What independent battalions

[Twotribes]

what independent battalions do you add to your brigades?

[Maerchen]

Recon buggies, motorbikes only if found early, and light tanks. On tank brigadesarmed with howitzers: tank destroyers with HV guns.

[Twotribes]

Right now I am testing assigning one artillery battalion and one either rpg or anti tank battalion to infantry forces and med tanks to light tank brigades.

[BlueTemplar]

I've been adding the same kind of Battalions to my Brigades, as I'm often lacking the logistic points on the very front to send subunit replacements, and getting a unit out of position for one-two turns and losing those AP's often seems to be not worth it (and manual subunit transfer is often relatively AP-costly too).
Plus, more units in a formation (for the same amount of subunits) seems better than less, especially considering how encircling works, even with the relatively high PP cost of the independent formations (raising new brigades is probably even MORE PP expensive, once you take the costs for an extra OHQ commander and a posture into account ?).

I've also been sending mixed forces of a brigade with outdated APCs (which I have a LOT of) with 1-2 battalions of outdated tanks against non-aligned/minors.

[newageofpower]

If I have the spare industry/metal to pay for the ammo, Rocket Arty. Otherwise, maybe a recon element.

For foot OOBs, an RPG unit or two if I haven't discovered the Grenadier OOB type yet.

For light armor OOBs, early game mix in HV light tanks to deal with enemy armor. Late game I swap them to laser so I mix in mechanized quadguns to deal with enemy infantry.

For medium armor OOBs, mix in Assault Guns with howitzers to deal with infantry.

Super late game I think everyone attaches Walkers, as they are extremely strong atm.

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: Twotribes

what independent battalions do you add to your brigades?

Recon Buggy or Motorcycles
Artillery
Tanks, mostly light

ORIGINAL: Twotribes

Right now I am testing assigning one artillery battalion and one either rpg or anti tank battalion to infantry forces and med tanks to light tank brigades.

The AT gun and RPG (like most infantry) are inherently defensive units.
Defensive units work best, if they are distributed throught the combat units, so the enemy can never attack without hitting some of them.

That being said when doing a enciclement I often put the OHQ + Independant batallions into the same hex, usually the most defensible one. At that point defensive independants can work pretty well at making the OHQ a unatractive target...

[Twotribes]

Ya the rpg and anti tank units occupy the head quarters hex for me. The artillery just depends where I need it.

[redrum68]

Depends what OOBs you have. Early game you almost always want to attach the strongest independent units (tanks in most cases) to get the OHQ bonus as you'll have mostly infantry centric OOBs. Later on it tends to matter less as you unlock more OOBs but probably walkers since they don't have their own OOB.

[BlueTemplar]

I just realized that in my second game I was wasting a lot of BPs into trying to get Light Tank OOB, while I didn't even *need* it (at least a that point of the game) : since I picked Mind, Curiosity (50) gives me Fluid Defense (+40% on defense for infantry+arty, +30% attack & -30% defense for mechanized).

This is the only thing I *really* need for pushing back the AI assault with tanks attached to my infantry OOB, and the only thing I should have tasked my Staff Council with !

[FarAway Sooner]

Recon, Artillery, and Tanks are the best bet, usually in that order (although sometimes Tanks present themselves before Artillery). Early in the game, I might do a Motorized Infantry Battalion if I want to do a lot of scouting close to roads, but the Fuel needs make it really hard for Trucks to go too far off the road.

A lot of those decisions are driven by what sorts of OoB advances you get from your Staff Council. Once you get Siege Artillery, it's convenient to build Artillery organic to your mainline combat units. But until then, having a couple sets of big heavy guns you can move around to soften up enemy targets beats the heck out of plinking away at them with the 20 artillery guns you might get in a militia regiment or two if you're lucky!