Why are artillery/batteries so useless?

[newbie123]

I find in all the scenarios i had played, the artillery units are practically useless against armored units despite it showing considerable anti armor value in its info. Though they can be lethal against the infantry units, not the mechanised ones. The problem lies in the fact that most of the enemy units are armored which renders my artillery useless. Same goes for bombers/aircraft attack, they are useless when ordered to bombard an armored unit.

[cathar1244]

The anti-armor rating is used in direct fire situations in which the artillery is defending against attack by an enemy armored unit, if I understand how the game works in this case.

For bombardment of enemy armored units, again my recall may be faulty, but I think a portion of the anti-personnel rating is used to check if armored targets are destroyed.

Can you provide a specific situation (which kind of artillery piece or aircraft bombarding which kind of armored vehicle)?

Cheers

ORIGINAL: newbie123

I find in all the scenarios i had played, the artillery units are practically useless against armored units despite it showing considerable anti armor value in its info. Though they can be lethal against the infantry units, not the mechanised ones. The problem lies in the fact that most of the enemy units are armored which renders my artillery useless. Same goes for bombers/aircraft attack, they are useless when ordered to bombard an armored unit.

[Oberst_Klink]

ORIGINAL: newbie123

I find in all the scenarios i had played, the artillery units are practically useless against armored units despite it showing considerable anti armor value in its info. Though they can be lethal against the infantry units, not the mechanised ones. The problem lies in the fact that most of the enemy units are armored which renders my artillery useless. Same goes for bombers/aircraft attack, they are useless when ordered to bombard an armored unit.

Experiment with one of many Tutorial scenarios I have created, in particular this one, about artillery.

tm.asp?m=4412329

Klink, Oberst

[newbie123]

I dont have access to the full report but the unit i bombard in particular is a full armor. I only have one artillery against it. The combat result came as 0 losses for the enemy.But it has an anti armor value of around 20, the enemy has armor defense of around 19.

[gliz2]

Hi Newbie123,

As already explained
Arty's anti-armour rating is for direct clash NOT for bombardment.

From historical perspective it is absolutely correct. Barraging tanks was not causing too much damage unless one of two things happened:
1. The barrage caught the tanks resting (with crews outside tanks)
2. A direct hit was achieved (it was a rare treat but did happened sometimes).

Usually a barrage from 105s or 155s would result in short disorder and very few casualties with some track or antennas being damaged. But nothing serious.

Also from tactical perspective barraging tanks was not easy. You usually did not know exactly the enemy tanks position and by committing to a barrage you'd give the enemy an opportunity for counter barrage (which is not present in TAOW if I'm not mistaken) thus risking exposure of valuable units for a moongose chase.

Only in case of heavy artillery like 280mm naval guns the picture was different. Then even a close hit could not only damage but litteraly turn tanks to oblivion.

The picture was however different when tanks met prepared artillery heads on (direct combat). Then the arty could do some substantial damage to tanks (although still in most cases the arty would get run over quite easily).

[Lobster]

In modern situations artillery is quite capable of directly attacking armor with indirect fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMArt_155
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_155_Bonus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Destroy_ARMor

There are others.

[Zovs]

What scenario?

There is so many that the possibilities are endless.

For an example if your playing Drag Nach Osten (basically a divisional/regimental game) your results and tactics will different then say playing St. Lo or Mortain (both basically battalion level games).

Also, one artillery unit bombarding one hex may or may not be enough, sometimes you have to add more. It just depends on the situation.

The thing about TOAW is that it is very 'dynamic' meaning that there are so many possibility to each and every problem, a vast number of scenarios, based on a wide range of parameters and a host of unit size to map complexity range that to say that the game is broken or does not work based on one playing of one scenario is essentially a shallow claim. There are hundreds of scenarios with several dozen units to a couple of thousand units and there are some scenarios that have ranged artillery and some that don't.

All that being said, artillery primarily is more effective against soft targets and in this game to help reduce fortification levels. Just as engineer's are great helping with reducing fortifications they are also very useful to place on rivers so that other non-amph units can move over them. It all just depends on the units in question, the scenario, the situation and a host of other variables.

One could almost rename this game to Dynamic Operational Art of War (DOAW), lol.