Infantry useless?

[dbsapp]

Infantry in Red Thunder seems to be completely impotent.

It doesn't shoot back, it's too vulnerable and it stops to implement order after the first shots from the enemy. Moving slow make soldiers exausted in 2 minutes after they crouched 10 meters.

The single machine gunner can wipe out the squad in a matter of seconds. Soldiers can't assault buildings or fortifications or woods no matter what type of order you give them. 

It requiers a lot of micromanagement, including orders to shoot particular area or units, to make them do something except of dying.

Like in some ancient games, e.g.Sudden Strike, the infantry single role is to observe and find the enemy positions. It is the tanks that do the killing.

Actually, it's quite frustrating and unrealistic. Graviteam's games made much better use of infantry with substantially less micromanagement and  greater survivability of the infantry.

Burning bunkers mission is the great example of infantry negligible role in the game. You have hundreds of soldiers, but the only things you need are the tanks with flametowers, which you have to direct manually, because they don't see German machine guns firing under their nose. Infantry can't make it even close to German positions. For the whole time playing the game I saw my men firing at the enemy maybe twice, despite I tried to place them at the locations with line of sight on their foe.

Would Fire and Rubble make improvements to TacAI and infantry behavior or it would be repackaging of the same Red Thunder with new units and maps?

[chuckdyke]

14 minutes ago, dbsapp said:

Graviteam's games made much better use of infantry with substantially less micromanagement and  greater survivability of the infantry.

I installed the game and got rid of it soon afterwards. Infantry in Graviteam is robotic, no fear, skill levels or motivation. You didn't say with which game you had problems. I spent some time practical shooting and service type shooting. From the street the average person has a problem hitting a dinner plate at 50mtrs. After a month or so he gets consistent. Note these are under ideal conditions and no stress involved. In the game grenades or anything which says bang do most of the killing. With MG's you must carefully select your position for plunging or grazing fire. Get it wrong you blast away for nothing. In modern warfare rifles have now 1X1.25 magnification scopes. You really need training with them before you're better off than with Iron Sights. Under stress you tend to use your weapon in shotgun fashion, reason they seem to be effective. 

[Cobetco]

sounds like someone has discovered why ww1 was a meat grinder.

[MikeyD]

CM needs as much or as little micromanagement as you're willing to give it. On rare occasion I've double clicked on company HQ to  select everyone in the company and I given them marching orders across the map. More often I double click on the platoon leader and march them forward as a group. I don't try micromanaging until I'm in contact with the enemy. If you're struggling you might want to avoid the infantry battalion size battles. My ideal scenario size tends to be reinforced company.

Your infantry are being mowed down because... well... you're not very good at it yet (which, frankly, we all were when we started). You eventually learn how to effectively use the terrain, use suppression, know what your various weapons systems are capable of. I recall a Russian tactics paper that said a single German HMG nest had been known to hold up an entire battalion if they didn't bring along the means to neutralize it. That's why they fielded monster 152mm assault guns for close infantry support. Infantry are only one arm of a combined arms force. I joked playing CM:Afghanistan that 1980s Russian infantry's primary mission is to move forward over the charred corpses of your enemy.

Edited April 5, 2021 by MikeyD

[Mr.X]

There are statistics, which claim, that only 2-3 of 10 soldiers in combat situations really use their weapons to fight...the others try to survive...

 

Facing a MG-42, it is the very best option to get cover...

[Aragorn2002]

Everybody beginner can use tanks, but to use infantry takes experience and skill. 

[chuckdyke]

3 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Everybody beginner can use tanks, but to use infantry takes experience and skill. 

The one who shoots first lives longer. It is not rocket science. 

[Aragorn2002]

1 hour ago, chuckdyke said:

The one who shoots first lives longer. It is not rocket science. 

No, but it ain't that easy either. 

[chuckdyke]

2 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

No, but it ain't that easy either. 

That one came from a Waffen SS veteran.

