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[IMPORTANT] Artillery discussion


Nick Thomadis

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Since the game portrays the battle at the brigade level, is it possible to allow the arty to fire through and over the infantry to simulate the breaks in between regiments and also the firing arch? Maybe have it so they hold their fire if friendly troops are in the impact zone. Just a suggestion.

Keep up the good work guys!

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The one thing I find gamey about artillery is that the seem to be roling their cannons manually across the map. Cannons, I'm sure you know, were horse drawn and theoretically should be faster than marching infantry.

 

I would suggest making the artillery much faster on the move, with the "run" option --against condition loss of course. They should have the abilty to adjust their facing without having to limber the cannon, but every time they move --or move an arbitrary (very short) distance or more where they might actually push their cannons-- they must limber again. Limbering should take a short time before they can move and unlimbering a bit longer before they can fire.

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I just can't get to grips with this line of sight method its just so patchy and uncertain,

 

I suggested the highlighted idea before i feel it would be far simpler and no confusion, because at the moment I’m still not sure what you can or cannot hit with this present line of sight method

if the cannon projects a transparent arc of light (coloured ...say blue or red )  that goes around any object that is interfering with LOL this would be first class and simple to understand  in my humble opinion

 

thx

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I personally have no problem with artillery LoS, M key helps a lot. Haven't experienced any weird things so far.

 

I think this problem would be easily solved if there was a way to just click on a point of ground on the map and see it's LoS.

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I personally have no problem with artillery LoS, M key helps a lot. Haven't experienced any weird things so far.

 

I think this problem would be easily solved if there was a way to just click on a point of ground on the map and see it's LoS.

It would be easily solved with meticulous survey mapping and GPS.

 

Having a rough civilian map was quality topographical intelligence back then. In reality LOS would be just educated guesswork based on the general lie of the land visible or reports, and you would have to have someone qualified go there to see the actual practical fields of fire. Round Top was useful as an observation post, but too forested for a gun platform, and Little Round Top like other spiny ridges offered limited positions on the top to site guns and with limited angles. The key ground and grand artillery platform of the battlefield was cemetery hill and cemetery ridge with a broad view overlooking the enemy approaches and ample room to site batteries and hold an army. 

 

So LOS not being too easy to figure out is itself part of the battle experience. Highlighting visible enemy who can be targeted is fair , as well as the visible terrain from a particular unit.   

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Views from Early Access build 0.86

 

There needs to be some sort of indicator in terms of blocked LOS when asking an artillery unit to fire.  10 hours spent in game and quickly learned that cannons are amazing but difficult and annoying to place.  Any small clipping with infantry brigades in front or beside and the artillery can't fire.

 

Consider easing the LoS restrictions with respect to clipping of friendly troops that are not meleeing another brigade.  Your interface neither offers the appropriate feedback, nor does your control scheme allow for the precise control needed to avoid such issues in its current state.  In a brigade level combat game, I would assume that your subordinates would be able to work out how to push the cannons that extra pixel up needed to gain LoS.

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I just wanted to report that I am finding the artillery far more easy to use. I still can't quite seem to work my will on it 100% of the time but I actually am finding myself relying upon and using them rather then seeing the heavy guns as dead weight. 

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Often, i ve notice for all units,  for angle range of fire, light more further; illuminate ennemies in red and shoot, than the black basic design wedges. 

 It's happen in differents altitud's circumstances. 

 

 The trick here, could be to adapt the distance fire wedge ground design, with the local position ? 

 I know sometimes, the depth of the brigade overlaps in same time, differents variations of ground heights. But there's necessary a choice actually and anyway, i guess.

 Could be complicated with the refresh ... It's an idea.

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At Gettysburg as elsewhere, batteries at times deployed on compressed frontages. More hazardous, offering a better target, and less flexible but a thought to consider when we don't have tools to tidy the line.  They might, for example, do so to chase off mounted videttes...

 

 

EDIT: The concepts of a military crest and dead ground are naturally obvious to some, not to others, and might be mentioned with an illustration in the documentation. As in the field then, the lie of the land and potential dead ground can only be confirmed by presence on the spot, but one can make pretty good guesses that a convex slope will require careful deployment while a concave one will provide ample visibility but may be limited by the ability to depress guns on top.    

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This is exactly the reason to my previous suggestion, if I understand correctly. 

  It's a way to respond to the perception of the military crest and discovery, refining the circumstances of the positions, drawing markers on the ground, angle and distance. 

 

  Otherwise it would serrated mapping more marked. Abandoning the current flare and smooth. 

 

  This applies infantry as artillery.

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Just now I had a battle. Lane's Brigade marched, fresh, into combat against a battery on Seminary ridge. It was not under fire by other elements when it reached the battery and started to melee. One by one the artillery crewmen went down, slowly....but at the same rate, Lane was losing points of condition. And a short time later, Lane is from 67% condition to 25%. The battery is yet unbroken. 

