Artillery

[Adrian Taylor]

The 'All powerful' artillery from the original game has had its claws clipped.

Along with a decrease in weapon accuracy and ROF you will find indirect ranges have ahd a significant increase with most guns being able to cover the whole map. Mortars you will be pleased to hear are no longer next to useless and are now very useful for laying those vital smoke screens they were so good at doing.

Those orange circles have also been re-vamped. Their generation in size and random nature now depends on weapon size rather than range. The bigger the gun the easier it is to locate. In some cases you will not being able to see the circles until you have units ground or air close enough to their location.

Note that all guns now have these circles. This was implemented because of the increased ranges of direct fire weapons. The circles make it easier to identify the general location of direct fire.

The ability for in-direct fire to knoceked out armoured vehicles has also been much reduced. Firstly, the wepaons are no longer so accurate so it is harder to get a direct hit and secondly I have reduced the penetrative power of in-direct fire weapons, so that only the really big boys can destroy medium to heavy tanks.

Adrian

[Silvio]

crap i gotta repost this


AFAIK indirect artillery fire has a very limited probability iof destroying a tank. Are there any reports available on the web of indirect artillery fire knocking out tanks and armoured halftracks etc?

[Adrian Taylor]

In-dierct fire can still destroy light armour, which includes armoured cars, halftracks and light tanks with direct hits. Most of these units have sufficent side armour to resist shrapnel and blast effects from HE rounds.

Heavier tanks with thick top armour can resist almost all HE rounds apart from bombs and a few big guns.


Adrian

[Adrian Taylor]

Although in the original BK it was possible to have artillery with different types of shells; HEAT, HE, Smoke, they all had to have the same accuracy rating, rate of fire, aiming time.

This meant if you decreased the accuracy rating to take into account in-direct fire you also made the gun less accurate for direct fire. This did not really matter for the short ranges in the orginal BK, but it does in Ostfront.

To get around this, each gun now effectively has to gun types. One for direct fire and the other for in-direct fire. You will be able to tell this by selecting the unit and clicking 'alt' & 'R'. This will give you a Red circle designating direct fire and then a green arc for in-direct fire. Ammo is also separated and will be shown in the two ammo display bars. Once all the direct fire rounds are gone the gun will not be able to engage any target within the red circle area.

This is a compromise, but as most guns have enough direct fire rounds to either successfully defend themselves or get destroyed before running out.


Adrian

[Bogan]

that's a great move in my opinion, i always use ALT+R to check my arcs and range, so it will great to see two different ammo types and the new red and green fields of fire.

very good for realism as usual, in all a very thourough overhaul.

[Adrian Taylor]

I have just been testing Pruzhany in the final stages of the street fighting. I could not get rid of the 122mm Howitzers in there so had to go toe to toe. Believe it or not the AI had them firing over open sights at my attacking troops!

Gave my Pz III crew one hell of a shock


Adrian

[Bogan]

sounds promising, that really is a nasty little patch of street fighting in Pruzhany

they sure have some arty in that mission.

[foxy]

Looking forward to it.

I do like street fighting.

[HMan]

Please take care of making that Ari not too dominant and too strong.
I hate those scenarios where everything only depends on Ari.
As Adrian told above I also think that Ari should have few possibilities blasting a tank. Although I have no historical prove of that I have played an old round based Wargame which was called Eastern Front.

Gameplay quiet sux but these Guys put very much in balancing everything there historical correct.

There Ari almost never had a Chance to taking out Tank-Platoons. Was really useless.

Also this Game had something in it which none of the more moddern RTS WW2 Games have. A REALLY GREAT ENCYCLOPEDIA (there u can click on every Unit and see original photos of it as well as its own history)

So sad that this might be impossible to do here as well but no matter.

[Adrian Taylor]

Even during the early years of the war, most artillery had access to a small supply of anti-tank rounds. In alot of cases these were the only effective guns that could take out heavy tanks.

However, this was quite dangerous for the gunners and was only done as a last resort. This was beacuse most artillery pices are fairly large and lack protection and the shells are quite big and clumbersome, thus rate of fire is not great.

Saying that it did occur on several notable occasions. Rommel had to bring forward the guns including the dreaded '88' to stop the British Matildas at Arras. And the Germans could only effectively rely on their artillery guns to deal with the T 34's and KV's.

There is a useful on-line data base of Blitz units. Can't remember the website, but if you do a search in the forums you should find it.

I will be including photo's of the new units in Ostfront together with a brief description and strengths etc.


Adrian