Artillery settings

[jivemi]

My understanding is that arty overload was added to penalize players or scenario designers who rely excessively on indirect fire to paralyze opposing infantry in (mostly) defensive battles or meeting engagements when enemy infantry are out in the open and especially vulnerable. Bear in mind that there is no penalty at all for assaulting forces while the overload for advancers has a threshold of 30% before kicking in.

What's especially annoying is trying to clear or advance cautiously through minefields while the defender, armed with knowledge of your whereabouts through mineclearing reports (even a slow advance by regular infantry will usually dig up one or two), proceeds to target the area with salvo after salvo while your guys are critically exposed.

---Spoiler Alert---

A case in point is SPWW2 Scenario #550, Pakfront Kursk. The German player has no pioneers so is obliged to advance prudently along the main VH path with sufficient forces until almost inevitably blundering into Russian mines with ordinary sloggers. One may try one's luck by going off-road yet perils can lurk even there and in any event time is relatively short--32 turns--plus some objectives are deep in the rear.

The harrowing situation described above occurred in due course in a recent attempt at this hard nut. It took 6 or 7 turns to pass through the mine barrier, clearing only a couple hexes--by accident due to being pinned rather than by design--while being subjected to barrages of various calibers which not only attrited the infantry but damaged a couple tank's weapons as well. One even blew up when it mistakenly moved onto a mined hex in Buttoned status rather than Ready (my bad).

Despite these setbacks the Germans managed to recover and eventually seize all objectives by Turn 30. Unfortunately losses incurred during that first and subsequent doleful episodes were sufficient to prevent a VP margin of 8:1, final score being 3838:500. Rats!

But hey, wait a second. The Russian arty overload penalty of 251 points put the German over the top at 4089, which seems fair compensation for time and material lost in the Twilight Zone of being practically immobilized in a minefield under indirect fire. And while it may not be historically accurate it does even out the odds for a competitive wargame. Won't suit everybody but it sure suits me. Cheers!

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

At first I had my doubts about the "penalty" as I've always had a "combined arms" view in my force makeup. Within a short time I was much more comfortable with it, because as Andy pointed out, a live opponent in this game could do the same thing with a few decent armored recon or helicopter borne troop (Touch and go.) units, as he pointed out on for that that "table top" tourney.

And since it was brought up...
You having ammo units (And I do for "RL" reasons.) against the AI is a huge advantage and one I've advocated in the past, the AI should have the option of as well.

[b]Bottom-line from many years past posts is, it would be a coding nightmare.[b]

Whether intended or not, the AI WILL ON A CONSISTANT BASIS TARGET YOUR AMMO SUPPLY UNITS. It stresses your logistics, it's an easy kill and with the primary and secondary explosions it usually will cause collateral damage to any light units or worse and at a minimum suppress them even to the point of routing them based on their "experience" at the time.

I still buy them but for what units, well the reader will just figure out what's best for them. The AI knows for sure.

Andy for you or Don, and I'm sure I've asked this in the past and have forgotten the answer, but I thought I've seen the AI get charged for "artillery overload" as well?

Could you please enlighten me (And possibly some others.) as to the correct answer?

Regards,
Pat

[Imp]

With mines you can sell them a dummy admittedly that scenario no engineers but it does not matter your force is mobile & my tanks had ample smoke. Hit the mines & either let engineers work a couple of turns smoke & pull out. Probe the line to see how far it goes worst case I have no issues with advancing in the wrong direction for a turn or two when it comes to mines.

SPOILER
In this case not far you can go round it while the arty hits the now vacated minefield.

In my view the artillery system works well I do fall foul of overload on the occasion in early year games but not worried by it. D/S G/S are useful additional tools these are the ones you have covering your mines if defending with any Gold Spots positioned to relocate & hit again. Due to high adjust cost stick to infantry as targets not harassing vehicles.

[Mobhack]

Precisely the above was why Artillery Overload was introduced. To penalise the players who but stupid amounts of artillery. (Takes me back to the 1/300 tabletop days, back in the 1970s when there were no army lists and 1 guy at the Nationals turned up with nothing but off-map artillery and a dozen FOO jeeps to take the objectives and spot for the guns - the next year, official army lists appeared )

And if you really think you need the artillery, by all means go for the overload - the penalty is not too much, so if you give away say 300 points, that's the cost of an MBT which is neither here nor there, just make sure the extra guns work hard to make up for the penalty points given away.

Planes do not count - they are limited by flight numbers.

Ammo carriers do count - they are a force multiplier that only humans can take advantage of.

As to the reduced response of D/S and G/S artillery - there is no delay if they are used as pre-programmed artillery so they are generally only useful for the attacker, as cheaper planned strikes. They fall on pre-plotted gold spots at the same delay as others, so may be useful for cheap defensive fires if you plot your FDF spots correctly.

And also, I will be looking into artillery overload for scenarios - and probably not charging it for these since the designer knows what was needed.

[Mobhack]

The AI will get charged if it overbuys. I thought I would have to do a lot of rework to the pick lists, but it turned out that the AI generally kept within the limits I had determined anyway - bar the occasional time it goes heavy on guns (e.g. UK/USA later war in WW2 sometimes buys a lot, but that is historic).

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

That's what I thought, and was hoping I wasn't seeing things that weren't there!?!

I usually play some "combination" of countries against Russia and China mostly. It's been my experience that beside setting my AI preference to "Tank Heavy" most of the time (If not all of the time.) it's also "Artillery Heavy" as well with a combination of Off Map/Mortar/On Map (Grads and such.) which, if you think about it, is what both those countries are able to do in life as embolden above.

I do not short the AI on points as this is not a realistic thing to do considering their "RL" equipment status since the end of WWII.

Thanks for your answer Andy!

Regards,
Pat