 

What is going on with the artillery? If one battery is unmovable by a brigade (or it cripples the brigade's strength), what about a position? I know you can shoot at the cannons too, but that is hardly the ideal solution when under canister yourself. 

 

AT the same time, Videttes that weren't even a factor are charging and running over batteries with ease. 

 

Can someone explain why this is and if there's going to be a fix to this behaviour? Artillery caught by infantry should be a foregone conclusion - the guns are abandoned if the canister doesn't drive the attackers off. 

 

This and the lack of limbers makes artillery a VERY strange, slow "tank" in an otherwise historical-minded game.

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Zelekendel - agreed.

 

In multi-player scenario 1 the union videttes can take out most of the arty right away. I rebs are smart and protect 'em then the vids just hang near the edge of the map and swoop in later to know out the arty and wait at the herrs ridge for a victory (takes a good 5 mins by the way for a skirmisher or vidette to turn it from red to blue).

 

Meanwhile , same scenario , my union arty can move like tanks into the rebs and blast them with canister. Must have routed old petigrew 5 times in a row tonight with the 4 arty combo that enter as reinforcements. He fired and fired at them but i guess they ducked and blasted him with canister - and bye bye Petigrew (all 2500 of him)

 

The combo of morale and condition is also slowly making sense to me. I'm still not sure how much impact each has but if i RUN with Von Gilsa into battle he routes right away. If he walks in then (eventually) he stands up for more fire. Maybe condition is more heavily weighted in the game that i first thought. Some explanation in the guide might help us tune up our troops.

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I will say that when I am pushing into Seminary ridge as rebs there are LoS / Line management issues.  Canon on canister appears adjacent to enemy infantry on the map yet does not fire.  It must be micro'd and even then getting those batters to discharge is difficult and inconsistent.  Less so on Oak Ridge, i think the LoS modifiers there are pretty good

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What if artillery only highlights in red enemies that it can actually hit. I can't count the number of times that a unit is highlighted in red by my artillery, and the my arty just refuses to fire. If my arty's view is blocked by a tree or brigade or something, then nothing should light up so I know I need to readjust. 

Also, the rules on firing lines need consistence. Sometimes, I'll have an artillery unit literally inside a brigade firing at the enemy just fine. Other times, I'll have a brigade 100 yards in front and the arty won't fire. Sometimes, I put arty in trees and they fire, other times they won't. Sometimes I'll put artillery on a clear plateau, this usually works but occasionally, even though nothing's blocking them and they can see everything, they just won't shoot. 

I think it would help if Game-Labs gave us the criteria under which artillery can be used, and perhaps only highlighted potential artillery targets when said unit can fire. Even better, perhaps Game Labs could employ an icon over the heads of artillery units that are blocked so we know they need to be moved. 

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In the coming patch there are going to be artillery targeting fixes that will make artillery handling better. In each patch we make it better thanks to your feedback. We think that many icons and flashy indicators are not fitting the art style so this is why we avoid using them.

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In a multiplayer game that just ended. Stewart's Battery attacked two of my Brigades, Archer and Lane, backed up by some other artillery further off and occasionally the Iron Brigade (which broke and ran several times).

 

The main point is, a lot of the time Stewart's battery was shooting canister into lane while worn-down Lane and Archer volleyed it (at very low condition % near the end).

 

At the end, the kill statistics were 8 lost for Stewart's Battery, and it had racked up 270 kills. How can this be? I did win the battle of course, but the artillery seem like assault guns. I knew if I'd charge the guns it'd end badly (the other guns were supporting).

 

Can you PLEASE fix the guns? It's gotten so aggravating that I'm considering a long break from the game until the matter is resolved.

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Zelekendel,

 

The 8 kills for the artillery crew seems reasonable - but the artillery implementation has driven me away from the game.

 

At Gettysburg the weak link in the Union lines in the Peach Orchard was the line of artillery posted on the left flank of the Union line.  Union General Humphreys was so concerned about the weakness of his left flank and he tried to find infantry regiments to INCREASE his firepower by moving some of the guns out of the front line and replacing them with infantry.  

 

Note that the CSA attack in the Peach Orchard was directed at this line of batteries - which had to withdraw in the face of the infantry.  Smith's guns were captured by the CSA infantry along this front.  When the Union artillery could not hold against the CSA infantry the Union III Corps was flanked and effectively put out of action.

 

ACW artillery could not stand by itself against infantry - it was a complementary and supporting combat arm.  Generally when the action got close the artillery crews moved to the rear with their tools, ammunition, caissons, and limbers.  They left one man per gun to fire double canister at 10 yards to try to break formations.  While this worked when the artillery was supported with infantry - most often the gun were withdrawn when infantry got too close.

