About infantry

[102nd-YU-Devill]

Hi all,

I was thinking that infantry is very hard to see from air as it is now. At the same time, we are making more and more use of it in our campaigns.

What I propose in order to make infantry more targetable from the air is a system similar to artillery pieces when the option: "Enable Automatic Emplacements for Artillery" is selected.

In the case of infantry, it would be great if all the infantry which is not ordered to move in the mission, be displayed in trenches; while the infantry on the move would keep present appearance.

Now, the entrenched infantry could actually be a different unit, much more resilient to damage both from strafing aeroplanes and tanks. But, since it would be easier to spot from the air, it could (and should) be targeted by carpet bombing or dive bombing planes.

What do you think about this? Is it possible to do?

AGain the primary inscentive here is that we use a lot of infantry units now in the campaigns which are not terribly useful.

Cheers!

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

Hi Devill,

Stationary infantry will have foxholes etc in the next DCS version (e.g. for use in the June 1942 campaign). They are still pretty hard to see from the air, but that is good.

Cheers,
4Shades

[102nd-YU-Devill]

Hi Shades,

This news is good, but I'd still like to know if they are going to be harder to destroy than usual infantry.

I am thinking of this: in real war you can't charge with a bazooka into some tanks and attack; if you do, you can't fire while moving, and you are a great target yourself. Now in IL-2 I think that stationary (entrenched) infantry is destroyed to easily by tanks, while beeing almost unseeable from air. The usefulness of the entrenched infantry is IMHO a major problem right now.

So, it is not just a question of visibility, but also of usefulness.

On the other hand, imagine if you assemble a lot of infantry to form a defensive front line; this should be seen from the air!

Cheers!

P.S. Do you remember that talk about artillery on the 242nd forum recently? Should we open a thread about that? IMHO infantry and artillery are really undersimulated right now in SEOW. Maybe a discussion about these things could spawn some good ideas?

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

Hi Devill,

Well, the foxholes give them some extra protection. Just yesterday I drove a single SdKfz through a full strength Commonwealth Infantry platoon, 4 sections, dug-in. The halftrack drove up to the platoon and killed the AT section, but not before the AT guys had fired off one bazooka (missed). The halftrack then killed another section and drove on through, leaving two sections undestroyed.

The thing here is that the halftrack fires and reloads faster than the AT section. Maybe a tank, which only fires its main gun in IL-2, will reload at a similar rate to the AT section so there is more chance for the tank to die. I haven't tested this.

I take your point that much more could be done to elaborate the whole infantry ground war, but I suspect a lot of that work needs to be done as a Mod rather than as SEOW coding. Let's open a thread about this!

Cheers,
4Shades

[102nd-YU-Devill]

Hi Shades,

sadly I drowe a couple of tanks towards some infantry positions (4 full squads) and they were all anihilated by tanks(no foxholes obviously). Thing is tanks start shooting from 800m. Anyway, I didn't see any bazookas being fired, how do they look like? Is it visible?

Maybe we should increase the ROF of infantry, or the range or both.

A question: in the FMB i can only put infantry which has minimum 2 waypoints; if I put them very close together so that they move only a little, does this mean they will fire the bazookas once they are at the final waypoint? (maybe that is more of a question for Charlie)

Cheers!

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

Based on Charlie's recommendation, I have altered SEOW to include bazooka sections in stationary infantry squads. You see, only moving infantry have anti-tank capability in the Mod. But there is now a stationary anti-tank section, so for every full-strength platoon, SEOW will place one anti-tank squad in the stationary dispersal pattern. Hey presto - stationary infantry with anti-tank capability.

Cheers,
4Shades

[102nd-HR-cmirko]

Anyway, I didn't see any bazookas being fired, how do they look like? Is it visible?

yup, they look like one katyusha rocket - for FMB testing use moving infantry with short waypoints as you said before

cheers

[102nd-YU-Devill]

Great work mate, thx! Will test some more.

Cheers!