Charles22
Posts: 912
Joined: 5/17/2000 From: Dallas, Texas, USA Status: offline
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I almost never buy artillery, but if I ever resort to bombardment it's either by air attack or much more likely to be from direct fire.
From what I've seen playing as Gerry, even if I don't inflict a casualty to the crew, if I fire at the unit between 5-10 times, the question of their getting back to the tank is very remote (actually....if we blend your strategy together with mine to deal with enemy crews, what do we come up with? Ah, bombard with tanks direct-fire. Actually I would feel safer with at least hurling 2 or three rounds via reguler direct-fire and then hurl in three or four rounds of direct-fire bombardment, which if it's coming from a 70mm+ gun, I would think would send their suppression up at least another ten points).
BTW, I mentioned somewhere, perhaps another thread, that the crews have only maximum speed of three, and so therefore aren't a threat, but since then I've found this to be untrue; it's a speed of six, and their mixed bag of weapons has a range of six. In my current battle, a large part of my hide was saved by that venomous AI trying to slaughter my crews. The crews, though some might have got slaughtered, gave enough time for my hard-charging relief platoon to stabilise and finally wipe out the tank opposition. I probably lost between 6-7 tanks in various forms of damage due to his concentrated attack. This was quite exciting, because the area had many times also been plastered very heavy bombardment from the Polish artillery. Ah, but just to make sure my now dominance is complete, a Ju88-A-4 is on it's way, next Polish phase it will hit. My engineers and rifle squads got the living daylights bombarded out of them. This was the first battle I'd fought which had times victory hexes on the front three clusters of hexes. Normally I'll defend the front haxes to the last man anyway, but if the hexes were who controlled them last, I probably would have abandoned them much quicker, as the bombardment was killer and the area's fire was pretty limited (visibility only 15 to boot).
It was rather fascinating for me, but the prior battle, the 9/39 one, I used a JU88-A-4 as well and it worked so well that I decided to get one again in the next battle. What happened in the first battle, was that I forgot to use it during the critical "I First Spot Enemy Tanks En Masse, Approaching" Phase. There was a mid-sector which the enemy was getting so many units in, en masse (during an assault), that I was facing the real possibility of my priorly ranges of one, for several infantry units, finding them totally wiped out, with the area tanks damaged (including malfunctioning guns) and threatened by Inf-ATs as well. Man, this was just picturesque; it was awesome!!! The Ju88 received 18 damage just upon entering the screen (the enemies rear - forgot to adjust flight path) and hit three or four hexes, right at the lynch-pin of the enemy geting on my hill. It must've wiped out like six or seven units, but ended up slicing one of my infantry in half, but my infantry stood firm. I couldn't believe that the JU88 hit the exact perfect hexes, at the exactly perfect time, and the enemy never had any gumption anymore; the hill was threatened no more. Believe it or not, after receiving 18 damage points, the Ju88 was ready for more duty, but I didn't dare use it again. I'm certain that the Ju88's target point was some five or six hexes distant from the hill, but he charged forward to the enemy's highest concentration. Frankly, I've yet to see a more dramatic point in a game, though my platoon of tanks racing from an unthreatened northern area to the severely attacked area in the south of the current battle comes close.
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