When to use which artillery-option?

[Verluste]

As there is no detailed information about the artillery strikes, my experience while playing commander is the following:

- Mortar barrage is useful for short, intense small artillery fire on a small area with lots of enemies in. Very useful for clearing out capzones.
- Regimental gun-barrage is useful for areas with more spread out enemy inf and armor in it, not that useful to clear out capzones but useful for blocking paths since it takes quite long for it to end
- Katyusha's for a wide area, powerful against enemy armor and hidden enemies camping outside

 

[Holy.Death]

Is artillery (and recon plane) limited per round/match? If yes, what are exact values?

 

[flavin420]

At first i thought it was only limited to the time it takes for you to get a reload. But erlier on BARRACKS where you have access to mortars. I think i dropped about 3 seperate strikes and then i got cut off 7 minutes before the round ended. So your guess is as good as mine.

Sometimes you will see on the map #Salvos remaining but i never seem to see that when im commander.

Well get the full manual hopefully in a week

 

[Sufyan]

OP has it right. Mortars are intense killers dropping in three barrages, artillery is a minute long area denial using six barrages and rockets are a more spread out mortar attack with a single barrage.

Personally I find the artillery barrages being the most useful support for a defender. You basically disable a large part of the map, stalling the attackers and funneling them to the other flank.

Mortars are good for punishing passive attackers that stay in packs but advance very slowly, making their approach very predictable. I also use these when firing close to my team as they don't deviate too much and so they are very easy to stand clear of. The street in front of Town Hall on Spartanovka is a good place for mortars as artillery would spread too much.

Rockets, because they are so brief, are only really good for softening up an objective for the attackers, especially if you intend to move up yourself immediately after calling in the strike. In public games it is safer to place an artillery strike behind the objective to prevent defenders from getting back on to the objective while you fight your way on to the objective with firearms and smoke, because teammates love to run into obvious artillery barrages even when you warn them about it.

 

[OnTheGun]

Sometimes you will see on the map #Salvos remaining but i never seem to see that when im commander.

I think that is referring to the actual barrage. It seems to me they are using a system of something like 5 guns firing 3 rounds each. So the first "salvo" is the first round fired by all five guns... then there is a pause, then the second salvo and so on.

So the map marker is to let you know how many more salvos are going to drop so you don't run in during a pause only to get hit by the next salvo.

 

[OnTheGun]

In public games it is safer to place an artillery strike behind the objective to prevent defenders from getting back on to the objective while you fight your way on to the objective with firearms and smoke, because teammates love to run into obvious artillery barrages even when you warn them about it.

That is where you should be placing it anyway. During WWI, armies learned that an artillery barrage, no matter how intense, simply can not destroy a deeply entrenched or fortified enemy. So what they found is artillery is best used to prevent the enemy's movements behind the line, rather than to attack the line itself. Artillery can't do it all by itself so the PBI still has to go over the top, and all it does is act as a warning to the enemy that an assault is about to happen.

So artillery barrages are used defensively. You want to hammer the enemy who are moving to attack you, or moving to reinforce the objective, but leave the enemy who are not moving and are dug in to the actual assault. You are using artillery to isolate and interdict the supply lines rather than destroy the front lines. As long as you prevent any reinforcements arriving, you'll do far more damage to the enemy position than if you hit it directly.

Hell, in the real world making a bunch of craters in the objective actually HELPS them

 

[Verluste]

OP has it right. Mortars are intense killers dropping in three barrages, artillery is a minute long area denial using six barrages and rockets are a more spread out mortar attack with a single barrage.

Personally I find the artillery barrages being the most useful support for a defender. You basically disable a large part of the map, stalling the attackers and funneling them to the other flank.

Mortars are good for punishing passive attackers that stay in packs but advance very slowly, making their approach very predictable. I also use these when firing close to my team as they don't deviate too much and so they are very easy to stand clear of. The street in front of Town Hall on Spartanovka is a good place for mortars as artillery would spread too much.

Rockets, because they are so brief, are only really good for softening up an objective for the attackers, especially if you intend to move up yourself immediately after calling in the strike. In public games it is safer to place an artillery strike behind the objective to prevent defenders from getting back on to the objective while you fight your way on to the objective with firearms and smoke, because teammates love to run into obvious artillery barrages even when you warn them about it.

I find rockets very useful when two capzones are near each other, in open areas like RedOctoberFactory where the buildings are largely open from the top and german players tend to camp outside on the flanks of hills and debris. Its like shooting a sawed of barrel shotgun from the air. You will always hit something. I once got 8 kills from a single rocket barrage. It's definitely useful for the appropriate situation. You will switch to mortar strikes after that when your team gets capzones and needs to defend it and/or has to attack single capzones.