Alternate Artillery Rule

[bwv]

this rule looks to have a major impact playing the Russians in Kursk - playing through one turn of the North battle, I inflicted roughly 1600 German casualities with artillery fire using the alt rule vs. under 800 with the normal art setting

Would think that the ability to aim Katyushas on a specific target within a 1KM square would be limited

[Mr Grumpy]

this rule looks to have a major impact playing the Russians in Kursk - playing through one turn of the North battle, I inflicted roughly 1600 German casualities with artillery fire using the alt rule vs. under 800 with the normal art setting

Would think that the ability to aim Katyushas on a specific target within a 1KM square would be limited

That is the effect of this rule, it is down to the player (knowing this rule is in effect) to not stack a huge amount of units in any one hex, the fact you caused 1600 casualties suggests that hex was packed tight with troops.

[Liquid_Sky]

I dont think he did that in the same hex ;)

Your right though, instead of causing twice the daily casaulties...perhaps it might be halved by spreading out. Play style will change based on the options used.

[bwv]

In the first turn of the North Battle the German AI had no stacks that I fired at greater than 2 units (however they were 500 men each)

[Mr Grumpy]

Your right though, instead of causing twice the daily casaulties...perhaps it might be halved by spreading out. Play style will change based on the options used.

Indeed, i believe the reason players don't like the effects of the Alt fire rules is because they don't alter their play to take into account the new situation, if you use the same old "mega stacks" tactics you will get hammered!

[Strela]

And thats why I like it - particularly for the Eastern front. The Russians will have disproportionate losses when using mega stack human wave tactics. The Germans don't want to be massed anywhere in Katyusha range.

Play style is very different with an abhorrence of stacking anywhere that is visible to the enemy and a need to probe the defences. It simulates probing as it makes it more dificult for a player to take advantage of an enemy disrupt as there are less valid units to immediately assault.

One other thing we have seen it do is slow the overall tempo of the game down and lessens the ability of the player to push and attack 24/7 as mentioned in other threads.

The trick as mentioned previously is adjusting the VP's and ensuring it doesn't cause casualties to a level that makes later game turns unplayable.

[Volcano Man]

One of the things about why Alt Arty is and is not preferred is the whole two 1/2 power shots on a specific target vs. one 1/1 shot on a hex. Some seem to feel that the former is a better way to disrupt targets in PzC since you can choose specific targets to concentrate on and, essentially, those that you want to fire on multiple time. The latter (1/1 single shot on hex) approach can however provide more disruptions if it means firing on a densely packed hex.

At TC3, Rick and I were discussing Normandy and how I have apparently (in the _Alt notes?) said that Alt Arty Resolution rule should NOT be used. He is right, I said this on page 16 of those Alt notes. What comes to mind here is that people were demanding that those rules no longer be required because although it was helping the Germans in regards to the invasion hexes, it actually turned out to hurt them following the post invasion when the allies get their heaps of artillery units ashore as they move inland. The Alt Arty Resolution rule therefore turned out to hurt the Germans more at this stage because they could not band together units in stacks to hold off the allied horde since the allies would keep pounding them with tons of artillery (the British and US artillery units are quite large at this stage), constantly fatiguing EVERY unit in a stack. So there is your answer Rick as to why it was changed. ;)

The other thing I can say in regards to the German's artillery in N44_Alt is that Stockpiled was placed into effect there to help them be a little more effective (maybe the Germans need a higher stockpile probability there though -- I am open to suggestions!) and the beaches place the allies in greater vulnerability so that the Germans should be singling out their engineers to keep them there as long as possible (on the beach). However, alternate artillery resolution does make sense on the East Front, however having played the Russians in Kursk I can say that this is something you probably don't want there because it ends up hurting the Russian's ability to solidify and hold ground.

So, in the end (IMO) now that all of this is coming back, I think the Alt Arty Resolution rules are not a bad thing, but I think they tend to hurt the defender more in the cases where the defender is hanging on by their toe nails and having to form stacks to keep from being overrun. I think that the whole mass fatigue accumulation for the stack is another thing that can hurt the defender's ability to hold ground in a series where we have to give more breaks to the defender as it is. That is just my opinion though.

[Dog Soldier]

VM is right on this issue of the defender trying to hold ground.
I think the heart of the alt artillery fire resolution has more to do with the quality of the artillery for each side first and number of artillery units in each side second.

In F40, the German artillery is mostly C with some B quality in the PD. The British and French armies are mostly C quality with a few B quality in the British and some French second echelon divisions being D and E. Belgian artillery has about 20% C with the rest E quality and maybe a few D quality.

So the invading German armies have a slight edge in artillery quality, and a smaller advantage in number of overall guns. The Germans have more artillery than the combined Allied armies in F40, but smaller guns per unit giving them more flexibility with only one shot per battery. Breakdown of some of the French and British batteries into smaller units helps the Allies achieve an even close parity in numbers of shots, but at the cost of less effective shots in my experience.
If the Allies can concentrate their artillery in F40 which uses the alt artillery fire rule as a default, they can hammer the German advance to a stop in some sectors. The Allied artillery can be just as effective as the German artillery. The difference comes with the German PD which have higher quality units being shot at, thus having the capacity to absorb a lot more fatigue from Allied artillery before a degradation in performance is seen.

Where the east front is concerned the delta in quality is greater between the artillery units thus causing the really lopsided effect seen in losses. I think I checked once and it took about five times as many guns in the unit at E quality (typical Russian artillery unit in PzC until very late in the war) to do the same damage a B quality artillery unit did. I used generated artillery units with the same fire factors firing on a soft target in open ground with a target quality of C. (Note the use of quality instead of morale those who know the difference.)

Dog Soldier