Artillery and bombardments

[Snowflake]

I've never really understood the proper use of artillery units. Having read some posts lately I've started to realize that it is an important aspect to understand. So what can artillery units really do? Last time when I tried Googlie's challenge I got quite a few spore launchers, I used them to bombard the fungal towers and I don't think they've caused any real harms.

So how do you use artillery units?

[Hydro]

HongHu,

I’m a fairly unsophisticated player, but I do use artillery for a few specific purposes:

Protection: Protect coastal bases from foil bombardment (on X-1-1 artillery protects a radius of 2 sectors – quite a bargain) of the base or terraforming. Plus, land-based artillery gets a huge bonus against foil artillery, plus a likely elevation bonus

Bombardment: Bombard enemy terraforming, particularly sensors

Invasion preparation: Soften up bases before invasion. This can be significant if the tech is evenly matched, and critical if you are at a disadvantage. For instance, waltzing up against a base 1 sector from the sea (to prevent amphib) and whacking it with the artillery from five foils and then unloading your offensive and defensive rovers can be very effective.

Probe action: bombard a base before sending out your probes. Defending probes that aren’t armored will be severely weakened, making your probe actions required to remove defending probes and then effecting your theft much easier.

Sector probing: if you don’t know but suspect someone is hiding in a sector, bombard it. You’ll either get ‘bombardment failed’ indicating no-one is likely there, or see a unit get whacked. This works very well against sneaky probes with no armor.

[Commy]

In my opinion, the best reason of bombardment is to protect from bombardment. Unless against psi, I never actually attack with artillery. I simply use it to defend against foils and cruisers. Also, land artillery gets a combat advantage against non-land artillery...

[Flubber]

Artillery

Hydro gives a good overview of the ways they can be used. They can actually be reasonably effective if you have a high weapon arty unit

I have games where I hardly build any arty and then otehrs where I might create a 2-4 unit battery. Sometimes its worthwhile when attacking bases that are hard to crack. Taking 10-50% off the health of the defenders might be the difference in losing other units in the attack or not

I don't bombard improvements much except with ships. The biggest two uses for me is hitting bases and hitting native life.

[Snowflake]

Ok now I understand one use of arty is to soften up the enemy so further attack/probe attack would be easier.

Also you can bombard improvements. Right? Or is anybody can do this? I think you can use a plan to bombard improvements too, don't need to be artillery right?

What about destroying AAs? Ships?

How effective is it used against different units?

[Hydro]

Bombarding improvements: yes, although it sometimes fails (I don't know why)

Who can do this? Artillery on land or sea units. Normal units can't bombard. But, normal units can destroy improvements if they have movement left and are in the square there the improvement is located. Artillery can do so at a distance of 2 sectors (always and advantage to remove an offending sensor, for instance). Planes and choppers can bomb improvements, which requires one move and a 'bomb' order. This may or may not work, like artillery

AAs can be destroyed with artillery. See my post on the use of AAs for details.

Artillery usefulness: land artillery has a large advantage over sea (foil) artillery. In general, the bigger the gun the better the boom when fighting units. For instance, a battle between land artillery and a ship will probably leave the ship severely damaged the artillery slightly damaged. Note that two land or sea artillery will fight to the death.

[Blake]

Artillery is useful against enemy artillery, say the AI foolishly has a (2)-1-2 stacked with his plasma units, if you bombard the stack (and win) then all units in the stack take standard "in tile with loser" damage - you have avoided the plasma armor and any terrain defense bonuses. (this also applies to attacking ships, it's always better to bombard ships with a lower weapon than armor rating - especially if your ship is in a coastal base, then it gets altitude bonus)

Artillery is good if the AI stacks all their planes in an in-range base, one volley with a decent level of artillery will reduce most the planes to half health, you can keep bombarding and hence pin down their aircraft.

