New S42 Campaign!

[NicholasBell]

Hey, I just wanted to clarify that when I wrote of excessive Soviet artillery flexibility, I was not speaking so much of moving around as their ability to fire at any and everything as if the Soviets had the integrated communication abilities like the US. As being discussed, slowing down movement, lowering the probability of setup and adjusting supply are fine in addressing the problem in some form. But the real problem is more the ability to call fire where ever needed - they just didn't operate like that. Without going to phased game turns and introducing player enforced non-firing of artillery above divisional level, that just isn't possible in the game engine.

And just to make clear, I don't want to reduce the effectiveness of Soviet artillery when employed in a historical manner. Once established, they should have the ability to blow holes in the German lines as they did. Too bad the "one shot weapon" attribute can't easily be utilized - and reset as needed.

Let me toss out a few other random thoughts you can shoot holes in:

1. Reorganize the artillery so there are limited numbers of integral HQ's acting as FO's which would be the only units capable of calling artillery. This would not solve the excessive firing capability, but it would at least inhibit artillery firing all over the place "as needed" (as opposed to the historical reality "as planned") to areas within LOS of the FO.

2. Lower the soft attack value dramatically of non-divisional arty units, and increase the stockpile fire bonus tremendously to offset the lower values. Hopefully players would rather wait for the stockpiling than plink away with crippled units. Wouldn't work against the AI though...

Couple with some of the other ideas discussed, these might give the Soviet player the powerful tools needed to recreate historical results at a slower, more realistic pace.

Nick