Artillery Support

[Euri]

When the enemy is in building what kind of ammo should one use, General, Personnel or Armor? I noticed that the anti-personnel ammo explodes "above" the target which makes it excellent for personnel in trenches - but is it any good for people in buildings?

[Thomm]

Use 'General' against buildings.

It is still unclear to me what the distinction between 'General' and 'Armor' actually means for the types of artillery that are simulated. I once asked whether it makes a difference if I choose 'General' or 'Armor' when using 81 mm mortars, but never got an answer!

Best regards,

Thomm

[SgtMuhammed]

I think that is one of the broken things in the game. Armor should use DPICM airbursts to take out armor while general should be HE.

If you use large callibur AP rounds then they will knock down buildings. Smaller stuff won't hurt people in buildings. At least I don't think it will.

[JonS]

DPICM isn't airburst.

[SgtMuhammed]

Cannister rounds containing multiple bomblets. My bad.

[John Kettler]

SgtMuhammed,

DPICM DOES airburst, but I think JonS is trying to draw a distinction between an HE shell with multifunction fuze set for VT mode and the initiation of the burster charge on a cargo carrying munition using Base Ejection to release submunitions.

Regards,

John Kettler

[the Fighting Seabee]

Yeah, what he said!

[JonS]

Words have meanings. Screw with them if you want, but don't come crying to me when you get confused. And you will. Get confused, that is.

DPICM isn't an airburst munition, it is a carrier round with scatterable sub-munitions. DPICM also isn't that great against heavy armour, although it's perfect for IFV types and SP arty.

[SgtMuhammed]

It's better than lobbing HE and praying for a top hit. Besides, the little boys nearly always outnumber the big boys.

[John Kettler]

JonS,

The Soviets/Russians found Rockeye/APAM/DPICM a big enough threat that special soft armor blankets were fitted to T-64/72/80 turret roofs and other areas in an effort to defeat it by thwarting shaped charge initiation. DPICM is indeed a carrier round, but submunition ejection isn't triggered by ground impact, so it therefore initiates in midair.

Regards,

John Kettler

[JonS]

No ****, Sherlock. It still ain't an airburst round.

BTW, I assume you know what "isn't that great" means on the spectrum of { deadly --> useless }. 2.5+ inches penetration of RHA is pretty good, expecially against top or bottom surfaces, and obviously better than dumb HE. Against that, though, is the very limited area of effect of each sub-munition.

It ain't an airburst, and it ain't a silver bullet.

[reel-why]

I'm pretty sure Battlefront stated somewhere that General is a combination of Infantry and Armor rounds. So some air burst and some impact the ground. Which makes sense in my mind against a building.

On a side note, has anyone seen arty strike a really high 6 to 9 story building? Can it hit the top floors? Maybe I'll give that a try

[Secondbrooks]

Had company of Syrian republic guard's mech infantry (4 platoons) in 500 meters long line, dismounted. Ordered 4 batteries of 155mm paladin fire. Half of fired shells were 'Armor' (general to left siode, armor to right side of line). And what were the intresting results after 2 minutes of barrage? This was a test, not warfighting scenarion. Ground type (if it matters) was sand.

Company lost 100 men (Almost all dismounted infantry) but not a single BMP. There was no differences in vehicle damages and infantry casulities on left (general) and right (armor) side. Two BMPs ALMOST lost their tracks... even if there was crater beneath them! That should have killed whole vehicle. There was about 5-7 BMPs which had crater(s) inside 10 meters away from them.

I quess in real life 30-50% of the vehicles should have been not fit to fight anymore, some lost their tracks, some severy damaged and some destroyed.