Help me kill those pesky infantrymen pls

[terje439]

Well I have not played SPwaw for long, but have countless hours on the original SP, as well as alot of other ww2 games.

My problem is as follows, it seems the german support tanks are no good at killing infantry, my PzIVc's rarely kill anything, but my PzIIIe's on the other hand.... And have they made the 88s stop shooting HE
or something? They are no longer great against infantry. And my engineers, well guess they feel sorry for the enemy infantry, because they sure as *&#¤ do not kill them. Even my mg nests are useless...

So how do I kill infantry units in this game? Rushing the PzIII's into enemy infantry positions tend to lead to high casualties, mines do not work good, artillery works ok, but I never have enough of those big guns.
So anyone???

[plloyd]

I have no such problem. What version are you playing? There used to be a problem like that back around 5.1 or 5.2.

[Tequila]

There are several methods.

1. Flametanks Especially those with range of 2. You can sometimes outright kill the whole squad with two squirts assuming they don't run out of range before the second squirt Easier if you target them then only press the key to fire the flame, otherwise if the tank fires the MG first the infantry might pop smoke and run before the flamegun fires.

2. Large bore howitzers of 105MM+ on tanks like the KV-2, StuH42, Sherman 105 that create a slot of splash damage. However, the HE rounds from a 75mm assault gun like from the PzIV-c you are using should still do decent damage to infantry but mostly at close range. You'll notice that if you fire a 75mm HE shell further than 2 hexes away it doesn't give you the big fireball graphic yet it's still using an HE round against a soft target. That's the big difference between the 75 and 105+mm HE. You can loft a 105mm HE from many hexes away and it still has a great effect but a 75mm HE really needs that close range to inflict optimal damage against soft targets from what I have witnessed.

3. Run them over! If you time it right so that the enemy infantry is routed or retreating from artillery then you can put your tank in the same hex without worry of being assaulted and then press alt-O if you have enough movement points.

Enemy infantry that is pinned/routed/retreating is harder to kill with MG fire than when they are ready so don't waste too much time on them with an MG after they go to pinned status.

Hope that helps some.

[rbrunsman]

I'm guessing you're using your PzIVcs from long range. If you use them from <4 hexes they really crush the infantry.

As said before, MGs are best used against 'ready' infantry, not 'pinned' units.

Mines don't get them every time someone passes through the hex. There is only a probability of it happening.

If you want to see engineers do some damage, then turn off all their weapons except for their flamethrowers. That really does damage.

rb

[Yamashita]

Infantry has really been toughened up since the original SP. If you want to go back to those days you can adjust Infantry Toughness in the Preferences screen.

Glad you asked because I hadn't learned about the greater effectivenes of the PzIVc at short range.does this make sense ?

heavy mortars like 105mm can be really devestating now, IIRC mortars seemed pretty useless in SP Orig.

Also MGs & AT guns are much tougher to kill now, they used to die very quickly.

[Voriax]

The greater effectiveness of PzIV at short range applies to all tanks. If the distance is over 3 hexes (or 4) tanks fire their main weapon but do not fire other weapons unless they pass bunch of experience etc. checks. Exception being heavy mg's like M2 and DShK as they are considered small guns. At close range the tank goes into 'panic' [;)] mode and will always fire all weapons.

Voriax

[rbrunsman]

You'll also notice that at close range, the 75mm HE rounds of your CS tanks and Stugs, etc. make a bigger 'flash.' And, they almost always do some kind of damage. Just experiment a little and you'll see.

In MCLV, where your only core armor is the Stug ausf E with just a short barrelled 75mm gun, they don't do anything to infantry at a long range, but up close, and for no real reason, the 75mm HE round just does more damage. Go figure...[&:]

[terje439]

All of this was new to me, so thank you all of you, guess those pesky allied will taste the german wrath now [:)]

[Maciste]

I'd suggest to use nebelwerfers batterys displayed around an hex containing an ammo dumps... then switch to artillery and... ¡the endless fire barrage begins! (it works too with katyushas [:D][:D])

[ILCK]

ORIGINAL: terje439

All of this was new to me, so thank you all of you, guess those pesky allied will taste the german wrath now [:)]

The other thing that helped me a lot is not shooting at pinned units. Take a MG and shoot into 3 differrent ready, moving units and it seems like you'll get kills on each shot. Once they go to ground they're much harder to kill.

for the Germans that SIG133 thing works wonder too. I've bought those on support points and they wreak havoc.