[Ts4EVER]

19 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

That one came from a Waffen SS veteran.

Well if he knows so much, how come he lost?

Anyway, regarding infantry: I am kind of confused why Graviteam Tactics is cited as an example of very strong infantry, the developers even pride themselves in infantry being somewhat useless against tanks. That is not a joke, there is a thread on their steam forum that only exists to post reports of tanks being basically impervious to infantry. I would even turn it around: In Combat Mission infantry is a bigger factor, in Graviteam the anti tank gun.

 

edit: Although I should say that this is partly because Graviteam plays before the introduction of effective hand held anti tank systems, at least the WW2 part.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Ts4EVER

[chuckdyke]

1 minute ago, Ts4EVER said:

Well if he knows so much, how come he lost?

He lived to a ripe old age. Very good at crossword puzzles. Graviteam Tactics? I installed it and after a week or so got rid of it. It is more a less a tank game. Nice graphics so it appeals to some people. 

[Aragorn2002]

2 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

He lived to a ripe old age. Very good at crossword puzzles. Graviteam Tactics? I installed it and after a week or so got rid of it. It is more a less a tank game. Nice graphics so it appeals to some people. 

Same here. The looks are okay, but CM is far superior.

[Frenchy56]

I wouldn't say CM is superior to Graviteam, or vice-versa. They are simply both simulations which focus on different aspects from one another.

Graviteam focuses on entire operations on which you can move painstakingly-recreated units with period TO&Es for that specific operation around a strategic map, then duke it out on the tactical map which offers very good ballistic and vehicle simulation, terrain deformation, AI formations that can go up to battalion size that doesn't require so much micromanagement and can follow orders by itself if they are simple enough. Of course the downsides are that there may be some mishaps with the AI.

Combat Mission is a sandbox. You can make practically anything set in the timeline and theater represented in the form of scenarios and scripted campaigns, with historical TO&Es and boatloads of vehicles and variants, however it's more practical to play at a smaller scale than Graviteam's since units require much, much more micromanagement, though that gives more control over what exactly you want your units to do. There are still a lot of abstractions compared to Graviteam, like how buildings work.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Frenchy56

[Aragorn2002]

Sounds like Graviteam made a lot progress, since I tried it years ago. But I'll stick to CM.

[zulu1966]

15 hours ago, dbsapp said:

Infantry in Red Thunder seems to be completely impotent.

It doesn't shoot back, it's too vulnerable and it stops to implement order after the first shots from the enemy. Moving slow make soldiers exausted in 2 minutes after they crouched 10 meters.

The single machine gunner can wipe out the squad in a matter of seconds. Soldiers can't assault buildings or fortifications or woods no matter what type of order you give them. 

It requiers a lot of micromanagement, including orders to shoot particular area or units, to make them do something except of dying.

Like in some ancient games, e.g.Sudden Strike, the infantry single role is to observe and find the enemy positions. It is the tanks that do the killing.

Actually, it's quite frustrating and unrealistic. Graviteam's games made much better use of infantry with substantially less micromanagement and  greater survivability of the infantry.

Burning bunkers mission is the great example of infantry negligible role in the game. You have hundreds of soldiers, but the only things you need are the tanks with flametowers, which you have to direct manually, because they don't see German machine guns firing under their nose. Infantry can't make it even close to German positions. For the whole time playing the game I saw my men firing at the enemy maybe twice, despite I tried to place them at the locations with line of sight on their foe.

Would Fire and Rubble make improvements to TacAI and infantry behavior or it would be repackaging of the same Red Thunder with new units and maps?

You obviously dont know the game. Graviteam games I like. But infantry in that is useless - massive slaughter everytime. you should understand infantry in CM behaves like infrantry and is good for the things infantry is good for.

[Frenchy56]

Infantry only gets slaughtered if you throw it into the meatgrinder without a great enough (at least numerical) advantage, just how it should be. Unfortunately in most scenarios you don't really have a choice, and that's a pretty good representation of the Eastern Front.

