Good ol' airborne

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[rommalsnowman]

can someone fill me on the fighting ability of these little guys? Can they beat Grens 1v1? how effective are they vs. other inf?

[AmPM]

They are pretty good, fighting grens 1v1 depends on situation and upgrades on both, what they can do is fireup, which is a huge advantage in a mod where if you retreat out of MG suppression you lose the squads.

[BrotherG]

***** i think their numbers are the biggest advantage they have. Its a 6 man squad which gives it quite the survivability. I think nades are a must for them as they have no other AI upgrades available. Picking up dropped weapons is a must for them.

***** Brother G.

[GamerAndyAlly]

Airborne initial stats are kinda weak
but if you use them en-masse and keep them moving, they're pretty dang powerful - Grenades (though expensive) can wipe out whole squads of volks and if you take some pot-shots at grenadiers it can annihalate a vet2 squad as well.   

Recoilless rifles are arguably the best man-pack AT in the game, and have better frontal penetration vs. tanks than a standard Panther - The downside is they have relatively low damage, so a good tactic is to use two squads together - If you can get behind enemy armour with them, they do crazy damage, but will penetrate more often than not from the front.

One thing that not many people know about is that Airborne are the only infantry unit *designed* to fire while on the move.   Most units lose 50% of their accuracy at least if they fire while moving, airborne only lose 25%  AND they have a special modifier called "moving accuracy" that makes it so that any troop shooting at an airborne squad while the airborne squad is moving has an ADDITIONAL 25% decrease in accuracy.

That means if a gren squad is chasing an airborne squad, the airborne has 75% of its regular accuracy and the gren squad only has 25% - This is crazy powerful


Finally of course, Fire-up.   Lots of new AB players use this incorrectly - What it does is breaks suppression or pin on your units and makes them immune to it for 15 seconds, their speed also goes up to 4 (sprint) from 3 (run), at sprint they can keep up with tanks

In EIR the cooldown on this ability has been increased alot - an AB player can correct me here but I think its about a 5 minute cooldown.

the ONLY time you should use fire-up is when a) you need to take down a machine gun b) you're chasing down a fleeing almost-dead vehicle. C) your being overpowered, are pinned, and are going to have to retreat off-map - fire up in this situation to get away.   I see lots of new players fire-up to do a standard infantry assault, and thats  just a poor use of it - Keep it available so you can use it when you need it to do one of the other things.   

Thats pretty much AB in a nutshell - They do get satchel charges, and those are useful but more useful if you're playing against players with poor micro, as someone paying attention can get an MG out of a house before the 5 second fuse goes off.  I recommend you invest munitions more heavily into grenades, those things are insane.

[Kolath]

Good write-up Andy!

A few additional points on AB, based on playing against them:

-Grenades: give them to multiple squads and you can pretty much clear any building in one volley.
-Doctrine Abilities: have a big impact on the use of AB.  One ability lets them deploy instantly at the start of the battle and is good for seizing key buildings before the defenders can set up.  Another ability gives them an insane buff for the first 60(?) seconds after they drop, this is good for assaulting enemy positions.

[GamerAndyAlly]

Kolath is talking about Tier 4 abilities, which take a little while to get to   Although thinking about it, if you just started a company you get like 50cp and probably have enough.

But some other good abilities are Raid which gives you +6 pop-cap for the entire game, and theres one that makes grenades 35% cheaper which is pretty useful if you use them alot.

For some more detailed advice you should talk to Natedog or BradAnderson, both of them are t4 AB players who know their shit.

edit: thanks kolath    Being a stat-whore does have advantages

[[AB]RikiRude]

I suggest only using satchel charges on bunkers and 88's. Other then that they aren't really good for anything else. Though I always keep at least one AB squad with a satchel and RRs, because I don't think satchels blow bunkers in one hit.

[BradAnderson1]

ok, yes u can drop in 60 secs but all AB now have an extra 30 secs on there deployment timer so 1min 30 to deploy also nades are good but if u only intend on using them against hmgs buy sachels there cheaper and if the guy takes his hmg outta the building ull be able 2 get it if he stays in boom! bye bye hmg and if u dont feel interested in sachels and like nades instea buy nades on a 1:2 ratio of nades to airbourne so u can afford at least 5 recoiless and i think andy said something about there docterine abilitys being very usefull he is very true i think if ur 2 start an Ab company dont bother going straight for the T4 get all the other abilitys then get ur T4 afterwards....

[Warbirds]

Don't bother destroying any Axis bunkers unless you want the game to glitch everyone into a sync error.  Not saying this as a threat or anything; it's true and it's happened to me before.

[sgMisten]

The glitch seems to occur when the repair bunker is repairing or being repaired. You could wait for it to idle or kill off the repairmen then blow the bunker.

[lompocus]

As a nub I've used fireup the wrong way. I often tried tackling MG's mounted in houses with a sole airborne squad. Unfourtunately, a single one of six will round a small corner to get to the MG. They will fireup so as not to become suppressed. Between the crew running from their hiding spot to the opposite side of the house to dump grenades and satchels on the MG crew within, the MG crew often has 3-5 seconds, depending on how stupid you force's AI decides to be at that time, to shoot at your squad. Often I'd find myself going from 6 to 5, then trying a different path only to get them stuck again and go down to 2 troops, drop nades, take out the MG crew and quickly have the last remaining airborne swarmed by the nazis. Again and again and again.

That's why I say screw airborne doctrine and go tanks! With tanks you never need to worry about trivial MG fire!