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Soar_Slitherine -> RE: The uses of artillery (6/20/2020 12:49:23 AM)
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There seem to be a few mechanics that should increase the effectiveness of artillery in direct attack compared to bombardment.
1) Attacks targeting hidden subunits are penalized, and direct combat increases the recon on the enemy force as it goes on, revealing hidden enemies so the supporting artillery can attack with reduced penalties.
2) If you fire a preparatory bombardment and then follow up with a direct attack, any subunits forced to retreat by hits from the bombardment have an opportunity to recover and still contribute to the defense, but if you go straight into a combined direct attack instead, the attacking force can immediately exploit any retreats forced by the artillery to more easily dislodge the enemy from the hex.
3) During bombardment, enemy artillery can target your artillery with counterbattery fire. If your artillery is supporting other forces in a direct attack instead, the enemy artillery will have other targets to keep them busy, so effective counterbattery fire is far less likely.
Then there are a few reasons why adding more artillery (or other units) to a direct attack might not always be beneficial.
A) When all the units involved in an attack are under the same OHQ, the concentric attack bonus is doubled. In such a case, adding independent artillery not attached to that OHQ will lower the concentric attack bonus.
B) There's a stacking limit - attacking with too many subunits in a single attack will lower their combat efficiency.
C) There's a limit to how many times each target can be attacked in the same combat round without penalty. Artillery doesn't get to have a high attack score, they get to attack multiple times as their firepower increases instead. As such, if they come up before your harder-hitting units in the initiative order (which is determined randomly), they could saturate targets and end up nerfing your most powerful attacks.
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