Calling In Artillery Support

[kb6583]

I'm a bit frustrated here. I consider myself I suppose reasonably well read on WWII in the ETO but am certainly no PhD. I thought historically when an urban area was going to be assaulted that artillery could be and was fired by the map on that urban area. In this game however, that appears to not be possible. So for example, playing the War Without Mercy scenario as the US. I've got a fair number of reasonably well supplied mortars plus arty support as reinforcements. Yet unless some unit, preferably a spotter or HQ, can see precisely where they're requesting arty support, all of the aforementioned arty is useless. I've gone over the scenario editor and the manual and yet I simply cannot find any mention of being able to fire into those two urban areas I'm supposed to take. Am I missing something here?

[Combatintman]

Doesn't look like it - spotters need to be able to see the thing they that you want to drop indirect fire onto.  I seem to recall that Turn One might be an exception to this rule but haven't played anything not of my own design of late so cannot confirm.  TRPs also allow you to target areas you cannot see but if they've not been provided by the scenario designer then clearly you cannot take advantage of them.

[domfluff]

TRPs and planning from turn zero are the options.

[Bulletpoint]

If you plan the barrage during deployment you can target anywhere on the map and even get much better accuracy than they got back in the day while map-firing.

[Ultradave]

Yes, and initial CFF on turn 1 is one way. Many times that's frowned upon in H2H play however, if you are playing a stock scenario. If you are playing solo though, go for it and hit it hard. 

A request for the future is to include the ability to make a CFF on a target not in LOS of the observer, by using "map coordinates"  In game mechanic you'd just point to the spot. And the FFE would be subject to more inaccuracy if it was fired into the open (say, at a sound contact in the woods). IMO, though, if you targeted a bridge, crossroads, church, school, there shouldn't be an accuracy hit. Those items are all marked on maps and it's easy to send an accurate target coordinate location to the battery. That's my opinion of course, no telling what might make it into the game eventually.

Dave

[chuckdyke]

Yes it would make the Marked Red Land Features a little more useful if they could function as TRPs. We can only dream.