Artillery Management - T.O.T.

[G_X]

I use them as spotters too, since they're recon infantry, they have a higher spot check, which means they check better than even normal infantry. Usually I find my Spotters having good places to hunker down in a defense stance, and use my snipers (I always take a few) and they're good hiding bonuses as well as good spotting to probe enemy defenses, and simulate the sniper calling the FO to call in artillery by using the FO to spot.

I've never had any qualms about using my On Board arty as the spotter, as he may have recieved orders before battle to take targets he thought were proper, I always do it with my highest ranking Arty piece though.

[rbrunsman]

I read in the Manual that arty plotted in LOS is 50% more effective. I didn't take that to mean more accurate (i.e. hitting the targeted hex), rather I understood it to mean that the "higher mathematics" used by the game system gives you twice as much power when LOS is available (i.e. more likelihood of a kill, better splash damage, more suppression, etc.)

As for FOs forward or in the rear, I use some of them forward because they seem to be very good at just standing around not being seen. Even better than scout teams (in my experience) for some reason. I move them forward slowly, find a nice hiding place, and then annoy the heck out of my opponent because he can't figure out how his "hidden" units are being seen.

[Major Destruction]

Buy one mortar. That should do the trick.

[bigtroutz]

Originally posted by Capt. Pixel
Well fud, I agree with you on all points. I also do not put my FOs in harm's way if I can help it. They're more expensive than just about any other infantry unit, and I also have never seen sufficient improvement in targetting to warrant their exposure on the front.

I might purchase two or more FOs if C&C is On or I have a lot of arty and/or marginal experience levels. From multiple FOs, one may have enough experience to be worthwhile.

I am hoping that someone out there can give me some insight that might change my opinion on FO usage. Anyone?

I agree with all your points, Capt, with the following additions:

1) IMHO FO's placed in the center of either a tight hex-ring or a loose ring with good line of sight to the surrounding arty means that more (all) arty units are able to fire each turn. It seems to me that scattered, isolated arty is unable to fire (out of contact, perhaps) much more frequently. if you play with limited ammo, a ammo dump or truck in the center also helps alot. the drawback is the juicy counterbattery target nature of this unit concentration but see #2

2) I tend to buy alot (6 is a good number, 12 seems a little excessive tho, hehe) of jeep/scoutcar 60mm mortars (cheap FEB (forward edge of battle) suppression units) when playing US or Brit or Anzac, and a jeep/lynx FO allows them to shoot and scoot as a group, or move forward as a group when targets are at extreme range, and the round drop pattern starts to scatter too much.

3) why use a 40 point FO team to recon when a 8-14 pt sniper or 2 man elite scout team works just as well, or perhaps better, depending on experience level. I am unconvinced that a FO team is less observable. Seems like a waste of points. Recon is always on the bleeding edge anyway, the first to get snuffed.

4) FO induced arty delay reduction is so important in my tactics that i always buy some extra's in case one or two cannot call arty (out of contact type deal). There is nothing to compare to being able to call down 150mm rounds on a spotted (and doomed) enemy concentration BEFORE it is able to move along.

hope this contributes something useful

[Capt. Pixel]

I see the issues pretty much the same way. I'm pretty sure that both the '0' unit of an arty battery AND the FO have to be in contact with the A0 unit to deliver or call artillery. But having the FO near the arty battery isn't that important.

For that reason, I tend to put my FOs and arty leaders within visual contact of my A0. I place the FOs as far from the artillery as possible in this configuration. I get always 100% availability with my onboards this way.

Having said that, most would realize that the resulting smoke trails would reveal a rather obvious deployment pattern. A canny opponent might be able to pin, not only your artillery, but your FOs and A0 too.

Here we can explore some methods for confusticating your enemy.

Keep moving your artillery. Using your mobility always increases your opponent's targetting problems. I discovered that the IT motoguzzi Trialce is THE premier transport for medium mortars. They can take them half way across the board in one turn.

Place decoy smoke bombardments. By spending a few smoke rounds behind your own lines, you can create images of other 'artillery parks' by plotting smoke in suspicious clusters. Put some smoke right over your actual park to further confound him. The 60mm jeep that bigtroutz mentions is ideal for this. They fire lots of smoke rounds in tight cluster patterns.

If you're the second player in a battle and you plot an opening barrage with a delay of 0.0, your opponent will have the opportunity to spot your smoke trails on his first turn. Deprive him of that opportunity by plotting a 1.0 delay on your barrage. The barrage will then come in at the end of his first turn, and he won't get the opportunity to strike at your artillery first.

