Slitherine

... totally ineffective and unuseful What happened guys?

I hate to say it, but I think he's right. I was noticing that just now, myself.

Not naval gunnery, which is fine. Not the enemy's artillery, which seems as potent as ever. Just the player's own artillery seems to be firing blanks. As I said someplace else, I just went through Boot Camp as a freshener and in two of those scenarios there is artillery at the player's disposal. It was "ineffective and unuseful," as TDefender says.

From the patch notes

• Artillery now deals less damage against low-strength targets, making them less effective at "sniping kills" from long range.

Maybe bugged?

It appears a (not very happy) decision from devs but something definitely went wrong :

https://steamcommunity.com/app/312450/d ... 272181800/

I love this game and I look forward to buy the "Winter War" dlc but not before this issue get addressed.

Now I'm not sure. After Rood posted that patch note, which I had missed, I decided to test things by making up a couple of scenarios. They are basically the same scenario with static infantry on both sides (U.S. by choice - don't move them; Japanese by design) and a spotter plane for each side (which crash by the end of the scenario and basically were not needed anyway - oh well).

In the Passive Japs scenario, their artillery don't do anything. So, in my test, I pounded their infantry, one cannon per enemy unit, over and over again for 20 turns. The first screen print below is after 10 turns, and it seems the guns have done a job on the Japanese infantry; strengths of 4 and 5 out of 10.

However, by the end of that scenario, after 10 more rounds of bombardment, not very much more damage has been inflicted as shown in the second screen print. This appears to be as designed, according to the patch note. As a matter of fact, I think I could have pounded them for 20 more rounds and never actually killed any Japanese infantry. I'm OK with this decision because historically artillery bombardment disrupts and decimates to some extent but does not wipe out entire companies, battalions, regiments, etc.

As far as whether this situation is balanced as to human vs. AI, play the Aggressive Japs scenario and see what you think. Again, leave your infantry alone and just blast away with artillery. Realize that the Japanese artillery immediately targets the U.S. Guns, so you will want to do the same. Note: The human player moves first and his artillery is ready to fire on turn 1 whereas the Japanese artillery need one turn to raise their barrels. To be fair and get a feel for whether this is balanced, maybe hold fire on turn 1. I did so, and I was satisfied that their artillery was no more potent than mine but we both did damage after a few turns.

I think I am satisfied now.

Here are the two scenarios, in case you would like to try them.

bru888 wrote:I think I am satisfied now.

Hold on there, Bru! What about cover? Does that skew things in the new situation?

Well, I made a third scenario with the Japanese infantry under cover: village (60% cover), forest (70% cover), and jungle (80% cover). The results are shown below, after 10 turns of bombardment and 20 turns (passive Japanese). The cover helped them, it seems, but it did not negate artillery damage to a very great extent.

So yes, now I think I am satisfied.

Guys, you might check this thread over at the Steam forum, same topic and discussion with the Devs:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/312450/di ... 272181800/

Schweinewitz wrote:Guys, you might check this thread over at the Steam forum, same topic and discussion with the Devs:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/312450/di ... 272181800/

Thanks. I guess that's one of the drawbacks of downloading the game manually from Matrix/Slitherine vs. getting it on Steam; it appears the forums over there are much more popular than here. Sometimes this place seems a bit deserted.

Well, I see that there is a debate going on, or has taken place, and it appears this topic is still up in the air. Here's a synopsis of adherbal's comments on the Steam forum. FWIW, I tend to agree with what he said and, if my test scenarios are any indication, artillery is not impotent in patch 2.6.7c by any means.

The main reason for the change is to address the furstrating event where you retreat a badly mauled elite unit from the front line, only to get it killed off by long range artillery during the enemy's turn.

This was less of an issue during the Pacific campaigns because (heavy) artillery (especially for the Japanese) was fairly uncommon there. But with the Russian front campaigns player's will be facing much more numerious artillery concentrations and we quickly realised this was having devastating effects on unit survivability.

Perhaps we'll have to increase the base damage output a bit to compensate from the new calculation however. The damage done against a full strength target is identical to pre-patch 2.6.7, but drops to virtually 0 against a 1 strength target - so whiping out a unit completely with artillery alone is now impossible.

Our aim is to make artillery an ideal weapon to soften up defenses - by reducing strength and crippling efficiency - without being able to destroy enemy units from long range. This way they become the support weapon they should be, but still require actual boots on the ground to wipe out the enemy.

I doubt artillery was ever able to wipe out units to the last man (or tank). The current change, where it's easier to cause casualties if there is more stuff to potentially hit should improve realism.

I'd like to hear your experiences after playing the Viipuri 1944 scenario, where the Soviets throw a firing line of six 155 to 203mm howitzers and a bunch of Katyushas against your defenses

Before this change any unit venturing in range of that was deleted during the enemy turn. It probably still is now, but at least it takes a horde of T34s and infantry for the final kill, after it's efficiency and strength got crippled by the artillery barrage.

Now my problem is, do I continue with the Pacific campaign that I am replaying? What if they change the artillery situation again?

bru888 wrote:Now my problem is, do I continue with the Pacific campaign that I am replaying? What if they change the artillery situation again?

