Artillery in HoI4

[Axe99]

The idea is a brainstorming thread about artillery in HoI4. Kicked off from a discussion @Alex_brunius and I were having in the AI thread, but as he rightly pointed out, not the place to carry it on, but I do think it's an important element of the game (indeed, artillery are arguably as important as armour, so getting it right is important - but artillery is possibly harder to get 'right' than armour, as it's generally not a direct combat element.

At the moment, the issue is that after a certain amount of infantry, stacking divs with tons of arty makes them pretty potent in soft attack, such that there's a significant advantage over the AI. I've only played a few hours of TfV, so early days there, but it sounds like it's still a thing.

The state of play at the moment:

- artillery battalions in HoI4 have 36 guns in them, and do a whole heap of soft attack.

- there have been mixed thoughts on the forums about what artillery 'guns' represent. Some say heavy arty (100mm+) only, others say 75mm or so up.

- historically, artillery tended to be around 12-24 guns a battalion - in my quick look at some TO&Es, I haven't seen any battalions of 36 guns, which does seem a bit on the high side. For division composition, see this link.

That said, even if we reduce the cost and SA of an arty battalion down to their historical gun size, it won't solve the problem, it'll just mean more arty battalions for the same effect.

One thought that popped up in previous discussion (this is me bringing up other people's ideas - I'm not an arty expert, just interested in the arty game being done right) was the idea of two parallel combat widths - one for direct combat units, and one for supporting forces. Things like RART, ART and SPGs would take up 'support width', while frontline units (INF, TD, ARM, AT) would take up combat width. That way, there'd be a limit at which arty would no longer be useful (that point should still be pretty expensive though) - perhaps with a diminishing marginal returns kind of arrangement, so that there's no clear 'right' answer, and someone with a silly amount of arty might stack it up more, even if the marginal benefit of that sixth battalion might not be so much (think some of the USSR's crazy barrages later in the war).

That said - this isn't a suggestion thread - it's a brainstorming thread. After brainstorming, I reckon we put the best of what we can bang our brains together with in the suggestions thread though. I think getting arty right is probably the land combat game's biggest 'combat' (as opposed to the movement and placement of troops) mechanic challenge, so worth talking about (and has been talked about before - feel free to bring back posts from discussions in the past, there were some good ones).

 

[atredies]

I always was of the opinion that simple ART was too OP, and should provide a stacking speed penalty to the division the more you attach simulating more arduous logistical problems related to moving very heavy equipment, setting it up, packing it up, and moving it around again.

 

[Secret Master]

I'm going to repost something I said in the other thread, then add some additional commentary:

I've noticed that when units with little ART fight each other, you get trench warfare. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

One of the weird things is that mortars and other lighter artillery is represented by the support weapons tech. But that tech boosts breakthrough and defense, not soft attack.

I understand why the tech is set up that way (and is not a separate piece of equipment), but I can't be the only person thinking that it might be a good idea in the future to create separate equipment for support weapons, give that equipment some soft attack, and then retool infantry to require some support equipment. (Maybe even make a MIL type of infantry that just uses infantry kits and no support weapons). You could then bridge the current gap between the overpowering presence of ART and INF.

One issue with support weapons being set up the way they are is that having cutting-edge infantry is simply a matter of two tech tree paths and one kind of equipment.

In my current MP game as India (Sunflower, so none of the Raj goodies in TFV) I used the generic minor NF tree to grab the highest tier of support weapons ahead of time. I paid the research price, but it instantly upgraded my divisions' fighting ability with no cost in terms of industry. I was still cranking out mediocre tier 1 infantry kits as quickly as I could, but I was sitting there with higher breakthrough and defense like it was nobody's business. Meanwhile, if I had upgraded to MAR or MTN, I'd be sitting at an equipment deficit that "pays" for the benefits of those units.