You can move alternate units. Some units remain to fire while others can move to new, unrevealed positions. The units left behind then move up the next turn. This way, you can keep at least some of your bombard strength available. If you're relying on radio contact to your arty units, move those units that have already lost contact this turn. You can also move under the covering smoke near the front, near to or downwind of a burning hex, or back into a previously 'smoke trailed' hex.

Another tactic is to start with the units spread out to fire. On their next turn they converge on an ammo supply and begin reloading. On the following turn (or whenever they've gotten a sufficient reload) they move forward and spread out again before firing. By not firing near the ammo supply, the opponent has no reason to suspect a target in that area. This works well with a platoon of Wurfrahmen and a platoon of ammo trucks. Every three turns they can unleash a healthy volley of rockets.

Be aware of when your artillery is going to arrive (and reveal your firing positions), and what you're opponent is likely to see. For instance, if you plot your barrage to arrive at 0.3 or later, he's only going to see the incoming barrage at the end of his turn. This gives you the opportunity to move before he targets you.

I'm sure there are many. many other tactics such as these. I'd like to hear of some more.

[Gary Tatro]

Well I thought I would give my 2 cents. This is what I do and it works. First I always buy 2 to 4 FO, infantry kind. I place one right next to my HQ0 unit. This means that I will always have one FO that is in contact. Next I place my other FO's in areas for good observation points (always in woods, rough, slope, rocks, bolders) and turn off their weapons. Or in a position so first turn they can move to the good observation point. Then NEVER move them. Your FO's are there to call in artillary strikes and not to fight. This is there most valuable use.
If posible I try to always get onboard artillary. Why? It is cheeper and I always play games where artillary is limited. This way I get more tubes. I generally opt for stationary artillary, again because it is cheeper, but sometimes I go for the mobile. I don't play with rockets. Why? one to expensive, two ussually your opponent won't let you buy them, three to easy to kill (they generally have no armor, so you run a MC unit up and shot it) and lastly they run out of ammo to quickly so you always have to buy ammo depots or ammo trucks.

I almost never pack all of my artillary into a small area around a ammo dump or ammo trucks because this is just asking for a whopping. I love playing against opponents that do do it though. Most of your onboard artillary comes with a lot of ammo. Usually more than you are going to need. So if you do pack them together all I have to do is spot the park and then plot an air attack or artillary on it. Each turn I keep ploting two or three tubes to drop on you and you do not get to use your artillary. Also if it is all together it make for an easy target of units with big caliber war heads to wipe out in a few turns.

I will generally be very liberal with spacing my artillary out. First I will only place it in the back and only in good defensive hexes (ie: rocks, bolders, trees, or rough) change all there setting to defensive and then they will be in cover the rest of the game. NOTE if you are in cover and in a good defensive hex you can be hit multiple times by HEAVY artillary and not lose a single man. You will get less suppresion and take less damage. Now when I go about spacing my artillary out I make sure that there is at least 2 hexes between each of them. The reason for this is that most artillary, bombs from AIR and large caliber shells will not extend to a third hex. So I place on artillary in rough move two hexes place next artillary unit in rough. This spreads out my artillary and makes it almost imposible to counter batter fire.

I also will place recon and MC units in the back to pop smoke to add additional confution to my opponents attempts to counter batter fire. This also make my artillary out of contact more often but I have found that having my artillary out of contact for a turn is not a big problem. I usually have 60% to 100% of my artillary in contact and since I have more tubes this make up the difference.

You need to purchase a couple of platoons of infantry or say 4-6 Machine guns to put around your artillary to protect it from thoughs pesky AB, and infiltrators. But use cheep units since most of the game they are just standing there on guard duty. Also if any tanks break into the backfield most of your heavy artillary mortars and howitzers will have 5 round of HEAT ammo and that can really put a whole in some panzers day. Charging a well disbursed howitzer line is more dangerous than charging a well disbursed AT gun line. The howitzers use bigger shells.

Well like I said this is what I usually do and this works for me. You will have to try things out and see what works for you.

[Belisarius]

Uhh.. the posts were getting long!

Excellent thread Pixel! There was quite a few things I haven't given a thought! Really useful!

