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This discussion started in my AAR on post #425 and I wanted to some proper tests to see what effects artillery and especially Heavy Artillery have on fort levels.

I have run around 70+ tests. The conditions were as follows: Soviet forces in good defensive positions starting on fort level 5 with good commanders in charge. German forces under good commanders, supported by Pioneers and a lot artillery (6 per Corps, Siege Mortar Battery and very Heavy Artillery were present as well). The aim of the test was to see the fractional reduction of fort levels when the enemy held. This was done because when an enemy retreats/routs fort levels automatically drop to 0 so it would be hard to see the effects of artillery fire on the reduction of forts.

My test show that artillery was very very ineffective in reducing fort levels. Most of the times fort levels were not reduced at all by artillery fire (not even by 1%). In the cases when artillery fire did reduce the fort levels the percentage point was very low (2-4%).

Final battle odds were what affected fort level reduction the most, something that is detailed in the manual in section 15.3.2.6. The big thing to aim for here was to have final battle odds of 1.5-1.99, which guarantee that the fort level will drop by 1 full level eg: 4 to 3 or 3 to 2, with further reductions possible depending on the Engineer Value of the attacking forces.

Keep in mind that fort level reduction from artillery happens before combat is resolved (see section 15.1 in the manual) so it will still help you reduce the enemy CV but by very little.

Conclusion: Artillery is not the big thing that drives down fort levels although it does help to have a lot of artillery present as they cause disruption (among other things) and also can reduce fort levels (although by very small increments). They are not able to reduce fort levels by a full level or more by themselves, that depends on the final Battle Odds as explained above.

I don't have screenshots from my tests (because I didn't know I was going to post them on the forums at the time) but if you want to see this in action you can check the battle for Crimea in my AAR. You will see how hard it is to reduce fort levels even with a lot of artillery present and very good commanders.

In case any devs see this: I think it would be quite nice to increase the effect of heavy artillery on fortification levels so that they have a proper impact on the battlefield (would be happy with a 10% or more reduction).

Cheers!

I have been following the advice to use heavier guns for forts until now.

Is any other support unit, other than engineers, better now? Or is artillery still the best even if not very good?

Are there any advantages to heavier or light artillery or are they interchangeable for any battle?

Thanks xhoel, good stuff

ORIGINAL: Beria
Is any other support unit, other than engineers, better now? Or is artillery still the best even if not very good?

Commandos, flamethrowers and infantry basically. An infantry element is worth 1/10th of an engineer squad.

So in theory, all the infantry squads of an axis 41a Infantry Division's added together are worth approximately the same as an engineer batallion. And if you add the organic engineer batallion of the same division, it means a standard Axis 41a Infantry division is worth 2 engineer batallions for fort reduction purposes. But there are modifiers for each levels of fortification bringing down the effectiveness of the engineer values.

As stated in the manual 15.3.2.6

@xhoel: Thanks for testing and posting.
Your systematic are congruent with my feeling.
In the case of high enemy fort levels, artillery will also cause very little disruption/destruction, just calculate the % of disrupted stuff as shown in the detailed combat report.

Overall, my impression is "artillery is weak", the higher the fort level, the more.
Having them does not hurt and I think they have some extra commitment boni but given the choice between an artillery unit and pioneers/sappers, I will always pick the latter to appear in the battle.
The 0.7+ CV of a pinoeer batallion/sapper regiment added to your side do more for the odds than the little disruption and fort reduction an artillery batallion/regiment will do.

At least that is my experience with the WitE combat system.

@Beria: I would say that currently engineers are what you want to have to crack forts. Artillery is still the best as it adds a nice bonus, my post was simply to remove the idea that artillery by itself is able to reduce forts by full levels, a belief that was standard so far.

In terms of advantages of heavy/light artillery I recall that Crackaces had a post about it where he explained what to use. I have not done testing on the matter so currently am following Crackaces guide.

@joelmar: Always glad to be helpful!

@Evk: Yes I have noticed that they have small effects the higher the fort level. It makes sense in a way, since forces sheltered in concrete bunkers will do much better than units in foxholes.

If I had to chose between them, I would probably go for the Pioneers as well. They help with dropping fort levels and that helps with reduction of end CV which determines if a battle is won or lost. That being said I never go into battle without artillery and value them dearly.

Given what is being said on engineers - they will always be the best. But if you have some spots for more SUs what would be your second choice? Until now that has been the heaviest artillery you could find. But following this through would Joelmar's idea be better. Infantry type SUs would at least be the equivalent of partial engineer units (??) and also have some CV too. If artillery counts for so little, better to have something with CV and engineering values (??) no matter how small?

Many versions ago units like the bicycle recon battalion were one of the SUs attached to infantry divisions for the crossing of the Neva. In old patches the unit used to have over 90 morale whereas now it has been downgraded so I guess is not favoured anymore. Should the bike recon and German MG battalions be making a come back and now be prefered for large fortification assaults? Seems what comes around goes around! [:)]

I agree, it seems to matter very little what artillery type you use against Forts. But on the topic of which artillery SU to use when, regardless of forts, I have come to the conclusion that Nebelwerfers are the best, since they on average have 18 pieces vs. 12 pieces of normal artillery battalions. Furthermore they even come with an additional 3 MGs and 3 anti-tank guns. That leaves us with heavy howitzers vs. light howitzers, were the difference seems to matter very little.

So overall my current strategy is based around assigning nebelwerfer regiments (the big ones that have 50 pieces each) first, then nebelwerfer battalions, then the rest, in order of best to worst.

@Telemecus: I really like the MG Battalions and the Bicycle Recon Battalion. They were part of the attack on Sevastopol and add quite a bit of punch. I would still keep artillery though. If you run tests where scenario A is an attack supported by artillery and scenario B is an attack that is not supported by artillery, you will suffer many more casualties in scenario B. So artillery helps with reducing the casualties you take and with suppressing the enemy but they don't do much to forts.

@Pashahlis: I would agree with you that the Nebelwerfer Regiments are really great because they pack a lot of firepower but would disagree on the value of Werfer Battalions. They have very short range, so to me they are not that worth it. I would rather use standard artillery.

Cheers!

Also disruption augments casualties of the enemy when he retreats or routs, so in the long run that adds up.

I ran a few tests on artillery last week on a lone Soviet division in the clear with a very good corp leader. And the best results from werfers seemed to come when I added 105mm or 150mm guns to the mix. I say "seemed" because sadly I don't have the patience to test thoroughly the endless combinations to get a good enough statistical dataset!!! [:D]

But anyway as a rule of thumb, I try to mix SU's types with more of this or that depending on the target and availability. And I always add some AA before the battle, again depending on the target and air cover.

You should automate testing with a clickbot.

ORIGINAL: EwaldVonKleist
You should automate testing with a clickbot.

Interesting, do you have a clickbot suggestion?

But I'm not sure it would help a lot though... I do my tests always with the same units to get exact results, so what is long is reloading the game between each test and collecting the information. And also change the parameters once a set of test has been done.