[Ts4EVER]

4 hours ago, zulu1966 said:

You obviously dont know the game. Graviteam games I like. But infantry in that is useless - massive slaughter everytime. you should understand infantry in CM behaves like infrantry and is good for the things infantry is good for.

Wouldn't go that far. One thing I had to learn in GT due to the inability to micromanage the inf is that you need to heavily support them with mortars, MGs or AT guns. Without that they are indeed useless.

[weapon2010]

20 hours ago, dbsapp said:

Infantry in Red Thunder seems to be completely impotent

 Take a deep breath, relax, is it possible your doing something wrong? if you apply previous gaming experience to CM you will surley fail, if you apply strict real world tactics , you will fail a little bit less,lol.

[Artkin]

What our kind friends here are trying to say is:

Infantry are actually your most powerful tool. 

They spot for the tanks.

They spot for the artillery.

They have heavy assets which do a MAJORITY OF THE KILLING!

MACHINE GUNS MORTARS HEAVY WEPS these KILL your enemy. 

Infantry serve as recon, area denial. 

Sure infantry can fight but they will probably trade blows. Your assets are different. They just obliterate whatever theyre firing at. 

 

 

There is a learning curve to standard infantry in CM...

Best results are achieved when your squads are split and micromanaged to avoid being suppressed by the same bad guy. 

If you try to assault anything with your infantry, you can pretty much walk right on top of the enemy and blow their faces off so long as you keep them suppressed from other formations. 

Suppress, and then attack. It's all about manuever. Someone had an excellent Churchill quote on here just on that. 

 

Proof: Played a recent cmrt pbem and my infantry got maybe 5-10% of the total kills. And those were snipers/AT rifles.  A huge % was my MG and AT guns. I had no artillery or else that would have probably replaced my AT in number of kills. 

Edited April 6, 2021 by Artkin

[MikeyD]

The trick to gameplayplay is to enjoy dying. If you're a 'win at all costs' competitive type it can get pretty frustrating to lose a battle. If you're a 'I'm watching an interactive war movie' type whose doing it for the immersion a 'glorious death' can be half the fun of gameplay.

[chuckdyke]

My 'Sniper' in SF2. Got the credit for 3 AA Shilkas also of 9 enemy combatants. He was more effective than the Leopard 2 in that game. OK if it makes you happy infantry is useless in CM . Infantry is the Alpha and the Omega they scout at the start and flush out the enemy HQ from some pile of rubble at the end of the game. 

[MikeyD]

Most of the time if you find something in the game that's problematic its because it was problematic in the real world. That's where the 'sim' takes precedence over the 'game'. The British Ministry of Defence ordered their own CM title. I don't have a clue what they're using it for but I can imagine them workshopping tactical solutions to vexing modern war problems. The enemy have drones and smart weapons. Find a solution with your available assets.

[Freyberg]

2 hours ago, MikeyD said:

The trick to gameplayplay is to enjoy dying.

Lol... or accept cheating. If you screw up - go back to a saved turn and try again

Plus - in QBs, give yourself plenty of time. Only in the very smallest of games will you finish in 45min with mostly infantry.

I love infantry-heavy battles. They require patience, studying the terrain, making use of all arms, a lot of slow and careful manoeuvre with occasional short dashes, always conscious of enemy artillery - fantastic...

[Artkin]

Totally and completely agreed. Nowadays I mostly play battles with 0 vehicles.... as Chuck said the snipers do work....

Everyone can have their Barrett, this is what I want...

 

That fluted barrel is beautiful. It's like a you're holding a goddamn railgun in your hands.

The only rifle that gets to play with the .50s....

How are infantry useless when theyre missing limbs after being hit 2km away ?

[MikeyD]

CM Cold War. Tank heavy and US infantry don't have a single sniper weapon. This is going to be interesting.