As for FO's, I always always buy at least 3 of them for any type of battle. Why? Because then you can have one shot up at the front, and two in the back field. Why two? Because you can bet anything that one of them is gonna be out of contact with the artillery when you need it the most. :rolleyes: I usually keep one FO in LOS with HQ to facilitate operations.

[Kanda']

Greetings...

When buying forces, After I've created my combat formations, I'll purchase my artillary. Ideally: I'll buy them in this order; Ideally 6 FO's, 5 HQ's(command posts), 5 ammo dumps, 5 Norwegian Ammo containers (cheap and don't explode) and 5 ammo trucks (though they are often too slow) Then a number of SPA's depends on what's available, Lots of AAA, finally to top it off at least 1 btty of offmap 150 or larger. Any extra points goes into buying cheap 2 man recon teams to pop smoke in the back field.

During setup I assign the FO's using the 'W' key to various formations. 1 always becomes A1 or higher (so that I ALWAYS have at least 1 in contact) The others distributed out to the various recce and combat formations. Any vehicle capable of carrying 2 men works. Ketten's are wonderful for this work. Though almost any armored car works too.

Then, each Ammo dump and Ammo truck is assigned to the formation of each HQ, and the SPA's or other tubes assigned then the AAA. At start, the SPA's are Scattered around Not adjacent to the ammo dumps. After they fire, they take turns moving around, 1/3 to 1/2 of them may move. Depends on how agressive my opponent is doing counterbattery. Morters and other Leg Arty have a transport. Most of time I don't let them run out of ammo before moving them back to the ammo dumps. They are never more than 1 turn from the ammo dumps, and I try to keep them within 5 hexes of an HQ at all times. The HQ's are always within 2 hexes of the ammo dump and usually 2 or more ammo dumps within 5 hexes of any HQ The ammo trucks usually try to stay 1 turn behind the combat formations. Loads of AAA surround all the ammo dumps and HQ's to protect from airplanes and to act as a flak area for any aircraft which strays over them.

I'll usually have 3 of these formations fully outfitted, with 2 HQ/Ammo Dump combo's as spares placed a bit forward.

In Practice, the recce group or combat formation will cart the FO into a good location, dump him off unobserved behind a hill or in woods, then, Here's the real trick, you use the FO to call in the Arty, but you use any unit with radio contact and observation to the targt to adust it! Often, my FO is still behind the hill, or slowly moving out of the woods, still getting to his OP. He calls in the SPA's at .02, and the tank or infantry in the battle itself adjusts it onto the target at .03. This way you get the observed firepower bonus without risking the FO too badly. Once the FO is in place, he takes over the spotting duties.

Frequently, I don't fire the Offmap arty at all, it's simply there to Counter battery on any Offmap arty my opponent uses. Once it's done it's trick, or when the final push to rout the enemy comes, then I'll call it in.

I rarely use gold spots to spot arty, I usually place them more for airstrikes than for Arty, as I don't usually need them too much for Arty. Besides, we usually play on size 10 maps so even 10 spots is far too few!

Rockets must be used enmass as they are so wildly inaccurate.
A good mix of 81/82mm Morters for close support suppression, 120mm for close support killing power, lots of 105's for harrassing enemy movement and interdiction. 150/155 for deep strikes and counterbattery, Wurframen/Nebelwurfer/Katyusha I use either to break an enemy assault, or as prep prior to my own assault. Larger tubes such as russian 203mm US 8'' , German 380mm(as on the sturmtiger) and such are devestation against mass infantry. useful clearing roads for my deep penetration recce teams.

I have very rarely ever had any thing onboard be offline, rarely a whole battery of offmap arty goes offline, Maybe 1 or 2 units. My nephew is pretty good at figuring out where I placed my Ammo dumps and he's expended a lot of planes attempting to blow them, but having a few spares in forwad positions has surprised him more than once. Also scattering around a few well placed Norwegian Ammo crates keeps the morters well supplied as they don't explode and give away their locations when hit.


You really need to be a master of prediction when using the arty time plots, and it's not always best to have everything arrive in 0.0 time. .02 and .04 are my favorites for interdiction work. Especially when firing at a crossroads deep in enemy territory and unobserved. Anything actually at the crossroads will be slowed down or stopped which will clog the road and produce traffic jams, and has the effect of causing other units to group around the crossroad. The rest of the barrage coming in the next barrage phase catches these units too which tends to amplify the effect! I use 105's for this purpose, as they usually have a nice high rate of fire, and frequently score hits on vehicles even though they may not actually kill it, they supress it enough so that frequently it's still there the next barrage. If I start hearing a lot of 105 hits, I'll call in the 150's or larger and switch the 105's to another target.