Of course it's always worth mentioning SAM Artillery, aircraft (and locusts) not in a base are easily killed dead by artillery, this can sometimes enable you to whack aircraft which otherwise you couldn't reach (or would leave your SAM Rover/Ship vulnerable to counter-attack), it's also exceptional vs. stacks of aircraft (especially locust pops)

Artillery are good against ships and isles, transports are easily sunk with missile artillery or better.

Post-Fusion reactor, Artillery becomes somewhat lackluster, useful mostly in it's role of coastal-defense and anti-worm, against big enemy stacks your generally better off using self-destruct because fusion laser/reactor units pack so much punch for such little cost.

Basically some games I build no artillery, and other games I build a fair bit. It's great on the defensive, artillery totally devastates rovers - making it trivial to hold narrow choke points, stack the Artillery with high-armored units in a forested bunker, then bombard their rovers as they group 2 tiles out. A useful technique in challenge games where you need to defend against AI hordes.

I use coastal defense arty nearly every game where my terraforming is threatened by ships and I don't have (or can't use) aircraft.

The main alternative to Artillery is aircraft, not so good in FM. Also one of the primary uses of Artillery is wormicide - again something freemarketeers can have trouble with, another use being ship-defense - countering ships is annoying when sending your own ship (or interceptor) out causes drones. So when I do go Artillery heavy it'll almost certainly be under FM.

[Qwerty88]

A few things about artillery:
-If an artilery unit bombards a square it can't choose the terrain enhancement it wants to destroy, but a combat or terraforming unit using the destroy enhancement can choose.
-Artillery vs. artillery combat ignores armor values and uses both weapon values, but at sea you have to choose long range fire for this, attacking the unit will cause standered combat.
-Artillery units get a +25% combat bonus for each level of altitude above its tatget it is and a +50% combat bonus if it uses land based guns against a naval unit, both these can be edited in the alpha/alphax.txt
-Units in a base can only be damaged to 50% power in a base or bunker, 99% on land, and 100% in sea or air, these can be changed in the alpha/alphax.txt

[Commy]

Artillery, all in all, is probably the least important military doctrine. It is more critical to have interceptors, garrisons, speeders for attack, and transports than it is artillery. I'm not saying artillery is bad, it just isn't exactly, well, the greatest of things.

[Sikander]

One thing not mentioned (Blake alluded to it briefly) is that artillery can prevent units from healing and formers from working. This is one use for those often fairly useless spore launchers.

[Hydro]

Sik – you are quite correct on bombardment stopping terraforming.

In a recent PBEM the Spartans were bombarding the fruits of my Hivean terraforming and few coastal bases. I knew his foil would return so I started raising land. Sure enough, he returned 1 turn before my former would raise land. I was gleeful at the prospect of hulling and beaching his nasty foil! But, he bombarded my former team, spoiling the work.

Foiled!! (if you’ll forgive the pun)

[Snowflake]

Wow thank you guys! That was some great things for me to learn.

[Hydro]

HH – in my recent completed Hive PBEM I built cheap 4-1-1 artillery for my coastal bases (which I define as either at or 1 sector away from a coastline; I make no differentiation since they’re all vulnerable). The Hive’s wonderful support was key here, and the arti it made me almost proof against the roving Spartan impact foils. After a few unsuccessful engagements resulting in severely damaged Spartan 4-2-4t foils the Spartan retired. I did not have Doct: Flex at the time (I had a large land mass, no enemies anywhere nearby, and was pursing a Yang Hybrid strategy of development and aggressive defense; plus, my Semi-Directed research wasn't cooperating), so this was absolutely critical to secure my coast and its terraforming from an aggressive human-run Spartan. The Pirates (AI) were also in this game, so arti seemed like a very good investment even after I had my own hordes of People’s Foils swarming over former Spartan and Pirate sea lanes.

In most games arti isn’t quite as useful. I’m usually the Gaians and have lots of annoying spoor launchers, which take up my ‘native’ slots and aren’t nearly as useful. They do a good job at sniping, however, when on IoDs.

Hydro