rocket artillery

[yuvuphys]

What is the best way to employ rocket artillery? Is there a certain type of terrain that it works best on? Is it better for attack or defense?

[Kingfish]

Regardless of whether you are on the attack or defense, the best time to use Rockets is early in the fight, and targeted deep into the other side's territory. This will limit your own losses from "shorts".

As the defender use rockets as spoilers against your opponent's impending attack. Even if the strike doesn't cause many casualties it will cause disruption, forcing him to spend precious time reorganizing his shocked units.

As the attacker they work well in prep barrages, either alone or in conjunction with regular tube artillery, with the latter concentrating on point targets.

[securityguard]

I recently was able to use Incendiary Rockets versus an opponent in a quick-battle op we both created. I thought they would be invaluable on the attack (urban enviroment, I wanted to burn the buildings down he would be in) and spent a ton of points to buy the spotter, but even as a prep barrage the amount of flames and damage done was extremely minimal. Almost nothing burned down or caught fire and the only times I inflicted tons of casualties is when I predicted his counter-attack on his last hoorah before the surrender.

I kind of wish the incendiary effect was more area based so stuff would catch fire easier, but maybe that isn't realistic. Anyone have any historical info on these types of rockets?

[GS_Guderian]

In QB´s and an assault with 5000/8600 points I often buy rockets as the attacker if I knew the categories for the landscape.

I experienced great damage from the bigger rockets to gun positions in small woods streches. Not because of the forest itself, more like a hint to where the guns will hide. Most times you can predict where the enemy will defend, as long as it isn´t all forest or no forest. You won´t kill all of the guns, but you sort some out and thus punch holes into the overlapping fire of ATGs. Allthough if timed right, you can get the rockets down right before you come into effective HMG range and hope to gain some speed in advance since you pinned/panicked some teams.

I never used rockets without TRP or without preplanning them (Delay with Q), because it seems to take forever until they finally shoot and you certainly do not have time to wait all day. Attack is speed. Speed ain´t magic. (I know you can time QBs pretty long, but I think it takes away the thrill if the attacker can sneak all his way and still make it in time for the 5 o´clock tea)

[Brent Pollock]

Beware of reloads for some rocket batteries; Not all of them fire it off in one huge stonk. Many a player has walked his units into his own rockets because of a long reload time (2 to 5 minutes?). Remember to monitor the FO for ammo usage.

[yuvuphys]

So basically rocket artillery is less of a killer, and more of a device to shock and pin the enemy troops to aid your advance, whereas regular artillery can be used for either purpose. That about right?

[Kingfish]

So basically rocket artillery is less of a killer, and more of a device to shock and pin the enemy troops to aid your advance

Close. Because of their wide impacts, the best time to use rockets is when your own units are as far away from the front lines as possible. Therefore, whatever morale effects the rockets had on the enemy will have been overcomed by the time your own units reach their attack positions.

Think of rockets as weapons that will soften up the enemy positions over a wide area. Guns will be taken out, vehicles destroyed, houses damaged or completely leveled, and of course losses to the enemy infantry.

[yuvuphys]

Well, I've found the rockets not to be very effective against dug in infantry. Are they better at taking down buildings, AFV's, and guns than killing dug in infantry?

[Huckebein]

Yes; dug-in infantry are not likely to be harmed by anything less than a direct hit. Whilst a direct hit in a trench from a rocket would cause tremendous damage, it is highly unlikely to occur. Rockets are simply for putting multiple high-explosive or incendiary charges down, at random, over a wide area around the target 'crosshairs'. They level or damage buildings, knock out slow/ immobile units and generally soften the area up, as I believe it has been said. You never know, they might also cause an infantry squad or two to 'panic', and rattle them, to your permanent benefit.

[dieseltaylor]

Having lost 5 widely spread TD's to a 310mm rocket barrage I can tell you that do not have to get that close for crews to bail.

[GS_Guderian]

From the Russian point of view I must say that 2 x 82mm rocktets helped Zero to nothing vs. entrenched Finns, while my 300mm rocket battery took out 1 gun and 40 men in the same area.

[Xipe66]

All bigger calibres are really nasty, and can even route your own men if you're too close and out of command (I accidentally routed two of my three spotters with a 300 mm strike that hit 200 m away from two of my spotters that were out of command (actually, the guy who called it down panicked himself )). Unfortunately you can rarely afford those calibres in a QB - 600 pts of artillery easily counters 1200 pts of infantry if the enemy is nicely bunched up though (no more than 400 m wide) and you manage to get the time and the location of the strike right. They have huge command delays though.