 

Also the 3" ordnance rifles have the longest and the most effective canister pattern in the game.  In reality the rifled pieces were the least effective.  Smoothbores - specifically Napoleons were the weapon of choice for situations that required canister.  Note that the 24 lb howitzers and 12 lb howitzers were the most effective at delivering canister - but these guns were not as favored as the 12 lb Napoleon because of their limited effectiveness with other ammunition.

 

While you've got your history correct - I don't expect any major shift in the artillery implementation - I've been fighting this for 9 months.

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Zelekendel,

 

The 8 kills for the artillery crew seems reasonable

 

Really? This was from 4-6 volleys from two brigades, at canister range. I've tested some more and in general that's the idea, shooting artillery seems to produce very little results and assaulting is very hard if not impractical because of the condition loss on the brigades. It's #1 on the problem list for me. The multiplayer AI doesn't take advantage of it too much but the humans actually advancing the guns by themselves to canister range without infantry nearby and then being able to get away with it like this is aggravating to say the least.

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Interesting - getting the effectiveness profiles of rifled guns and Napoleons wrong is a serious issue for me - as a matter of doctrine I would assign guns to bombardment and close support or positional defense accordingly.  

 

The history of artillery charges deserves its own topic.

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Zelenkendel,

 

Ahhhh, 4 to 6 volleys from two brigades changes things substantially.  :blink:

 

The Panzer attack problem is really annoying. :angry:

 

Historically formed units sent skirmishers forward to deal with guns - Bigelow's battery for example was shredded (particularly the horses) by skirmishers which eliminated the battery's mobility.  While the men got away the guns and limbers were abandoned on the field - and later recovered by the Union.

 

UGG doesn't embrace the concept of skirmishers or the notion of the horse for artillery mobility.  

Abstracting skirmishers would have fixed the 8 vs 270 casualty problem - and removed some of my frustrations with Phase 1 Union cavalry.  Pesky and annoying problems.

 

By making the artillery move slower the net effect was to slow the pace of the panzer tactics - but I agree it doesn't really address the problem.

 

In the ACW artillery couldn't creep forward because all of the horses would get slaughtered - so artillery was primarily a defensive weapon.

Losses of horses for the CSA became an acute problem after Gettysburg where the CSA lost 35% of its front-line artillery horses.

 

Perhaps someday a game in the horse and musket era will actually consider the "horse" part of the equation.  

Till then...we can only fuss and be aggravated. :rolleyes:

 

I'm waiting on the 9.0 release to see what happens.  I've checked out on UGG because of these issues.

 

I did write a positive review under the pen name Stonecold637 in Metacritic despite my reservations.  

 

If we don't support the guys who are filling the void in history games who will step up to the challenge? :)

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I've only just started playing the game, so please feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken in some of my observations or if there's an easy way around them, but here's the problems I'm having with artillery:-

 

  1. As the OP stated, sometimes I place the artillery in what appears to be a clear line of sight, no units or trees/buildings in their way, and they refuse to fire.  If the artillery cannot shoot at its intended target, there should be a message saying "Line of sight blocked" in the details on the top left when you click on the unit.
     
  2. Often I tell artillery to fire at a particular target, and they'll choose to ignore my instruction and fire at something else instead.  To me this is a critical flaw as I set everything up to concentrate fire on a weak spot and find my units refuse to obey for no apparent reason.
     
  3. The Condition of artillery units is often zero, yet they're able to setup and fire.  Hence, what does this value mean?
     
  4. If artillery are facing in one direction and I direct them to fire at a target in a different direction, they refuse to turn their facing and instead ignore my instruction until I turn them manually.  This is rather counter-intuitive, and can be quite difficult if the target is distant requiring me to be zoomed out to turn the unit correctly however at that zoom I can't see the pink facing rectangle.
     
  5. If artillery comes under fire from infantry it retreats automatically, even though its morale is reasonably high.  This makes it extremely difficult to use canister rounds as the artillery refuse to stay in range and often retreat completely out of any line of sight requiring constant manual coaxing back into battle.
     
  6. This last one would be more of an enhancement.  When artillery units rout, they drag their cannons with them.  In reality the gun crews would flee leaving the weapons behind which could then be captured by the enemy, and going by accounts in books such as "Company Aytch" the capture of cannons was quite significant.  Would be very nice to see this added to the game in some way.
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Long5hot - On point #5 above try clicking on "hold" for your artillery to fire canister.  You need to watch this closely because once they fire you may want them to "fallback" to preserve your artillery until they can reload.  Then set them on "hold" again and iterate.  

 

Silly amount of micromanagement with all aspects of artillery.

 

Could have been so much easier with a target symbol that was pink for units you can hit with a reason why:

- friendly unit blocking target

- building blocking target

- terrain blocking target

- outside of LOS

 

Red target allows you to pick and fire on a target and unit changes facing without additional human intervention.

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