Early game units

[Magic]

Is there any good compo of early game units?

I always start as pure infantry, and then jump to mechnized infantry with tanks, motorbike, rockets etc as quick as possible. But after several games I observe that metal seems the main factor of limit before metal soil filtration, oil is less a limit but to produce oil usually you also need metal to build infrastructures....

So I wonder, if it is better to ditch out some vehicles, for example running infantry + RPG infantry + buggy with a little tanks etc.?

[Slippy]

There arent really any outright ‘bad’ early game units and what you can build will largely depend on your metal availability and oil.

Basic Infantry, MGs and RPG infantry are all good, especially once the tech upgrades start rolling in. You start with the ability to form MG infantry brigades which is great. You need to unlock RPG infantry brigades which can be pain, but they are good as well.

If fuel isn’t a problem both light tanks and buggies are excellent. Light tanks with howitzers will melt pretty much any infantry without AT support and buggies provide good recon, can be well armoured and have good soft attack with their MGs. Moterbike infantry provide excellent recon at low cost and low fuel usage, but tend to be pretty glass cannon on the attack.

The only early game units I would largely avoid are artillery and AT guns. Neither are bad but both have poor mobility unless you use the tiny calibres/attach vehicles and both guzzle ammo like crazy for little output. However, AT guns are very good on the defence and might be useful against massive native life forms and artillery is good against entrenched infantry in places you don’t want to send tanks.

Mechanised infantry for me is a mid game unit. Many players swear by APC infantry which are very effective for mobility and attack, although if you lose more APCs than men they slow right down. Trucks are great for quickly moving non front line units like artillery and AT guns. The later tank models fall into mid game for me, you need tanks to attack other tanks largely.

Hopefully that helps. One of the great things about shadow empire is that different planets/terrain gives you different tactical challenges and different available resources. As I largely play desolate worlds fuel is often in small supply so I largely avoid early game masses vehicles.

[Hasefrexx]

Firstly it depends on the planet. Plains favours vehicles, sand is more annoying for vehicles but I would still lean on it mostly and in forests infantries are generally better. In mountains definitely infantry.

High hazard exposure favours vehicles as the IP cost of infantry feels more impacted than vehicles. This is further emphasized as battles are more deadly so if you get in with infantries they will die in droves instead of retreating.

Early on I would consider using infantries, buggies, light tanks, anti tank guns and ultra light recon and bombers.

Infantry: hard not to use. Protects supply lines or cuts the enemy's. Also used to screen more important units with numbers.
Buggies/light tanks (howitzer): mostly the same niche, which is to beat infantry
Anti tank gun: your best defensive option against buggies/light tanks. It also works reasonably well when attacking, particularly tanks. Don't forget to mix it with something to screen it from fire.
Ultra light recon: cheapest way to get recon before battles, you need at least 400 for optimal combat results during the initial turns of battle and more accurate battle odds prediction. Really worth doing before important battles, even if there's some flak/fighters.
Ultra light bomber: with smallest precision bomb and fine tuning the design you can often get range around 6/7 hex which is good enough without any extra technologies. That's your best anti tank tool early game and worth spamming level 1 airports as the frontline moves. Most of the time ultralight is the best although when atmosphere doesn't allow for enough range then a light bomber can have enough range instead.

In lifeless planets the aim should be to beeline for biofuel, it's slow to get started but after a few levels the production will start exploding.

[流れ星]

Originally posted by Hasefrexx:

Ultra light recon: cheapest way to get recon before battles, you need at least 400 for optimal combat results during the initial turns of battle and more accurate battle odds prediction. Really worth doing before important battles, even if there's some flak/fighters.
Ultra light bomber: with smallest precision bomb and fine tuning the design you can often get range around 6/7 hex which is good enough without any extra technologies. That's your best anti tank tool early game and worth spamming level 1 airports as the frontline moves. Most of the time ultralight is the best although when atmosphere doesn't allow for enough range then a light bomber can have enough range instead.

I want to add here that the relation of atmosphere and gravity plays a major role in the question how useful air forces are. You can do a simple calculation: Divide the air pressure in bar by the gravity in g. If the result is 1 (for example with 500 mBar air pressure at 0.5g gravity), your airplanes will have a normal, average range: Barely acceptable range with early game tech, but relatively high range later. A result significantly below 1 means airforce is rather useless due to unacceptably low range until far into mid-game. A result significantly above 1 means even low-tech aircraft have a high range and AI players will use airforce to harass your troops early, so you better get a simple fighter model ready for production just in case.
There is one exception to the rule: Rocket engine airplanes. Their range increases with thinner atmosphere. But they're relatively expensive in terms of fuel consumption, so they're not really a good option for the early game.

If air recon is not an option, buggies and motorbike troops can do the job. It's advisable to upgrade the starter buggy model into one with 50mm armor and a heavy engine. That model massacres low-tech infantry and weaker native wildlife with great efficiency, at the cost of an increased fuel consumption. I'm not a big fan of motorbike troops because the best armor they're allowed to wear are padded envirosuits. They're decent combat troops in the very early game, but once everyone else wears combat armor or better, they become a resource drain.

[流れ星]

Originally posted by Magic:

Is there any good compo of early game units?

I always start as pure infantry, and then jump to mechnized infantry with tanks, motorbike, rockets etc as quick as possible. But after several games I observe that metal seems the main factor of limit before metal soil filtration, oil is less a limit but to produce oil usually you also need metal to build infrastructures....

So I wonder, if it is better to ditch out some vehicles, for example running infantry + RPG infantry + buggy with a little tanks etc.?

I usually just build MG light infantry brigades, the ones that are already researched at the start of the game. You can attach two extra units to each of them, so I give them whatever GR troops I find (I usually throw all GR tanks together into one group and all GR infantry units together in another) or an independent recon buggy group or two. When attached to the brigade, those units directly profit from the OHQ bonuses of the brigade commander.

Once you have a staff director, you can create custom formation templates from existing ones. There I expand the basic 800 light infantry + 200 MG template to 800 light infantry +200 MG + 200 RPG and then upgrade all my MG infantry brigades to that new RPG MG infantry brigade template. RPG infantry is not an all-overwhelming tank killer, but they do kill a few tanks in every fight. That's usually enough, because tanks cost a lot of metal and the AI player is unlikely to keep up with the loss replacement, especially in early game.
You can add whatever units you want to the template, just keep in mind that only pure infantry (means no motorbikes or buggies) can cross high mountain terrain and that heavy guns like AT and artillery can slow down the entire brigade in any terrain.