Killing Infantry

[Krotos]

Hey all,

Here is yet another quote concerning Kurt Meyer.

"Kurt Meyer was a classic example of the aggressive and ruthless Waffen-SS officer. He was a first rate leader who pushed his troops (and himself) to their limits. In a periodic review, he was characterized by Sepp Dietrich, the commander of the LAH, as a passionate soldier, which he certainly was. During his interrogation by the Canadians shortly after the war, Meyer viewed the struggle in Normandy as "magnificent in the best Wagnerian tradition. As he described his actions and those of his men, it seemed as though he liked to consider himself as Siegfried leading his warriors to their death."

"The Valour and the Horror" Web Site

The point is, men like Meyer may even be able to rally the dead, but the average officer or NCO is not made of similar metal. In SPMBT, all of the squad leaders appear to be Kurt Meyer clones.

Krotos

[pdoktar]

Siegfried leading his warriors to their death. Yet he survived the war. Considering his superior morale and fighting skill and commitment, it is a bit surprising. Maybe he too layed low during the worst engagements.. to survive to fight another day, or just shivering with fear like the rest of us would.

[Basileus]

DRG said:
Infantry hits have been labled "casualties" since 1998. It was one of the first changes we made to the games when we were working on SP2WW2 and it's been that way ever since

Don

Ah, thanks Don. I'm an old SPIII hand, and spend more time tweaking OOB files than playing so I hadn't noticed

Basileus

[Basileus]

pdoktar said:
Yeah, right. I would kill the good-old grenade throwing squad leader if any of us survived the attack. This guy wouldn´t make me grin and respect the leader afterwards.

I hear you. I'd rather be led by someone like the stoic Sgt.Rock hollering "C'MON, EASY!" myself than have some lob a grenade at me. Then again, it's probably a cultural difference...a WW2 Japanese officer could rally their troops into a suicide charge with a wave of his katana and a "Hail to the Emperor", while Belisarius' Thracian Bucellarii didn't even need such encouragement to rush to his aid when he got himself ambushed by the Goths at Rome. As others have said, Panzer Meyer wasn't exactly a nice guy. But he understood the danger of losing the momentum of the assault and getting pinned by enemy fire; in SPMBT, if you stay in one spot for more than a couple turns, even the AI will stonk you with artillery, and that will certainly be fatal.

Basileus

[Basileus]

Krotos said:
The point is, men like Meyer may even be able to rally the dead, but the average officer or NCO is not made of similar metal. In SPMBT, all of the squad leaders appear to be Kurt Meyer clones.

Krotos

Agreed, such "super rally" leaders should be few and far inbetween, probably best represented with high leadership quotients for specific individuals rather than overall troop quality ratings. The default infantry toughness in SPMBT does seem high, but it's also a double-edged sword in that if you're playing a Western nationality, your own troops should be more prone to look after their casualties than the game's infantry toughness quotient may suggest. In the old GDW map-and-counters game called "Phase Line Smash", the designers made an interesting note regarding disruption (their version of pinned/retreat, which means Coalition units can't attack after taking hits until auto-recovery next turn):

"So how come the Coalition units are such a bunch of babies with no combat ability when disrupted, and the (Iraqis) are hairy-chested warriors who keep fighting even when they're down? Most of this is due to the differences in scale, Coalition battalions vs. (Iraqi) brigades, but also because when a Coalition unit is hit, it does stop as soon as possible to take care of casualties and to regroup before continuing the fight. A diagnostic feature of (Coalition) units is that they will stop and focus their attention on the care of even one casualty in the middle of a firefight. And don't think it's because they're a bunch of babies. It is that very same team cohesion that makes them such excellent fighters. Soldiers don't fight very well when they know no one gives a damn. On the other hand, you have the Iraqis, who didn't fight very well, because they know no one did, and were defeated before they started. At the same time, their command and control was so godawful that they might as well keep fighting when disrupted, they're not that much more in the dark now than they were before, anyway. Coalition units used sophisticated doctrines and operations that did require them to stop, regroup, and sort things out before continuing. And their terrifying effectiveness when doing so proves the wisdom of taking an extra moment to do it right" - probably Dave Nilsen (parenthetical paraphrasing for clarity)

Basileus

[andy1964]

Hi,
Another opinion on the subject.

Infantry are hard to kill, those guys are not standing out in the open waiting for you to shoot them :-) they are making use of every bit of cover they can find.

So Pin them with fire, then pound them with artillery and keep it going until they start to take casualties and retreat/rout and as they retreat keep pounding them, don't give them an option to regroup. From observation, routing units are much easier to kill with small arms fire and MICV armament, even Tank secondary armament has a better effect. Not sure if this is actually stated in the manual, about routing units, but it seems to hold true.

Artillery after all is the killer of the battlefield. Infantry are there to mop up afterwards.

One other point on this is once you have a target for your artillery don't keep switching it every turn. Pick a target and hit it hard until you are sure it's not going to bother you again.

TY
Andy

[baggypants]

Post deleted by baggypants

[Listy]

If the enemy infantry are out in the open (Even pinned) a cluster warhead is great fun at improving the situation. If they're dug in land LARGE things that go bang on their head, the larger the better.

Flame based weapons also shift infantry fast.

But as otehrs have said, Supress tehm, then get your own infantry in postion and start mowing them down up close works every time.

[macktheknifeau]

I've been playing alot of infantry themed campaings and scens (many of which feature no arty, planes, mortars or anything other than basic infantry, and maybe some apcs), I've found the best way to get rid of enemy infantry, is waste their return fire in your turn (preferably on things they can't kill, or squads far away to prevent mass casulties), and then get an infantry squad in the next hex and open fire from close range.

This can be done with regular foot infantry (it takes slightly more planning and turns), or mechanized infantry, sometimes it takes 2 or 3 turns "preparing" the enemy squad, and then one good strike to take them out of the game.

Of course, you could substitue that with any sort of thing which has enough fire to hurt the squad (apc, tank etc), but generally you need to pin the squad, waste their return fire, and then move a squad into the next hex.

Regular firefights (between 3 and more hexes) you'll probably need something like a heavy sniper to break the deadlock.

oh, one more thing, when you are moving units for the enemy to shoot at (or shooting at them getting a response back), try to use different units for every movement\firing.

[Basileus]

By the way, while we're on the topic of infantry combat, let me say I'm impressed with dismounts in WinSPMBT. Watching those Marines in the Obong-ni Ridge scenario duke it out with T-34s in adjacent hexes and actually holding their own, that was impressive. On the receiving end, I like the fact that my tanks being ambushed by hidden infantry in adjacent hexes don't automatically result in my tanks being killed. That part of SP3 was a royal pain...I mean, they only had HAND GRENADES. I can't remember where I read it, perhaps it was Andy Gailey in the help file for Kobhack, but it was said that infantry WILL find a way to take out unescorted tanks that blunder into an infantry ambush (of course, having LAWs/RPGs would improve their odds, but even with just grenades there was a very good chance your tank would be toast). Now, SP3 was platoon-based, so your poor multi-tank unit might get reduced to a single survivor in one move! That's a kick in the crotch I don't miss

Basileus