I need more men!

[Cheech Marin]

Originally posted by Darth Windu

Armour (Mechanised) forces exist to SUPPORT infantry, not to replace them, and that is the way these units should be portrayed.

 

You would so get owned by von Manstein, Patton and Zhukov. As modern battles (Gulf War) have shown, armour is superior to infantry in open battlefields. So, it's the other way around, infantry are meant to support armour. The job of infantry is to make sure that the flanks are secure so that the armour can't be snuck up on and destroyed. Note that I said that infantry should support armour, not be replaced by it.

[BeBop]

Originally posted by Cheech Marin

As modern battles (Gulf War) have shown, armour is superior to infantry in open battlefields.

 

And what about the non open battlefields. As we have already seen in some EaW screens, there are maps that look quite cluttered with trees, rocks, swamps that would hinder a vehicle's movement. I suppose vehicles could just run over them (much like the MTT's in Episode I) but infantry could take advantage of the terrain and ambush the enemy. Vehicles and all (assuming they give some infantry anti vehicle abilities) Plus, vehicles are slow. Especially the large walkers, if infantry can get behind and close to the vehicle, it will probably have trouble defending itself. Which creates a need for Infantry to support the vehicle.

[swphreak]

Originally posted by BeBop

You really think it was tanks that stormed the inside of the base?

 

I wasn't talking about the Base. It seems to me like infantry was rather useless against the armored units.

[Darth Windu]

Cheech - hardly. Sure - Patton, Guderian etc were excellent Armour Generals, but did they achieve their successes without Infantry? No, and there is no way they could have. Regardless of whether you think Infantry supports Armour or Armour supports Infantry, the fact is that Infantry are very valuable units that are essential in any armed force.

 

Juggernaut - no. What i'm saying is there shouldn't be a mass of vehicles with one or two infantry units. Instead there should be a more limited number of units but make them more versitile and encourage people to make use of combined-arms tactics, rather than just swarming with vehicles.

[Dagobahn Eagle]

Yet the soldiers on Hoth got their behinds handed to them by tanks.

You're the first person I've ever heard call AT-ATs "tanks". I've called them assault vehicles myself, and I guess you can call them AFVs (Armoured Fighting Vehicles), but tanks? That's a new one. Not necessarily wrong, but certainly new to me:).

 

As for "getting their butts handed to them": The fact remains that the infantry on Hoth greatly outnumbered the six AT-AT walkers and their support AT-STs. Even counting the rebel snow speeder, I believe there'd be more infantry than vehicles.

 

Endor's Moon was a fluke because the good guys always win.

They didn't win Hoth or the Naboo plains. And they were kicking Ewok butt and would've wiped the rebels out had it not been for that Han Solo and Chewbacca tricked the imperials into opening the bunker doors. Think about it: The doors could not be opened. They were blaster-proof and hacking-proof, and the rebels couldn't use their explosives on it. It was a no-win situation for the rebels, as they couldn't have blown up their objective even if they wiped out every imperial outside of the bunker.

 

Infantry are no good when a tank can easily take them out.

Give me a rocket infantry fire team and lemme at 'em! A recruitable squad of four people carrying a portable proton torpedo launcher = teh roxxorz!!!111:D

 

As I said before: Maybe heavy weapons and equipment like scanners, healing units, half-dome force fields, mortars, E-Web turbo lasers, and warhead launchers could be assigned to squads the same way siege weapons like rams are in Rome: Total War? Then they can be deployed for use, put down, and picked up at the player's whim. Infantry squads could carry grenades of various sorts, too, depending on the type of squad. Then they stopped firing and threw the grenades when you allowed them to.

 

Sounds too complicated, but is in reality just fun. Rome: Total War could have thousands of units in a single battle and yet never was too complicated in my eyes thanks to the fluent UI and the squad system.

 

So you support LESS epic battles and fewer choices of strategy in favor of spamming?

Hardly.

 

First of all, doesn't "spamming" mean "epic" as it results in more units? Yup, it does. I consider a battle with 400 units of more or less the same type more epic than a short battle with 50 units of various types. "Epic" just means "long-lasting" or "big" (although it originally referred to a genre type).

 

Second of all, a higher ratio of infantry doesn't equal to a lower amount or diversity of vehicles.

 

Third of all, regarding strategy, you have a good deal of strategic options with multiple groups of infantry.

 

Kthxbai

What's that mean? "OK, thanks, bye":confused:?

[lukeiamyourdad]

Originally posted by StarWarsPhreak

I wasn't talking about the Base. It seems to me like infantry was rather useless against the armored units.

 

The point is?

 

Nobody is denying the advantage of vehicles on an open field.

However, when fighting in an urban setting, jungle or anything with decent cover for infantry, it is known that tanks(and most "armored assault vehicles") get crushed by the much more mobile infantry.

 

That said, in order to keep realism as high as possible without automatically hampering gameplay, infantry MUST be made useful AT ALL TIMES.

It means, using vehicles only will get you destroyed by a player with a mixed force.

[Cheech Marin]

Originally posted by Darth Windu

Cheech - hardly. Sure - Patton, Guderian etc were excellent Armour Generals, but did they achieve their successes without Infantry? No, and there is no way they could have. Regardless of whether you think Infantry supports Armour or Armour supports Infantry, the fact is that Infantry are very valuable units that are essential in any armed force.

 

Did I mention anything about how infantry should be replaced completely by vehicles? No. I simply said that infantry supports armour, not the other way around.

[lukeiamyourdad]

I sense blood boiling

 

Keep it nice people.

[DK_Viceroy]

I know how effecive infantry can be and if they've gone for realism and unless it's a rebels v rebels match then the Infantry will be supporting the vehicles which isn't nessacerily a bad thing.

