Historical Arty Delay

[Igor]

It's difficult to really model the American and British experience with fire control; because it wasn't really a neat mechanical matter of guns, tactics, and flight times.

The problem with just looking at the American technical ability to deliver fire is that this overlooks the politics of fire control. Historically, control of the guns having been assigned, whoever had them tended to refuse outright to fire missions not requested by their own FOs (they might, after all, need them themselves at some point). This could be worked around by going up the chain; but that added a lot of time.

Case in point, the Audy Murphy story. He had no technical right to call in fire (not being a divisional FO), and certainly had no guns assigned to him. Had the divisional commander not been on the net at that moment, then the request would have been refused, he would have been killed, and the Germans would have continued on their way. Since permission was instantly forthcoming, he got elite FO response times from an entire battalion of 105s. But how do we model this? Random availability and response times for non-FO units requesting non-organic fire support?

As for the British Stonk; yes, it could deliver a heck of a lot of fire (especially since, unlike the Americans, they tended to assume the FO knew what he was doing when he asked for every gun in range). But again, how do we model the random availability of batteries not even in the same corps as the requesting FO? This could make a divisional FO worth a vast number of points on the off chance he could whistle up 200 tubes on a 1.2 turn delay.

Just in passing, the Time of Target barrage was *never* responsive. It required massive amounts of coordination and calculation to determine just when to fire each tube to get to the target(s) simultaneously; and there was just no way a pre-computerized field artillery branch could do that in real time. The dawn barrage of July 4, 1944 was a typical example; after massive calculations, all of the targets were struck simultaneously.

If you want to use one, then create an MRL unit firing large aircraft bombs with very limited ammo and a high ROF, and insert it into a scenario as a pre-game bombardment weapon. As a special treat, a late war American option would be to do the same with large bore cluster munitions instead of bombs (with the HE armor penetration set to 2); this would be a TOT barrage with proximity fuzed rounds. Murder on infantry, not too dangerous to anything with top armor, and no awkward craters.

[Frank W.]

i vote for beefing up the british arty.

at least in H2H the americans are quite good
modelled because they have more ammo and
slightly cheaper prices than germans.

[plloyd]

I think it would be best if the delays were not tweeked too much. This is because, like with most tactical games, SP:WaW compresses the action. Battles which took all day all are over in less than an hour, in game terms. We often have entire companies virtually wiped out in under 15 minutes game time. This happens because a lot goes on every turn. Thus the battle becomes compressed. Many of you reading this are thinking, "But Peter, a lot can happen in 2 minutes!". That would be quite correct, it is equally true that a lot does not happen every 2 minutes, indeed a lot does not happen in most "2 minutes", and that is where the compression comes in. Stretching the lag time for artillery would prevent it from keeping up with events in the game.

[KG Erwin]

Guys, the OOB Team is going to experiment with altering the ROFs for quick-firing artillery, such as the famous French 75. I've always felt that offboard 75s are practically useless, since they're so often out of contact. We'll test this idea out--I hope it offers a workable solution, and makes them worthwhile purchasing.

[Jim1954]

Good answer, and congrats on your newly gained position of lofty esteem.

[&o][&o][&o][:D]

[KG Erwin]

If you guys want to help test this, here's the altered test ROFs, adjusted per ammo loadout:
Rounds / ROF
25 3
30 4
50 6
70 8
80 10

[plloyd]

Actually I am not so new. I have playing SP:WaW since v2.3, and I started with the Tanks & SP1. I have seen the difference in "time effects" between Squad Leader and (am I really this old?) Tracktics vs. Command Decision and SP3. Those same diffences are appicable here.

I have been on the forums for about 2 years now. I started as Lost Soldier (hence the avatar), but that was 2 or 3 crashes ago. All in all, it is nice to be appeciated. Glad you liked it.