The potential effects aren't really obvious when playing majors; everyone gets the tech, and it's easy to spam infantry kits and even ART. When playing a minor with lots of manpower and less industry, the disparity is much more obvious.

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Mighty Raj, it is I, high-tech Japan, come to ruin your day! See my high tech infantry divisions, and despair!"

"Hiya, high-tech Japan. I tech rushed support weapons, so we're all good. I only need 15 MIC on infantry kits to outfit a few million troops, so I don't really care about your high tech infantry. Your ART concerns me, but we're fighting in Burma, so good luck dragging a bunch of 40 width divisions with 4 ART a piece through there."

"Rats! Foiled again!"

What I think should instead happen is something like this:

INF should be split into new units.

Great War Infantry and Advanced Infantry

Great War Infantry keeps current INF stats and equipment costs. It is no longer affected by support weapons.

Advanced Infantry works differently. It costs twice as many infantry kits. It has more breakthrough and defense. It benefits from the support weapons tech. The Support Weapons tech now adds soft attack; more soft attack per tier.

Support weapons will also affect MTN, PARA, MAR.

Here's how I want it balanced:

With no support weapon tech, Advanced Infantry has more defense and breakthrough, but has the exact same soft attack as Great War Infantry. As you add more support weapon tiers, you get more soft attack.

But here's the best part: since the soft attack bonus enjoyed by Advanced Infantry scales to support weapons and not infantry kit tech, it means that at low techs, Advanced Infantry is not really a good choice. You might actually want Great War style infantry if you are an impoverished nation or even a great power in 1936. But as tech advances, the superiority of Advanced Infantry over Great War Infantry on a per manpower basis becomes ever more obvious.

Infantry kits would have equal effects on both types of infantry. This would allow Lend-Leasing of nice equipment to lower tech nations to still have a beneficial effect. Oh, the Raj doesn't have support weapons or Advanced Infantry? That's fine. Those fancy Tier 2 infantry kits still boost stats.

You would also want to consider a small nerf to ART and SPART.

EDIT:

This would also allow us to more easily create second-tier garrison units for rear areas. We can kind of do that with equipment now, but with this set up, it will be more distinct.

 

[Meglok]

@Axe99
HOI4 artillery "battalions" represent the generic medium and heavy artillery units of various nations, usually of 85 mm and up.
HOI4 artillery support companies represent the various large mortar and infantry guns assigned to a division.
The support weapon bonus in the infantry tech line is the lighter weapons, Hvy machines guns, light mortars, etc.
At least that is what I have understood from replies to questions I asked in the past.

The 36 tube battalion is the generic standard they chose and likely comes from Western templates. You can find enough examples in the Nafziger files to come up with 36 tube units. But it isn't in any sense historical, either by division type or nationality. And the tube numbers vary in motorized HOI4 artillery. 36 is just a good generic number for them.

There is no reason you couldn't knock the tube numbers down to somewhere between 12 and 24, adjust the firepower, and adjust the width down to 2. It would wind up reducing the firepower just because you would have to use more divisional slots to get the same firepower as a 36 tube battalion. Which of course deals with the issues people have about OP artillery and Space Marines. TommyLotto did this in his Fox and Lion mod. This is probably a simpler expedient than trying to introduce separate width pools.

You could also look at reducing the amount of firepower in support companies, as these represent smaller gun sizes as well as smaller numbers of tubes.

When they get around to fixing everything that was broken by 1.3 and get all the new things working as planned I will start thinking about what to do. Right now things are such a mess it isn't worth even trying now.

 

[Axe99]

Here's how I want it balanced:

With no support weapon tech, Advanced Infantry has more defense and breakthrough, but has the exact same soft attack as Great War Infantry. As you add more support weapon tiers, you get more soft attack.

But here's the best part: since the soft attack bonus enjoyed by Advanced Infantry scales to support weapons and not infantry kit tech, it means that at low techs, Advanced Infantry is not really a good choice. You might actually want Great War style infantry if you are an impoverished nation or even a great power in 1936. But as tech advances, the superiority of Advanced Infantry over Great War Infantry on a per manpower basis becomes ever more obvious.

