Pre planning lots of Soviet rocket artillery, good idea?

[meldorian]

Hi!

I have noticed that the Soviet rocket artillery will fire only once, and that the rockets scatter over a huge area. Therefore I thought about buying tons of these rockets and bombard the German set-up area in turn 1. Some of my units will usually see at least some of the German units, and FOs do not really do much to increase the accuracy of the rockets due to the scattering.

My questions are, is this a good? And, if yes, what rockets should I choose? With the 80something mm ones, you can easily get off more than a thousand missiles in less than half a minute even as a defender in a 2000 pt QB, but it seems like these cannot even do credible damage to infantry out in the open. The big, fat 300+ mm rockets one the other hand are quite expensive, but they can easily immobilize tanks and blow up anything else. The 132 mm rockets look like a good compromise to me, but what do you think?

[WWB]

Preplanned rocket strikes are very handy. In QBs they are among the few effective pre-planned arty options due to their blanketing effects.

One nice trick is to delay the bombardment until you can close to within 500m or so of the enemy, so you can follow on relatively quickly. Use the Q key for that. Another fun pre-planned rocket strike is the "pound him as he shifts forces late in the game" strike, basically a pre-planned strike delayed until turn 20 or so when he will be redeploying. Just remember to steer clear of your own rocket strike.

WWB

[meldorian]

Hey, that delayed rocket strike sounds great! What do you think about the German rockets? I mean, they can shoot at least twice, but there seems to be a pause of a few minutes in between because the launchers need to be reloaded. Doesn't that pause render the German rockets near useless for pre-planing? I mean, after the first strike, any clever USSR player will get the heck out of the target zone with everything that can move. And as an attacker, you cannot exploit the gap because otherwise, the second strike is going to wipe out your infantry. If you are a German defender, it is even worse, as your enemy will have moved his troops forward or at least to the left or right after the first strike, so the second salvo is essantially a big wast of precious points.

But the Soviet rockets are still great.

[ October 09, 2002, 02:45 PM: Message edited by: meldorian ]

[WWB]

Pause can be pretty short, only a minute and a half.

Anyhow, I would sit tight in the target zone if I am dug in. Chances are you are not going to get hit too hard in one spot, damage to moving troops is alot worse, and there is no way to clear that large (300x500m) a target zone too quickly anyhow.

WWB

[Chad Harrison]

For sure if it is divisional or corps level. And, rocket artillery is soo unpredicable, that if my men are even close to it, all it takes is one very short round to ruin my day! I was playing a canned scenario and pre bombarded with rockets. On the first turn, one rocket went astray and killed over 20 of my men with a tree burst! Got to be carefull.

Chad

[Redwolf]

It might be worthwhile to preplann even with small stuff.

Yesterday I was attacking. The terrain was very defense-friendly and we only had 23+ turns, so I was in a hurry.

A pre-planned barrage of I think 82mm mortar file went down on the attacker's setup zone's border, at the only place which was offering entry into the only covered route. It shocked two vehicles, amoung them a KV-1 (in a 800 points game), took out a heavy weapon and caused 35 casulties.

But more importantly I lost 3 or 4 turns before I could start off to wait for inresponsive infantry, and I lost the game with exhaust troops only 1000 meters or so from one flag (I neutraled the other with tanks).