Rocket artillery?
- Thread starter Denkt
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Isn't it historical then if Soviet had zero operational Katyushas when Barbarossa broke out, but when their offensives started near the end of 1942 they had over 216 batteries of them in operation... So once they operated alot of motorized rocket launchers they were on the offensive and doing good progress seems to match with their stats of being better on the offensive.
Being more destructive against targets in the open is nice, but since attacker had initiative, they could use night/fog/smoke to cover their advance making it much harder to hit the. Hitting moving targets in general is always harder.
Fact, that rocket artilery had to move, because it was easily targeted for CB fire made it less usefull , that more distant long range tube artilery, which could often only be supressed by airpower, so it can continue providing support.
Longer range of tube artilery also allowed it to support (both offensive and defensive) longer stretch of frontline with same number of weapons, compared to rocket artilery, with their relatively short range.
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We don't know how doctrines affect artillery, maybe mobile warfare and mass assult encourage development of rocket artillery while superior firepower and grand battle plan encourage development of conventional artillery.
Pretty much all resonable large fronts in the game such as Germany-Soviet will see both armies doing both offensive and defensive operations at the same time so both types of artillery will see both their strengths used.
Pretty much all resonable large fronts in the game such as Germany-Soviet will see both armies doing both offensive and defensive operations at the same time so both types of artillery will see both their strengths used.
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Exactly, if Katysha wasn`t such good defensive weapon, they wouldn`t prioritize building so many of those in 1941-1942, when RKKA was short on literally everything.
As for pre-war, weapon was not ready.
Now tell me, IF you are Russia in 1941, you`re under a huge attack and fight for your survival, would you prioritize building offensive or defensive weapons?
That, is theoretical, but since most attacks were not during night or bad weather, your point is moot.
As for hitting moving target, well, you`re trying to hit a formation, which is easier to do with huge area of effect attack than with a few small hist that you have to target every time.
Long range tube artillery was desirable, but providing it in large enough amounts was often impossible. It was easy to build thousands or tens of thousands of 210mm rocket artillery launchers. 170-210mm artillery, on the other hand, was usually numbering in hundreds of units in an army. It is simply too big and hard to maneuver, and too expensive to produce in large numbers.
Even 150mm long-range tube artillery wasn`t in high supply for the majority of the war, with Germans opting for 105mm long range artillery, and Soviets, for 122mm.
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Just to make my point clean, I don`t want to see countries being dead set on a single type of artillery. I want countries to develop and use both types of artillery.
Thought a combination of cost, required materials, ammunition consumed, and combat modifiers, I want to see countries have reason to develop and use both types of artillery, shifting the balance of rocket to tube artillery as circumstances demand, but having both in decent supply.
Thought a combination of cost, required materials, ammunition consumed, and combat modifiers, I want to see countries have reason to develop and use both types of artillery, shifting the balance of rocket to tube artillery as circumstances demand, but having both in decent supply.
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Pretty much all major powers will probably field both artillery types while minors maybe only have the industry to focus on one of the two.
That would actually be rather irrelevant, because rocket artillery is anything but accurate. It's not about actually hitting a target, it's about saturating an entire area. The idea is to plaster an whole area with lots and lots of rockets, which also fragment into thousand pieces over a pretty big distance. With a whole barrage coming in mere seconds, there is no time to take cover, so you hit the enemy while he's in the open. In other words, night, fog or smoke is actually a perfect situation for rocket artillery, as it doesn't need to pinpoint the position of enemy troops, it just needs the general vicinity.
The accuracy was actually so bad that you couldn't really use rocket artillery for precision strikes.
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Think of the shock value of having 150mm+ size artillery pieces come crashing down around you....
...although rocket-propelled horse artillery that fires real horses would be comparably intimidating.
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Just put a trebuchet armed with a plagued animal on a V2. That should get the pathogens over the wall of any city.
All weapons that shoot can be used both for offense and defense, there is no such thing as a weapons that's only for defense or offense, neither in reality nor in HoI. Also remember that they got a load of free trucks from lend lease, so cheapest way to get some weapon at all was to literally mount rockets on them. They built more of them when they were on the offensive then the defensive though, if that is what you think matters.
In most cases defenders didnt have anywhere near enough rocket launchers to "saturate whole area" especially given relatively low range on WW2 rocket artilery. Also, when they fired, in many cases everyone saw it from far away, so element of surprise often didnt exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-inch_coast_defense_mortar
In theory they might have been made mobile but in practice they weren't. Pedantry for the win.
Interesting fact:
The five tubes of the Nebelwerfer 42 brought as much explosive on target as over hundred shells from the leFH 18 (for which a battery of four guns would need about 4 to 5 minutes) or as much as 22 shells from the Heavy 15 cm K39, which would have needed 11 minutes to deliver those or about 3 minutes as a battery.
The five tubes of the Nebelwerfer 42 brought as much explosive on target as over hundred shells from the leFH 18 (for which a battery of four guns would need about 4 to 5 minutes) or as much as 22 shells from the Heavy 15 cm K39, which would have needed 11 minutes to deliver those or about 3 minutes as a battery.
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Um yes, they did.
Do you realise that you even contradict yourself?
First you say that rocket launchers had a low range, then you say that everyone saw it from far away, which doesn't really make sense, because a low range gives little time to react. You have 10-15 seconds to react if you happen to notice the rockets being launched, less if you only realise it afterwards. Seeing how those rockets impacted a whole area and had a fragmentation-range of about 100m, there is little chance to take proper cover in that time-frame. All that has little to do with surprising the enemy, as the attacker is already very much aware that he will make contact, as that is the whole point of attacking in the first place.
A barrage from the Werfer-Abteilung would consist of 90 rockets, if only one battery is firing that's still about 30 rockets, with far more fire-power than normal artillery. Combined with the fragmentation-effect, there most definately was a saturation of a whole area. Made even worse by the fact that the short order of impact also creates a big shockwave.
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Looks like the perfect weapon to support your counter attack to push the defenders off the beachhead they just captured back into the water
96 of them also seem to have been converted and mounted on railway carriages according to your own link, for use in WW1 in support of allied offensives there ( not sure if they had time to be actually deployed though ) !
But you do have a point in that more stationary weapons in general are less useful for flexible mobile offensives, and the Russian Katyusha Rocket launchers were far from stationary. They were very mobile and suited for rapid offensives or deployments. I hope we can deploy Katyushas to support Soviet armored divisions in HoI4, would be cool.
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Other games deal with Rocket arty by having as shock value, maybe higher attack stats.
But these are balance by being out of ammo quicker than conventional gun arty. And having higher supply need- which seams logical to me.
But these are balance by being out of ammo quicker than conventional gun arty. And having higher supply need- which seams logical to me.
The corresponding value i HoI would probably be higher org damage but lower strength damage. Could be an interesting effect as long as it can't be abused to make say tanks or dug in defenders retreat without serious combat.