Infantry kits would have equal effects on both types of infantry. This would allow Lend-Leasing of nice equipment to lower tech nations to still have a beneficial effect. Oh, the Raj doesn't have support weapons or Advanced Infantry? That's fine. Those fancy Tier 2 infantry kits still boost stats.

You would also want to consider a small nerf to ART and SPART.

EDIT:

This would also allow us to more easily create second-tier garrison units for rear areas. We can kind of do that with equipment now, but with this set up, it will be more distinct.

This is a great idea, but is more improving INF than fixing ART. That said, as far as I've read (and again, sorry for not being up on this, but my reading's all naval at the moment, and will be until my mod's where I want it) ART should be overpowering against an enemy without artillery, even if they're (WW2 level) advanced - no amount of mortars, LMGs and Bazookas will compensate for a battalion of 75mm guns lobbing shells in and causing trouble.

@Axe99
HOI4 artillery "battalions" represent the generic medium and heavy artillery units of various nations, usually of 85 mm and up.

This would be easier if different nations defined it well - the US call 105mm light, for example! That said, looking at the various TO&Es (just from that site), there seems to be a fair amount of variation in terms of how arty was organised. For example, the British and US looked to keep all their artillery that wasn't mortars or bazookas in separate regiments/brigades, while the Germans had more embedded artillery within their infantry regiments (75mm guns, but about a battalion's worth - although I'm not as good at reading the German symbols so could have messed this up) and had one heavy artillery regiment (in many of their divisions) of four battalions of 12 105mm+ guns each. The Soviets looked to have a bit both ways, with separate artillery battalions (8 x 76mm, 4 x 122mm) but also had 4 x 76mm within each infantry battalion (this is looking at a 1942 Rifle Division).

Doing some quick Googling, the Soviet 76mm had a range of 14km, so I'd think it'd qualify. However, the German 75mm IG 18 only had a range of 3.5km, and is probably better considered a light support gun, covered off by the arty support company.

That said, looking at that site, I can find plenty of regiments/brigades of 36 guns, but not a single battalion (I've just done a quick look though, I may have missed something).

Edit: Sorry about that - as the phone rang I slipped and managed to post a half-garbled mess. I clearly should have my keyboard privileges revoked!

Second half was to say that I agree with what @tommylotto did and thanks for posting that, it's a good idea . If that could solve the spam on its own, then that'd do the job and be a lot easier. I'm just not sure that just scaling it down would necessarily work, as with 25 battalion slots you could still have a silly number of arty battalions even with nine infantry battalions and nothing else.

 

[Saski77]

As a historian and division composition nerd, I also want to see a proper artillery regiment in place.

Would dropping the number of guns per batallion to 12 and adjusting the manpower and effects as well affect too much of the game mechanics or AI right now?

 

[Gamer_1745]

Different Armies use terms differently at different times. Artillery as used in HoI is Field Howitzers (Field Artillery). Son no the Germans did not in that sense have artillery in their infantry units, the had infantry guns. Also the millimeter thing can be very deceptive. Let me show what I mean below.

This is a 7.5 cm Leichte Feldkanone 18

This is a 7.5 cm leichtes Infanteriegeschütz 18

They are both 75mm, but shoot a very different round!

This is a 15-cm-schwere Feldhaubitze 18

This is a 15-cm-schweres Infanteriegeschütz 33

They also are very different and shoot very different rounds. The infantry guns rounds are much less powerful than 'artillery' rounds & have very much less range. Artillery in HoI are the field guns, and the support weapons are the infantry guns.

 

[Gamer_1745]

Also artillery should have a very high attrition rate! Replace a units guns every 2 or 3 battles?? This would keep units from being too artillery heavy. The real cost for artillery is not the guns, but the ammo. Since ammo is figured into things either guns should be hugely expensive or have a very high attrition rate.

