Rockets

[John Hugo]

In SC2 will you finally be able to move rockets across the water Hubert? The inability to do so in SC1 was sooooooooo annoying.

[jon_j_rambo]

In WW-2 who used rockets? Mostly Fritz & Vladamir, right?

[JerseyJohn]

Only Fritz.

In SC the USSR has Rockets 1 but that's not accurate, they had nothing like the German V-1 and certainly nothing even remotely like the V-2. I think Hubert was trying to give them credit for their multiple rocket launchers "Stalin Organs." But that's a whole different category and has nothing to do with the kind of rockets we're talking about.

One is short range, powder propelled and really artillery.

The other is long range and fuel driven.

[jon_j_rambo]

Exactly. Vlad had those rockets (advanced artillery really) on wheels (trains & stuff). While Fritz...well, you know. Thank you History Channel.

[JerseyJohn]

My pleasure General Rambo.

[John Hugo]

I use my rockets like artillery.

[JerseyJohn]

Yes, we all do when we use them at all. But if this is in reference to the earlier comments about Russia's multiple rocket launchers, they would be tactical weapons used up close to the target where those in the rocket category would have a range of 50 to 250? miles I guess.

Rambo and others have often said they're a waste and, in terms of playing competitively they are. But I like to make scenarios for use against the AI, like playing solitair. I don't care much about play balance or whether my game improves, I just want to play for an hour or two once a month so that's fine with me. I try to make the scenarios compensating for the AI's known weaknesses so, if the AI is the Axis I'll make all the Scandinavian countries part of that side as I know the AI will never invade them. If it's the Allies I give it a lot of units in Egypt because I know it will never send troops there, things like that.

Anyway, in playing these solitair games I do a lot of experimenting and have found that Rockets L=3-4-5 can be very useful for either the Germans, Italians or Soviets. The justification is just to assume one of those countries did the main research during the 1930s. Every major country had scientists who were working in this area (the Germans learned a lot from the American Robert Goddard and, in 1945, were amazed to learn that the American officers questioning them had never heard of their rocket pioneering countryman). The difference is Hitler actually took them seriously and funded their research and development.

It's estimated that if he hadn't, overall rocketry would have been ten years behind it's historical development after the war.

[SeaMonkey]

Right on the money JJ, nothing to add to the facts and the basic realities of SC's Rocket usage.

But now for the abstract. John H, you are right on too! In a separation from the rational, I believe they can also fill that role of artillery.

Just imagine that they are the howitzers, guns, and rocket tubes we are all familiar with. They bombard basically at range, their traditional role. When you get a tech upgrade, they become more effective and extend their range, ignore the fact of the scale that SC hexes represent. Think of them as "in battery" at certain ranges in the same hex as your attacking units, the farther from the front line your deployment, the less susceptable to counter battery they are, with a corresponding loss of effectiveness.

Ever notice how the AI's AFs go after them with a vengeance, does that replicate the reality of the WW2 battle field?

They dig the enemy out of entrenchments, they keep the combat units disrupted, reducing their effectiveness, but above all they cause casualties, the mother of which they were known as on any battlefield throughout history.

Yep, SC Rockets truly operate as battlefield artillery, albeit in an abstract manner. I won't even mention their role as coastal fortified guns, just don't let any of your naval assets get within range.

One drawback........ahemmmm, Hubert are you listening? They are not transportable.

[JerseyJohn]

Originally posted by SeaMonkey:

One drawback........ahemmmm, Hubert are you listening? They are not transportable.

Yup, making them useless to anyone but a continental power.

I like that part about using them as coastal artillery! I've been using them behind the lines in France as the Axis to make life miserable for the Allied units that make it ashore. Very similar idea. And yes, I've seen them mangle naval units myself. They don't really deserve the bad rap they've gotten except for the fact they're so have to move up to where the action is. In the USSR they're great for helping in the assault on Leningrad or Riga and also great along the Black Sea, very effective in softening fortresses like Sevastapol or Malta.

Regarding your view of them as very heavy artillery in an abstract sense. Yes, I agree. They can be seen sometimes as those huge railroad guns the Germans made -- largest versions that required a 5,000 man crew with a general for a gun captain!

< Article on Dora, Germany's Huge RailRoad Siege Gun >

Those two were originally designed to crack the Maginot Line, would have been used against Gibraltar if Franco had joined the Axis, and later proved their worth (at least one of them) in busting the Russian Gibraltar of Sevastapol. Dora was also used during the Italian Campaign.

There's a lot of controversy as to whether those huge guns were worthwhile, considering the resources they consumed, but I think they were a good investment. For one thing it has to be unnerving to be hit by very, very heavy shells when you can't even hear the artillery piece firing them! For another thing, when they hit the mark it was always devastating, albeit they could only fire a few times a day. Which at Sevastapol was plenty.

[kozmeister]

That's what I've always thought of them as SeaMonkey.

Correct me if I'm wrong but both western allied and German units consistently used 'self propelled' artillery near the end of the war. These were very effective replacements to older cannon artillery. I'm no aware to what degree the Russians used the same. German units used (shorter range) tactical rocket launders at the platoon level in their mechanised units.

Rockets as artillery seems correct; rockets such as the V2 used for field maneuvers seems esoteric at best.

KOZMEISTER

[SeaMonkey]

Total agreement here kozmeister. It seems ludicrous to represent a weapons system that didn't have any bearing on the military aspects of the conflict, nor the strategic I might add.

Unique type weapons, ...yes, with an ambience of science fiction,... but practical deployment as a combat weapon....didn't happen.

Well this is a game of "what ifs".

[JerseyJohn]

No artillery piece ever had a range like the rocket units, not even the largest naval guns!

So the rocket units can only be seen as V-1s and V-2s, which the Soviets never developed, so their rating of 1 is totally inaccurate.

The only way to figure rocket units as artillery is if you imagine them as stacked with a unit that is adacent to the enemy unit being fired upon. A bit of a stretch and totally out of the question if they're firing across water.

Naturally those weapons weren't accurate enough to hit ships, so the rocket's ability to sink them is farcical -- it would be the equivalent of aiming one at an area of water a hundred miles off and hoping for the best!

Rockets couldn't target anything smaller than a city, which is why they weren't used against the approaching Allied troops moving north through France. No point, they might have had some psychological effect but that would have been the extent of it.

The main German plan was to refine large amounts of uranium and make enough dirty bombs sent by rocket against London (each contaminating an area of 2 squar miles) that the British would agree to cessation. As the United States was already involved this became ever less likely and the idea was finally given up altogether. At war's end German scientists were still not certain they even had a way to send a dirty bomb that wouldn't have disolved in flight.

But they sent their remaining radioctive material to Japan via U-Boat with the Japanese planning to drop dirty bombs on San Francisco using sea planes set off from their giant subs adapted for the purpose. This was supposed to be carried out in late August but Japan surrendered before making the attempt. A few months earlier that German U-Boat surrendered to the Americans in Virginia and, ironically, the radioactive material it carried was used to help make the Nagasaki bomb.

Anyway, the rockets, while viable for game play, don't have much to do with historical reality.

The multiple rocket racks were used by the USSR, Germany and the United States after first being introduced by the Soviets.

Self-propelled guns have nothing to do with the subject and I have no idea how that got in here via an earlier post.

[Audie292]

Actually Sevastopol was a battle where they fired more artillery shells than ordinary ammo.

About V2 rockets: historically useless as some of you said but they could be in the game for what-if scenarios, assuming that more accurate rockets are built. As the game develops we will probably get some alternative history scenarios too.