making tanks with great survivability against other tanks. In the end though, even a tank-hunter tank will destroy infantry in the right geographical situatinos with the right distances and lack of blind spots. Infantry on the other hand will moslty always have the upper hand in real close and tight urban circumstances, assuming they are equiped properly. If not, then the Tank wins there too.

Me personally, I do things along the lines of Sherman's bit, only with lesser distances between my infantry and the PCs. I usually keep the PCs close by so that they can peek over a hill and send a friendly love tap to any Tank looking to take out the troops from the front.

I think I tend to have my tanks fole past my PCs and Troops, as opposed to the other way around. I rush with the PCs and troops to get a foot in the door, and like Sherman, to have eyes up front right away. From there I gauge the best possible approaches with the best cover and let the tanks role in. I am not advocating this strategy as good or bad, it just tends to be the way I do things. Once the tanks have gotten those forward positions I bring up the troops and PCs to those same positions, set up another hold, and bounce forward witht the tanks.

I do this because I see it as a balance of fire power and armour in relation to application. PCs have no chance of absorbing tank rounds, none what so ever. Putting then so forward means they may match the tank for killign ability, but have no defence. With them at farther distances with my tanks forward means that my tanks are being engaged while engaging back, already a 1 to 1 even situation, added to that the PCs lobing rounds from a bit further back while not being in the main focus of the enemy tanks. End result = my tanks go fist to fist while getting support from PCs in the form of instant arty almost (assuming they have eyes on). who otherwise are too easily blown away if they are up front.

Exceptions to this process are when I see a copse of trees or a valley entrace, or a hill with a superior LOS at the top, then Ill use the troops to hold those key points of the map for as long as I see the enemy as strong enough to take those poitns and thus gaining his side a good advantage. Once the enemy is beaten downa nd back, I will be willing to leave such strategically rich map areas in order to support a forward push.

I dont use troops out front because I find some maps dont allow for quick support from your tanks from as far back as 2.5km. By the time an enemy tank comes rolling in and sprays your 8 boys till nothings left, you may not have gotten a good eyes on with your tank 2.5kms back. That could jsut be because of my own mistakse, but I do find sometimes giving effective support, or being able to garuantee effective support from that far away is not always possible.

Ludwig.

[Cobra2]

i found a PM from LS about the troops not firing from 100m. the fact is that the fuzing range is never more than 50m. usually this is closer to 30m. indeed you are expected to use an RPG from 100m distance and not from the quoted range of 500m or so. a weapon like Carl Gustov M2 may be, but with RPGs you get a rocket that adds a little yaw to the warhead. if you look at and RPG coming in and is initially directed right at you, you will see it 'snake' its way to you. this is because the stabilization of an RPG is not perfict. this is also the reason you cant hope to hit anything at a distance of 1000m while the rocket can in fact have its speed increased to engage targets that far, but remains the problem of accuracy.

even ATGMs can be used like RPGs up close. im not really sure here, but i do know at least some ATGMs have a 'rocket mode' where their guidance is inactive. not to mention that the guidance system only kicks in at about 100m-200m distance from the launcher. some systems like Dragon and Javelin may be exceptions.