Infantry - What Do You pick?

[m113apc]

Originally Posted by Charles22

Thanks for your response. I guess there were two main things I was looking for a)what sort of infantry people get, and, more importantly b)what do people equip them with. That's why I described in some detail what I want mine equipped with, such as how many LMG's, grenade launchers, mortars, flamethrowers, what have you.

Well in that case, I look for one thing.
Do those in at least one of their slots have a weapon that could knock out a tank?

The rest of the slots are, do they have enough punch to decimate an infantry unit.

[iCaMpWiThAWP]

Originally Posted by m113apc

Well in that case, I look for one thing.
Do those in at least one of their slots have a weapon that could knock out a tank?

The rest of the slots are, do they have enough punch to decimate an infantry unit.

GLs, mortars and flamers can knock out tanks, (HE pen of at least 1 CAN penetrate tankettes and most italian early war armor)

[m113apc]

[/quote]
GLs, mortars and flamers can knock out tanks, (HE pen of at least 1 CAN penetrate tankettes and most italian early war armor)[/quote]

Yepp.
What I really would like to have the capability to do. Is to have some options to choose the armament for my infantry myself.

The need for different weapons can vary from time to time, dependent of the mission you want them to have.

But my guess is that this would take a lot of time to get in to the game.

[runequester]

My current soviet campaign has:

2 companies of soviet infantry. I upgraded them to SVT rifles when they became available, and dual hand grenade slots. Weak against tanks but they do okay, and they are usually close to my armour anyways.
2 platoons of engineers originally, but I realized that I rarely use them for anything engineer'ish, so exchanged them for SMG troops to send around the flanks. I can always buy engineers as support if needed.
Then 4 units of scouts and 4 snipers. I absolutely love snipers. Very effective for pinning down an entire platoon in many cases.

I tend to focus on well equipped infantry but I rarely buy elite types, unless thats the focus of my campaign.

[Charles22]

Elite troops are at least interesting in that over a period of time you can find out if they make any significant difference. I have found out that the Brandenburgers having 2 LMG's can be quite devastating at times.

I don't know, but I think at least having some engineers in core is pretty essential, because for the early portions of the war they represent the only real infantry threat to anything resembling a medium tank. Of course if one gets them shot up all the time just fighting regular infantry, where they're generally weaker, having them in core probably won't matter too much.

[runequester]

Thats true, though I've been able to just stick around the tanks so far. Im a big fan of having the infantry stack in the same hex, as it seems to make a lot of fire bounce off the tank.

Of course, I tend to get impetous, so I'll send a tank platoon off to do something, only to be blown up by hidden enemy infantry

[Griefbringer]

Originally Posted by m113apc

What I really would like to have the capability to do. Is to have some options to choose the armament for my infantry myself.

The need for different weapons can vary from time to time, dependent of the mission you want them to have.

This could also be a bit gamey.

In practice, your average WWII infantry company is not likely to cart with it a truckload of spare weapons, so that they could optimise their armament for a particular battle.

Getting some satchel charges for a bunker-busting mission would be a possibility, though. But these tend to be abundant enough in many forces as they are.

Mechanised forces could be a bit more lucky, since they would have some spare transport capacity in their halftracks - though after fitting in a dozen men and their gear, it might not have been too much. There could be still the option to dismount the MG and take the bazooka/panzershreck allocated to the vehicle.

Griefbringer

[Charles22]

It depends on the GL, of course, but AFAIK there are no dependable mortars or grenade launchers intrinsic to an infantry type squad, that knock out a tank enough to count on it. I have been through 2 battles against the Polish GL's, maybe having tanks hit between 50-100 times, and not a scratch. It's only the armored cars and half-tracks that have anything resembling consistent trouble from them. Needless to say, if the GL firer were on a hill, he might have some damage hitting a top portion of a tank. They're just entirely too unreliable in anything but the very lightest armor to think of them as being anti-tank.

[Charles22]

Originally Posted by m113apc

Well in that case, I look for one thing.
Do those in at least one of their slots have a weapon that could knock out a tank?

The rest of the slots are, do they have enough punch to decimate an infantry unit.

That's how I look at it early in the war as well (though you often can't get any weapons that are really anti-tank capable early on), but later, you're probably better off with slot 3 being as a ranged anti-tank weapon like a bazooka. So you would half for tanks and half for infantry. I guess, if it were possible, to have a bazooka type weapon as your lone anti-tank weapon, that might be sufficient, since it is ranged to some degree.