artillery shell shock in OP

[hobbitlord]

Is there any consensus on how artillery is played in OPs? SO arty being cheaper probably because of the longer delay

doesn't justify in my book as the delay time is nullified with reference points. It would take an extremely patient player to wait 17 turns for SO artillery

to come in so I'm going to say that type of play is not how it is normally used. In a PBEM game I've seen SO rocket batteries strike my GE front line troops at second 2 of turn 1 of a battle. Now how this super speed was exactly achieved is a mystery to me as I'm new to the game. I'm coming to the conclusion though a sure win strategy is to purchase several conscript SO 132mm rocket units and at 130ish a piece they will more then

pay for themselves every battle in an OP, especially at the near sub second response speed they can do at the start. To me this doesn't make for fun game play. But since I'm new to the game maybe I'm overlooking something like run for the hills and poke your head up at turn 3 when the iron storm cloud has passed!!! But then fleeing for the hills at the start of every battle keeps your units alive but then no ground could ever be held, let alone gained.

In operations why are artillery units points not adjusted? In a 4 part OP I see artillery purchased at turn 1 as being 1/4 the cost as they are reloaded every battle.

I guess I'm suffering from shell shock. Between the rockets from this PBEM OP game and 8 inch arty from a recent online game where 8 inch shells destroyed a city house by house with my infantry cellar shivering rats in it, artillery has become my most feared unit.

[Sergei]

In battles other than meeting engagements, either side can tell his artillery to do a prepared bombardment, with a delay of 0 to 30 minutes.

Operations are not meant to be played the way you play them, it's that simple.

[Beta1]

Like the man said - youve just been hit by a planned barrage - always on time always accurate.

However buying lots of rockets and just spamming the setup zone tends not to pay for itself in the long run. Mainly because the rockets come in so spread out. After a while you just saturate the area anyway and further hits dont do much extra damage.

Anyway theres a very simple way to aviod these. Dont deploy masses of troops in an area the opponent can see in turn one. If you do your opponent is almost certain to drop some heavy artillery on it. After turn 1 the delays become massive and its hard to get a rocket FO to ever hit anything.

I would also suggest not playing "unrestricted" force battles. If you stick to any of the other types the chances of you ever encountering an 8" gun or more than 1 rocket FO is practically zero.

Then its just things like sturmtigers you have to worry about.

[Joachim]

If you want to play "Quick operations", I suggest you balance them a bit.

You have to do that yourself. The editor is to create scenarios or ops that are balanced by the author. It is not neccesarily for the novice but for the experienced player who knows the units and their value - and the effect of reinforcements. Balancing is usually done by playtesting the scenario/op. For an operation, this is a very long process - especially because there are reinforcements and the (ab)use of available forces depends on the individual player: Players have a choice to attack with what is at hand or wait for their reserves, creating completely different scenarios...

What you are doing sounds interesting, yet it was probably never intended.

Some tips:

a) Restrict the amount of arty for each player (cf above)

Either

-use the rarity to calculate the points (inf has no rarity anyway). Takes some time and calculations however or

- do not allow any units with rarity above 40% (or only a fixed amount of those, say 1 spotter or 1 plt of tanks etc, maybe also calculate their cost based on rarity)

c) use redwolf's armor rules (search the forum for them) to balance the armor.

Doing that will balance the battle (at least to some extent )

Gruß

Joachim