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Role of artillery

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Gary Grigsby's War in the East Series >> The War Room >> Role of artillery

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Role of artillery - 11/19/2012 8:48:24 AM

morvael

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What is the exact effect of artillery, since it has zero CV value? Jumping from 45 000 to 75 000 guns as Soviets in early 42 doesn't affect their CV (which is really badly needed), so what is improved? I understand that more artillery is able to kill more enemy during combat, so the final CV of the enemy might be lower, and thus allow the Soviet side to win? That way artillery helps winning combats but it's unreliable, unlike more infantry and tanks (the effect is not known until the combat has been resolved). Right?

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/19/2012 11:30:16 AM

carlkay58

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The CV is supposed to represent the ability to take and hold ground. Artillery does not do that - so almost nil on CV for the artillery. Artillery, on the other hand, does dramatically increase the casualties you can cause to the attacker or defender. So you are right.

(in reply to morvael)

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/19/2012 8:12:36 PM

turtlefang

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I had close to the same question a few months ago.

Artillery doesn't impact CV much, if any. What it will do, on the defense, is disrupt and break up the attackers, causing losses, but more importantly, disrupting the attack, causing moral losses, and causing a temp reduction in the attacker's CV as the artillery shells land.

On offensive, its close to the same thing but you need more artillery to get the same impact, especially if the defense is fortified or in a city.

And without a lot of artillery - read Artillery Divisions - supporting the attack against the Germans, the Soviets will have a very hard time dislodging a decently constructed German defense in 43 and beyond.

The Germans aren't in the same shape as the German Infantry divisions have a lot of organic artillery support. But if you apply the right artillery SUs to the Germany attacks on, say a city, or fortification, can make a difference on how many losses you suffer or how many the Soviets suffer.

There is a lot of debate on how much artillery support the Soviet army/fronts should be assigned in 41. And you just have to come up with a style that fits your type of play. I standardize my assignements at usually two RVGK battalions and one 41 battalion. This provides the maximum amount of guns at different ranges for a minimal amount of manpower.

However, some of the guys here think that way too much and do a minimium assignment. Just whatever is avaliable at the start after they reassign the artillery to the front. I want to kill as many Germans as possible, so the extra artillery worth it, but I'm not a top ranked player. And if you are getting pounded by a good German, you just may not have the manpower, the AP, or ARM pts to do these kind of assignments.

(in reply to morvael)

Post #: 3

RE: Role of artillery - 11/19/2012 8:51:39 PM

morvael

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The issue I have with artillery having no impact on CV is that it's hard to assess this "invisible" power and shuffle units between tasks to take it properly into account. There should be an additional parameter - AV (artillery value) on counters, thus that kind of power would be easily discernible. In current form it's more of an art than science (like it's with CV). You have to experience it first hand and only after many trial and error you get the feeling what is enough and what is not. At the same time balancing CV in defense or attack is just pure math.

(in reply to turtlefang)

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/19/2012 11:05:26 PM

Wally Wilson

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As the Soviets, I try to maintain 60k tubes guns throughout 1941 and have 100k by summer 1942. Its my observation that the battles where units hold rather than retreat are the ones where plentiful artillery support is provided.

(in reply to morvael)

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/20/2012 1:57:22 AM

turtlefang

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I agree that understanding the impact of artillery on combat is difficult to understand. But I'm not sure adding another CV factor would help. Artillery - at least in my experience - trends to be a make or break factor in a lot of cases. Either it has a big impact and causes a lot of problems or it doesn't with wide swings in impact.

So a CV wouldn't do much, at least for me. It is one of the reasons I ended up standardizing the Soviet artillery support with units that provide different sized guns, a large number of tubes, with different range effectiveness. It maximizes my chances for having an impact, but it is still a hit or miss affair.

If the Soviet's have low moral units on the front, low CVs and manpower, it really won't matter what artillery support you provide. The Germans will supply tear you apart in 41. If you can get your moral up to the mid to upper 40s, or even into the lower 50s, the arillery starts to make a big difference.

At that point, my experience is that Soviet lines that have a chance to hold have "good" artillery support. Those that don't, fold quickly - at least in 41. And in 41, the Soviets need every bit of help that they can get.

(in reply to morvael)

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/20/2012 3:08:51 AM

Wally Wilson

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Wouldn't WWII era artillery be considered more of a suppression and morale destroying weapon anyway? If that's the case, artillery shouldn't have an actual CV.

