Regarding British Artillery and it's ability to observe.

Right, second time cause this site bullshitted me out of my first response, eating it without posting which is kinda infuriating not gonna lie so it’s going to take on a more negative tone. TLDR at the bottom.

Let’s face it, British Artillery is garbage right now. It lacks the speed into action as the OKW artillery doctrine or the U.S. Doctrine, and while similar to the Soviet doctrine, lacks the striking power. This sucks, big time. I have the solution however. We look to what the British did to fix this troublesome issue. Was it increasing the firepower? Not really, infact 25 pounders are kinda dinkly and weak. Was it extreme accuracy? Again, not so much, more of a German thing from what I can tell. The British solution was Concentration, more later.

The big thing for the Brits is being able to get a LOT of guns on target. The British had higher ranks as their observers who were entrusted to utilize certain code-words that when uttered, would prioritize that barrage order. Through a neat little site, I was able to find the following: “These concentrations were known as Mike (regiment), Uncle (division), Victor (corps), William (army) and Yoke (AGRA) targets and always initiated by the radio call “Mike Target, Mike Target, Mike Target” (or Uncle, etc) that galvanised CPs and guns to action.”

I do have a suggestion if this were to play off realistically. Since any observer could call in heavy strikes, with certain strikes being represented by a major or above, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to have some guns be temporarily taken away from the player. For example, If the player has 3, 25 pounder positions set up (+ the HQ base one), representing 8 guns, and they aren’t using them, then the firing animation and sound may play for 1-3 of these batteries, representing them hitting priority targets of other divisions, regiments or such. These guns would be ‘taken away’ from the player, just as guns that are recharging, in counter-battery mode, or are already fulfilling a fire-mission aren’t available. However, when the player were to call down a VICTOR target (as is already in game but dramatically under-powered!), it should be devastating after a fair delay.

I mentioned a lot of guns and how devastating it would be, and it really was.

In game currently, a Victor Target strike is 8, 25 pounders. However, that term has significance and does mean something. Historically, it represented far more. So rather than 8 dinkly guns firing on a Victor Target call relatively quickly, it should be instead about a 30 second pause before “… All available 216 field guns of an entire corps zeroed in on the…” target. Ideally, “with a good rate of fire, a ‘Victor’ shoot [should] literally place a thousand shells or so on a German position inside of a minute”. That’s a lot of dinkly!

This would be a fascinating play style, yet let’s think of this through the experience of the match. Mid-game, one sets up their artillery after skirmishing with the enemy. Sets up AT mines, and does scouting with their engineer squads. After the skirmishing, the Brit player would have quite a few Generals Credit points (forgive me, I’m not sure of the proper name). Ideally if this were to go through, Victor Target would have to be doubled in terms of credit costs. Purchasing that, the player observes an enemy armour group floundering in the mines and calls a Victor strike onto that area.

Now, since the player only has at this point the Headquarters Battery (which needs to be able to track kills by the way), that Victor Target would only be 2 guns normally. However, since it would be modified, it would be instead 216 guns.

However, the player lacks the other batteries in this example, and for balance reasons, it would be fair to assume that the other ‘units’ off map haven’t setup quite as quickly either. Thus, with only 1 out of the possible 4 batteries available, they’d only get a 1/4 of the guns (NOT shells, just to be clear), so 54 guns firing (presumably the amount of shells they currently fire for a regular battery, I think it’s like 5-6 or something).

Now, the battle advances. As the player gets additional batteries built, they get more of a proportion of the Corps fire plan. Thus, with one HQ battery, they get 54 guns firing.
HQ plus an additional built battery? 108 guns.
HQ plus two batteries? 162
The full pull, three built batteries and the HQ? The full Corps load of 216 guns firing.

Now, to be fair, some may call this overpowered.
I would disagree.

No 1. 
It takes a helluva long time to setup and it would be proportionally expensive, being double both in cost of the required generals credits as well as the ammo usage.

No 2.
As the British placed pride of place to fire-rate rather than accuracy, the spread on this would be <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>fairly large</span>, although it would be timely.

TLDR
The Victor Target Barrage in game is only 8 guns when it should be 216. Fix that so this doctrine isn’t a chore to play in comparison to the OKW Rocke- pardon, their Artillery doctrine.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by ZeeDesertFox. Reason: Site ate my first response

After some more experience with the game, I’ve found that by the time the player has already gotten to the Company Command Post, and built their 3 batteries, every other artillery doctrine has already been calling in strikes that feature more volume of fire (OKW artillery), more power (Wehrmacht defence or Soviet), or more versatility (USA Artillery), or all three, than the British Artillery.
This is before the difference between say a Land Mattress or Calliope strike is taken into account versus that of conventional gun artillery.

