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Ammo is reloaded after YOUR artillery barrage turn - but your ammo will not be reloaded after his barrage turn.
I'm wondering who would think that they'd reload twice? You seem to think that people would think that they would reload twice a turn, whereas I've always thought it was once a turn. Of course, it doesn't really matter, whether it's twice or once, it's the total that counts.
If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that if fire patterns are clumped together they will have fired more than once since last time you looked at their ammo, thereby seeming to have fallen behind in resupply, but of course if you were accurately keeping up with the fire rate it would be no surprise, which of course if you had only one gun that would be a simple proposition.
John David: If you're talking about the quote, it ought to be, as that was the manual, however, the attempted explanation was mine. I say attempted because I'm not even sure I'm right, so am I curious if anyone knows that to be coorect. It's bound to be flawed to some extent.
Originally posted by Charles_22 tracer: That positioning is just asking for a bruising. Artillery and ammo trucks in the objectives? Hmm, I posted this prematurely...
This is from a late-game turn; opponent hit the area much earlier, but hadn't since...and the 'congregation' formed slowly. Also should point out that I cleared the smoke before grabbing the picture; the entire area (and several others behind the battle line) are covered with smoke-hexes...very low risk of him picking this one. Not sure what you meant by 'objectives': the nearest VH's are 10-15 hexes away. And yes, there are some opponents I would never try this with
(hope this one doesn't recognize the map!).
In the other battle I mentioned, I also had 100mm howitzers in the same hex as an ammo dump, and 81mm mortars adjacent to it...both were resupplied like clockwork.
I always believed the rate for same and adjacent hex was the same too, but lately I'm seeing a different picture.
tracer: Ohhhh, those flags are identification markers. I thought they were VHs (misspoke when I said objectives), as I never use those unit flags. It really looked stupid, as though you were trying to make the picture-perfect disposition as to what not to do, and even cleared it looks like a unit didn't make it, alongside other hexes having been hit, and many of the units are in clear hexes, assuming that were there from deployment until that turn; it looked really bad. It looked as though your avatar was an indication of self-infliction.
Yeah, one did get hit earlier,lucky shot; my opponent dropped a fire mission there to prep the way for some airborne.
Speaking of that, he dropped smoke on the following turn, and I saw the C-47's fly over, but during the following 10 turns or so I never saw any troops. After the game (just finished today) he said his troops never dropped: his guess was that the smoke caused his planes to miss the drop target, and since it was near the map edge the paras never jumped. Anyone have this happen to them?
Yep, I was playing Green Devils over something or another and due to heavy fire/incompotence 35% of my foces landed out of the map or didnt drop to avoid going into the water (I was dropping into northern Crete near the north coast).
Whats sad is that it was 3 o'clock in the afternoon as well.
I did manage to take a draw though I took a few easy objectives and beat of british attacks. I would of got a DV if it wasnt for my dumbass pilots.
Charles_22 - I didn't mean to imply that I expected the ammo to be reloaded twice. Although it appears I may have.
Regardless of how many ammo trucks you have supplying your artillery, units that fired at the end of your opponents last turn will be short by that many rounds at the start of your next turn.
If, however, you insure that your barrages are coming in with a 0.0 or 0.1 delay, your ammo trucks will be able to reload spent in the barrage at the end of YOUR turn. Within their capabilities, of course. (a 0.2 delay will 'bleed' some shots over to the other players barrage segment)
My point was to illustrate the reload mechanics for those that haven't spent the inordinate time that I have setting up test and watching,counting and verifying these kinds of results. :rolleyes:
This process has been more or less consistent with most recent versions up to 7.0 IMHO.
Haven't tried 7.1 yet - waiting for a tournament to wind down.
"Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible. "
- Stonewall Jackson
Capt. Pixel: Oh okay. But in any case, in summarizing, isn't it proper to say that you were basically warning us that if the shells bombarded more than once until the next time you saw the unit, that it would appear as though the trucks weren't keeping with their usual pace? I think part of your argument here has to do with trying to keep the maximum ammo loadout, and of course if a unit is being "oversupplied" it will only say the maximum rounds, but if the unit fires twice (and I'm probably totally wrong on that, but I think what you mean is that the user is diligently looking after every gun's ammo. If a 4 gun battery had 2 guns fire the player turn, then the resupply came, and then 2 fired the enemy turn, you would conclude the supply was working properly; that seems to be what you're saying) and three ammo trucks are resupplying it with at least one round per truck, obviously it's never going to use the 50rds. it started out with; a bit of a waste, but then if you're artillery is prone to fall to HTH barrages, then that's another matter.