I'm trying to learn how to use artillery/rockets more effectively though and have found 105mm and 150mm to be the easiest to use, while a far cry from the big calibres they still seem to give good moral damage and decent kills.

[Radetzky]

does anyone know if cm simulates airbursts from

bouncing shells on frozen ground? the russian rocket

arty was feared by the germans bc of the intimidating optical effect (huge explosions) but less effective in causing casualties than normal shelling. so if properly modeled, a rocket barrage should easily suppress infantry but not button or take out tanks.

[GS_Guderian]

I tried some artillery peaces on dug in Infantry and must say that nothing seems to beat the 300mm rockets.

1944, German PzGrenBtl entrenched, spread out on an area about 500m - 800m. (Of course this means it was pretty crowded).

I bought 1 x 300mm rockets and fired on my own men (yes, I know...but it was for testing purposes only )

I suffered over 50 dead and 6 20mm Flak gone,

compared to the other artillery woth the same money this was the best I could get.

81mm mortars caused a lot of fear, some soldiers even ran, but not even 20 losses from mortars.

75mm artillery did even worse. 4 x 170mm artillery was pretty scaring too, but the actually losses didn´t go over 25 and some 20mm Flak.

As far as I see it, the biggest rockets are worth their money, as long as you have a rather dense defense. If it´s only a thin line, you might be better off with individual, smaller batteries. And for the mortars, the ability to fire smoke instead of HE is appealing, too.

On the other hand, a commander who fires his rockets "blind" in the open without real assurance of strong enemy presence, basically wasted his money.

[GS_Guderian]

Dezember 1941, medium map, German assault.

The 5.000 point strong defense dug in around the greatest portion of flags. Actually about 80% worth the lag value was located in an area 800m x 300m. With a mediocre amount of woods the overall target area for my Artillery was clear.

From 10.750 points allocated to the German Assault, I purchased 2 x 337 incendary rockets and 1 x 280mm Nebelwerfer. All of it fired pre-planned on the mass of flags.

As Jason C stated, the lack of depth in QB (im comparision) to the width of a map can be fatal.

I never had such terrible result:

Nebelwerfer 280mm took out:

132 men

8 guns

6 mortars

Incendary rockets took out:

72 men

1 gun

5 motars

&

25 men

1 gun

After the second volley of rockets hit, my enemy asked for capitualtion. The Luftwaffe was striking, too. One T-34 was destroyed and allready routed soldiers got scared even more.

Literally ALL of his men were pinned.

First game ever, that was won due to artillery.

(I liked the fact especially since I had totaly unexperienced troops. One rocket FO was a recruit actually.)

[Panzer76]

Generally, for smaller battles, it is better to get arty instead of rockets due to their lack of accuracy.

[Dr. Rosenrosen]

Along these lines, is it best to get conscript rocket arty spotters if you are just going to use them as a preplanned barrage? It is my thinking that the only liability of a conscript spotter is the increased delay time, which becomes irrelevant for preplannned attacks. Are there other drawbacks (accuracy, for example)?

[stikkypixie]

If use preplanned barrages, I always take low quality spotters. Preplanned is always accurate and always on time.

I believe that low quality spotters have lower accuracy as well.

[JasonC]

GS-G - don't use the incendiaries, they aren't as good as the straight big rockets - or the big tube FOs. Other than that, just get caliber.

On conscript FOs, they are great for prep fire. There are 3 drawbacks to conscript FOs generally. 1, they have long fire delay. 2, the on map unit is more likely to panic, and lose you your module of support because of it. 3, the time between flights of shells is slightly longer (longer reload time). 1 and 2 don't matter for prep fire, and 3 is no big deal.

(3 is more noticable on defense - greens are OK if you have enough TRPs).

[Beta1]

I think rockets are one of those weapons that get better value the larger the battle - The area they come in on is often so large that unless they are firing on big formations they often dont make their cost back, especially compared with equivlent calliber tubes. On defense with TRPs they are more usefull though as with some luck you can have multiple possible TRPs to fire on increasing your chances of a good stonk. OTOH the same price of big calliber stuff can do a lot of damage when paired to TRPs. Some of the big russian calibres can be purchased really cheaply at low experience and paired with TRPs can cause total carnage if you get your stonk in on time.

[GS_Guderian]

Originally posted by JasonC:

...GS-G - don't use the incendiaries, they aren't as good as the straight big rockets - or the big tube FOs. Other than that, just get caliber...

Yep,

you are right, everytime I used them, they didn´t work as well as plain rocktes.

I figured, that the fires they start out might disturb my enemy a little more, but the actual number of fires spreading after impact is very small .