Similarly rockets can be used more efficiently If you vary the timing. Since most rockets empty their tubes in 1 or 2 firings, using a .02 .04 timing gives the illusion of them lasting longer, plus they tend to reload a couple of rounds using the .04 timing during the turn break if they are adjacent to an ammo dump. Of course you want to use the 1.0 /.03 as prep which falls just before your turn to maximise the suppression just before your own assault, and to make sure that there won't be any more rounds falling after you have rushed the hill! The first time your succesful assault gets whacked by your own 1/2 barrage of nebelwurfers will make you intimately aware of critical timing!


Kanda'

[Capt. Pixel]

In a recent game, I lost the first tube in two of my OBA batteries. But they still kept on firing.

So, it seems that the 7.1 update fixes that 'lose the whole battery if you lose the first tube problem".

[G_X]

*Cheers* I was begining to wonder Capt. as I'd yet to come across this, even playing a 20k vs 20k game Russian vs German with the AI, and me using hordes (20% ) of 203mm Off Board guns, and losing a few first guns but they seemed to keep firing...


And with 4k points of 203mm Rounds falling I like being able to keep up that almost-constant barrage...it's nuts really, just hordes and hordes of 203mm shells...it's a beautiful day for a shower.

[Capt. Pixel]

Well I, for one, am glad it's been fixed. I always thought that was a pretty lame bug.

Can anyone speak with authority on the games modelling of snow cushioning HE explosions and/or enhanced damage from airbursts, particularly in trees?

I've always wondered if those situations were modelled in SPW@W.

[Hades]

Steel blocking out the sunlight?

[G_X]

It's been pouring non-stop since turn one, I can always have a minimum of half my arty on one spot.

I don't know if WaW models those situations Pixel, sorry.

[Capt. Pixel]

Kanda' - How does one access items like the Ammo Canister for use in generated battles? (available 12'49 only) Or is it only an item that can be accessed when creating a scenario?

(Boy, you play large games!! )

[G_X]

It's not as big as the China Vs. Taiwan one I have going on in MBT...

Done to represent a Full Scale Modern Day assault by China into Taiwan

It started almsot two months ago and I forget the number of points we used, whatever the max is for MBT...It's huge...I have something like over 10 infantry companies and then some, plus armour, arty, and specialized Inf. as China. Taiwan's about equal size...

Used the biggest map for MBT and just could barely fit everything in there by stacking stuff up.

[Kanda']

Greetings...

Well, Capt Pixel I fixed it with Spwawedit. Set it to jan 1930 -dec 49. Same with the trains, bus etc... Also made a supply Bus and an icecream truck... hehehe... Plays the Jingle jingle when it moves.. Completely unarmed, size 0 1 man van. Made a formation of 10 of them. Hide them well forward on the front line, when my nephew's tanks come driving down a road, a bunch of them bail out and run away ringing their bells! Drives him crazy... I think he has this thing about clowns...
I mixed the overrun sounds (of men crying in agony and a jingling intro to a song and made a wav file for it) rather unnerving. A dead giveaway when they move! Psych warfare?

I use the Norway OOB to experiment with all kinds of things. Like a paladin-like mine artillary. An observation plane - I wanted an unarmed slow moving airplane that would just spot, but if it's unarmed, it won't get called in. So I just made a weapon that did no damage made it speed 1, 200 hit points, and dirt cheap. It just soaks up all kinds of AA and spots very well. If you make it part of a ground formation, you can buy them in your core force and have them available in all weather. Helicopters, Anti aircraft missiles, antitank missiles, all kinds of goodies...

Kanda'

[Larry Holt]

Best discussion of tactics I've read in awhile.

I nominate this for hall of fame!

[G_X]

Sounds like a plan to me, I second that nomination!

[Capt. Pixel]

I agree. Seems I managed to get some of the forum boys to divulge some of their best artillery secrets. Heheh.

I've started using some of the tactics mentioned above, and I've had very good results.

[Ivan]

i have a question, how do you correct your artillery, i mean, i usually just click where i want it to come and it comes there a round later, but i think you can correct it more accurately, how is this done.

and another thing, whats with the primamy hex thing, the red circle, if im bombing several different places, and ive marked them, and then i click priority hex, will it all fall down in that area despite me choosing some of em to fall somewhere else