Artillery Battery Size

[Heretek1914]

Is there a particular reason to not max out the guns? Assuming we have high level officers, money, and guns to spare, why is the 'rule' to only put 12 guns into a battery?

I remeber the one bit I saw said something about how the damage drops but that was due to inefficiency. Whether this was referring to the efficiency stat or just 'its inefficient' is unclear to me.

[Kristoph42]

My opinion, from playing the game a lot, is that it sucks up ammo or supply. You seem to run out of supply faster with large batteries. This holds true even with the supply trait for the corp commander. I haven't tired it with divisional commander and corp commander with the supply trait. Most of my division commanders die on a regular basis, so the new ones all have training perk.

[wanderingthoreau1987]

After 12 cannons the battery begins to suffer from diminishing returns. The larger the battery the more time it takes to move and rotate. Whether this is just me or not, but I feel like the batteries over 12 take longer to do everything and even inflict less casualties.

Not only that, the more cannons you have the more the ai scales with you, so that is where you'll see many players set artificial boundaries for units.

[Krumpf41]

Why would a 12 gun battery go through its ammo faster than a 24 gun battery? Each cannon in the battery would historically have an assigned caisson to carry the ammo for each piece. The ammo capacity should scale with the number of guns in the battery so a 24 gun battery wouldn't use up ammo faster than a 12 gun. Make sense?

[BigJKU316]

Originally posted by Krumpf41:

Why would a 12 gun battery go through its ammo faster than a 24 gun battery? Each cannon in the battery would historically have an assigned caisson to carry the ammo for each piece. The ammo capacity should scale with the number of guns in the battery so a 24 gun battery wouldn't use up ammo faster than a 12 gun. Make sense?

I think the bigger issue is that the large batteries just eat your supply wagons alive as the wagons don't scale up.

Someone else may know if artillery battery supply is fixed or scaled with guns. I haven't noticed one way or another. It should scale as you stated for initial supplies.

[ohener]

It's a bug with the way efficiency is calculated which makes it so that a battery of 24 guns only does half the damage per volley as a battery of 12 guns. It's not just diminishing returns, after 12 guns adding more cannon actually makes your whole battery worse.

I've had 12-gun batteries deal over 3000 casualties in a single day of fighting.

[BigJKU316]

Ironically being forced to have 12 gun batteries has honestly made me more efficient. As I didn't want to have less guns per corps I generally have 2 12-guns per division now. I am able to cover positions better defensively with the more widely spaced batteries and it's more flexible on offense.

[Luunyrkki]

Someone posted that the difference in casualty figures is/could be because the larger batteries take more time to turn. Historically speaking the game actually gets this correct since ideal size is somewhere between 6-12 guns, with more guns just presenting logistical issues, command issues and more targets for the enemy, In any case, right now 12 guns is the maximum you should have.

[CrashToDesktop]

Originally posted by Luunyrkki:

Someone posted that the difference in casualty figures is/could be because the larger batteries take more time to turn. Historically speaking the game actually gets this correct since ideal size is somewhere between 6-12 guns, with more guns just presenting logistical issues, command issues and more targets for the enemy, In any case, right now 12 guns is the maximum you should have.

I've tested it pretty exhaustively, on a per-volley basis the 24 gun batteries do substancially worse than smaller batteries.

[Kristoph42]

Originally posted by author:

I've tested it pretty exhaustively, on a per-volley basis the 24 gun batteries do substancially worse than smaller batteries.

Did you test that idea with higher commanders? I generally have a Major General on my batteries of 24. I know that Captains, Majors, Lt. Colonels, and Colonels give the 24 gun battery less efficency. Then again, I usually only l have 2 to 3 24 gun batteries in the whole army. All the other artillery batteries are 12, because I can put a Major or Lt. Colonel in charge of them and battery does not lose efficency.

If you could test it out and let me know, Soldier, I would appreciate that.

[Wright29]

Originally posted by Kristoph42:

Originally posted by author:

I've tested it pretty exhaustively, on a per-volley basis the 24 gun batteries do substancially worse than smaller batteries.

Did you test that idea with higher commanders? I generally have a Major General on my batteries of 24. I know that Captains, Majors, Lt. Colonels, and Colonels give the 24 gun battery less efficency. Then again, I usually only l have 2 to 3 24 gun batteries in the whole army. All the other artillery batteries are 12, because I can put a Major or Lt. Colonel in charge of them and battery does not lose efficency.

If you could test it out and let me know, Soldier, I would appreciate that.

He's tested it with all command levels and he initially found the bug/ inefficiency. Due to this optimal level of performance, cost savings, lower ammo consumption, and lower auto-scaling, there's no reason to have batteries above 12 guns. Don't know if this will always hold true as the game evolves, but right now it's basically an ironclad rule.

[Heretek1914]

You would think the massive 24 gun batteries would do well in defense, ie. situations were they do not move and the additional rounds will hit more, and not so well in others but it seems they are just flat out bad, so I'll have to disband and reform a few of my 14 gun batteries

[Kristoph42]

Thank You Wright29 and Soldier. Next play through, 12 guns it is.

[Kristoph42]

For the record, it is hard to move my guns up and have them get shot at so they will get down to 12 guns per battery. I had a lot of 14 and 16 batteries.

[wanderingthoreau1987]

Also if you get to AO 9, you can have two batteries per division which is quite effective defensively.

[Lumpy]

So, is batteries getting worse after the 12 guns threshold a bug? If so, why is it still around when TheSoldier posted his findings about this a few versions ago?