The deal with me though, is I rarely notice the ammo amount even when resupplying (actually even less prone to do so then), because I don't expect it to crest the full ammo loadout at any time. In fact, if I had, I would be disappointed because tipping the scales would be wasteful. If 50rds. of ammo gets me through 5 or 6 combat turns (assuming one only bombards then - I don't like to guess unless I'm REALLY overlavish with guns), and that maybe means it lasts till turn 10 (maybe 4-5 turns of no contact), then the most I want out of my ammo trucks is to get the artillery to turn 15, turn 20 at the most. The reason being that the vast majority of the fighting is done by then, at which point the mopping up takes place, which of course often puts my troops in greater danger from my barrages than the enemy. IOW, if around that time, my artillery isn't used up, any excess ammo trucks are a waste since I'm not realy interested in bombarding past that amount of the battle. My ammo trucks are there just to get my artillery to about zero ammo left at that time. One truck per onboard gun suffices. No matter how the battle goes, with onboard artillery that is, the rout is on or the forces are so intermingled there's little purpose to further bombardment, unless there's still enemy onboard to reckon with, which if they're still viable, is unlikely to have too much ammo left anyway. I would never dream of having 3 ammo trucks resupplying one gun because of that reasoning. That would be 200pts excess that could've been spent on 3 PZIVCs. Of course if my one little truck is hit very early on I'll have to struggle a bit, but I just don't see keeping my artillery at it's super-highest the entire time of battle, but then again, I doubt I'd ever use the Wurfs if I ever got to that point of the war. The max. onboard I ever intend to carry are 120mm mortars, but then I think there's nothing larger than that available anyway, until at least some of the SPAs are out. With my plan one truck lasts for 120mm until I basically want them to, but getting to 150mm or larger would probably be a different story. I suppose when onboard stuff like that is available, I will probably make a pass as I'd consider that too much power, unless, of course, I start seeing the AI buying stuff like that, and then all bets are off. Actually, if I'm playing it smart, I ought to run a few different scenarios through the AI. Pick a '44 battle for example, adn if I'm campaigning as the USSR, see if the GE AI picks things over 120mm in onboard artillery, but then again I have to weigh another factor, and that is that the AI doesn't resupply, but, and maybe you've noticed this, but it seems some of his artillery, maybe the onboard stuff, can fire ALL the battle and still have like 30rds. left, although I have seen some 81mm mortars run out for the AI, so I guess that just leaves me really confused overall.
One ammo truck can generally extend an artillery units capacity ~50%. Two trucks (or one dump) can keep an arty unit going pretty much indefinitely.
Most artillery can be reloaded at about their firing rate with two trucks. As the caliber increases, ROF decreases as does the reload rate.
Mortars of all sizes get off one extra round above their listed ROF. I don't know why. Just a note.
Another exception is rockets (wurfrahmen, katyusha and the like). If you want to keep your Nebelwerfer battery going, you'd better plan at least 'one truck to one rocket' as your reload rate.
My tactic is to assign one ammo truck to each platoon of my MOST effective Artillery pieces. I don't usually assign ammo trucks to ALL onboard Arty. As the unsupplied Arty units start to run low, they can be moved towards the ammo resupply points.
If I start running low on rounds as the game progresses, I just lift the barrage for a turn or two, reload, and carry on.
In this way, I can extend the duration of my artillery access by half again or more.
The only time I have more than 4 ammo trucks on the field, is when I'm using rockets in an Advance or Assault.
Charles_22 is right. Don't purchase more ammo resupply than you can realistically expect to need. they're too expensive for that kind of luxury.
If you are the type that doesn't keep his A0 back with the Arty, you'll still get reloads on the turns you've lost contact and don't fire. This goes a long ways in keeping those magazines full, but who cares if they're not firing anyway?
"Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible. "
- Stonewall Jackson
Originally posted by Belisarius I'm offtopic-ing here, but...
...a question just popped up in my head:
What kind of people drove ammo trucks?
I mean, it's not like driving potato trucks, right? So if you were on ammo truck detail, did you have some certain kind of mentality, or did one develop it? Driving around in a soft-skinned truck with 3 tons of explosives in the back.... :p
Originally posted by Belisarius I'm offtopic-ing here, but...
What kind of people drove ammo trucks?
I mean, it's not like driving potato trucks, right? So if you were on ammo truck detail, did you have some certain kind of mentality, or did one develop it? Driving around in a soft-skinned truck with 3 tons of explosives in the back.... :p
I can answer that one as I DID drive an ammo truck once. Real careful drivers who can also drive fast!
