Artillery 101

Tips from a seasoned Arty guy

Basics & Material

If you want to be a good arty guy/girl, you should get three things:

A pen
A piece of paper
and... A STOPWATCH or a Watch that shows seconds

Yes you read perfectly, The last item is very important, one can do arty easily without one, but, you'll see through this guide that this is an essential tool regarding accuracy and timing.

Arty data

So, on your piece of paper, I want you to copy the template seen inside the cannon
This will come in handy when you'll have to give battery orders or as I do most often, calculate the elevation while reloading or turning the gun chassis.

After that, here are a couple things you should add to your piece of paper:

100 meter = 24 MIL
1MIL = 4 meters (more or less, but this is no relevant due to dispersion and blast radius.)
Time of shell flight is roughly 24 seconds (here comes the handy watch)
1 square on the map is 200 meters
1 square is crossed by running infantry in 40 seconds

The smoke has a radius of 20 meters and lasts 90 seconds from impact to total dispersion

Use of arty

When you use arty, you should always keep in mind a couple things:

Watch for your allies in the vicinity of your shelling, and ALWAYS CHECK THE MAP.
If you shell friendlies, it is your fault, not theirs.

Smoke is useful as an offensive weapon, denying defenders their range and cover. If you have friendlies coming into a capture zone, always go for smoke, unless:
1. allies have already occupied the zone and are capturing full blast. A smoke shell could hinder them and allow ennemies to take advantage.
2. You have enough experience to tell where the enemy resistance is coming from and you can safely shell a zone to forbid them to come back in the point.

The defensive use of smoke is trickier, because you really need eyes on the field that can tell you exactly where to strike with smoke to stop a Tank, MG or AT cannon from firing efficiently. Or to cover the approach of reinforcements, but again, this requires even a HIGHER level of coordination.

Due to the time of flight, A soldier can run 120 meters in the same time a shell leaves the cannon. This means you have to be aware of coming friendlies. If they are rushing a point, strike further or send smoke. This time table is also handy when you want to shell incoming infantry in the early game, by looking at your own infantry as reference. Once you'll get the timing, you will be able to strike incoming infantry.

Shoot shells 1 by 1 or by volley of 3 shells MAXIMUM. Shells are expensive ammunition and overshelling a zone is completely useless. (Again, there are exceptions, but you need experience to tell if it is relevant or not)

Keep an eye on the ressources and the rates of replenishment.
An HE costs 3 points and a Smoke costs 5. If you get a +15/min replenishment of shells, this means you could fire 5 HE or 3 SMK per minute whithout grinding ressources. I've been in a lot of games where people overshell like arses and end up using all the ammo of the team for a single kill and then complaining that there are no ammo left. DONT BE THAT GUY.

Usually, I take a Squad Leader seat, the reason being that I can monitor command radio and most importantly, set up markers to fire more accurately. Remind the commander that you are an arty and you do not request air strikes. (I had a commander who would throw all he had on my markers.)

Arty is a powerful tool, thanks to it's range, power, tactical use and the last but not the least: PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT. Arty demoralizes infantry because they are extremely vulnerable and can't do much about it. If you play well, assume there will be commandos inbound to silence your guns.

Practical use

Now we covered some of the general tactical uses of arty, let's dig into my method of calculating:

But keep in mind: SUBSTRACT MIL TO STRIKE FURTHER (people often get confused by that)

Here are my tips:
50m = 12 MIL
40m = 10 MIL
4m = 1 MIL

Check for hundreds/thousands, then divide the last two digits by 4.

Let's say I have to hit a target at 755 meters.
I point my gun at the marker, and I calculate the MIL doing so:

I check the 700meters value, which is 836, I substract 12 MIL to reach 750 and a further 1 MIL to reach 754 meters. There is an offset, but 1 meter is irrelevant due to blast radius and dispersion.

Another example would be against a target a 1012 meters. I already know 12 meters = 3 MIL, so I lower the cannon down to 764 MIL and I remove a further 3 MIL to reach 1012 meters.

Now, with experience, you'll be able to tell if you have to calculate from the bottom (like we did here) or from the top.

I know it doesn't seem to make sense, but here is an example:

A target is situated at 1166 meters. I either calculate from 741MIL(1100m) minus 12MIL (50meters) minus 4MIL (16meters) to get to 725MIL (1166m) from 741MIL (1100m) (Bottom)

or

calculate from 717MIL(1200m) plus 10MIL(40meters) minus 1MIL. I could calculate directly 9 MIL, but the goal here is to teach the brain to use references already known in order to speed up the calculation. You'll notice that the value we get here is not the same, as the first calculation give 725MIL and the latter 726MIL. If you are in doubt, strike both values, but honestly, the difference is not that great in open ground.

With this method, I am able to point the gun rather quickly and move the breech up or down in the right direction as I am still calculating.


I know this method could be confusing, but so far it is the one that works best for me and it is how I teach newcomers how to use arty.

Advanced uses

Once you master calculations, you will be able to make use of some arty tactics and maybe develop your own.

Here are a couple ideas:

A rolling fire can be made in front of advancing troops, to do so, increase the distance and strike 140m further from them as they advance, this value should be increased if they progress quickly or lowered if they become pinned down. Note that this works as well with smoke, though it is more expensive, this could be used to make a covert approach for incoming troops. Yet again, this is extremely difficult to achieve and requires a high level of coordination.

A swiping fire is useful to lay smoke in line or clear a defensive line. Set your fire support marker on your left boundary and the observe marker on your right boundary, then shell from one to another. Since reloading takes 6 seconds or so (I dont remember the timing), flight time is 24 seconds and the smoke lasts 90 seconds, you should be able to lay up to 6-7 shells before having to restrike your first point. If well done, you can lay a wall of smoke more that a 100meters long.

If smoking an ennemy point, lay one or two HE among them, just to add panic to confusion.

You can also determine where the enemy is by loking at your team mates on the map, if you are Squad Leader, you can even ask them the nature of their opposition and strike in front of them, or lay smoke to allow them to break contact.


and AGAIN


CHECK YOUR MAP BEFORE FIRING, if not sure, ask confirmation or strike further.

Your stopwatch is your friend (and also, it impress people when you tell them when the shell strikes, and this often brings enthusiasm and respect from fellow players.)


I hope you'll find this guide useful.

Se you on the battlefield


oodA, Officer at the ]OCB[

[whiterivercitizen]

as a player that only runs arty, i can confirm he cooked with this one...

[Groleo]

Great guide. Thank you ]OCB[ oodA.be

[]OCB[ oodA.be]

For the record, I shoot faster and with more accuracy than the people using the calculator.
And there's also a huge advantage with my technique, with some training it's possible to make fire patterns that cover a broader range of uses besides pointing and shooting. But I guess that's beyond calc user's comprehension. :)

[Shane510]

heres a shorter guide.
Step 1. Google hell let loose calculator.
Step 2. choose the map you are playing.
Step 3. click on target and it gives you the coordinates.
Step 4. Shoot.

[SlothMarine]

The Name's Khan, Genghis Khan

[kebab]

step 1 : ping general location of enemy on map
step 2 : adjust the gun to the ping
step 3 : fire
step 4 : ?????
step 5 : profit

[dIE sKIM]

were is the caculator

[HANK_KILL]

@OP, any idea what the numbers on spread are? Also, does the time to splash change with distance? If so I'd like to do some experiments to figure out those numbers.

[HANK_KILL]

I'll see if I can design a nice A4 table for this, will attribute

[Sirderpybanana]

how do i calculate traverse?