 

[Secret Master]

ART should be overpowering against an enemy without artillery, even if they're (WW2 level) advanced - no amount of mortars, LMGs and Bazookas will compensate for a battalion of 75mm guns lobbing shells in and causing trouble.

I agree. It's partially why I want INF to make more sense.

But I'm not sure ART is justifiably as powerful as it is now. If ART could be fired continuously all the time during WWII, it would make sense in its current form. As it stands now, it has that massive firepower advantage all day, every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

A slight nerf to the soft attack might do well in lieu of a radical mechanic change, like ART only having X number of hours in combat it can fire at full strength.

 

[adam_grif]

Reposting from an earlier thread:

I'm more in favour of making Arty 0 width (perhaps even having a special section in templates just for artillery, not even in support or frontline units), and balancing it with the dual mechanisms of increased supply usage and "saturation" - only so many guns per unit of combat width will be effective and if you spam artillery past the optimal point it becomes progressively less effective per gun. I would set the optimal point at about 40-50 guns per 20 combat width to be roughly historical - slightly more than they historically had per division on average but not too far from that ballpark. By the time you hit 80 guns per 20 width it's basically not helping and is just wasting tons of supplies.

On the topic of the earlier discussion of support techs not increasing SA, it might be good to separate out a new type of equipment that is basically light/support artillery, manifactured separately from support eq.

 

[Meglok]

@Axe99
Don't get hung up on historical vs what PDS did with artillery. Generically abstracted from historical references best describes the product now. Because of their design choice as of now to use generic templates instead of nation specific historical ToE templates nothing will look historical. If a modder wants to tackle historical they can, assuming PDS can EVER get the template code to work.
The other thing @tommylotto did iirc was to decouple artillery from infantry. He made artillery its own prime category, which also reduces the number of divisional slots artillery can use. As he designed it artillery is rather elegant and is historically based upon national ToEs.

@Secret Master
The other thing artillery needs is a much higher supply usage value. That would reflect the ammo and tail better than current design, and would make Artillery heavy designs more painful to contemplate in all but high infrastructure areas. You could also tinker with org and hit points, but HOI4 supply is just too damn easy right now, even in the worst real world areas.

 

[Uniform764]

I personally attribute the issues to the supply decisions that Paradox made and the division designer.

The former is obvious. Arty takes a lot of shells to remain effective. With no requirement to build or transport ammunition one of the biggest limits on Arty usage is sidestepped.

The second is probably a bit controversial, I know a lot of people are big fans of it and it's fun to play around in, but it gives way too much scope for "gamey" divisions. Especially given most majors start with no arty, or support arty in their templates and limited stockpiles of big guns, so adding two battalions of arty gives you a frankly obscene combat advantage.

 

[Axe99]

Great thoughts all, cheers for posting .

Different Armies use terms differently at different times. Artillery as used in HoI is Field Howitzers (Field Artillery).

They also are very different and shoot very different rounds. The infantry guns rounds are much less powerful than 'artillery' rounds & have very much less range. Artillery in HoI are the field guns, and the support weapons are the infantry guns.

I definitely agree the 7.5cm IG 18 isn't what we're shooting to cover here . My feeling is the best thing to use would be types of guns used in the role of divisional artillery (even if, like the Soviets, they had some guns of the same type both in their infantry battalions and in separate artillery battalions) - because otherwise things'd get messy - but not get hung up on calibre (particular as this kind of artillery, unlike naval artillery, didn't need to worry as much about penetration - at least afaik - so I'd guess (but could be wrong) that the weight of fire is more important than the size of a particular shell). That way, the guns we're trying to represent as 'line artillery' in HoI4 could include (these are just examples from various historical divisions from the site linked in the OP - please forgive (and correct, if easy ) any errors in reading the charts):