[lukeiamyourdad]

It makes no difference whether infantry supports armor or armor supports infantry.

 

The element that must remain unchanged is the amount of infantry vs the amount of armor.

[stingerhs]

what's with you guys complaining about the lack of infantry?? i know you're basing this conclusion off of the screenshots, so i have to wonder if y'all have seen this one yet....

 

looks like a descent amount of infantry to me......

[Dagobahn Eagle]

Link doesn't work.

[lukeiamyourdad]

Try it again. It works.

 

Well, it's a moot thing...

 

I can see about ~18 infantry soldiers for 5 vehicles on the Imperial side which makes it roughly a 4/1 ratio.

The Rebels have more for the number of vehicles.

 

Well, it depends on your point of view but, I would say that a 4/1 ratio isn't high considering how large an AT-AT is.

[stingerhs]

^^^^

and don't forget that an AT-AT is not just an assault craft. if i remember correctly, it can also carry a number of troops as well.

 

afterall, AT-AT is just an acronym for All Terrain - Armored Transport......

[lukeiamyourdad]

But we'll never know if those AT-AT do indeed carry troopers until the game comes out

[Darth Windu]

stinger - actually the 'All Terrain Armoured Transport' name is pure assumption, as is the AT-AT designation - according to the only official source of Star Wars info, the films, they are simply called 'Walkers'.

[Admiral Vostok]

I'm glad this thread has inspired some thoughtful discussion that seemed to otherwise be lacking from the forum.

 

stingerhs: Indeed I had seen that screenshot, and as I said there isn't more than 30 troops in the battle. Which is rediculous.

 

Phreak: you seem to be a little confused. I'm not saying infantry should be able to take out an AT-AT. But there should be some sort of incentive to use infantry rather than just having a game of only vehicles. Or are you suggesting that at Hoth the Rebels shouldn't have bothered manning the trenches at all?

 

I like to think this game is emulating the battles we see in the movies. As I said with space battles they are doing an excellent job, but the ground battles are not.

 

Viceroy: whilst I'll take your comment really as just your usual way of giving me crap for no particular reason, I'd like to point out that Galactic Battlegrounds did not have the infantry balance right either. Sure, for your favourite civ Confederacy the Troopers were well worth taking, you'd be foolish not to. But the Naboo infantry sucked, and the roles the fulfilled were better performed by other units, so there was no reason to take them. Even if infantry suck, they should have some sort of benefits that vehicles just cannot provide, or EaW will end up like Galactic Battlegrounds: fun to play, but nothing like the movies.

[Darth Alec]

I belive that infantry is inferior to tanks and other vechicles since they dont have the capebility to take out other things. It is fun to storm 200 infantry over the battlefield but 10-20 AT-ST/AT-AT's would slaughter them.

[stingerhs]

Originally posted by Darth Windu

stinger - actually the 'All Terrain Armoured Transport' name is pure assumption, as is the AT-AT designation - according to the only official source of Star Wars info, the films, they are simply called 'Walkers'.

 

well, its not exactly something the EU came up with, neither. if i remember correctly, George Lucas was the one who came up with the AT-AT and AT-ST designations.

 

now, feel free to correct me if i'm wrong, but i was just trying to show that you could use the AT-AT for loading and unloading troops in a battle.

[Cheech Marin]

I just want infantry to use something other than Napoleonic tactics. Just look at them, the stormtroopers are standing in a BOX. The rebels are smarter, being more spaced out and staggered, but they're still out in the open.

[Hermie]

I think the key to balance here is the cost. How many Stormtroopers can you train and equip for the same amount of money that it costs to construct an AT-AT? And I imagine that building a walker will also take considerably more time. So if Petrogylph pulls this of correctly, You should'nt be able to just go straight to building an vehicle armada without being raided to pieces by the opponents infantry, and if you just recruit normal ground troops, you will eventually be blown to pieces by the enemys tank line-up.

[DK_Viceroy]

Vostok please point out where I took the crap out of you, you at tone point claimed to be an Air Nazi so Air Whorse is hardly derogative it's usually hillarious to be on the same team as you as everyone runs around like headless chickens trying to contain us and get the Holocrons.

[lukeiamyourdad]

Now now now, no personal debates here.

[Majin Boba Fett]

Wow. This reminds me of the Galactic Battlegrounds board...

[Admiral Vostok]

Originally posted by Herminator

I think the key to balance here is the cost. How many Stormtroopers can you train and equip for the same amount of money that it costs to construct an AT-AT? And I imagine that building a walker will also take considerably more time. So if Petrogylph pulls this of correctly, You should'nt be able to just go straight to building an vehicle armada without being raided to pieces by the opponents infantry, and if you just recruit normal ground troops, you will eventually be blown to pieces by the enemys tank line-up.

I totally agree with this. I think the problem with a lot of games that have too many vehicles over infantry is that they haven't got the cost and build times sorted.

 

Cost is the most obvious way to encourage infantry usage, but in many games there comes a point where the players have built up such a strong economy that cost is no longer an issue, so they'll resort to pumping out the more expensive vehicles. So I believe the key to infantry usage is in the build times. If it takes a really, really long time to build vehicles in comparison with infantry, I think they may get used in the right proportions.

 

I'd also like to see the inclusion of infantry as a necessity for some reason. While Rise of Nations sucked majorly, it did have one interesting feature, and that was that enemy cities could only be taken by infantry and not be vehicles. This meant you had to have infantry in your army just to win the game. Perhaps a similar idea could be used in EaW? Not necessarily that you can only take enemy bases with infantry, but perhaps you could either destroy the building with heavy firepower or invade it with infantry. Invading with infantry might give you control of the building, or it might actually be quicker than destroying it, or you might get a boost to your economy by capturing it (but don't get to use it).