newbie questions

[Afreet]

Hi, I've been reading some of the faqs but still dont completely understand some things. What reasons are there for attaching or not attaching a hero to a squad? I know that if they are attached they are much less likely to be hit and killed, but that they also need to be put in the same stance as the rest of the squad. Is there anything else though? It seems like some people don't like attaching them...

Also, I'm still trying to figure out how to effectively use heavy weapons. When I want to set a squad to melee should I throw in a flamer or two (if flamers would be useful anyway), or should they only go on ranged squads? Would a melee unit even use it after the first charge? And do heavy weapons make my units worse at melee? And should I be mixing heavy weapons at all? I doubt a flamer and a missile would be good together since you would never get close enough to use the flamer, but how about missiles and bolters? Or flamers and plasma?

Thanks for any info!

[Old Painless]

The hero will assume the stance of the unit he/she joins without needing to be changed and will revert back to its original stance when split from the squad.

Heavy weapons mix in squads is really down to your play style and what damage you want the squad to do. As SM i sometimes mix heavy bolters and flamers so the enemy can be mown down as they approach and then lose morale as they get closer giving my marines a better chance of breaking them and winning cc.

A couple of squads with flamers in the early game can be wonderful as once an enemy squad is broken its damage output is severly reduced, move from squad to squad and break them all as your heavies sit at the back and you will take low damage overall.


Flamers are used in cc and out of it, mostly for morale damage but they can do good actual hp damage given time.

Try downloading some replays from the battle archive section, this will help enormously as you can see how other people use the squads and what weapons they give them.

[Energizer Bunny]

Advantages
- Hero confers relevant bonusses to squad he is attached to
- Hero much harder to kill as he cannot be individually targetted
- Less micro, if you don't like that sort of thing
- Hero becomes far less likely to be knocked down

Disadvantages
- Lose individual control of hero
- Hero does what squad does (i.e. if you have a cc hero attached to a shooty squad, he's gonna be pretty useless

Looks like you're playing SM, so I would suggest that you definately attach the Librarian (so he cant be killed when doing WOTE) and strongly consider attaching the FC (his plasma damage is nuts). Chappy obviously cant be attached, but it's worth keeping him on ranged so he doesn't run off into battle taking his lovely healing aura with him.

Re: Heavy weapons: this is a matter of opinion. It basically boils down to the fact that in general heavy weapons are only really effective in one role, and if you require that squad to perform a different role, you can get caught out. For example, full plasma squads are great for fighting infantry on the run, but if a vehicle shows up you're screwed. Some people therefore like to have a mix so that no one squad is completely useless.

Personally, I would counsel against this, as if you have mixed heavy weapons, no squad is ever fully effective. There's always one of those HW's going to waste, no matter what you shoot at. Far wiser to have different squads for different occasions IMHO.

Flamers are only really something you should be building if you get into trouble in tier 1. They dont really work in higher tiers and frankly, you should be pumping that money into other types of heavy weapons in the higher tiers.

[Old Painless]

All very true, i have had some success with flamers and missile launchers, the knockdowns from the misssiles can stop opposing squad members from being useful. The differing ranges can make these mixed squads useless.