How much artillery is enough?

[Cap Zemp]

When I have a idea where the enemy is located and I want to soften my target. How much is enough? Im sure defensive terrain is a factor.

I hate wasting artillery but sometimes I think I should poor it on before I move in for the attack.

Any bit of artillery tactics would be helpful.

[Cpl Carrot]

Holien knows the answer to this one

[Guest Mike]

There is no such thing as too much artillery preparation.

[109 Gustav]

I'd recommend that you don't use any prep arty until you can see where the enemy is. There are few things more satisfying than watching your opponent pound the snot out of that big grove of trees where you didn't have anyone. Instead, you should send recon units ahead to find out where the enemy is, and then blow him away.

For arty units with long delay times, however, you can begin targeting likely positions. If your scouts find anyone there, you are all set to dump arty on them. If they don't, then cancel the order before any rounds drop and switch to a more likely area.

[fridericus]

upto 3000 points QB i use only 1-2 81mm mortar-spotter.

i hate wasting points in useless units. i prefer direct fire/area fire from he.

i only shoot, when i see them, esspecially with 150mm

[Michael Emrys]

Actually, about four battalions (12 spotters) is nice to have. But for larger battles I'd want more.

Michael

[Beta1]

How many points are you playing?

I normally spend about half-2/3rds of the combined arms allowance.

For 2000 points (axis) I find a single 150mm and a 81mm is more than enough (although I am beginning to be swayed by the 2x120mm option)

[xerxes]

Things you can never have too much of:

1. time

2. money (and no, you can't buy #1 with this)

3. girls

4. arty

I don't spec fire arty. Unless I'm POSITIVE there has to be infantry in those woods.

If you have an identified target it's much better to have overlapping FOs fire for 30 seconds then a single FO for 1 minute.

[Redwolf]

I am not quite sure what exactly is original question was up to.

Do you want to know how long to keep the artillery firing, assuming you already fired on a target for some time?

I have a rule of thumb to keep an artillery module firing at least one turn more than I want. If the infantry at the target looks throroughly beaten and dead and all common sense would call to lift the strike, then I keep it pouring for one more turn in CMBO (2-3 turns in TacOps).

An exception would be if I target an isolated gun and I can see it is dead.

[Chad Harrison]

Originally posted by Cap Zemp:

When I have a idea where the enemy is located and I want to soften my target. How much is enough? Im sure defensive terrain is a factor.

I hate wasting artillery but sometimes I think I should poor it on before I move in for the attack.

Any bit of artillery tactics would be helpful.

For me, it is good practice to fire when I know that they are they in force for sure. If you are not sure, its better to send one or two half squads over there and find out, than to waste hundreds of points on artillery. Artillery is better to keep their heads down while you assault them, rather than to soften them up (unless its over 150 arty)

[Arty]

I Agree with one comment made, that you can never have enough Arty.

But surely what you choose ( depending on availabilty and points) depends primarily, if you are attacking or defending ?

If I am attacking and I can confidently target the enemy,being in a resonably static position, I want to shell them until they are quite useless as a defending force, either dead and on the way to hell or badly shell shocked they want to go home to mum.

The larger the Arty the better, I like to see craters the size of swimming pools and chucking shells the size of Volkswagons will do it for me every time. Arty.

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by Arty:

I Agree with one comment made, that you can never have enough Arty.

But surely what you choose ( depending on availabilty and points) depends primarily, if you are attacking or defending ?

If I am attacking and I can confidently target the enemy,being in a resonably static position, I want to shell them until they are quite useless as a defending force, either dead and on the way to hell or badly shell shocked they want to go home to mum.

The larger the Arty the better, I like to see craters the size of swimming pools and chucking shells the size of Volkswagons will do it for me every time. Arty.

Gee, I never would have guessed you'd be into lots of Arty, Arty.

Seriously, I usually play scenarios, so I don't get to choose what kind of Arty I have or how much.

When I have small Arty, I find it very important to remember that the small stuff will usually not cause that many casualties, so using it to 'soften up' a defensive position in preparation for an assault takes a bit of finesse.

My biggest successes with using small arty for this have been when I am able to coordinate the arty barrage very closely with the infantry assault. "Hug your Artillery" was an old WWII infantry saying, and I find it applies to CM as well. Even little 'ol 81mm mortar fire will panic regular troops in about a turn of well-aimed firing under good conditions (ex: troops without foxholes in trees). The thing is, they won't stay panicked for very long, so you need to get your infantry in close almost immediately after the barrage is over - use your pause command to coordinate things. Better to lose one or two men to 'friendly fire' from your own arty than it is to have your guys halfway across the open ground when the enemy platoon 'wakes up' from it's panicked state and begins to mow them down with small arms fire.

IOW, with small bore stuff in my experience close coordination of the arty barrage with the infantry assault is often more important than how many turns of fire you've used - firing 3-4 turns of 81mm fire on one position is going to use nearly all of one spotter's ammo load, and while you might break or maybe even rout the enemy infantry with this much fire (causing them to take longer to recover), you're not going to kill the majority of them, so you still are going to have to assault the position if you really want to take care of them. 3-4 turns of fire is also going to give your opponent 3-4 turns to adjust his forces and perhaps prepare a nasty surprise for you when you do try to assault the position. He may just target a nice little Arty barrage for you to walk into!!

Just pointing out that you really need to use different tactics depending on the kind of arty you have and what your tactical goals are.

Cheers,

YD

[Cap Zemp]

Thanks a lot for all the info guys. You gave me plenty read.

CAP ZEMP.