pompack
Posts: 2450
Joined: 2/8/2004 From: University Park, Texas Status: online
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon pompack, a question for you. What in your mind constitutes "heavy artillery support", how many artillery units/guns are you thinking in terms of? One example for you in a game I'm playing at Bataan. Level 4 fortifications, 6 attacking artillery units, combined with all the infantry unit's inherent artillery capability...580+ guns have little effect with straight bombardment attacks on Bataan's defences. 3 Shock and 1 deliberate attacks later, supported by those same 6 artillery units, has had 0 effect on the fortification level. And this after weeks of air and ground bombardment. AV comparison is roughly 3:2 in favour of Japanese forces. I've been informed I did not bring enough artillery or troops to make an impact, I'm ok with that. What I'm trying to learn is, if the artillery is working fine now with reduced effect as intended, I'd like some idea how much I have to bring to bear on certain fortification levels to have a chance at cracking the defences. I've read something about an "artillery threshold" or "saturation" point having to be attained before you will see positive results. What the heck does that mean? Does a player have to guess by trail and error what that magic number might be in any given circumstance? After the implementation of the patch, I'm sure a lot of players have no idea how much artillery is needed for positive results, what worked before definitely does not anymore. My hope is that some clarification will be forthcoming. I'm ok with the changes, really...(except disruption ) but I think some guidelines are needed to let people know what will, or won't be effective anymore. I know there is no absolute right answer, because of the sheer number of variables, but there must be some ballpark figures that could be available. I think a lot of the frustration over this issue may not be the actual changes, but not knowing what is an effective level of artillery support anymore. Just a suggestion. Check out my posts in the other thread for the details. In general I consider 10 to 12 independent (but non-AT) artillery units to be heavy support. In my testing example, I just picked up the available artillery near HK. It consisted of 327 tubes (joining 260 tubes of orgainic artillery) assigned to four heavy, two medium, one field, four morter and one mountain unit (12 total). As in the test,about about 500 tubes in a bombardment against lvl 3 urban terrain will sometimes disable a squad or two on a good day. If about 30,000 good troops with their 260 organic tubes (about 1000AV) assault (NEVER shock until the last day if then) about 200 AV of defenders you can expect to wear then down and take the position in 6 to 12 days at a cost of 10%-25% of your force dead or disrupted. However, if you add the additional independet artillery you can take the position in half the time and a quarter of the total casualties. At least you can if you never bombard since all that does is use supply, tire your force, and increase the opponents experience level. And of course, never shock attack. Now I have no idea how to compute the thereshold level (if one exists), but I do know this. Assaulting a fortified position with only artillery (bombard) is useless. Assaulting a fortified position with a little infantry and artillery is almost as useless and will obliterate your infantry. Assaulting a fortified position with about a 3:1 AV advantage including one tube per 10-15 men and "some " engineers will eventually give you the position by wearing down the defenders (assuming you don't geive them a chance to repair forts and replace losses). Augmenting that infantry/engineer force with about one additional artillery unit per 75-100 AV will take a position in a week or less. Note that I speak of units here instead of tubes; as near as I can tell, a heavy artillery unit has about the same affect as a morter unit with 24 tubes. This is NOT like real life where only the heavy stuff is useful against forifications with overhead cover. BTW did I mention that you should never, ever, really not ever shock assault a fortified position unless there is nothing left but two cooks and an orderly inside? . If you do, you will have to stop and rest since you will take worse casaulties and disruption than your opponent. This will give him time to recover and replace and then you have to start all over again. Remember when you shock attack, you give hime an EXTRA shot at you and a bonus with each shot; all you get in exchange is an artificial boost of one or two levels of superiority. This is fine at the end when you are aiming at that extra superiority pushing him over the edge and surrendering. But if he does NOT surrender then you have just wrecked your army.
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