- the Germans (Wave 1 Inf, May 1940) with what look to be no 7.5cm guns, but 36 105mm Field Howitzers and 12 150mm Field Howitzers (across 4 battalions)
- the US (Triangular Inf, Dec 1941), with a very similar set up (36 105mm Howitzers and 12 155mm Howitzers across 4 battalions)
- The British (Inf Div, May 1940) with 48 25 pounders (87.6mm calibre), 12 18 pounders (83.8mm) and 12 4.5 inch (114mm) Howitzers (across three battalions).
- The French (Inf Div, May 1940) with 36 75mm guns and 25 155mm howitzers (across 5 battalions).
- The Soviets (Inf Div, Apr 1941) with 16 76mm guns, 32 122mm guns and 12 152mm guns (across 5 battalions).
- The Japanese (Triangular regular Inf Div, Dec 1941) with (noting it varied a bit) 24 75mm guns and 24 105mm guns (across 4 battalions).
- The Italian (Inf Div, 1940) with 24 75mm guns and 12 100mm guns across three battalions.

From this, I'd say 12 guns a battalion makes sense (does anyone know if the British had the same number for 24 87mm guns as the French did for 12 75mm, or whether a British arty 'battalion' is actually closer to two arty battalions in most other armies?), and that most infantry divisions would have had 4-5/6 of them.

If arty battalions in HoI4 as it stands now had their stats divided by three (more or less - at least for the combat values - might need to be a bit more careful with widths, supply values and manpower) that might go some way to making it harder to 'trick out' a div with unrealistic amounts of artillery (as they'd need to get close to filling on column just to get historic arty numbers).

I agree. It's partially why I want INF to make more sense.

But I'm not sure ART is justifiably as powerful as it is now. If ART could be fired continuously all the time during WWII, it would make sense in its current form. As it stands now, it has that massive firepower advantage all day, every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

A slight nerf to the soft attack might do well in lieu of a radical mechanic change, like ART only having X number of hours in combat it can fire at full strength.

I'll happily agree with that . What about @Gamer_1745 's idea of making them have very high levels of combat attrition? That way, they'll only likely be ready for a 'full barrage' at the start of combat, and then run down capability quickly afterwards (unless the player has stockpiled heaps of artillery (representing ammo) - and even that will take a little time to get to the front, so after a combat has started arty shouldn't be full strength again until after a pause - and then only if production can keep up? That'd more or less work within existing systems as well.

@Axe99
Don't get hung up on historical vs what PDS did with artillery. Generically abstracted from historical references best describes the product now. Because of their design choice as of now to use generic templates instead of nation specific historical ToE templates nothing will look historical. If a modder wants to tackle historical they can, assuming PDS can EVER get the template code to work.
The other thing @tommylotto did iirc was to decouple artillery from infantry. He made artillery its own prime category, which also reduces the number of divisional slots artillery can use. As he designed it artillery is rather elegant and is historically based upon national ToEs.

Aye, I totally get that - I was thinking if we all threw ideas around we might be able to come up with a suggestion(s) that might help PDS refine the system to get more interesting division compositions, while hopefully still being good gameplay and preferably representing things a bit more historically. I think things like tommylotto making arty its own category is a good step in this direction, and his work shows its possible even within the current system to get TO&Es a bit closer to historical ones. Have you played much FnLB? If yes, how do you find how that setup works in terms of gameplay and the AI?

 

[Meglok]

Aye, I totally get that - I was thinking if we all threw ideas around we might be able to come up with a suggestion(s) that might help PDS refine the system to get more interesting division compositions, while hopefully still being good gameplay and preferably representing things a bit more historically.

