Rocket attack!

[Orange]

I've been playing around as the Germans and I recently tried some 155mm rockets. They seemed cheap and I figured they'd pack some punch. When it came time to use them it was against an out of LOS target. Man, those rockets were going off everywhere. Is that the kind of (in)accuracy I should expect. I know you get what you pay for, but I'm asking anyway. Are they much better with a LOS to the target?

I was thinking as a strategy that using them against troops behind the main lines (ie, well away from my troops) would be worth spending the points on. A few lucky hits could knock some stuff around and the cost is low.

Any other thoughts?

[Sirocco]

With or without LOS, you want to be as far back as possible when they start to land. I seemed to always sustain more casualties using them than I caused.

[MOS was 71331]

Fire rockets early, while your guys are well away from the plotted impact points. Those things spread too much to be used when the opposing forces are near each other.

[flamingknives]

LOS improves the grouping in CMBO, but rockets are still a large area bombardment weapon.

[Panzer Ace]

Like MOS said use 'em EARLY and make sure your guys DUCK :eek:

[Michael Emrys]

They are slightly more useful in CMBB because there at least you can target them on the first turn and they will fall accurately on target even without LOS, which might be hard to get in the early turns when you'd most want to use them. But they still spread out over a huge area compared to tube artillery. I have decided the most effective way to use them is to buy several batteries (four or more) and target them all on the same or close to the same point. That way, they do saturate a pretty large area. But just one battery isn't going to do a lot unless you get awfully lucky.

Michael

[SgtMuhammed]

Very hit or miss with rockets. I have had them fall with about the same accuracy as other large arty but then I have also had them fall where, no joke here, no two impacts were closer than 200 meters. There were craters all over the map.

Look out for that last rocket in the barrage. It always seems to be the one that will find your most important asset and kill it.

[Slappy]

I generally think they're too much of a gamble due to the large spread, but they can make an effective suppression weapon. If just one or two catch a platoon on the move in open ground or get a good treeburst, they'll pay off.

[JasonC]

They are not tube arty - they have a different function. They work for that function. The bigger ones do it somewhat better, and are also somewhat closer in effect to regular tube arty - but of course they also cost more.

The key thing to notice about them is they are extremely sensitive to the overall scale of the target and to target density. You don't fire them at a platoon, like you can with a single battery of 105s. More like a battalion.

You don't need to know where the target is, exactly. You do need to know there will be a lot of men out there. They will fall all over the place in a 200m deep beaten zone, more like 350m wide.

If there are only a few platoons widely separated in that large area, 9 out of 10 will miss completely. Only a handful will hit close enough to do anything. The best rocket often inflicts half the losses of the whole barrage in this case. It isn't really worth the cost.

You don't need to use 4 of them at the same aimpoint to get sufficient coverage to suppress everything within the targeted area. Just one of the 150s is too scattered to do that, but 2 do a decent job (and cost about what a medium arty module does).

More important than using several at once, though, is firing at a packed enough target. The damage they will do goes up dramatically if the enemy are packed into the area.

For example, try using 2 of them targeted on turn 1 (for accurate placement even without LOS), hitting Q a few times to delay the strike until minute 4 or 5. Target them at the forward edge of an attacker's set up area, and well away from the side edges (200m). In a largish fight, this "spoiling barrage" use of them can catch a full battalion.

Will it stun that whole battalion? Not for more than a minute or two. But the best rocket here and the best rocket there will cut squads in half, break a few others including an HQ here or there, pin a weapons team while it was moving, KO a halftrack. Five minutes in, this results in significant disorganization, which will translate into either a delayed attack or a piecemeal one.

The heavier rockets (I am talking 210mm to 300mm), on the other hand, have enough blast that they will hurt their target area with just one module. The right target is a large body of woods or a whole village. The best few rockets will still do the lion's share of the damage - but now some of those will be entire squad wipe outs, or whole platoons broken by a close treeburst. They are decent weapons on the attack.

Just don't rely on them for responsive fire, adapting to recent intel about enemy positions. You need some regular arty for that, something that can hit an individual platoon and can be called down on a target in contact (firefight range) with your own guys.