(in reply to turtlefang)

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/20/2012 2:24:58 PM

turtlefang

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quote:

Artillery doesn't impact CV much, if any. What it will do, on the defense, is disrupt and break up the attackers, causing losses, but more importantly, disrupting the attack, causing moral losses, and causing a temp reduction in the attacker's CV as the artillery shells land.

I agree with you. This is from my first post, above.

(in reply to Wally Wilson)

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/20/2012 3:11:35 PM

morvael

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It's ok for the artillery to not have impact on CV as it is meant to be "take and hold ground" power estimate, but there is no "math" way to balance and predict artillery power in units. That's my problem with it. 50% increase in artillery in early '42 and no help to predict what number of which caliber is enough and what is not enough for every army.

(in reply to turtlefang)

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/20/2012 8:25:22 PM

Wally Wilson

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Was that not the case historically?

(in reply to morvael)

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/20/2012 9:02:55 PM

morvael

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But this is a game and CVs are known and visible. Why show one part of the equation and hide the other?

In 1-3 hours we do things done by millions of people in a week. We need some abstract help in form of estimates. For me an AV (for example 1 for light gun, 2 for medium, 4 for heavy; adjusted for morale, experience, fatigue and ammo, just like CV) would be great help. This should be im correlation with CV, so I could estimate that a unit with CV 2 and AV 4 would be at adantage over unit with CV 3 and AV 1.

< Message edited by morvael -- 11/20/2012 9:40:19 PM >

(in reply to Wally Wilson)

Post #: 11

RE: Role of artillery - 11/20/2012 9:59:48 PM

turtlefang

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There is too much of a variance in how artillery interacts.

For example, the Soviet AT guns would have a much higher CV or ART value against armor units but much less against infantry attacks.

Mrts, on the other hand, would have a higher CV or ART value against infantry and much lower against a heavy AFV attack.

Plus, you don't know if an artillery SU will be committed into a particular defense or attack until it passes it's commander's INT rating - so you don't even know if will be part of the combat until the combat happens. And that's true on the attack and the defense. (And this is true for any support unit, not just artillery).

So while I agree it would be helpful to have this information, I just don't see how it could be provided given the current game system.

(in reply to morvael)

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/20/2012 10:14:51 PM

morvael

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I'm calling this an estimate with purpose. It's a similar case with CV. Support units may not commit. A Ferdinand is better vs tanks, a rifle squad vs infantry, yet they are rated on the same scale 9 and 3 respectively. It's like initial CV and final CV in combat, they vary greatly - so it all depends on initiative and other command checks. Exactly the same happens with artillery. I guess a few checks using the battle engine would allow for nominal scaling of AV vs CV and all would be set (compare a few sets of various units vs opposing set of units adding more artillery to the mix and checking where do 80% of combat results fall).

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/21/2012 8:34:10 AM

EddyBear81

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I disagree with the need to display ART values or to better predict the impact of arty / support units...
First, the committment of support units adds a degree of variance that depends mostly on the commander skills, so you can influence it somehow
Second, if you want to add certainty to the committment of support units, you can always invest a few AP to directly attach support units (mostly STUGs and Pioneers) to attacking/defending divs.

So in the end, it makes the game more unpredictable (which is a good thing, since the final outcome - regardless of VP levels - is already known : soviets win), and implies a little more investment (both in player dedication and AP) to have better results in battle....

(in reply to morvael)

Post #: 14

RE: Role of artillery - 11/21/2012 2:33:16 PM

Klydon

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For the most part, I think this is a mostly Russian conversation in terms of the game since they have far more guns to deal with as the game goes along and far more control with the artillery divisions and brigades that come along in the game.

Early in the game, it doesn't matter what the Russians do. I typically set all support to 0 and get as much of the artillery as I can to the rear areas. No need to take unnecessary losses in battles that you can't win anyway. I don't like battalions for the most part either, but I go by number of guns rather than look at the size of the unit (Mortar units, you have to be careful with I believe as a "smaller" unit actually has more tubes than the "larger" unit).

It appears to me that artillery causes more disruption/damage by the way of hitting a given target and causing elements to become damaged. I don't think they participate in battle that way and if you can make the unit retreat, they suffer much heavier losses because of the extra damaged elements.

(in reply to EddyBear81)

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RE: Role of artillery - 11/21/2012 10:51:24 PM

Wally Wilson

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I agree. There is no sense in assigning artillery until there is a chance they can impact a battle.

I build a lot of heavy artillery early so they get demand built.

(in reply to Klydon)

Post #: 16