I don't think PDS is interested in moving beyond generic unit composition at this time, and maybe never will be. The philosophy of those in charge seems more towards appeal to the masses and if you want historical mod it. The problem is the AI and the battle planner as of right now do not play well with mods that lean towards historical compositions and quantities of divisions. Comments like the AI plays better with only infantry and the AI is designed to use hordes of divisions do not leave a warm fuzzy feeling in my modding heart.
It is very easy to mod in additional artillery units to represent light or heavy, and/or different tube ToEs as used by various nations. Getting it to balance, and then getting the AI to even use them instead of defaulting to generic template code is harder. Something is either hidden from modders or we are all missing something, especially in 1.3, regarding template design. The templates as envisioned are not happening even for PDS right now.

I think things like tommylotto making arty its own category is a good step in this direction, and his work shows its possible even within the current system to get TO&Es a bit closer to historical ones. Have you played much FnLB? If yes, how do you find how that setup works in terms of gameplay and the AI?

I definitely like his approach. It allows for a more historical ToE build out, and it nerfs artillery down to a more realistic size. If the battle planner was working better and the Ai could actually make good decisions about production in 1.2 I felt his mod would play out much better than vanilla. When the AI wasn't stepping on it's sword it certainly seemed so.

The issue I and I suspect many other people have is getting around the basic design concepts of HOI4 and how the game engine was developed and coded around those concepts. If PDS would just concentrate on fixing the damn broken or sub-optimal features in the game and let us beta test things before they release it, then modders could get to work on making the game better. It is hard to sit down and spend hours coding and testing when you are not even sure PDS won't rip everything you worked on out in 3-4 months. Once again we are trying to figure out did they really mean for some of these changes in 1.3 to work like this, or is it just buggy as hell and we can expect 1 or 2 more hot fixes.

All that being said, if we could get TommyLotto, SleightofHand (vanilla +) and the guy that did the Expanded AI mod to work together they would probably come up with a fantastic game mod that would be historical and play well.

 

[TomBombadil]

I always was of the opinion that simple ART was too OP, and should provide a stacking speed penalty to the division the more you attach simulating more arduous logistical problems related to moving very heavy equipment, setting it up, packing it up, and moving it around again.

Division speed relates less to the actual speed the troops and equipment could advance at, more to the speed a division can travel at. The top speed of artillery already factors in this, mounted on carriages artillery can be transported much faster than 4kph, and the challenges of moving them is no greater than shifting all the ammunition and supplies infantry need.

Artillery is OP in HOI4 because artillery was OP in WW2. Most of the killing was done by artillery, and artillery was usually the decisive factor in disorganising enemy forces.

 

[fabius]

I agree. It's partially why I want INF to make more sense.

But I'm not sure ART is justifiably as powerful as it is now. If ART could be fired continuously all the time during WWII, it would make sense in its current form. As it stands now, it has that massive firepower advantage all day, every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

A slight nerf to the soft attack might do well in lieu of a radical mechanic change, like ART only having X number of hours in combat it can fire at full strength.

Two points:

1. Yep, the main issue with Art being so powerful that it massively distorts realistic division templates is AMMUNITION based.

No Arty- not even the Yanks or Soviets could fire endlessly 24/7. Please paradox, one day add ammunition as a supply thing that is produced and delivered like equipment.


2. Arty of WW2 era (heck even most today) has a huge danger close zone. That means that in close fighting phases of combat Arty is less effective.
I think there's more that could be done with the base combat mechanics. Such as having range phases that are terrain (and general) dependent.
This could also help armour, guns, TDs, be more naturally powerful in plains. And infantry in forest, urban, fortification.

 

[Alex_brunius]

That said, even if we reduce the cost and SA of an arty battalion down to their historical gun size, it won't solve the problem, it'll just mean more arty battalions for the same effect.

It would partially solve the problem since there are actually several problems here. Let's break them down with alot of stats!

