Artillery

[PoorOldSpike]

[PoorOldSpike]

[PoorOldSpike]

[PoorOldSpike]

[PoorOldSpike]

Spotters? (no caption)

[Jobu88]

Fire plans are also very highly useful for the Russians when attacking, because you can set a delay of as many turns as you want and when the fire plan is executed it will fall accurately, without regard to LOS. If you see two or three natural defensive positions, woods / town / ridge you can set your artillery to plaster it on say Turn 15 and on Turn 15 you will get accurate artillery. Useful for anyone, but especially so for the Russians who seem to have the worst-trained artillery men in the world.

[Ratzki]

It's not the training that gives them such a long delay, but it is how far up the chain of command the arty is. The more commanders that the orders to fire have to go through, the longer the delay, so Army arty will take a long time, Regimental arty will take less time and Battalion level arty will be the fastest to fire a mission. Early in the war, the Russians had to move the arty farther up the command chain as lower level commanders were unable to produce effective results due to lack of experience. As the war progressed, arty was again shifted down the command chain somewhat as the lower level commanders gained battle experience.

[PoorOldSpike]

More tests..

SPOTTER QUALITY DOESN'T AFFECT ACCURACY

These 3 spotters are Elite/ Regular and Conscript and are calling in fire on the 3 crossroads.
Although quality affects delay (2/ 3/ 5 mins), it doesn't affect accuracy as the bottom post-barrage pic shows, as all the rounds have impacted on target with about the same pattern.





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WITH NO LOS, ARTY IMPACTS WAY OFF TARGET EVEN WITH HIGH-QUAL SPOTTER

As before, the 3 spotters each target a crossroads, but this time thick woods block their LOS..




And all 3 barrages drift far from the designated impact points, Conscript is worse and drifts completely off the map..
Conclusion- even the Elite drift is bad, so having a good quality spotter won't help much..


(PS- And delay times were longer without LOS, elite=3 mins, regular=5 mins, conscript=8 mins)

[Mikey_FGM]

In NON Meeting Engagement Battles, Artillery can be Preplotted on the first turn. A minute of delay time can be added with the "Q" shortcut Key.

This can be used to simulate a "Rolling Barrage", with considerable success.

Especially useful if one needs to advance through a narrow corridor of Woods... Simply Plaster the treeline with your first module, then 100m behind it, ANOTHER module with a +2 minute delay... 100m behind that, another module with a +4-5 minute delay... etc.

Your troops should then have the pleasure of mopping up the scattered remains of enemy units, and follow along behind the walking artillery.

[PoorOldSpike]

This might be a spool of telephone wire for connecting to arty batteries in the rear. That's why arty spotters in CM can't be transported because the wire would snap. Only spotters tagged 'radio' can be transported.