Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
Although I know weapon ranges are abstracted for the sake of gameplay, it would be odd to have artillery capable of firing at ranges over 30km on maps which are perhaps 5km wide.
That said, I think vehicle-based mortars might have a role on CtA infantry-focused 0modes. Perhaps an LAV mortar carrier for the US? It might not fit the "feel" of rhe GRM, but I remember seeing a photo if an MT-LB or M113 (can't remember which) which was fitted with S5 or S8 rocket-racks used by Daesh in Iraq a few years back -- that might be a neat unit, as well. :)
It's also capable of applying sustained pressure on enemy positions, as opposed to aircraft which need to enter the engagement zone, deploy ordinance, leave the engagement zone, re-arm and repeat the procedure (exposing the craft and crew to enemy air defenses each time they enter and exit the target area).
I strongly disagree.
Modern (I emphasize this word) artillery is as usefull as ever.
Battlefield management systems with integrated artillery networks in conjunction with modern sureillance systems like UAVs bring modern artillery into the 21st century.
In contrast to air power artillery is much more responsive and much less restricted by weather than fast or rotary air.
Against modern opponents artillery may very well be more survivable than fast or rotary air. Bringing a flight of fast movers into position over a heavily contested battlefield may result in lots of losses. Modern SPHs performing shoot and scoot fire missions out of well dispersed fire positions are hard to counter.
Ammunition like Excalibur or GMLRs are also nice performers when precision is important while stuff like SMARt is really dangerous for vehicles.
Aircrafts also can't perform continious fire missions or support own troops with smoke and illum.
Artillery has proven it's worth again and again in the conventional and unconventional conflicts of recent years.
Not to mention it's rather excessive pricing and impact on pop cap. The scale isn't particularly different from MoW(If anything, the game supports much larger scale in certain modes), but the gameplay is miles different. Unlike MoW, losing even a handful of troops is extremely costly and painful, thanks in no small part to the total lack of the SP unit category to help you bounce back or play more aggressive. Artillery is now in a really awkward place because of that, because indirect fire weapons dealing significant damage could very easily become OP(Grenadiers are bad enough as is.)
Firstly, just want to get this out of the way:
I won't derail my own thread by talking about this at length but your statement is unequivocally untrue.
According to data from both the Ukrainian war and conflict in Syria - artillery has actually been the leading cause of casualties in both wars - this statistic is even higher for Ukraine as the use of airpower has been minimal.
Moving on...
I strongly agree with others here that self-propelled howizters and Multiple Rocket Launchers are too large for the scale of the CTA and nerfing them with reduced firing range is not the answer. Even for the new Combined Arms and Armored Assault modes the power of these systems would also have the potential to disrupt game balance (i.e. can you imagine forty 122mm GRAD rockets raining down over half the map).
However I'm certain that the right compromise could be found using units with shorter ranged weapons. The addition of these units would instantly introduce an interesting and challenging new dynamic to gameplay: "Damn! I'm being attacked by artillery, I need to quickly move, somehow respond to the attack or hunt down the enemy artillery!".
Artillery units would be mobile and suit the new larger game modes but also vunerable to destruction. Obviously there would be need for balance to prevent spam - but that rings true for any other unit.
Adding a couple of new artillery vehicles would also further increase the variety of each factions roster plus give new toys to everyone for use in the editor and campaign/custom missions.
Here is a quick, off the top of my head, list of possible units that illustrate my idea:
US - Stryker 120mm mortar variant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgRu6JHjjXs
GRM - Technical with mortar, helicopter rocket pod or 107mm rockets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpu6lbskv3g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH2T7YUqgJ4
Germany - Wiesel 120mm mortar variant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qln3hVoe8qA
Russia - 2N9 Nona or transport truck with 120mm mortar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BTymlylbT0
I don't believe any of these units would be overpowered and all of them (apart from the 2N9) make use of base game assets.
No, nothing big like that
But stuff like this I'm working on:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=810860305
And other "lighter" artillery vehicles like the Stryker with mortar for US would fit the game perfect in my opinion.
As has been drilled into you ad nauseum, artillery is still very much the "king of battle".
Aircraft are limited by fuel, payload, weather, cost, and above all, getting shot down. These are severe drawbacks to relying on aircraft.
A lack of fuel means that aircraft have limited loiter times. Jets can't stay on the battlefield for very long. An F-35 only has a loiter time of 20-30 minutes, meaning that afterwards it needs to RTB to refuel. Ground attack and rotary aircraft similarly need to refuel, which means that for a period of time they will not be available to provide ground support. This is unlike artillery, which can simply sit there until they're called in to fire.
Weather is another factor that influences the availability and effectiveness of aircraft. In certain conditions, it may be difficult for aircraft to fly at all. In other cases, the ability of aircraft to adequately hit targets in poor weather may depend on ground teams or the weapons of the aircraft. Artillery is generally unaffected by weather and can easily compensate.
Aircraft can only fire off whatever they have on their wings and they're they might as well be bricks. This isn't very much. The F-35 might only carry a handful of bombs. An AH-64 can carry at most 16 missiles, which drops if it also wants to carry rockets. Artillery, on the other hand, is already on the ground so can be constantly resupplied and reloaded.
