Indirect fire uses up all ammo too fast?

[derbius]

I had two tubes of 81mm arty (why this shows as 6 green circles I don't know). I told them to fire "long" expecting them to fire 20-28 rounds then stop. Two minutes later they seem to have shot until empty (and we were told they had 100 HE and some WP to start with). I can't even get them to fire the WP now! Is "heavy" 20-28 rounds per minute per tube? Do you always need to tell arty to cease fire? I thought that was the point of setting a duration?

[PondScum]

Yes, "heavy" chews through ammo quickly. So far I've only used heavy on the shortest fire-mission duration, to target tanks. For regular anti-infantry work I use medium/medium to inflict pain and suffering for a couple of minutes before an assault, or light/long to pin them in place while I'm bringing up other assets.

[SteveP]

Is "heavy" 20-28 rounds per minute per tube?

Yes, that it the way I understand it.

[Sergei]

I had two tubes of 81mm arty (why this shows as 6 green circles I don't know).

The green circles are not tubes, they are a fatig-o-meter. When you give a Heavy fire order, they start turning red as the battery's readiness drops, after which the ROF slows down to medium.

[Peregrine]

Read through manual again as descriptions in the UI don't really match a laymans expections.

Mission is the rate of fire (ie how quickly the units will attempt to fire the rounds).

Duration is how many rounds the unit fires.

If you have two tubes and asked them to fire "long and heavy" then you should have had 2 (tubes) * 20-28 (long) = 40-56 rounds fired. Heavy means fire as fast as possible. As above the heavy (quick rate of fire would have resulted in the barrells getting "hot" (lots of reds dots). As this goes up your rate of fire has to come down (or pause entirely? not sure about that).

What you described shouldn't have resulted in 100 rounds used. Maybe your crew was drunk and needed 40+ spotting rounds.