Effectiveness of Artillery

[Captnkev]

So now that Herb and I have a few games under our belt, it seems to both of us that the modeling of artillery damage is on the light side.  This seems especially pronounced for units in the clear and in transport mode.  Has this been discussed?  I didn't see a thread scrolling back a few pages, so thought I would raise it.

Firstly, artillery will be very effective against units in travel mode if used en masse. The seasoned players will make you fear using travel mode in clear sight. Katyushas or a combined artillery battalion will make short work of exposed units.

Personally, we have created some conundrums for players by including artillery at battery (platoon equivalent) level in line with the rest of the the units. Unfortunately with all the current factors the impact from the 2 - 4 tubes in a battery standalone has a lesser impact. I usually combine into multi battery/battalion units to get some reasonable impact from my indirect units. The trade off is less shots both in my turn and in the defensive fire phases.

That said, this thread and some others before it has sparked a deep discussion among the development team on what we want indirect fire units to do and achieve. We have gone back and started looking at the doctrine each nation used, how flexible artillery use was (or wasn't) and a range of other factors such as spotting, barrages, speed of fire etc. We are also discussing the different impacts the various class of units could have keeping in mind their is distinctions between mortar, rocket, artillery and heavy artillery.

There is no guarantee we will change anything, but there is a discussion underway.

David