Aircraft cost a lot. To design. To build. To maintain. And to fly. An F-35 costs $40,000 per hour just to fly... which doesn't even include the costs of anything it fires. Aircraft-launched weapons are also tremendously expensive even compared to advanced artillery shells. For the price of a single $116 million dollar F-35, you could buy 50 M109 self-propelled artillery pieces.
Finally aircraft are vulnerable to being shot at because their weapons are generally much lower ranged. While certainly artillery need to watch out for counterbattery, aircraft need to expose themselves to a wider array of threats.
If CtA implements aircraft, they should cost much, much more than even a MBT, especially in terms of CP. Maybe if a player calls in an aircraft then that's the only unit they should get for the entire match.
The F-35 is supposed to be the airframe that replaces most of the current US strike fleet... you clearly don't understand what the word "multirole" means. An air superiority fighter or an interceptor is meant to attack other planes... a multirole aircraft like the F-35 is meant to attack both ground and air targets. "Multirole" essentially means "fighter bomber", to borrow from WWII parlance.
In the US, this is a very controversial move, because the F-35 will be handling ground attack roles as well as air superiority roles. It will replace the A-10, F-16, F/A-18s, and the few remaining Harriers. There's a lot of discussion about whether that's smart or not, because you really don't need a stealth fighter against men in pickup trucks, and it lacks both the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of a dedicated ground attack aircraft.
At any rate, by 2028 the F-35s are to fully take up the job of the A-10s and other ground attack craft.
The A-10 is only PARTIALLY protected with titanium... mostly just the pilot actually. It's a common misconception thrown about, but in actuality the A-10 is mostly armoured against 23mm hits in SOME areas. 23mm being of course a rather obsolete round as air defense systems go... most modern air defense systems that still use shells range from 30mm to 40mm.
Simple ground fire can certainly down A-10s. Out of the 6 A-10s lost in Desert Storm (really only a month of combat), 2 were downed by AAA, with a possible third hit by AAA as well. And these were fairly primitive forms of AA that the Iraqis possessed.
Even then, at $18.8 million per A-10, you could get 8-9 M109 artillery pieces (not counting munitions, which favours artillery even more). Those artillery pieces could deliver much more fire in a sustained period of time with much less risk.
The combat performance of A-10s is great when they're attacking an enemy that can't fight back... but even against a force with drastically inferior AA capabilities the A-10s still took quite a few losses (1 every 5 days).
Can artillery be taken out with airstrikes? Sure. But artillery can also smack airfields (especially when we move into missile artillery, which includes cruise missiles and SRBMs/IRBMs/ICBMs). The precision-guided weapons that aircraft rely on can also be rendered moot by anti-PGM systems like the Tor-M1 or equivalents.
In short, for an actual war against a decently armed enemy, artillery is essential. Artillery provides a less expensive, more reliable, and more available way to deliver explosives on enemy positions compared to air options.
As someone that served as field artillery for years, Artillery is way, way, way more popular in modern warfare than you think. It's cheaper, FASTER, and often enough safer than airstrikes; Not just in the sense of protecting pilots and their equipment, but also in minimizing collateral damage(Artillery can be quite accurate, believe it or not, and if absolute precision is a must, Copperhead or Excalibur munitions can hit within a VERY tight window).
It can be mass-deployed, is omni-present due to requiring no fuel, no radar, no large support structure, and the ability to be fielded on practically any stable terrain. The response time from contact, to fire mission, to shell-splash can be done in mere minutes with a good FO and FDC if the COC removes the red tape, and the sheer diversity of munitions allows field artillery to respond to a variety of situations aircraft either struggle with or outright cannot perform.
Strategically, artillery is a wild card that absolutely dominates a battlefield. It's not restricted to the operational range of an air strip, it leaves no signs of it's existence until it's already fired, and it can quickly be march-ordered and repositioned between fire missions and remain almost totally concealed from anything short of drone surveillance. The large quantities of it's existence, the absolutely massive and/or precise fire it can yield, the extreme ranges in which it can operate, and it's ability to largely avoid most means of countermeasures purely through responsible caution make it a force multiplier that any self-respecting force absolutely cannot do without if they want any remote chances not only of mere survival, but success.
When you're under fire, and minutes can mean lives, who are you gonna call? The firebase that can have a shell from barrel-to-impact in 30 seconds or less from the moment they pull a lanyard, or the airbase that has to scramble an A-10 30 minutes away at best, who then requires close coordination and communication with ground troops as it loiters until it can safely engage?
Absolutely, artillery weither it be mortars, howitzers, mobile artillery would be an excellent addition along with other deployable weapons such as TOW's.
Giving a faction a variety of anti armour or mass/fortified infantry solutions and creating more dynamic gameplay by requiring players to break up the now tried and true formulas.
The one caveat would be that in order to really make good use of larger artillery you would need to use combined arms or larger maps.
Wondering if artillery has been replaced by aircraft in modern warfare is irrelevant if not due to the fact that no major powers have engaged in warfare on a large scale against one another then because warfare itself is unpredictable in how it proceeds into the future.