AP vs infantry

[JohnR]

I haven't been playing too long. I did a search on this question, but did not find anything. Will a unit that has only AP rounds left fire on infantry? Will they fire at buildings? If so, how much effect will AP rounds have on them?

Thanks

[Gyrene]

Sometimes they will fire on their own, most often you'll have to manually target them. AP round don't do much against buildings or troops as they are basically just one big bullet with no explosive charge. (Usually) The odds of someone getting hit is fairly low, but it does happen.

Gyrene

[JohnR]

Thanks for the info. Say gyrene, did you get the email I sent you about starting a pbem game?

[109 Gustav]

They do a good job of keeping supressed inf pinned down, though, so if you have nothing better to do with 40some AP rounds, by all means use them. You should always keep 15 or so on hand just in case a couple enemy tanks show up.

IIRC British AP rounds have no blast, however, because they were solid shells.

[ParaBellum]

In a recent QB an 88 PAK fired an AP shell against an enemy infantry squad.

Result: one casualtiy

I really don't wanna know what the 88mm shell did to that guy...

[Warmaker]

*splat* Sucks to be him... at least if you get blasted by HE you're in bits, that's it. I don't know about getting hit by an AP round...

[ParaBellum]

During my army time I saw a movie about british operations in the falklands.

Saw a wound caused by an 7.62mm (600-700m/s) bullet.

Looked quite ugly!

I just tried to imagine what an 88mm (!!)high velocity (about 1000 m/s) shell would do to a human body.

Ugh, what a mess...

[Michael Emrys]

An AP shot doesn't necessarily have to strike a body to cause a casualty. If it hits stone, masonry, or even wood, it will tend to send out a spray of splinters that can cause superficial (or even not-so-superficial) wounds. In fact, it can probably cause more casualties this way than by direct contact, although admittedly direct contact is more likely to be catastrophic (and more demoralizing to the casualty's buddies). I should think just having AP rounds shrieking through your position would make you want to keep your head down.

Michael

[109 Gustav]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ParaBellum:

In a recent QB an 88 PAK fired an AP shell against an enemy infantry squad.

Result: one casualtiy

I really don't wanna know what the 88mm shell did to that guy...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think Max Morlino (sp?) did a picutre of this. Might still be on CMHQ.

[CombinedArms]

My experience has been that AP and zook rounds won't cause many casualties but will fairly often make already suppressed infantry break and run. You DO have to specifically target them, but I think it's worth it if you don't have any HE to fire and don't need to save the AP to deal with armor.

In a recent Squad Leader conversion I played it was all infantry and I had 4-5 zook teams. When it was clear I'd be facing no armor & I'd begun to push back the attacking Axis infantry, I started targeting that slowly withdrawing infantry and just about every squad I targeted immediately broke and ran after taking one or two zook rounds--and they weren't receiving any other fire, so it must have been the zooks. I have the feeling this is built into the AI modeling--the idea being that already supressed infantry isn't going to be to discriminating about the real level of risk when they start receiving cannon or rocket fire.