Even taking the 5.5 inch gun option of the Sexton Spotting vehicle into account, the British lack a strong force to really clear gaps in the enemy line, unlike the Karl Mortar, or B-5 gun. Via Victor Target, they in theory try to make up for it in volume of fire, but this fails to pay respects on the battlefield in terms of performance, or to history via what I’ve written above.

TLDR: For a so called artillery doctrine, (and this is my opinion, I may be off admittedly) it doesn’t hold a candle to the other artillery doctrines, or even any doctrine that can get a rocket type system such as a Nebelwerfer call in or a Land-Mattress.

Right then.

So having read through The Guns of Normandy, and now currently more than half way through The Guns of Victory, I’ve got some more input for the British Artillery doctrine.

As we’ve seen from the above posts, we’ve established that the game right now only has a single battery (of eight 25-pounders) firing to represent a Victor Target type target as provided by the doctrine.

This frankly is not correct. A Victor target would involve “all 216 field guns of [a]… Corps”, which is far more than the 8 measly guns provided (Blackburn, 1997, P. xii). Now frankly, some say that that’s unacceptable for balance and due to the limitations of the game engine. However, time and time again, junior observers, as detailed in this work, from forward ops were “bringing down ‘Mike Targets’ (fire from all its twenty-four guns)”, as well as having “regularly participated in impromptu shoots on ‘Uncle targets’ (involving all seventy-two guns of the division)” (Blackburn, 1997, P. xii).

The question arises as to fire-rate would be appropriate.  Having read both (3/4ths through the second one) works by Mr. Blackburn an observation that can be made is that the most common scale (or number of rounds fired per gun) on an impromptu target (Mike, Uncle, or Victor) is that of a “Scale 5”, or five rounds per gun. (Blackburn, 1997, P. 45, 58, 295, 298, 315, other’s not listed cause I can’t CTRL+F a physical book sadly).

Thus, if it were a Mike Target, the area would be saturated with (24 x 5= 120) shells. Were it an Uncle target, then (72 x 5= 360) shells. And finally, were it a Victor Target, as is depicted in game, it would realistically be (216 x 5= 1080) shells.

The inquisitive observer may wonder as to if this proposed fire-rate was realistic. While the ‘Gunfire’ order (in which shells would be fired as soon as possible as they were loaded, unless an interval was required) was intensive on first glance, it should be noted that the drop-off  or wear of old tubes (barrels of artillery guns) “is astonishingly slight… during the past four months, have fired an average of 10,128 rounds each, including occasions in Normandy when they glowed red-hot and, which by all logic, should have caused severe wear” (Blackburn, 1997, P. 172). “For the reliability of the 25-pounder to be fully appreciated, it must be compared to other formidable weapons … – the 5.5 inch medium gun and the 40mm Bofors ack-ack gun… [with the] 5.5 inch barrels generally…ending life at 2,400 [rounds] And bofors barrels [being] inclined to bulge when furious firing rates were sustained” (Blackburn, 1997, P. 173). In effect, the guns could and would be able to take the type of punishment I’ve described thus far.

Thus, we must now come to the question of balance. From chatting with friends, the occasional dev, and other wikinger players, it’s been generally accepted that Wikinger’s Company of Heroes 2 would probably crash were a Victor Target properly portrayed (as much as I would like to see it).

This is why I propose a changing of the Victor Target to either an Uncle Target (72 guns, 360 shells), or a Mike target (24 guns, 120 shells). I know there’s a precedent for adding shells from off map guns into a barrage, what with the soviet infantry doctrine’s mortar observer barrage, so I don’t believe this would be groundbreaking.

This change would allow for the Royal Artillery doctrine to be competitive in my opinion, as time and time again in real life, enemy attacks were broken on the backs and efforts of the guns, and this should be represented in game.

Finally, when compared to some of the other changes suggested here, I don’t believe that it would be that hard to implement (of course, I’m not a dev). No new models or existing model configurations are required, a simple name/text change and number of shells dropped (plus ideally the sound of other battery’s firing from off map) would suffice.

Thanks for reading.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by ZeeDesertFox.