Surviving Artillery Bombardment

[sunderj]

Any advice for helping infantry survive an imminent artillery bombardment?

Best guess is to get out from under trees, stop moving & hide, but will any of these make a difference? Will type of movement (eg Sneak) make a difference to likely casualties?

[Thermopylae]

Run. Preferably out of LOS, at least as far as neccessary to make the battery re-adjust. Or have a nice solid building/trench to be in. Evertyhing else is just asking to take casualties in proportion to the arty size.

[junk2drive]

i spent an hour in the setup phase, first orders were to embark at guns to jeeps, surrounded by a company. hit go. enemy ai clobbered them all with arty. bodies everywhere. start over.

[Bone_Vulture]

Originally posted by junk2drive:

i spent an hour in the setup phase, first orders were to embark at guns to jeeps, surrounded by a company. hit go. enemy ai clobbered them all with arty. bodies everywhere. start over.

Were the guns padlocked, or why was there some other reason you didn't embark them during setup? :confused:

Oh yeah, and operating soft-ish vehicles anywhere near where heavy artillery is falling is just begging for trouble. I once landed a 152mm shell from my ISU-152 next to a pair of my opponent's armored cars. Knocked them both out solid.

The clue: infantry might survive the bombardment, even if it means losing half their manpower or more, but vehicles that are knocked out become 100% worthless.

[YankeeDog]

In general, the heavier the arty, the more sense it makes to just make a break for it and hope for the best. But if it's light stuff and your guys are in decent cover, sometimes it makes sense to just hunker down and wait it out.

For example, in a recent game I had a full platoon plus an HMG in Broken Ground that got caught under a 3" mortar barrage. Since Broken Ground is pretty darn good cover against Arty, I just hunkered them down. Three rounds of 3" fire caused a grand total of three casualties. The two squads most directly under the barrage went to "Panic" status, but they were back up and moving within a couple turns. True, these were Veteran troops under a commander with a morale bonus. Nevertheless, I was pretty unimpressed by the power of a light mortar barrage.

Against Heavier arty, sitting still like that wouldn't be such a good idea. More often than not, if I see a spotting round that looks like it's 105mm+, my infantry scatters like scared chickens for the nearest good cover and/or a place I think is likely out of the barrage danger zone (trees of any kind as you note NOT being considered good cover in the case of Arty). At the very least, I try to spread out my infantry units as soon as I see the spotting round to minimize the number of men that might get caught under the same barrage.

Like Thermopalye, unless there's a danger of direct enemy fire in addition to the barrage, I usually use the Run order as well. This is what makes the HMG + Arty combination so deadly on defense. The MGs pin advancing infantry down and force you to use slower movement orders like ADVANCE, which makes it easier to clobber them with Arty.

With more experienced troops, and/or units under command of an HQ with a really good morale bonus, you can sometimes get away with using the "Withdraw" order, which cuts the command delay and gives you an extra 10 seconds or so of sprinting time before the shells begin to fall. Depending on the situation, sometimes this is worth it but it can be risky since if ANY kind of incoming fire hits a withdrawing unit, it will usually immediately at least Panic, and often worse.

If the barrage is already falling, or if there's incoming enemy direct fire as well, chances are neither Run nor Withdraw will get you very far. One exception would be if it's big stuff with a long delay between salvos, and your units got lucky and weren't really hit by the first salvo. In this case, sometimes you can sprint out before the next salvo falls.

Usually, though, if the shells are already falling your chances of getting all the way out of the barrage on a Run order are slim - the units will probably pin before they makes it out unless they are right on the edge of the area of effect. In this case, I will either hunker down and weather the barrage if the cover is decent and the caliber isn't too large, or try to Advance or even Assault my way out of danger if I think the caliber is just to large to sit under.

Perhaps I am wrong here, and I should acutually keep using Run, though. I doubt Sneak would work unless you were just trying to get just a few meters to a nearby building or shellhole. Sneak is very slow and by the time you get out of a barrage on sneak it will probably be over anyway. Honestly, once a unit actually gets caught under a barrage of decent caliber size (105mm+), very rarely do I manage to extract them in any kind of decent order - they usually either make it through the barrage where they are and I rally them, or they break for the rear of their own accord, take heavy casualties, and whoever is left is usually worthless for an extended period of time.

Vehicles are totally different. I always Fast move even heavy tanks out from under Arty - there's nothing worse than receiving Gun Damage to your Tiger from a Mortar barrage. Watch out of the movement orders the TacAI give to vehicles when Arty comes in - they often make the vehicle present a flank to the enemy or expose itself in some other bad way. Usually, you want to modify or replot these orders youself to make sure the vehicle takes the best route to a safe place. Any make sure to button the vehicle if it hasn't buttoned itself already.

Cheers,

YD

[junk2drive]

it was setup for second battle in a op. when i moved the jeep to a road and then moved the gun, it did not show embark. it did after the setup phase on turn one. i believe the enemy had a trp on that road or had a preplanned bombardment and i just picked that spot to setup. or there was los by unseen spotter who then called in trp strike.

[ParaBellum]

The best way of surviving arty bombardement is to not get caught in it.

To achieve this:

1.) Move your infantry so that your enemy can't see them. What he can't see he can't hit. Use smoke for covering large distances over open ground.

2.) Stay away from obvious approaches to a VL. A stretch of woods leading to a VL will probably have a TRP set right on top of if your opponent is at least somewhat clever.

3.) Lure the enemy to expend his arty on a faint attack then strike with your main force. A smoke barrage is a good way to mislead the enemy. This works well on the defense, too. Make the enemy target your weak forward positions with his arty and keep your MLR intact.

4.) On the defense: STAY AWAY FROM VLs! You don't want to have a company wiped out by a pre-planned 155mm barrage.

4.) 75, 76 and 81mm calibre suppresses, not kills infantry. 120mm mortars are EXTREMELY dangerous, due to their fast reaction time, high ROF and good blast radius. If you get caught by them severy losses are guaranteed.

5.) Your best insurance against heavy arty is to KEEP MOVING.

[Bone_Vulture]

Even though using the withdraw command might panic or break your squads, they will head to waypoint you've given, unless they become pinned and choose to crawl towards nearest cover.

Also, pinned troops will jump up and run when a withdraw order is given, which is quite useful.

[junk2drive]

found my embark problem. i was using place command rather than move command.

[Bone_Vulture]

Originally posted by junk2drive:

found my embark problem. i was using place command rather than move command.

:confused: :confused: