Quick Question - Off Board Artillery & Defensive Fire

[Strela]

All,

John is working through the bug list I sent him.

One of the 'bugs' we have highlighted is that off-board artillery never fires in the defensive fire phase. Essentially it is only usable in the phasing players turn.

I was not aware of this until recently.

I have been asked to get players opinions (quickly) before we enact any change. If we allow off-board artillery to fire in the defensive fire phase, it will probably favour the Allies as they tend to have more artillery (much of which is off-map).

Personally, I believe this should be allowed as essentially the same spotters and communication nets were used whether the artillery is on or off-map. If I had known of this variation we would have probably put at least all divisional guns on map and had corps & naval guns off map, reflecting their lesser amount of flexibility.

Let me know your thoughts (quickly!)

David

[KG_RangerBooBoo]

I think off-board artillery should be able fire defensively if your looking for opinions.

[Strela]

I think off-board artillery should be able fire defensively if your looking for opinions.

Yes - I'm looking for opinions - hence the thread

John wanted to ensure that the majority agreed before making the change.

David

[Ricky B]

I would like to see them able to fire from off-map David, wasn't aware of this myself until seeing it mentioned here.

Rick

[Compass Rose]

I agree, too.

Thanks for asking.

[Gregor]

Agree that they should fire, but some of the scenarios might have need for some minor adjustments as a result of it.

[ComradeP]

Good to see it will be fixed. After searching the forums, it seems I only mentioned this issue to my opponents and didn't actually post about it.

One issue is that artillery units fire in support of units that don't belong to the same formation. Everybody can fire at everything in range.

If it were possible to change the code so that, when units are fired upon, they only attract fire from artillery units belonging to the same formation/artillery units they can spot for, that would be very nice. I expect that might take time mister Tiller doesn't have, however.

For scenarios where all medium and heavy artillery is off-map, it could unbalance the scenario as is, particularly for scenarios where Allied artillery units are big like Bois du Homme. There are only a handful of artillery units in most smaller scenarios, so the chance of any of them firing is still small. There are also scenarios where the Germans have more off-map artillery.

Perhaps this could be paired with a reduction of the indirect fire modifier to 175% or so to account for more artillery units being able to use defensive fire.

[wiggum]

I think the counter-battery fire needs a modifier to make it less effective (because it would be mostly imprecise in reality)
Is there anything like that already ingame ?

[ComradeP]

No, but larger guns and rocket artillery have lower defense values than light and medium artillery to simulate them being easier to hit/locate.

If you place your artillery units in hexes with defensive bonuses from terrain and trenches, you're unlikely to lose numerous guns.

It's not nearly as lethal as it can be in PzC, due to the hex artillery fire limit.

As to counterbattery fire being more imprecise due to it targeting an area: gun crews are initially standing and have no real protection from an artillery barrage unless there are foxholes or trenches around.

In my opinion, counterbattery is one of the things that work well in the game, although artillery is placed too far forward to survive/fire without being spotted in some scenarios which increases the rate at which units are spotted and thus your gun losses as well in all likeliness.

[panzerde]

If it were possible to change the code so that, when units are fired upon, they only attract fire from artillery units belonging to the same formation/artillery units they can spot for, that would be very nice. I expect that might take time mister Tiller doesn't have, however.

I agree that off-board artillery should be able to fire defensively. I also agree with ComradeP's suggestion as being a really nice addition and making things more realistic.