Discussion number 1 on the Alt oob

[James Ward]

[quote=Volcano Man]
It all depends on the infantry you are talking about, as well as the period in the war. In most cases you are supposed to rely on other tanks, tank destroyers, aircraft and anti-tank guns to counter enemy armor, not infantry. Heavy artillery can be used to an effect, but again it depends on too many variables to make such a broad statement. On the other hand, the later war infantry units that have no hard attack range mean that they either have to assault, or be assaulted by tanks to destroy them. It is all a matter of looking the numbers.

In a Prokhorovka test I have going on (1943), three Russian guards infantry battalions have been assaulting and pushing back SS PzKw IIIm tanks to good effect, but yes, if I just sat still in the open and let the tanks shoot me then I would not be about to counter. Anyway, these ranges are directly taken from McNamara's own numbers. The infantry units that have an "offensive" AT rating usually have a lower hard attack value than the ones that don't (to encourage close assault). Not that these numbers are the gospel, but they work well enough for me if you know the strengths and weaknesses of everything. Try backing up your infantry with some dug in AT guns is about all I can really say. You may find yourself in cases of extreme overmatch. In those cases, you or your opponent has to rush the counter to that overmatch to the area. Think rock, paper, scissors. ;)

As for the early war years, there isn't much of a choice. I think all infantry have 0 hard attack range since any AT capability they had was extremely limited. Then again, the early war tanks aren't that difficult to kill with air, artillery and anti-aircraft guns either.[quote=Volcano Man]



Like I said I don't know any way of giving infantry any sort of harassing fire ability without really changing the way the games play. Given that units in different hexes can be anywhere for ~2km to a few meters apart it's hard to say that infantry would always or never have any weapons that could effect hard targets. The only thing I find odd is it is to your benefit to use ahistorical tactics of keeping hard and soft targets separated.