Arty craters are still overkill

[Lebatron]

IMO the big arty attacks make to much mess of the map. Shown here is a small one from a mortar team and a large one from an artillery attack. Both IMO are overkill. A simple solution would be to use the mortar teams crater effect for the larger artillery attacks and use nothing for the smaller mortar attacks. I don't believe players want or need to see a map record of where mortars hit throughout the game. These are minor attacks in the same league as normal gun fire which do not leave traces themselves. For the big arty's it is nice to see a record of where they occurred throughout a fight and I think the smaller effect in the left picture is more than enough to fill that role. In fact, it's probably more to scale anyway.

Those that support this change chime in please.

[ioticus]

I mentioned this in another thread but will add my support here as well.

[z1812]

I also agree.

[DBeves]

ORIGINAL: Lebatron

IMO the big arty attacks make to much mess of the map. Shown here is a small one from a mortar team and a large one from an artillery attack. Both IMO are overkill. A simple solution would be to use the mortar teams crater effect for the larger artillery attacks and use nothing for the smaller mortar attacks. I don't believe players want or need to see a map record of where mortars hit throughout the game. These are minor attacks in the same league as normal gun fire which do not leave traces themselves. For the big arty's it is nice to see a record of where they occurred throughout a fight and I think the smaller effect in the left picture is more than enough to fill that role. In fact, it's probably more to scale anyway.

Those that support this change chime in please.

[&:] why ? What exactly is the problem with having craters ?

[vonRocko]

Why change it? I like craters.

[ericbabe]

For what it's worth, the mortar craters are roughly to scale with the units, though the artillery craters are perhaps a bit small at that scale. We found some data originally gathered by Col. Jyri Paulaharju that showed that in grass or dirt the size of a crater is depth and radius roughly equal to ten times the caliber of the mortar or artillery fire. For 76mm-82mm mortars and 122mm howitzers this gives craters with a diameter of about 1 m and 3 m respectively. In the scale of the hex graphics the mortar craters are about 5 m in diameter, but in the scale of the units they are about 1 - 1.5 m, the artillery craters are about 3 m at that scale. Early in development our artists decided to make these sorts of graphics unit-scale and not hex-scale -- we were trying to go for a sort of miniature wargaming look.

[Lebatron]

There is about 50 craters or more in my pic. I never imagined so much munitions would be used in a basic call for arty. If I'm right that's another argument to tone it down a lot. The left pic has 9 craters spaced in such a way to cover a 7 hex patch just right. Probably more in line with the amount of munitions used, plus it's easy to tell where the center of the attack was. I find that one much more useful for a map record of where arty landed than the larger texture effect. Oh well lets just wait for more feedback to see what more players think.

[ioticus]

The problem is it makes it difficult to see the terrain underneath.

[Xacto]

I like the randomness of the current craters - there is some gratification on seeing the scorched earth of the mortar. Maybe an option to turn craters off in the preference.

[Bison36]

I like the crater effects.

[danlongman]

I likes 'em for now. An effective artillery shoot would be multiple rounds to do anything except by blind luck.
Well maybe not so blind. If you asked a mortar section of two tubes to each drop four or so rounds thats a buncha holes already.
When they are fresh craters are very apparent as big rips in the ground. After a few days of weather not so much.
cheers