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Mraah -> RE: Indirect artillery fire.... (7/18/2008 8:17:08 AM)
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dgk196,
To answer your question ... Does it work the way I expect it to? ... some parts yes ... some parts no [:)].
Parts that need changing (optional feature as always) ...
OFF BOARD ARTILLERY - preplanned missions.
Instead of having all the artillery on-board we need to move some off board (DCG games too). During the setup phase you select "target" hexes and assign the batteries to these hexes and select a turn that you want the artillery to arrive on, and how many turns you want the barrage to last. These "off board" assets are like the Airstrike assets ... you only get a few preplanned missions to burn. Then when it arrives, assuming 2 salvo's/battery, it lands on the target hex or any adjancent hex (randomly determined). You can see that having 4 batteries preset to arrive on target can pretty much cover a good chunk of ground ... just don't be around when it lands. Also, you can "cancel" the fire mission at any time, however, the delay (in turns) would be applied to whatever the highest HQ is present on the battlefield ... such as ... Corps (0 delay), Division (1), Brigade (2), Regiment (3), Battalion (4) ... or whatever values you want to use to suit ones own taste.
ON BOARD ARTILLERY - add a delay based on chain-of-command from the spotting unit upwards.
Since the game knows whether a hex is in LOS then it must know which unit can see what hex ... right? When you use the artillery dialog (or even directly from the gun battery unit) and select a hex it will scan for friendly units that can see the hex ... and then use the chain-of-command to incure a delay. The delay can run from one turn (like we have now) up to several turns ... again, depending on the best chain-link it can determine. So, when we click a hex a dialog appears ... it will tell us an ETA ... this ETA can flex +/- 1 turn if we want to add some randomness to it. At this point we can cancell the mission and move along. If we agree with the delay and click "ok" then another dialog appears asking us to set a time on-target (in turns, say 1 or 2 turns). After the batteries start firing you cannot cancel them (hence 2 turns max on-target). Then ... yes there's more ... the battery that just fired immediately goes to a low-ammo state, no if's-and's-or but's about it ... then later it's subject to the normal ammo recovery rule.
Does it solve the uber-artillery vs armor? ... no, but it minimizes the point-and-click destruction we have now.
From the accounts I read in books (accurate accounts but not really technical stuff) it seems to me that artillery was mostly preplanned and all they had to do was turn it on or off. Any adjustments from the "battle-plan" resulted in delays that either slowed the advance or worse case arrived off target on friendly troops because human error will always be a factor.
Thanks for listening!
Rob
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