Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653

Edit: I don't use the Attack Planner, but there might be an option in there, too.

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ORIGINAL: amattin

Awesome, thank you both! I see that I can use the attack planner and only assign supports as a way of bombarding, thats pretty much what I was hoping for.

As far as setting the indirect units to Support mode, is that in the Deploy sub menu? Would I set them to Local/tactical reserve?

Thanks again!

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ORIGINAL: amattin

Thank you! Yes, that was exactly what I was wondering, which of those modes to use to ensure that those units weren't just sitting.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

From my experience, you'll want your artillery in direct support of an attack. This is doubly so since there's no chance of artillery being unavailable to support defenders in TOAW IV, because they retain their deployment status after bombarding. This is a trifle unrealistic but let's not worry about that.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay


Actually, if they were in Mobile deployment prior to being added to the attack, they will resume that deployment after the attack. So, there is some chance of being unavailable for their defenders.

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First put them in a reserve deployment (or leave them dug in if they started that way), then directly assign them.

And why is that unrealistic?

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

Only if the player screws up. No player is going to deliberately leave their artillery on mobile status before assigning them to an attack.

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Because the IGO-UGO system is an abstraction. In the real world, force 2 doesn't sit there patiently waiting for force 1 to finish their attacks before starting their own: in fact they're occurring simultaneously. If a force commits all of its artillery to a particular push, in the real world this creates a risk that the artillery isn't going to be available if a counterattack shows up somewhere else. The way this used to be simulated in TOAW is that the player might get early turn ending before being able to set all that artillery back to support. Now he needn't worry: the guns can blast away freely and happily and still take breaks to paste that counterattack that's happening at the same time.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

Regardless, continuous artillery usage is modeled by the strength reduction due to supply expenditure.

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Finally, passive artillery support of attacks retains defensive support ability. Why should direct support be different?

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

Not if the artillery is already at 1% supply.

In TOAW, good troops are still pretty effective at 1% supply. A lot of the time, the right play is to just bang away at everything and to hell with your supply level: what you want is to have your artillery fight for ten combat rounds on direct support, then be on passive support for the whole enemy turn, too.

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Let's look at the real world situation.

An artillery battery is supporting some attack somewhere, when a report radios in that there's a furious counterattack being made in the other direction and they're needed for counter-battery. The battery switches support halfway through its schedule to follow the new orders.

How on earth can the unit then be said to be fully supporting the attack? They cannot be bombarding both targets at once. Either they're dedicated to the attack or they're allowed to switch targets- which would be passive support.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

1% supply does not mean out of supply. It just means maximum fire discipline has been reached. Obviously, infantry, tanks, and everything else besides artillery can directly apply their full strength throughout their player-turn, then defend throughout the enemy player-turn. Why should artillery be different?

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Again, the enemy player-turn is not occurring simultaneously with the friendly player-turn.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

IGO-UGO is an abstraction only necessary to make PBEM possible?

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

Infantry moves when it attacks and then they're out of position and more vulnerable to attack. Moreover, unit quality is much more important for units on the line as it governs RFC probability as well as unit strength.

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You do realise this is supposed to be a simulation, don't you? That IGO-UGO is an abstraction only necessary to make PBEM possible?

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

Infantry moves when it attacks and then they're out of position and more vulnerable to attack. Moreover, unit quality is much more important for units on the line as it governs RFC probability as well as unit strength.

I'm not sure what your point is here? Back to supply: The supply model covers direct combat by ground elements in both friendly and enemy player-turns. It has to function the same for ranged support.

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You do realise this is supposed to be a simulation, don't you? That IGO-UGO is an abstraction only necessary to make PBEM possible?

Combat operations have a great deal of inertia to them. Combat really isn't endlessly continuous. Soldiers have to rest and sleep. Previous operations have to be evaluated - including gathering intel about them. Future plans have to be devised. Orders have to be designed and distributed. Supplies and replacements have to be distributed. Plenty of slack to allow one side to act and the other to react. IGOUGO isn't as great an abstraction as most players think.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

So you have no argument?...

Life is tough all over.

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When bombarding, should you always select "ignore losses"?

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ORIGINAL: rhinobones

To add on to sPzAbt's reply, when conducting preparatory artillery attacks adding a single ground unit to the attack is supposed to amplify the defender losses. The attack capability of the ground unit isn’t a factor, just that a ground unit is in some way involved. In this manner most people use a small unit (engineering/AT/AA) that would not be necessary for the main assault.

Of course, this is considered “gamey”, so use with discretion. Try it first in a PO/solo game to see how it works.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
This has been rendered obsolete by the Assault Ratio rules: See 13.20.