But just a little different from the game, I don't think the trucks would go adjascent to the guns if they were under fire. And one truck did a whole battery of 4 guns (I worked 105mm's). Since the gun's crews did most of the unloading, it kept up with the ROF.
I only did ammo detail once, and that was when they asked for volunteers. I know, never volunteer in the army! But we'd been in the field for over a week, I was sick of field rations, it was an hour before lunchtime and the ammo supply we had to pick up was real near the mess. Get the picture.
"Good military intelligence is worth at least as much as an extra regiment."
For those of you who would park and fire their Arty next to an ammo dump, take a look at this from a recent game.
Not a good turn for the Dodger. At the end of his turn my Typhoon hit his ammo dump with several 60mm Rockets. BOOM and then at the end of my turn (Dodger don't be firing your Nebelwerfers while surrounding your ammo dump, especially when you have no decoy smoke). My 150s and Nebelwerfers hit another ammo dump.BOOM Pretty Pretty secondary explosions.
. If you haven't seen an ammo dump go up, its worth the time to set up a hotseat battle and target an ammo dump until it explodes. It IS well done.
When you play an experienced player, they look for the pattern that indicates that you have fired from around an ammo dump. I set the pattern with my on-board when playing GaryT and VikingNo2. They both hit the pattern as quick as they could target it. Me, being a sneaky bird of opportunity, moved my arty out of harms way and next to my ammo dump for re-supply. Only to move it back into the pattern again several turns later to temp them again. It is sooo satisfying to see a battery of heavy off board (limited ammo) land on empty hexes.
I now buy only ammo trucks. What the heck. Two of them do the job of a dump and they can move. IIRC they cost the same.
I did notice something in H2H. I set 4 units with low ammo next to a dump, only two got ammo. The other two didn't in 4 turns. Is something different in H2H?
Originally posted by Buzzard45 When you play an experienced player, they look for the pattern that indicates that you have fired from around an ammo dump. I set the pattern with my on-board when playing GaryT and VikingNo2. They both hit the pattern as quick as they could target it. Me, being a sneaky bird of opportunity, moved my arty out of harms way and next to my ammo dump for re-supply. Only to move it back into the pattern again several turns later to temp them again. It is sooo satisfying to see a battery of heavy off board (limited ammo) land on empty hexes.
I now buy only ammo trucks. What the heck. Two of them do the job of a dump and they can move.
Buzzard45, you've got it exactly right!
When I was in the artillery, we never fired from next to an ammo dump. They were far too important to risk.
What we did was have the dump well hidden and protected and ammo trucks shuttled back and forth to the guns. Most of the gunners never knew where the dumps were, need-to-know ya' know.
Even the guns never sat still. The most # of fire missions I ever recall doing before moving was perhaps 5 if they were short ones. Then we'd up-anchor and move out. Maybe only 1/2 km or maybe 10 km, but never stayed in the same place long after firing. If it was a big fire mission, we'd only do the one before moving. Again, ammo dumps took a long time to set up and break down so they really couldn't move like the guns.
We practiced hook-up, move and re-set until we could do the hook-up in less than 2 minutes (a long time if we'd been under fire, which we weren't) and set-up in a new location took perhaps 5-10 minutes because we had to run out the aiming posts and locate them on the transit-scope, position each gun in the battery on the map-grid so we knew exactly where we were, set out ready-use ammo on groundsheets, etc. This was before GPS so maybe it's easier now but I can't imagine they wouldn't still use aiming posts out at 100 or 200 yards.
In SPWAW, if there's any chance of counterbattery fire, the closest way to do it to real-life is to have 2 or even 3 batteries. While Delta-battery is firing, Echo-battery is moving and Fox-battery is setting-up and re-supplying.
You therefore keep continuous fire on the target, continuous supply to the guns and the enemy doesn't know where you are in time.
In SPWAW, when I see the telltale smoke of a fire mission, just like Buzzard says, it looks like a nice juicy target! Depending on the situation at the moment and what's available, I either send in my own fire mission on the smoke, send over a CAS aircraft for a look-see, or divert a fast recce vehicle to see if I can find them.
The reason for not always doing the same thing is so my opponent doesn't know what to expect. I've been known to set off some fake smoke canisters myself with single troops just to draw his fire away from where I really am attacking, so why expect him not to think of the same thing? If he always expects counter-battery, he'll always move.
"Good military intelligence is worth at least as much as an extra regiment."
" Look alive!! Here comes a Buzzard"