1. Artillery has a high amount of soft attack per cost compared to Inf EQ:
   Using 1940 techs Inf EQ has 9.9SA/0.075KIC = 132 SA/KIC
   Using 1940 techs Artillery has 58SA/0.144KIC = 403 SA/KIC (+205% more)
   Using 1939/41 average and +5 variant SPGs has 93.2SA/0.5KIC = 186 SA/KIC (+41% more)
   
   
2. Artillery has a high amount of soft attack per width compared to Inf EQ:
   Using 1940 techs Inf EQ has 9.9SA/2Width = 4.95 SA/Width
   Using 1940 techs Artillery has 58SA/3Width = 19.33 SA/Width (+290% more)
   Using 1939/41 average and +5 variant SPGs has 93.2SA/3Width = 31 SA/Width (+527% more)
   
   
3. Breakthrough/Defense Mechanics potentially boost any added Soft attack by x4 if it's just enough to get over enemy Breakthrough/Defense.
   This potentially increase the actual damage done by 1940 tech Artillery above to up to +1100% per cost and +1460% per width over Infantry EQ
   This potentially increase the actual damage done by 1939/41 average and +5 variant SPGs above to up to +460% per cost and +2400% per width over Infantry EQ
   
   
4. Artillery has a high amount of soft attack per supply compared to Inf EQ:
   Using 1940 techs Inf EQ has 9.9SA/0.07Supply = 141 SA/Supply
   Using 1940 techs Artillery has 58SA/0.20Supply = 290 SA/Supply (+105% more)
   Using 1939/41 average and +5 variant SPGs has 93.2SA/0.44Supply = 212 SA/Supply (+50% more)

Yes, your reading this right. SPGs in "Space Marine" Infantry divisions can boost their actual damage output by up to 25 times as much per width compared to adding more infantry instead of them!!! (the most extreme example and situation)

Anyways, reducing it to 12 guns per battalion and 1/3:ed SA while keeping the same 3 width, would partially solve the problem with too much firepower per width.

The obvious first Issue I spot right away with the above number analysis is that adding artillery or even SPGs actually gives you more soft attack for the same amount of supply, compared to more infantry. That can't be right given the discussion above surrounding the cost of logistics and ammunition. Cost is also a concern since we due to HoI4s mechanics need to factor in both wear and tear from usage and ammunition in the initial cost, and this probably means Artillery/SPGs SA/cost needs to be brought down as well.

Soft attack / Width I'm not sure has to be an issue, because here Artillery/SPGs is supposed to be superior and be possible to use as a way to increase concentration of firepower. This is what they do at their core (and they are good at it).

One thought that popped up in previous discussion (this is me bringing up other people's ideas - I'm not an arty expert, just interested in the arty game being done right) was the idea of two parallel combat widths - one for direct combat units, and one for supporting forces. Things like RART, ART and SPGs would take up 'support width', while frontline units (INF, TD, ARM, AT) would take up combat width.

To be honest I'd like to find a solution where Artillery can be balanced while instead taking up 0 width like in HoI3. If Width is actually supposed to represent physical space on the frontline it makes no sense to have indirect fire weapons add it, and you would have trouble to argue the space of 12 or 36 guns behind a front of 9000 riflemen would be significant enough to have any sort of crowded situation behind your lines as well.

Yes this does make them even harder to balance since it means they suddenly provide infinite amounts of added soft attack per width!!! ( but I think it makes them more unique and historical mechanics wise ).

That way, there'd be a limit at which arty would no longer be useful (that point should still be pretty expensive though) - perhaps with a diminishing marginal returns kind of arrangement, so that there's no clear 'right' answer, and someone with a silly amount of arty might stack it up more, even if the marginal benefit of that sixth battalion might not be so much (think some of the USSR's crazy barrages later in the war).

Diminishing returns while being an interesting mechanics that I almost support everywhere, would not be ideal in this situation. The reason is the big freedom in divisions design where you simply can get around it by making more smaller 10 or 20 width divisions instead that have fewer artillery / SPG units in them and as such also less "diminishing returns" assuming it's added in the division design step which is the only logical place to have it. To get it right you would have to use quite complex things like / division size or something.

