Squad Leader
Hints:
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Submitted by: rickHH
Always try to end each characters turn with enough
action points to kneel. This improves their return fire
and makes them more difficult to hit.
First move should always involve a scout moving as far
forward as possible. They can be used to trigger ambushes,
reveal enemy locations plus all the rest of your troops
get a shot if the enemy is uncovered. This is a good thing
when you have artillery or tanks.
Use grenades on enemies inside of buildings, bunkers, or
trenches.
Dont use smoke grenades until after all your men have fired
their shots. That way, you get to maximize your attack and
minimize the enemies options.
Tips from the Boss
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Submitted by: Onellan Govender
E-mail:
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+ Kevin Jamiesons Hints +
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1. Stock up on grenades and throw them in bunkers to see if anyone is
home.
2. Missions require 4 or less squads, so with 8 squads to choose from,
right-click to swap soldiers from squad to squad and stack the
squad(s) you bring into battle with your best soldiers.
3. Check for underground tunnels in enemy bunkers.
4. Be careful with grenades near obstacles where they might bounce back,and
on roads where the open terrain increases their area of effect.
5. If possible, clear buildings of enemy soldiers and place snipers on
rooftops where they are the most effective.
6. Always try to leave enough Action Points (APs) to at least kneel (3AP) at
the end of a soldiers movement as this increases hit potential for the
kneeling soldier, reduces the hit potential for enemies, and often
reduces the number of enemies that can fire.
7. Place demo charges at the beginning of an engineers turn to ensure
that they have enough Action Points to move out of range of the
explosion.
8. Since the player gets to go first, place soldiers where they can see
enemy soldiers during the deployment phase. Use the Quick Enemy Select
Bar, located in the top middle of the interface area, to facilitate
this.
9. Use a bazooka, artillery fire, mortar fire, or grenades on an enemy
vehicles until the fuel line is hit or the vehicle is destroyed.
10. Whenever possible, keeps troops far enough apart to avoid multiple
deaths from enemy fire yet close enough to support each other.
11. There is no such thing as friendly fire.
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+ Ellie Crawleys Hints +
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1. Remember that tanks usually have a secondary weapon or machine gun as
well.
The machine gun can be fired more often than the main guns and they are
particularly effective against soft targets.
2. All squad-based soldiers will have a small graphic just to the left of
their AP icon indicating what squad they
belong to. Hitting the Y key will show all of the Squad icons.
3. Remember to place soldiers that have enough Action Points to fire in
opportunity fire mode. This will allow them
to fire at enemies that move into the soldiers line-of-sight during the
computers turn. If done right, opportunity fire
can really hamper the enemies attack.
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+ Corey Navages Hints +
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1. Smoke can be your soldiers best friend in a combat situation. A
well-placed smoke grenade can shield your troop
movements from enemy eyes. Heavy smoke at one level does not necessary
mean
heavy smoke at all levels. A smoke cloud that prevents a soldier from
being
seen while standing may not prevent the same soldier from being seen in a
kneeling or prone stance and vice versa.
2. The player can see how the smoke deployed at various levels by cutting
the level up and/or down using the
raise/lower cut away level tool in the game interface.
3. Soldiers can not see into or out of a smoke cloud. This can make for
some
interesting blind close-quarter fights.
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+ Jeffrey Tollesons Hints +
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1. Be very careful throwing grenades inside or out of buildings; they
often
dont go where you intended them.
2. When moving in the presence of the enemy, leave enough APs to fall
prone
or at least to kneel for protection.
3. If you need to advance under heavy enemy fire, try the smoke grenades.
And be careful of standing at the edge of
the smoke coverage.
4. Try to keep your soldiers within 6 squares of your squad leaders (same
colored dot or square above left of your
insignia and APs) and platoon leaders. Those extra 6 APs are golden.
5. You can ignore your medics in the single scenarios, but they are
valuable
for keeping your troops alive from
mission to mission in the campaign game.
6. The armored vehicles rule the battlefield. Concentrate on destroying
the
enemys and keep yours operational whenever they are
present.
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+ Rex Martins Hints +
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1. Most small unit tactics in WW2 revolved around the movement-and-fire
methods perfected during WW1. In
effect, one element of the squad or platoon would provide cover while the
other moved; once the moving element
was in position, it would provide cover for the rest to move. In Squad
Leader this is recreated by the
Opportunity Fire command; at the end of any turn, you should have several
of
your soldiers, with a good line-of-
sight (LOS) to a large area, placed on Opportunity Fire at the end of each
turn. During the war, the usual rule-of-
thumb was that half of the troops should be providing cover while the
other
half moved during any attack or retreat.
By leap-frogging the two halves, the tactical commander was always able to
react to any unexpected threat. In a
static defensive situation, this percentage should be somewhat higher, and
it was not unusual for 75% of the force to
be on Opportunity Fire, while the rest provided a mobile reserve, moving to
plug any holes as casualties occurred.
2. If you are expecting a long-range firefight, take along a sniper ortwo.
Put them in a position with long LOS,
preferably with some cover between them and the enemy. During your turn,
stand and use Aimed Fire, keeping
enough AP to again kneel or go prone so that the enemy will not be able to
return an aimed shot (any fire the sniper
will draw will be a Snap Shot enemy Opportunity Fire). With their
excellent
marksmanship, a sniper can often pick
off an enemy soldier each turn. Snipers want long-range duels; dont allow
your snipers to be caught in close (which
also means that snipers have little use for grenades).
