Artillery direct fire sights

[Marcello]

Question: some artillery pieces,like the D-30, are equipped with direct fire sights and are issued with antitank rounds like HEAT.Yet in the game they have no FC and RF ratings.Is that a design convention?

[Mobhack]

They are issued with HEAT or Sabot (as AP since an arty piece with AP is an arty piece with cluster rounds) for self defence.

You could issue FC and RF to your arty pieces, thus making all on-map arty a tad more expensive, and therefore penalise all your arty cost-wise for its primary role (lobbing HE bricks from dead ground where FC and RF are entirely irrelevant), for the .05% case of self defence against armour where its 3-4 HEAT rounds just might be useful?.

For self-defence fire, if the gun is plotted to fire indirect, there is no reaction fire in any case - too busy engaging the indirect target. If the guns are sited in dead ground, where the target will come into range at short range, and you cancel the fire mission (so it can fire direct), the long range of indirect fire guns (200+ hexes) will give you a good base accuracy value in any case. Without adding extra cost to onboard arty for no real benefit to thier role.

For arty pieces used in the AT role these will be reclassed as an AT gun. See the 25 pounder (AT role) in WinSPWW2 for example.


Cheers
Andy