That said - this isn't a suggestion thread - it's a brainstorming thread. After brainstorming, I reckon we put the best of what we can bang our brains together with in the suggestions thread though. I think getting arty right is probably the land combat game's biggest 'combat' (as opposed to the movement and placement of troops) mechanic challenge, so worth talking about (and has been talked about before - feel free to bring back posts from discussions in the past, there were some good ones).

I agree. It's a massive challenge. Based on my numbers above one thing I would like to try is:

• Tweak Artillery/Infantry/SPGs supply use per SA such that Infantry is about twice as effective per supply compared to Artillery/SPGs.
• Increase the combat penalty from out of supply to at least -50% (current -33% after 33days), so the above balance "is felt" quickly enough to matter. Artillery without ammo doing 67% of damage as currently is just silly.
• Tweak Artillery/Infantry/SPGs cost per SA such that Infantry is either equally effective per cost, or slightly better then Artillery/SPGs.

Given the above I think it could actually be possible to try to bring Artillery down to 0 width like in HoI3 since just like in HoI3 infantry is still better in fronts were supply is limited and equal or slightly better when cost is the limit (such as with some minors). Attack per manpower is still ( and should be ) way better for the Artillery and SPGs.

 

[AmpsterMan]

I'm usually a proponent of adopting the change that changes least. A simple nerf would be to change the amount of guns to 12 per battalion , reduce width to 1 and then reduce all other stats by 1/3.

Does that solve the space marines issue? Probably not. But it makes it more expensive to achieve in terms of military experience AND it means less usable space in a division.

Start with a small change and move from there.

 

[Alex_brunius]

I'm usually a proponent of adopting the change that changes least. A simple nerf would be to change the amount of guns to 12 per battalion , reduce width to 1 and then reduce all other stats by 1/3.

Does that solve the space marines issue? Probably not. But it makes it more expensive to achieve in terms of military experience AND it means less usable space in a division.

Would that really have any meaningful impact though?

The "standard" 7+2 template would simply turn into a 7+6 template instead and it just costs you 20 extra Military XP which to be honst is not much, being the same as a very cheap variant or adding 2 support battalions. You also gain more flexibility to swap out front-line Artillery for AT/AA more easily 1:1, so it's probably actually more powerful.

The bigger 14+4->14+12 templates are made impossible to make, since your exactly 1 slot short... which just reduce the artillery firepower by ~9% and make it a 39 width template, not a huge difference there either.

 

[Louella]

- there have been mixed thoughts on the forums about what artillery 'guns' represent. Some say heavy arty (100mm+) only, others say 75mm or so up.

the names for the equipment are kind of confusing, with artillery 1 and 2 seeming to be light guns for most countries, but artillery 3 being more of a heavy gun.


I think, perhaps, there is something that I can make a comparison with. I've played a ww2 set tactics game, "Close Combat", one of the games was set on the Russian front. but that's not important right now. What is important is, that in the game, there were 2 kinds of 'artillery'. You commanded a small group of forces, that included infantry squads, a few tanks/vehicles, mortars and small guns.

There were the fixed or very-low-mobility guns that you could have under your direct command, that would engage targets as you saw fit. Infantry guns, anti-tank guns, even up to 88mm AA guns.

But there were, in some battles, some off-screen "Artillery", that you chose the approximate targets for their barrage, that would fire when the action began, but would not fire again during the action that you controlled.


So, that might be an important question to think about - what are the artillery units supposed to be ? field guns, directly engaging enemy forces, under local command, at ranges of a couple thousand metres at most ? Or guns firing a preliminary barrage, on suspected enemy positions, before any contact has been made, from ranges of 10km or more ? Because that's an important thing to think about.

Especially, because it also relates to how to place SPGs, because a lot of these are more what you might class as "assault guns", which are to directly support armour or infantry units, and didn't really have long range until much later.