3. If you face a firefight in close terrain (urban, heavy vegetation, and
such), take along more automatic weapons
and grenades than the default order-of-battle usually offers. In
environments such as Arnhem, you should be looking
for a fast-paced, highly mobile and confusing firefight. Lines-of-sight
will
be short, the enemy will be moving in good
cover, and you wont have many opportunities for aimed fire. Urban
firefights, especially, were bloody affairs, so
expect high casualties and make sure that your critical specialists for
the
mission have back-ups.
4. Mortars and the heavy MG for the Heavy Weapons squads are of most use
in
open terrain with long LOS. They
are especially useful in defensive actions, and of little or little value
if
you plan a rapid advance. In the latter case,
leave them behind and focus on your Rifle squads.
5. Trucks, at the ranges depicted in Squad Leader, are a liability. They
tend to be deathtraps for your troops. Never
expose a loaded truck in range of any enemy troops. The half-tracks are
slightly better, but even here the standard
practice for armored infantry units was to dismount from the vehicles when
they engaged in a firefight. Indeed, the
half-tracks usually served as a mobile heavy MG that protected the flanks
or
provided covering fire for the
infantry movement.
6. Tanks, on the other hand, in those scenarios where they appear, tend to
dominate the immediate area they occupy.
In general, it is a waste to use their main guns on infantry targets. The
bow MG takes fewer AP to fire (meaning
more shots per turn), will do as much damage to a soldier if it hits, and
still leaves room for movement in the same
turn. Never expose your tanks to enemy infantry without infantry support
themselves. The limited range of vision of
a tank means that it is vulnerable if the enemy can close in.
7. One of the best uses for your tank is as cover for your soldiers in any
attack. If you can keep several of them
behind it, not only do they provide close infantry support, but if they
stay
low (kneeling or going prone every turn)
they will avoid most enemy fire. Be warned, though, if the tank goes up,
the
infantry might suffer the unpleasant
effects of the explosion as well.
8. Conversely, if you are facing enemy armor, you will need some sort of
long-range anti-tank weapon – a bazooka,
PIAT, panzerfaust or panzerschreck. Always take more than one. And if a
trooper carrying one goes down, do your
best to recover it. Otherwise, taking out an enemy tank at close range is
a
costly affair.
9. If you are blessed with artillery support, use it frugally. Dont waste
it on a single, annoying enemy soldier. Use it
much as you do a mortar, to clean out enemy trenches and fortifications
and
to break up masses of enemy troops that
you cannot fire on directly.
10. In summary, the most important principle in tactical combat, as at any
other level of military operations, is
planning. Read the mission objectives carefully, consider the minimum
forces
necessary, understand your resources,
prepare for contingencies and the unexpected. Succeeding in a campaign
game
means far more than just taking the
best marksmen every time and loading them down with lots of grenades. If
war
was just a single battle, anyone
could be a squad leader. But, to lead a platoon through a major campaign
takes planning, understanding and quick
thinking. Good luck.
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+ Jason Gleasons Hints +
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1. On the first turn, save some people with smoke grenades for last. Shoot
anyone around you with the majority of
your forces, move them into position, and THEN toss the smoke grenades.
Youll get the advantages of having had
the first attack as well as having the smoke cover.
2. Dont underestimate the value of concussion grenades. They have a
radius
one square larger than frag grenades.
This means that they cover an extra 133%! This is especially effective
when
throwing over hills where you cant see
your targets but know theyre out there.
3. Throw grenades liberally. Not only is it cathartic, it also can take
out
lots of units in bunkers and trenches. When
theyre all bunched up like that theyre just asking for a concussion
grenade.
4. Dont underestimate the value of suppressing fire. Dont waste good AP
on
enemies that have just been pinned
down. Only fire on enemies that have just been pinned when all other bad
guys are also pinned.
5. Alternate suppressing fire with movement. Spending even turns moving
and
odd turns shooting works like a
charm. Pin down all of the enemy troops and then worry about moving into
position. That eliminates the fear of opposing
opportunity fire.
6. Flamethrowers are pretty… pretty devastating, that is.
7. Remember that tanks run over enemy units. Remember that enemy tanks run
over friendly units. Dont let an
enemy tank get within driving distance of your units in smoke cover,
because
an enemy tank will not hesitate to
accidentally run over five, six, or seven of your best marksmen.
8. Use hand-to-hand combat in trenches in the cover of smoke.
9. Always, always, always take out radio operators if you have line of
sight. If you dont, get it. If you cant, move
around a lot. If you see the enemy radio operator call in an artillery
strike, move ALL of your units away.
10. Save early, save often. I recommend at the beginning and end of every
turn. That way, if something REALLY
BAD happens, youre not sunk.
11. Dont bring medics into non-campaign missions.
12. Heavy machine guns on vehicles seem to work well at killing trucks and
half-tracks. They deliver vehicle-killing
critical hits with surprising frequency. It must have something to do with
their rate of fire.
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+ Doug Atwells Hints +
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1. During your turn, always take your snipers shots first, they may take
out an enemy with opportunity fire just
waiting for one of your other soldiers to cross his path.
2. Sometimes the closest enemies are not always the easiest to hit, be
sure
you consider all your targets with the quick enemy selector before firing.
3. Your Radio Operators are your best friends, find them the best possible
cover with the farthest line-of-sight.
4. Before opening a door with a trooper, place another trooper behind him
so
that he can fire with all of his action
points.
5. Once victory is achieved in a mission, you dont have to exit right
away.
A good idea, if you have a surviving
medic, is to run around and treat any wounded soldiers so you can use them
for your next mission.
