Artillery

[Edwin P.]

Originally posted by Desert Dave:

I have used the same sprite, very sparingly, in the scenario that I created... 1941-42 North Afrika.

Any chance for an AAR on your 1941-42 North Afrika Campaign?

[Desert Dave]

Any chance for an AAR on your 1941-42 North Afrika Campaign?

Yes, Edwin P, there exists

A... chance.

Like the long untangling tresses of your

Much beloved,

As she hovers in the sight

Of a twi-light Destiny,

It depends on... how things

Shake out.

We'll see.

[Blashy]

Originally posted by guinty1:

After late 1943 the soviets started deploying artilley at division (i.e. a full 12k men armed with just art),then at corps (up to 30k men) level.by the attack on berlin zhukov had more men in his artilley units than the USA had in western europe.There shouldnt be a seperate unit for artilley in the game but there should have been an upgrade to corps and armies to represent the awesome power of massed artilley at this level.For every soldier killed in WW2 by a rifle or a tank ....6 where killed by mortars and artillery.

A corps and army do represent artillery properly for the scale of this game, we're talking 100s of square kilometers per tile here, having ONE unit represent artillery a tile behind an army unit and firing at the enemy would be totally unrealistic.

The corps and army represent men, armored vehicles (not tanks), transports, some supply pretty much everything except tanks.

It works out very well for the full map campaigns.

As for the smaller one, so far I've not seen one without artillery.

[Kuniworth]

what scenarios will be included?

Please make the oob historical.

[Desert Dave]

Blashy:

... having ONE unit represent artillery a tile behind an army unit and firing at the enemy would be totally unrealistic.

I have a separate artillery unit in a '39 Campaign mod, and it works out fine.

I pretend that it is attached to the unit in front of it (... IE, you would not leave it unprotected) and that it is firing at the enemy from a "realistic" distance.

If the unit in front is destroyed, I pretend that there remains a brigade or battalion of regular infantry, which is why I gave it a particular defensive value.

Thing is, you can PRETEND anything you like, so long as you are having FUN and enjoying the game, true?

[JerseyJohn]

Big Guns.

The Verdict.

1920s & 1930s -- Had potential.

1940s -- Made obsolescent by aircraft.

1950s -- Made obsolete by missles.

End of Story.

The problem with the very big guns cited above, the ones never actually built, is that, like Ball's Super Cannon, those things never get built.

The last large gun put into the field, was the U. S. Army's Atomic Cannon of the early 1950s. It was seen as obsolete even while it was being deployed and the one or two that were deployed were quickly turned into museum exhibits.

The large German railroad guns were built with two targets specifically in mind: The Maginot Line and Gibraltar. In reality they weren't ready in time for use against the Maginot and, in any case, the campaign didn't hinge on breaking the wall but in going around it. When Franco didn't joint the Axis their Gibraltar function became academic. Instead one of them, I think it was Dora, was used against Sevastapol, where it was effective when it hit the magnificent stone fortress, otherwise it only made large splashes with spectacular misses. In any case, it only fired a few shells a day.

And there's the problem. They had an extremely slow rate of fire and required a crew of several thousand men, all pretty highly specialized and commanded by a major general! That's an awfully large committment of manpower and resources for something that, essentially, is a very limited weapon.

Compare those few shells a day to loading a few dozen, or even a few hundred bombers with block busters and setting them against the same target.

But, under the proper conditions they did have a superior effect. As siege guns they'd have been fine, mainly to break the defenders morale but also the fortifications if properly sighted.

In 1918 Germany had what must have been the largest artillery piece ever made, the original Big Bertha, known more popularly as the Paris Gun. It hurled several projectiles a day into Paris from forty or so miles away, killing without warning. There would simply be an explosion and body parts. Unfortunately for the Germans it didn't break French morale, not even the morale of the Parisians and it had no military value whatever.

