Arty and mortar problems from a newbie

[mhowe]

I recently played a few turns of a random SPWAWv4 battle. I ran into two problems and I can't find the answers in the manual or the faq. First, on the buy screen, why is a mortar squad more expensive than a main battle tank? Playing as the Germans in June 1942, I can buy 5 main battle tanks for about 600 points, and it costs 432 points to buy three mortar squads. I will never buy mortar squads at this price, and that throws my whole combined-arms strategy out the window. Second, why did my off-board howitzer batteries fire one barrage on turn one and then report no ammo? What is the point of buying artillery that is good for only one shot?

Thanks for your attention.

Michael Howe

[Voriax]

Afaik there is a buglet in the pricing. There is an automatic multiplier of 1,5 in the arty pricing. So while the prices in the OOB are more reasonable in the actual purchase screen they are skewed. I *think* this is fixed in 4.1. But still..are you sure you didn't buy mortar platoons?

As for off-board howitzers. Was there any counter-battery fire? That tends to destroy all remaining ammo your guns had. Rocket launchers are only things that use all their ammo in one shot. Of course there might be a bug in the firing rates...

Voriax

[Raindem]

I've encountered the same thing with Arty. It will sometimes run out of ammo unexpectedly, even when I know I haven't fired enough rounds to do this. I always assumed the game did this on purpose, to make the arty less reliable.

[Arralen]

Originally posted by MHowe:
I recently played a few turns of a random SPWAWv4 battle. I ran into two problems and I can't find the answers in the manual or the faq. First, on the buy screen, why is a mortar squad more expensive than a main battle tank? Playing as the Germans in June 1942, I can buy 5 main battle tanks for about 600 points, and it costs 432 points to buy three mortar squads. I will never buy mortar squads at this price, and that throws my whole combined-arms strategy out the window. Second, why did my off-board howitzer batteries fire one barrage on turn one and then report no ammo? What is the point of buying artillery that is good for only one shot?

Mortar:
You're buying "Mortar Sec", which have 2 Squads. The 81mm Mortar Squad is at 48pts in the OOB and 72 in the game.

PzIV / PzIII start at 80/100 pts per vehicle.


Arty:
If you could give me a hint which unit you used? Looking through the OOB in a hurry I couldn't find any RoF-bug
Most likely you got counter-battered but didn't receive the appr. message - do you have "fast arty" turned on?

Arralen