Re: Artillery
First, let me reiterate my thanks ("The Man Hours") to the SPCamo folks: what you guys do is what wargaming is all about!
Second, I too have noticed the increased lethality of AI arty against armor in the new Win version. Chuckforth's 19 May comment sounds right to me, and I would like to agree with Charles22 on the percentage of top hits, Snake's experience with Polish 75mm and 100mm arty, and Vikhr's post regarding splash hits. As an example from recent game play, on a 40x40 map playing as the Germans against the poles in '39 my mixed armor company (PzIIIs, ACs), which was spread out over a 15x30 area with at least a hex between each vehicle, suffered 8 kills in less than half a dozen turns by Polish 75mm and 100mm off-map arty. I have also noticed a marked increase over other versions of SP in the amount of hits (clink!) taken by armor units from artillery.
I am reluctant to change the arty effectiveness preference because its effect on infantry and other soft targets at 100% seems right and I don't want to minimize this for the sake of armor. (BTW, for my money, the arty effectiveness for the last version of SPWW2 was just about perfect!) Thanks to Andy for looking into addressing this issue (28 May comment) as well as smoke in campaigns!
Lastly, while I understand the ambiguity and personal preferences in modeling arty "realism" and can accept the arty as it stands now in WinSp, what seem unrealistic are some of the splash effects, especially from non-arty weapons. For example, in a '44 game of Germany v. GB several odd splash hits occured within the first 8-10 turns. Once, I fired a single Panzerfaust round at an AC in a hex which contained three other ACs. I missed the target AC but TWO other ACs in the hex got destroyed. Or again, a British infantry squad fired at a motorcycle squad and, after inflicting a couple of casualties on the MCs from rifle fire, I saw the Puma AC that shared the hex explode (perhaps from a PIAT or Mills bomb?). I understand blast radius, MG bullet spray, etc. as well as the overall messiness of weapon fire (and how difficult it is to model these things with such a rational machine as a computer) but these splash effects seem too frequent to chalk up to accident and not very realistic - and made more so in light of the frequency of occurance. Am I missing some realism factor you guys were thinking about? Can you help me understand this a bit?
Thanks!
Groszdix
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