As was the case with the U2 rockets of decades later, it was hard for the Germans to know where there projectiles were coming down.

That gun was dismantled and the specs burned. There's an artist's conception of it from a soldier who saw it in operation, but no photos. So, nobody is quite certain what it looked like.

Ball's Atomic Cannon would have built along the side of an Iraqi mountain, aimed at Tel Aviv and it would have been capable firing one time only, destroying itself in the process. A smaller version was tested successfully but the real item had to be scratched when the Israelis found out the parts were being made to look like oil pipe sections and they were confiscated before leaving the foreign manufacturers. Ball was killed in the hallway of his apartment building, maybe by Israeli agents, maybe by the C. I. A. or maybe by the Iraqis.

[ January 30, 2006, 07:45 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[JerseyJohn]

Sorry, I was wrong about there being no photos of the Paris Gun. But I'm sure that there are no surviving specs or designer's drawings. Okay, I'm pretty sure.

Here are some photos of the behemoth being constructed, deployed to the field, and firing.

[SeaMonkey]

I guess I'll weigh in on this again. After being in this forum, for what, maybe 4 years at this point, I get the feeling my posts have a great degree of redundancy.

I'm sure my fellow SC veteran posters feel the same....eh JJ?

Gentlemen, we have the mechanism of artillery in SC, 1 and 2. I know what you are asking for is the effect, not necessarily a unit and the effect is there.

Now what you have to do is use your imagination and follow an abstracted principle that the artillery is indeed deployed with the frontline combat units, although physically in the game they will be a tile or two in the rear. This represents the normal deployment echelon that artillery units traditionally occupy.

They will be susceptible to air strikes and of course any opponents' breakthrough, just like IRL.

IE. they need protection.

They will also be less effective when firing at longer ranges, simulating the different calibers that artillery units usually display in their TO&Es.

What I'm saying is don't think of your deployments as one tile behind the next as being 60 miles plus 60 miles plus on and on. Think of them(your units) as being forwardly deployed in the area of the front line and don't associate them with the distances that the SC tiles/hexes actually represent in game terms. Remember, use your imagination.

Now the unit is.........drum roll please................

ROCKETS!!!!

We have all discussed their actual effectiveness IRL compared to SC game usage...completely disassociated tasks. So let's use them as they were IRL as the artillery role.

Did I happen to reitterate that in SC2, rockets/ARTILLERY are transportable.

[Desert Dave]

Gentlemen, we have the mechanism of artillery in SC, 1 and 2. I know what you are asking for is the effect, not necessarily a unit and the effect is there.

Now what you have to do is use your imagination and follow an abstracted principle that the artillery is indeed deployed with the frontline combat units, although physically in the game they will be a tile or two in the rear. This represents the normal deployment echelon that artillery units traditionally occupy.

They will be susceptible to air strikes and of course any opponents' breakthrough, just like IRL.

IE. they need protection.

They will also be less effective when firing at longer ranges, simulating the different calibers that artillery units usually display in their TO&Es.

What I'm saying is don't think of your deployments as one tile behind the next as being 60 miles plus 60 miles plus on and on. Think of them(your units) as being forwardly deployed in the area of the front line and don't associate them with the distances that the SC tiles/hexes actually represent in game terms. Remember, use your imagination.

What SeaMonkey said.

Like, what I had said, only not so good as he had said.

In my modded '39 Grand Campaign game, I have used Artillery:

1) Bombard Maginot Line.

2) Soften up several heavily entrenched cities.

3) Fire at a naval vessel in the English Channel (... you can set this attack value as low as you want, to get the EXACT effect that you would prefer from "coastal batteries")

4) Attack a mine (... again, "strategic attack" can be edited to your liking)

NEVER had so much FUN with ONE

Little game piece,

In my WHOLE life, LOLOLOL! :cool:

[SeaMonkey]

Thanks DD, but your explanation was completely clear from the outset as many others have been.

