Steel Panthers-Individual Soldiers

[Drivemill]

Here's an idea.

Instead of squads with say, 10 men each, would it be possible to have individual soldiers?

I suppose with this, a ten-man squad, with 1 person in each may be all that is possible, owing to company sized things have only ten slots each.

Do you know what I mean?

Is it even possible to implement?

[Imp]

A company can contain far more than 10 units.
You would need to change everything as would probably want to adjust map scsle.
Stacking would become a huge problem.

[Warhero]

Do you mean only 1 man/hex? I remember that long ago somebody did "squad leader mod" into SP3...

[Drivemill]

I think you know what I mean.

Would mg's have 2 men crews? Maybe one man per squad has a radio.

[jivemi]

Actually it would entail changing map scale, OOBs, combat results, etc. You're talking about a completely different game. Don't think it's gonna happen.

[Griefbringer]

Actually, there are already one-man units in the game, in the form of snipers.

Also, I think that for MBT there is a scenario in which the player commands a squad, with each squad member as a separate unit. For those interested, it should not be too difficult to write a similar scenario for WWII, where a player would lead eg. a handful of commandoes on a mission.

[Mobhack]

Actually it would entail changing map scale, OOBs, combat results, etc. You're talking about a completely different game. Don't think it's gonna happen.

And burst radii for artillery (if not using 30M hexes) etc etc - a brand new game in other words.

People have tried it - there may be one in the mods section for one of the games but I am not looking.

At 50m hexes, the most you probably could do is break unitary sections into gun group and rifle group, as is done for some OOBs in both games. But then you have the problem that you have doubled the number of elements the platoon commander has to rally when things go pear shaped. And also when casualties occur - each part section will reach the 50% barrier (where number of shots is much reduced as is morale (rallying)) quicker, and also perhaps reach the ~25% test for dispersing faster than a unitary section would have. And for mechanised platoons, you may have exceeded the 10 units per platoon allowed in formation templates. So you will need a platoon of APC separate from the grunts - doable but a fiddle.

[Drivemill]

How about individual troopers for special forces, like SEALs, SAS, etc?

[scorpio_rocks]

Special forces are really out of the scope of this game (they are generally found far away from the front line) and work in very close-knit TEAMS - which is how they are portrayed in the game!

Besides individuals are very fragile - a team can take a hit or two and still function (in game).

[Griefbringer]

Besides individuals are very fragile - a team can take a hit or two and still function (in game).

Especially the two man anti-tank teams tend to be vulnerable, and their rate of fire is usually badly affected when they take just a single hit.

Anyway, in a WWII battlefield combatants acted in squads or teams - usually only snipers were expected to act on their own (which they can already do in the game).

(Runners/messengers could also be expected to move around the battlefield on their own, but that was not really a fighting role and is abstracted away in this game - and most others that I know.)

[Drivemill]

Could you bag a tank with a side shot, maybe from a panzerfaust or M72 LAW?

There's already marksmen in the sniper slot, sometimes with assault rifles, rather than a sniper rifle.

[Griefbringer]

There's already marksmen in the sniper slot, sometimes with assault rifles, rather than a sniper rifle.

Yes, there are marksmen with non-sniper rifles, though usually with bolt action rifles for SPWW2 (though there are some with assault rifles in MBT).

Generally bolt actions were considered more accurate than semi-automatics, and thus were retained in limited use after the introduction of the latter - for example when US Army adopted M1 Garand as the main armament for WWII, the older M1903 Springfield was still retained as a weapon for sharpshooters, and every infantry platoon was officially assigned one for use by a platoon marksman.

That said, in late WWII Germans also experimented with assigning semi-automatics to snipers.