Gates of Hell have fixed Artillery from the previous Call to Arms game, but this time they just don’t seem to perform for the price. Lets fix that.
Artillery Introduction
Artillery? Artillery. Is it artistic technique to till some soil? Will I become art if a shell lands at my feet? Even the tanks don’t care about all these shells I am carrying. Is it artillery when the only way to use it is to blast away defenses, less than 200 meters away? Stand in front of the breach for me before I pull this string okay? If you think artillery is as much as a joke as this paragraph then let’s begin in fixing the artillery.
Heavy Artillery
Heavy artillery can also be used as field guns with their AT ammunition, but that’s not the point of a 700 point unit. Most artillery as its own is a disappointment in performance. What happens when the enemy has mortars? You get artillery to counter that. What happens when the artillery shells don’t even hit and the enemy knows where it is when it fires within a proximity? Well tough luck. Let’s fix that.
What people don’t know is artillery itself actually predicts enemy movement for an indirect hit. But because artillery itself can’t hit anything, nobody would know unless they fixed the radius of the artillery.
Rocket Artillery
Rocket artillery is for area saturation. Actually already effective on it’s own, but sometimes that’s just not enough. The dispersion can sometimes not have 6 or 16 shots hit the target at all.
I find that rocket artillery don’t have enough distance for how light most projectiles are, but before that the rocket artillery itself is heavily punished for even firing above it’s maximum range.
Artillery FAQ
Does artillery automatically engage?
It does not engage units not within its line of sight. That means if an enemy is behind a hill from the artillery’s point of view then the artillery crew won’t target and fire. Mortars however don’t have that problem as they are more of a direct, indirect support weapon that are within the soldier that spots and engages enemy units.
To have heavy artillery at the front line is not only a bad idea, but it’s not that autonomous to support the units that are at the front line, despite spawning in with “hold fire”. It sort of has the same behavior as an AT gun crew; with needing a support team to spot targets around it’s direct line of sight.
How useful was artillery before the balance changes?
It was useful but completely situational to use it. Artillery that is effective would require you to no longer field front line troops for the population cap limit.
Was artillery ever a winning strategy?
No. Even in Conquest light tanks are a lot more useful in attacking defended control points. Artillery is suppose to counter the light AT and field guns, but every one of them less than 700 points can’t out-range a 75-76mm gun.
The versatility of a light artillery gun was not versatile at all. Sometimes you had to use AT guns against AT guns, and that itself is pretty cringe as those guns had enough HE shells as a tank yet fired a lot faster than one. A 37-45mm gun will always be more useful than a 81-82mm mortar.
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