Noobs in Combat smg squad: Stats, Loadouts, and Counters

The SMG Squad in Noobs in Combat is a fast-striking infantry unit known as Shock Troops in the tech tree. Armed with automatic weapons and impact grenades, the unit specializes in taking down hostile infantry and capturing front-line objectives without requiring artillery radios.

Unit Stats and Core Capabilities

The SMG Squad operates as a three-man infantry team equipped with submachine guns and stored impact explosives. Fielding the unit requires 25 to 30 Tix depending on the active game mode and deployment phase. The squad carries a baseline pool of 90 hit points, granting it enough durability to survive standard low-caliber rifle fire while advancing toward capture points.

Offensively, the unit relies on two distinct weapon profiles:

• Primary Submachine Guns: Rapid bullet attacks designed to sweep unarmored targets and enemy foot soldiers within a two-tile radius.
• Secondary Impact Grenades: Explosive attacks dealing 35 base damage with two total rounds of ammunition and a two-turn cooldown between uses.

The unit benefits from two primary mechanics: Multi Attack and Capture. The Multi Attack perk permits the squad to fire its submachine guns and throw an impact grenade during the same combat turn. This combination produces up to 77 total damage in a single activation, allowing the unit to eliminate low-health combatants such as RPG crews, Flamethrowers, and isolated Bikers. With the Capture perk enabled, the squad secures outposts, supply depots, factories, and town buildings to deny enemy resources.

Urban environments, mountain ridges, defensive obstacles, and fortified bunkers provide tactical terrain bonuses to the squad. Occupying these structures increases damage resistance against incoming kinetic strikes and improves outgoing firing efficiency.

Tech Tree Position and Variant Evolution

In the official tech tree, the squad appears under the Trooper branch as the second tier of progression, originally introduced in version 5.2.0. The unit directly succeeds standard infantry options like riflemen and branches upward toward specialized Grunt formations.

While patch 5.7.0 formally relabeled the unit as Shock Troops on the roster display, community loadout discussions and earlier game revisions refer to it as the SMG Squad. Later campaign missions, such as post-5.8 updates to Tryhard Guest Town Assault, introduce an alternate SMG Troops variant that trades the burst impact grenade for standard operational radios.

Cosmetic visual skins also alter the unit's equipment appearance without changing underlying damage numbers. Selecting the German skin outfits the squad with Stielhandgranate stick grenades, while the Guest skin styles the explosives after classic platform items.

Tactical Roles in Offensive and Defensive Loadouts

Deploying the squad effectively depends on understanding its mobility and spotting limitations. With a standard foot mobility of two tiles per turn, the squad moves slowly across open grass and dirt roads. Pairing the unit with motorized transport trucks or half-tracks resolves this restriction, allowing squads to reach critical objectives on turn two.

Because the unit lacks a built-in radio, it cannot spot targets or call in strikes for an artillery loadout. Squads should instead be dedicated to direct-assault spearheads, urban clearance operations, and frontline captures. The unit also lacks passive medical healing perks, meaning sustained engagements require backup from supply trucks or field stations to keep hit points topped off.

When managing the starting deployment budget of 600 ticks, fielding two SMG Squads alongside mechanized transport gives players an economical early push capable of seizing contested towns before armored vehicles arrive.

Infantry Comparison and Selection

Choosing the right infantry unit depends on your primary strategic focus, terrain layout, and whether your army relies on support batteries or independent frontline skirmishing.

Effective Counters and Battlefield Weaknesses

Despite its high short-range burst output, the squad struggles when facing dedicated anti-infantry combat vehicles. Standard vehicle plating resists submachine gun fire, reducing kinetic damage down to negligible chip levels.

Light armored vehicles like the Tankette present a hard counter by engaging beyond the squad's weapon reach, inflicting heavy damage while pinning down the soldiers. Multi-L tanks provide a severe threat by firing dual machine guns across multiple targets. This repeated fire suppresses unit morale and pins the squad in place, neutralizing its Multi Attack advantage.

Defensive tow gunners also break SMG formations efficiently. Light Gunners firing from entrenched positions can pin down advancing squads before they enter grenade distance. Dedicated anti-air pieces like the SPAAG eliminate unarmored foot units in a single combat cycle, while heavy ordnance platforms and the armored tank destroyer ignore small-arms fire entirely to target accompanying transport vehicles.