Matrix Games Forums

I've noticed that units gain experience when the get shelled by enemy artillery units.
Was this intended? I assumed that you get experience from combat, but sitting on the receiving end of a bombardement should bring you either doom or a thankful heart for having survived.

Or am I missing something important?
[&:]

You're right, they do make small experience gains, 0.05 per bombardment, i.e. 20 bombardments = 1 experience. Being involved in combat gives significantly more experience.

That is the lowest gain possible, apart from setting the gain to zero which isn't necessarily correct as troops who have been bombarded are by definition more experienced and potentially more capable of surviving the next bombardment than one lacking that experience.

If this were a WWI game then we might have to change the gains from being bombarded, but hopefully it will be very rare for any significant gains to be made from just being shelled in this game?

If you hold a frontline (WW1-like), you will often notice that your artillery attack did nothing but to worsen the situation, as the attacked unit suddenly got one more experience dot.
And that is when you start to wonder.

I guess the biggest "problem" is that there are quiten often combat results where you don't destroy strength points.
So you attack again the next turn. And the next turn. With more units this time. And suddenly the enemy has mutated into a pretty deadly unit because of all his experience gains, even though this unit was cannon fodder some turns ago. If only your own units would have been able to get better results.

I think that's why the artillery should generally be fired only as a prelude to an attack, i.e. a little bombarding here and there won't do much good.

Yes, you're right. But the prelude should -in the best case- end with a strength point loss of the attacked unit. If the odds are not so great, you bombard first to see if you have been lucky. If not, you either postpone the attack (and hope that the enemy will be a weaker target next round due to the morale, readiness loss and the deentrenchment.

And than you have to cost free re-supply of artillery shots. Your artillery unit can only store 3 shots. But it gains more than one shot, if I remember correctly. But even if not, if you already have three shots, you fire no matter if you want to attack, or not. You don't want to waste the free shot. And - maybe your lucky...

I also noticed this, and I get the logic behind them gaining experience, but it's just a bit annoying when you want to perform an attack, only to see no damage but a stronger enemy which in the worst case ruins or weakens the attack itself.
As you say it's a rare occurence but in my opinion that should be the other way around, i.e. artillery is so rare that the experience gain can be removed.

(replied to Bill)

My idea was to use multiple attacks to get them softened up. But i've also noticed them getting more exp. Perhaps artillery and ships need a little boost?

Maybe it's best the gains are reduced to zero then if it is being noticed on a regular basis.

Or code it that a first bombardment attack gains the defender no experience, but further bombardments of the same unit do.

Or, get rid of the artillery units as they have no place in a game of this scale. [;)]