richmonder -> AI Artillery Control is NOW AVAILABLE! (12/26/2001 6:04:00 AM)
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Here's some good news for designers in regards to controlling the fire missions for your AI forces without having the computer override your settings.
(now someone may have already found this out, but I've never seen it discussed before; therefore, I post)
HERE'S HOW IT WOIKS:
1) Buy ONBOARD arty - not offboard - if you want to direct fire missions for a specific turn and/or hexes.
2) Alter the arty units as you see fit - gun type, tubes per unit, HE rounds, smoke - whatever. You can do rudimentary stuff in the SPWaW editor, but WaWEd.exe is vital for proper control and manipulation of the unit's composition.
3) Now set up these units via the artillery barrage screen and set their hexes/turns as you see the need.
4) HERE's the key - set these units as reinforcements for ONE TURN after the end of game. They will never appear; however, they WILL fire on the turn you set for their fire mission.
A few points for consideration:
They don't fire in that neat 4-hex row as offboard arty, but the spacing isn't too bad.
Remember that tubes in spaces 2-4 don't fire with quite the accuracy of tube #1. I think that's good as it gives some spread to the pattern.
Also, remember that ROF (rate of fire) affects how many rounds a unit can get off. If the ROF is set to 6 and you have 12-15 rounds of HE per tube, it won't fire all of those.
I have no clue if the onboard arty w/ end-of-game reinforcement status will fire on any other turns other than the assigned turn (that is, if they have excess ammo after the first assigned turn for the mission). I would not think so, but there is a possibility of that.
I've found I can set up a 120mm mortar squad with 3 tubes and 3-4 rounds per tube. This gives a nice fat blanketing for any assignment. The big guns are just flat out scary when you can assign them accurately and take it out of the AI's hands.
If this is a repeat, I apologize. But otherwise - enjoy!
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