Having pondered for a while, I believe the best thing to do is to uninstall 2.6.7c and go back to 2.4.8 which is still available as the basic game. I believe all DLC through U.S. Marines will work with that. If and when I do play Winter War, I will install 2.6.7c at that time. Meantime, I will await future developments and I would appreciate some official word in these forums as to if and when this artillery situation is revised.

One thing, though: From adherbal's comments, it seems that the Artistocrats changed the game to suit the latest campaign, Winter War. This comment in particular: "This was less of an issue during the Pacific campaigns because (heavy) artillery (especially for the Japanese) was fairly uncommon there. But with the Russian front campaigns player's will be facing much more numerious artillery concentrations and we quickly realised this was having devastating effects on unit survivability."

It seems that the basic game engine is often tweaked with each new patch, and I suppose that's a good thing. But to alter the game engine to suit the latest DLC may not be so advisable. From the customer comments in that thread, people are complaining that the gameplay for older DLC has been compromised, and that is not a good thing.

As to me, and considering that the game is mainly played in single mode, I would really appreciate to have artillery restored to pre-patch values (not perfect but not completely unuseful).

I find that it still works effectively, however, when hovering over a potential target it always shows zero damage will be inflicted. I did notice that the free long-range artillery you receive as a bonus during the attack on Munda airfield were significantly less useful than they used to be.

I like the artillery change because the weak unit sniping via artillery was really broken (especially in Morning sun campaign). I am a little bit concerned by these and past balance changes in the context of the campaigns. For example:

- AA gun nerf (can effect Pearl harbor scenario in both Japanese and US campaigns)
- Heavy infantry buff (can effect Morning sun campaign)
- Artillery nerf (can effect Morning sun campaign)

I'm not sure if the developers did actually some re-balance of the older campaigns in the context of these changes.

Mojko wrote:I'm not sure if the developers did actually some re-balance of the older campaigns in the context of these changes.

Not likely, I'd say. Maybe not even desirable.

Did we enjoy playing Pacific, Morning Sun, and Marines as they were? I believe so, occasional "weak unit artillery sniping" notwithstanding.

For that reason, pending any further word or action by the developers, I have worked it out so that I will be playing all of that DLC with version 2.4.8 and then I will upgrade to 2.6.7 to play Winter War and Battle of Britain. For now, I think that's the best way.

I will have to amend my post up above ... now that I am paying closer attention to the matter, artillery - while not completely useless - has gotten much weaker. Needs to be tweaked up. I use 105mm howitzers almost exclusively, and they are not scoring hits with any regularity.

Artillery after last patch is finally balanced. The unit sniping was ridiculous. I was scoring like 3 hits with the weakest artillery in the Morning sun campaign very often. artillery is still very powerful, I have finished both Mannerheim line defense scenarios in the Finnish campaign and I had 4 artillery units shelling the enemy all the time. Without these units the Russian tanks and heavy infantry would overrun my defenses easily as your units are generally weaker.

Can't talk about Winter War but as to previous Pacific scenarios artillery is now far to be "balanced"....

richfed wrote:I will have to amend my post up above ... now that I am paying closer attention to the matter, artillery - while not completely useless - has gotten much weaker. Needs to be tweaked up. I use 105mm howitzers almost exclusively, and they are not scoring hits with any regularity.

Mojko wrote:Artillery after last patch is finally balanced. The unit sniping was ridiculous. I was scoring like 3 hits with the weakest artillery in the Morning sun campaign very often. artillery is still very powerful, I have finished both Mannerheim line defense scenarios in the Finnish campaign and I had 4 artillery units shelling the enemy all the time. Without these units the Russian tanks and heavy infantry would overrun my defenses easily as your units are generally weaker.

It looks like we have conflicting opinions here! Since the jury is undecided, and since I heard nothing about this "artillery sniping" issue until now, when artillery has become an issue in general, my decision is to play all DLC content with version 2.4.8 and reserve 2.6.7 for Winter War. To my delight, it's possible to have separate iterations of OOB, one at version 2.4.8 and the other at 2.6.7, on the same laptop but even so, what I would have done is just to finish Pacific, Morning Sun, and Marines before applying the patch and moving on to Winter War.

Because, I am looking at it this way: The DLC prior to WW was designed in conjunction with 2.4.8 and the versions leading up to it. I was happy with the game and did not notice "artillery sniping" (or, if I did, may have been grateful to be the perpetrator as well as victim, at times). To be playing the old DLC with 2.6.7 will bother me now because I know darned well that the developers did not re-balance those campaigns. Some game players have reported unsatisfactory results, accordingly.

I agree with your reasoning. While I believe that current game setup is much more balanced I fear that the devs did not do any campaign rebalance. I expect the Morning Sun campaign to be much harder now because:

- Heavy infantry gained Mortar ability so they are much stronger
-> Chinese have lot of these guys and since this is a defensive unit, you are unlikely to benefit from this buff as much as Chinese do

- Artillery unit sniping is not an option anymore
-> You are going to be swarmed in this campaign and the Chinese will try to pull their weakened units and repair them thus fighting the war of attrition - a war you can't win

- AA gun nerf
-> the Chinese have a quite a good air forces available, so having an AA gun to support your fighters was a great choice, it will do less damage now

Changing the difficulty setting is always an option as a last resort.