WARNO – Useful Tips for Artillery (NATO)

NATO Artillery Tips

Here’s my take on artillery and how to make it worthwhile, what’s good what’s bad and everything in between. I will only cover the NATO side because I know NATO better.

First and foremost, let’s break down what’s good and what’s bad!

Rocket Artillery

LARS 2, MARS, M270 MLRS (Cluster): These are all very bad. Their high cost, not just to purchase but to supply, makes them too expensive to ever pay for themselves. The sheer visibility of rockets makes them easy to dodge, and all in all, their firing time makes them easy targets for bombing runs… I never use these and I recommend you take these out of your decks.

Mortars

Very fun, cheap, and in numbers can be effective. The best way to get good smoke coverage cheaply and fast.

• M125 Mortar: At 35 points, it’s very cheap. These will not kill, even in high numbers, very effectively. Recommended only as support for infantry in active engagement against unarmored targets.
• M106A2 Mortar: More expensive, more deadly, with better range compared to M125. Same opinion. Not worth using for anything more than directly supporting infantry in an active engagement against unarmored targets.

Howitzers

Finally the big boys, the holy grail of all heavenly arsenals – the Howitzers! These babies don’t even get me started. Okay, you got me started. These babies rule as the king of artillery and all battlefields with soft targets. These babies will SHRED infantry and unarmored vehicles when used properly.

• M109A2 / M109A3GA1 – These two are very similar, useful for shelling infantry, best used in groups of 2. Although these can damage armored targets, they’re best targeted at soft targets. On-board smokes help support infantry and will turn the tides of infantry vs infantry combat.
• M110A2 / M110A2G – These two units are nearly identical, with only slight differences between road speed and fuel supply. No on-board machine gun means these guys CAN NEVER defend themselves. However, who needs to defend themselves when you’re sending little balls of hate bombs 25km? Packing a higher punch, these guys will shred infantry and soft targets pretty easily. Still recommended to at least pair these up.

Tips and Tricks

Never use artillery with auto-fire or counter-battery… these are wastes of time. Artillery prioritizes shooting airborne helicopters rather hopelessly when left to fire at will, and counter-battery will lose to shoot-and-scoot tactics that your opponent will employ from the second you return fire once.

So, if I can’t use fire at will, how do I get my artillery to fire where I want the fastest?

Command groups are your friend. Pair your artillery in twos, then give them a command group. From there, it’s as simple as: 1 t (click target) 2 t (click target). For larger artillery armies, I’ll group in 3s or 4s just to give the effect that the sky itself is falling on my opponents.

When should I employ artillery?

Any time you are expected to cover tight areas such as towns or forests, or anywhere else you’d expect to see a ton of enemy infantry. If you’re playing in open fields, artillery will be wasted command points as you should expect to see more armored targets than soft targets. If you do get artillery and don’t need it, or have downtime, don’t be afraid to donate rounds to your teammate’s side of the fight! Every second the artillery is firing is another second the enemy is micro-ing their units around large areas of denial!

Artillery Commands

Things you can do with Arty and commands:

1. You can give a Fire Position command. Shift click a Move command. Shift a Fire Pos command. Shift click a move command.

This will result in your Arty piece aiming and then shooting a salvo. Then move to a new position. Aim and shoot again. And move to a new position.

This can prevent counter arty to destroy your pieces easily

2. If you have any number of arty pieces in a control group. You can select the control group give a smoke command. Then hit Tab give new smoke command. You can repeat the last step for each of your arty pieces.

This allows you to create a line of smoke (This also works for Fire Pos command)

Very useful when pushing over an open field; Or when you want to smoke off a tree line/ town edge held by the ENY (With the Fire Pos command you can get fires on a whole tree line)

3. You can combine 1 & 2:

If you have two Arty pieces in control group 1 and your smoke command is the B key and move command is M key, the key presses look as follows:

1 (Select Control Group)
B (Smoke)
Tab
B (Smoke)
1 (Select Control Group)
Shift + M (Move)
Shift + B (Smoke)
Tab (Release Shift)
Shit + B (Smoke)
1 (Select Control Group)
Shift + M (Move)

Queue order relocation for towed arty requires more micro than self propelled arty.

Towed arty/units micro:

1. Set a control group for your arty units (example hotkey “1”).
2. Use Tab key to cycle though all the arty units within said control group and give each one an individual fire/smoke position order. This can be skipped if you just want all of them to HE shell the same spot.
3. Double tap the control group number to automatically jump to where your arty units are.
4. Group select 1 towed arty piece AND 1 transport together (towed arty piece and transport should be right on top of each other when you unload the towed arty)
5. Use Shift key and click on the towed arty name, this gives the command to load up after the fire mission is complete.
6. Still holding Shift key, click on your desired relocation spot. This gives the command to the transport to move to the relocation spot after load up order. Done.
7. Do Step 4-7 for the remainder of the towed arty + transports involved in the fire mission. Done.

Notes: You might want to consider including the towed arty transports in the same control group as the towed arty themselves. This allows you to still select the towed arty transports via the control group hotkey and unload them, after being loaded up from the previous relocation micro.

If you do this, might want to turn of any weapons on the transports as giving a fire position order with them selected will send them to the front lines AND use Ctrl + left click on the bottom middle of the screen and click on the towed arty to filter your unit selection to only have the towed arty units, so you can tab cycle to give individual fire/smoke pos orders.