Infantry Defense Against Tank Assaults In Red Victory?

[Xerxes77]

Hey all, a Squad Battles noob here with two questions about infantry defending against tank assaults in Red Victory:

1. Can infantry in covered terrain (i.e. villages or trees) put up any sort of defense against assaulting tanks?

2. How do single use weapons like the Panzerfaust 30 actually work in game, and can they be effective?

Reason I ask is because of the experience I'm having playing the Germans in scenario 8, Peiper at Jeremjewka.  In nutshell while defending Jeremejewka against the Soviets my Panzergrenadiers were able to Pin or Demoralize all of the attacking Soviet infantry, but many of the attacking T-34's just kept coming and rolled over several of my (at or close to full strength, not Pinned/Demoralized/Disrupted, Morale A) squads in covered terrain with very little difficulty - the only defenders that have lasted longer than one assault have been multiple squads in Town hexes, and even they've been losing 8 or so guys per assault.  A few of the T-34's have become Immobilized, but that's it for tank casualties and I'm not even sure if it was the defenders or the terrain which accomplished that.

Regarding the Panzerfaust 30's, I see mine have both a Fire Value (which varies from 0-3) and a Strength of 1.  Per the manual the Strength of 1 means I get to use this Single Use Weapon once, so is the changing Fire Value irrelevant, or does it somehow represent how many Panzerfaust shots I can get off in a single "volley" fire?  Additionally I've also tried four flank shots against T-34's at range 1 (the max for the PF 30) with good order squads and gotten no kills so far- is this normal, have I just had bad luck or am I somehow misusing the Panzerfausts?  (i.e. instead of actually firing them at enemy tanks, should my squads be holding onto them to somehow better defend against those killer tank assaults?)

Any clarification that a SB veteran could send along would be greatly appreciated - so far my buddy and I have been really enjoying RV, which seems to get infantry combat right enough, but suddenly seeing unescorted Soviet tanks blitzing over elite troops hunkered down in a town has struck us both as being jarringly ahistorical.  Cheers!

Hi there! I'm not what you'd call a veteran, but here are my 2 cents:

- First, the bad news...  infantry units have no chance against medium-heavy tanks in an assault.

In fact, any tank whose armor exceeds the Hard Vehicle Armor parameter data value by even one point is impervious to any losses in an assault, either as attacker or defender. This is not explained anywhere in the manual, where instead the relevant entries suggest that the effect of the ratio armor/Hard Vehicle value was intended to modulate the attack strength of armored vehicles, not making them invincible. It is my belief that this is another bug in the software.

Your best bet to mitigate steamrolling tanks is trying to stick to covered terrain. The Immobile probability seems to work and means that tanks will get stuck 1/4th of the time. Unfortunately, being immobile doesn't make them less invulnerable to assaults, but at least they can't wreak havoc around the map and you can plink at them from afar.

- Your Panzerfausts are probably working fine. With a penetration value of 60, they have roughly a 25% chance of knocking out a T-34 (armor 60) from the flanks. Shooting from the rear will increase your chances to about 35%. Note that the 1-3 number you see is not the Fire Value, but the amount of times they can be fired. The Fire Value takes the Lethality of the weapon into account, which is 80, and the Strength, which is 1. Even if you can't get a kill, the loss of effectiveness will diminish the target's threat.

Hope you find this useful and keep enjoying the game :-)