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Tactics Artillery for Beginners

MeFirst

Grizzled Veteran
Mar 26, 2006
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I am too lazy to make a proper video for this at the moment and so you get this in text form. Anyway, this is pretty basic information that everyone that can mark artillery targets or is calling artillery targets should now.

These are just some basic rules of thumb. There are situation in which you should not follow these rules and get a bit more creative. Knowing when to do this is what makes the difference between a good commander and one that is "just" doing his job.


How to mark targets for the artillery?
At the moment, you can mark targets 3 1/2 ways. This sounds a bit weird, but bear with me.

1. Get your Binoculars, look on the desired spot and press fire. You can now also hold the fire button down and you see the marker before it is placed. This does the same as option 3 1/2.

2. Throw a signal smoke grenade on the spot. This is especially useful if you want to mark something nearby, but you are basically pinned down and you would get shot if you leave your current cover.

3. Use the Quick Orders Widget. If you hold down that button, you can precisely put down a movement and most importantly a artillery mark.

3 1/2. You can combine the Binoculars with the Quick Orders Widget. This is very useful if you are far away from the mark location, but you still want to get a precise mark. So open the Binocs first and then use the Quick Orders Widget while being in the Binocs.


What to mark and what to drop.
Now that you know how you can get some nice little marks, we can take a little look of where you should put them and what you should call/request on it.

You capture or hold a zone by having more players in them as the enemy. So you want to get your guys in and the other guys out. The situation usually looks like this:
209uk5.jpg



So you can use your artillery to make the magic happen. There are two types of artillery in the game.

1. Single Strike Artillery (Napalm etc.)
2. Barrage Artillery

Use Single Strikes right on the objective Barrage Artillery on the reinforcement lines.

A single strike is useful when the enemy is holding a zone with a lot of players and you have a hard time pushing in. By calling something like napalm, you can clear that zone for some time and open a window for your guys to take advantage of that and push in. It is very important that you coordinate this with your team. Otherwise you will gain nothing, make it worse or get auto kicked and session banned for teamkilling.

Barrages are better on the reinforcement lines. They last longer and you also have the possibility to randomly hit a squad tunnel of the NVA with it. It is usually not a good idea to call Barrage Artillery right on a Zone because you also block the zone for your own guys. You will most likely to kill a lot of reinforcements, or you make them use a longer route to the zone. This means that you will gain a temporarily advantage in the numbers of attackers.

If you are not sure where the most reinforcements come from, it is a very good idea to use the recon ability of the commander.


Happy explosions!
 
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I just find it so hard to set good marks in RS2 compared to the other games. I played quite a bit of commander and SL in RO2 and always made sure to set good marks for artillery, so I know the system.

Ok granted this is jungle compared to the more open terrain of the eastern front, so it might make sense that it would be harder to call in good coordinates, but not sure if this is the intention of the new system. I just find the marker is almost always red and either OOB or too close for comfort. I guess in RO2 you had a sight in the binoc view which made it easier, while a bit un-realistic.

Thanks for the tip on just being able to hold RMB (right right?) instead of fiddling around with binocs and also remembering to press the widget key.
 
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MeFirst;n2293630 said:
Remember that you don't have to set marks right on the ground. Your view of the place on the ground can often be blocked by vegetation and this is especially a case in RS2. What often helps is to place mark on higher objects. Can be a tree or a rooftop etc.

I know - that's what I usually do, except you have to hit directly on a tree and it's really tricky since there is nothing to aim with in the binoculars. Oh well.
 
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If the marker/light beam turns red, it doesn't mean you can't place a mark. It's actually indicating that you're aiming at an enemy or an enemy objective, and that left clicking at that time will send an attack order to your squad (or the currently selected squad(s) if you're commander). If it's blue, then you're aiming at a friendly objective and would issue a defend order. Speaking of which, it's not artillery related, but you can issue orders using the overhead map now, by double clicking to issue a move/attack/defend order, or middle clicking to mark an LZ. You cannot mark artillery via the map though, for gameplay reasons (you'd not need SL marks anymore if you could just call recon, look for a clump of guys and instantly mark a target on their heads).

Regarding the binocs and the other widget, I'm still not sure why you're needing to use them both. Holding the left mouse button in binoculars turns on the same light beam marker that the quick orders widget does, giving you the exact same visibility of where your mark is actually going to go.
 
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PsYcH0_Ch!cKeN;n2294113 said:
I'm still not sure why you're needing to use them both. Holding the left mouse button in binoculars turns on the same light beam marker that the quick orders widget does, giving you the exact same visibility of where your mark is actually going to go.

I wasn't aware you can also hold it down.

I just tested it a bit and it appears to be a bit inconsistent. Before somebody is suggesting that something with my mouse might be wrong, I tested that and the buttons are fine. Sometimes holding it down will directly place the make and in sometimes you give out a move marker and not an artillery marker while being in the binocs.

Anyway I'll edit the starting post about holding it down.
 
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