I knew exactly what you were saying, but at the risk of redundancy, I thought perhaps a slight difference of perspective(wording) might help.

Always believe in the ever present axiom of life. "two heads are better than one"

[Desert Dave]

Always believe in the ever present axiom of life. "two heads are better than one"

Yep, SM, that is occasionally the case.

Like the time I was down in Key West,

And some Hippie Kid TRIED to convince me

To invest some $$$$

In some fancy, hyper-tooled

Cigarette Boat.

And, hi-ho! run some bales of funny stuff

From Cuba on over to Florida.

I pondered, but after calling my brother,

Decided I didn't want to spend

Any more time in jail than I already had.

It's no fun, really.

So.

Here, the FIRST 2 heads were wrong.

Whereas, the SECOND 2 heads were right.

As a hard half-hurricane kind of Gulf rain, making "cigarette boat" travel on them roiled up Gulf waters a case of... likely losing the ONE head you started off with.

[ January 30, 2006, 10:38 AM: Message edited by: Desert Dave ]

[JerseyJohn]

SM and DD,

Redundancy is the key!

Sorry if those posts of mine in any way gave the impression that they were directly related to the game mechanics, they weren't.

Mainly I wanted to get into why big rail-road guns weren't such a great idea in WWII and why, after the mid-fifties, they were forever filed away in museums.

-- Except for the late Mr Ball, who really wanted to make a huge-super-gigantic gun that could shoot items, manned or unmanned, through the atmosphere and into space orbit around the earth. A lot of people, including myself, think he had a good idea there even it was only to move raw materials up there for use in constructing space stations and true space ships.

But I digress, as usual.

Naturally I don't think his agreeing to build a gun for Hussein to H-Bomb Israel was particularly commendable, not because I favor one side over the other, but because he buiding it for an outright madman.

[Kuniworth]

que nachos tortilla?

[JerseyJohn]

With refried beans, sure!

[SeaMonkey]

You know JJ, the day is coming.

They may have been farfetched ideas in WW2, but today rail guns are real. A lot of the info is classified, but rumors abound about them being standard weapon systems on the new DDX type naval vessels.

Imagine a purported 500 mile range, traveling at mach 10 there is no need of an explosive. The kinetic energy upon impact is very devastating and guided by GPS, say goodbye to hardened underground bunkers and similar type fortifications.

And remember those conceptual ice-aircraft carrier behemoths?

Well welcome to the MOB...Mobile Offshore Base, comprised of semisubmersible, interlocking modules encompassing an estimated 3 million square feet. A flight deck of 2 kilometers and a deployable Marine brigade of 3000 troops not to mention all the support facilities and 10 millions gallons of fuel. You know you are in for a world of hurt when one of these babies is parked off your coast.

[santabear]

Has there been a discussion of direct/indirect fire for this hypothetical artillery?

There would have to be spotting rules and cetera--but as has been pointed out, this is more applicable to tactical games (PanzerBlitz?) than a strategic level game, I think.

SB

[Kuniworth]

this is indeed an encouraging thread. Keep up the good work guys.

[jon_j_rambo]

Direct & Indirect fire? What is this, Squad Leader?

[JerseyJohn]

SB

It all sounds very interesting, and scary too. Artillery projectiles have the advantage of being impossible to intercept, so one with the attributes you've described would be formidable indeed.

I'd rather they found a way of not needing those 10,000,000 gallons of fuel on the floating base, though. There's been talk and research into better and less polluting methods since the late forties. I know it seems odd to think about pollution while discussing massive weapons, but why not?

I've no doubt that technology can come up with ever more gigantic weapons, but I don't think they're the answer for future warfare. For example, late in the Cold War it became a big concern of the U. S. Navy that the Soviets had a fleet of many small vessels with little capability other than finding and sinking aircraft carriers!

The new heavy guns must be what the Navy was talking about a few years back when some discussion came out about building a modern battleship.