Why artillery is ineffective against armored units?

[NikolaiEzhov]

In the default .eqp all the artillery pieces including the modern ones have the AT value of zero.
However, most of the modern howitzers or MRLSs are able to fire anti-armor cluster submunition or smart munitions which are extremely deadly to tanks or APCs.
So I tried to set the AT value of the M109A6 to very high(223), but it's still ineffective when bombarding an armored unit. They just didn't killed one single tank.
Is this some kind of game engine limitations?
regards
Nikolai

[shunwick]

As far as I know, it is one of those annoying hard-coded nasties. TOAW II has its limitations when trying to model modern warfare accurately.

Best wishes,
Steve

[josant]

A shot from a unit that is not adjacent to another unit is treated by the game as a indirect fire, and currently in this type of combat the game dont use the AT value, only the AP value, however I remember that a small portion (maybe 10% ?) of the AP value is used as AT value.

This is one of the things that I would like to be reworked for toaw 4, a modern AT weapon have as range more than 5Km, but currently if you chose the 2.5Km as game scale, the unit is only capable of shot from one hex to another adjacent hex (is not capable of shot a unit placed 2 hexes away).

[ogar]

Like josant, I remember some mention of this "AT allocation" on the forum, but have never found it in a manual. I remember the value as 25%. I've never seen artillery have an AT effect on anything armored in all the toaw_logs I've crawled through - whether version 3.2, 3.4.0.202, 3.4 w/3xBB or 3.4.1.9.

I tried the same customization approach as NikolaiEzhov, and also had the same zero result. The engine appears not to use AT values from artillery against any armored equipment.

I have little knowledge/experience with modern/post-modern equipment. But even in WWII, if a tank battalion/regiment were hit by a barrage from two dozen or more 152mm, 5.5 guns, 155 howitzers or 6 inch naval rifles, it often spelled "re-org" for that unit -- just not in TOAW.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: josant

A shot from a unit that is not adjacent to another unit is treated by the game as a indirect fire, and currently in this type of combat the game dont use the AT value, only the AP value, however I remember that a small portion (maybe 10% ?) of the AP value is used as AT value.

This is one of the things that I would like to be reworked for toaw 4, a modern AT weapon have as range more than 5Km, but currently if you chose the 2.5Km as game scale, the unit is only capable of shot from one hex to another adjacent hex (is not capable of shot a unit placed 2 hexes away).

It would be a pretty major undertaking to reflect direct fire between units in different hexes (at the moment combat effectively occurs in the defending hex), as the game would need to have some way of calculating line of sight. That would be an enormous can of worms and, I would say, outside the scope of an Operational game. If direct fire is frequently required at these ranges in modern warfare I'd argue that 2.5km/hex is not an operational scale in this period.

Anyway, as I recall if you create a modified ranged equipment piece with an AT value, that unit will act as an AT gun, but only in normal combat, not in bombardment. This can be very useful for weapons like the 25 pounder, which could be used in an AT role at short ranges, not to mention a wider range of guns which were not designed for it, but were sometimes pressed into service in an AT role by events.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: ogar

I have little knowledge/experience with modern/post-modern equipment. But even in WWII, if a tank battalion/regiment were hit by a barrage from two dozen or more 152mm, 5.5 guns, 155 howitzers or 6 inch naval rifles, it often spelled "re-org" for that unit -- just not in TOAW.

You would want to do some testing, but I have the impression that a barrage will cause units to lose readiness even if they take no losses.

This would be more appropriate than re-organisation, which would paralyse the unit for an entire turn.