Ballistics of WW2 Artillery

[Liquid_Sky]

Hmmmph..define 'individual unit'. A Battalion? A company? And is the random range of results (usually ranging from fatigue to a few guys lost) believable? The unit is not 'spread out' in the entire 1k hex, but is probably grouped around some feature. (or perhaps advancing spread out in an open ground area).

During a 2 hour interval, can enough rounds fall to do the damage we see in the game? If anything it is too low. I usually see a 24 gun battery do around 10 damage to men in light cover. One round can kill 10 guys.

The game uses a lot of statistics condensed down into probability. For example, Hans Rudel, who was so good at killing tanks with his Stuka, was awarded a new, high level award invented just for him.....destroyed over 600 tanks, but flew over 2000 missions (against land targets). That would give him about a one third chance to kill a tank.

So in a particular game, if you have a Hans Rudel flying, you may wonder why over a 2 day game, he only killed 3 tanks...and think that is quite low.

The same probably applies to artillery. Artillery was a big killer in WW2. It probably wasn't firing hour after hour the way we do in the games, but was probably grouped into more effective fires at key points of the day. Instead, the game lets us fire it when we want (assuming it is available), but does less damage per strike....but probably does the amount of total damage it should over the course of the battle.

Where the system seems to break down (in my mind), is the concentration of fire you can do. For example, the enemy is advancing on your positions, but due to visibility, you can only see a few units....so they get the full brunt of all the artillery in range that you can fire. Or the enemy has a key unit you want to disrupt (like an engineer), so you shoot all your artillery at that one unit.

That's what I think the alternative rules help alleviate.

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This just made me think of something:

I remember reading somewhere that the Germans used to pre-register artillery on their own defensive positions..and, especially against the Americans who were particularly lazy and wouldn't dig in (right away), fire after being forced to retreat.