Unique Battle and Impossible Barrage

[Charles22]

First, unique battle. I can't remember which version of SP it was, but I have had an offensive battle as Germany where I actually shut out the computer. I wouldn't had thought that was possible. To make it even more unbelievable, I recall the computer had dumped at least 10 rounds of HE into a good mass of troops, and didn't cause any losses. I don't know if I very effectively eliminated his artillery after that, or not, because I recall I either had no more bombardments against me, or I was deliberately advancing quickly enough that he missed for the few additional turns his artillery must had been firing.

I can recall some detail from that game, but I think later on I had another game where I shut out the computer as well. In any case I suppsoe it's exceedingly rare. How about any of you, have you ever managed a goose egg?

Now for the impossible barrage. I was playing in a Polish long campaign in the first battle against Germany. For AA support I had 4 taczanka's assigned to guard my main armored thrust. The Germans threw out 155mm artillery, and about 8-10 rounds hit. This resulted in all of that AA getting destroyed by one hit apiece, including one that was destroyed two hexes away from the bombardment. That is the first time I have ever seen a portion of my army's entire AA assets destroyed, and I certainly hadn't seen them through one-hit wonders, and to make matters worse it all occuring through one barrage in that one turn. There were no losses or damage to anything else, only one hit to those guys and poof! It was really weird seeing that. You would had thought the men got scared and set the carriage on fire themselves it was so bad.

[PanzerBob]

Charles22,

Never in an offensive battle, but in a defensive position yes. Once or twice I think.

As for the 10 rounds of HE Duds, I believe each is independently calculated for what it will do based on it's power, terrain etc, it's not implausible that they all "rolled" no effect. In real life, it has happened that entire batches of ammo were duds for various reasons.
Hope this helps.

Prosit!

[DRG]

What type of terrain they were standing on when the rounds landed?

Don

[Charles22]

I think they were all on a road. Look, I'm not complaining that this was some sort of thing that should never happen. I'm just saying how it was pretty bizarre and leave it at that. I only mentioned it because of that fact that it was bizarre and certainly not commonplace. I undertsand how units in more open terrain are more apt to receive more damage, but how I start offensives is always pretty much the same way, and the AA is always towards the back and either on the road or in a nearby woods hex. They were all in different hexes.

I'm also not complaining that there were duds. I don't consider HE that appears to do nothing as a dud. What I did mention of some of those rounds doing nothing was to more illuminate the stark contrast of what happened. Not only was nothing else affected by the 8-10 rounds, but also each AA unit was destroyed by one hit; no one man loss from a hit as we so commonly see. The taczanka's are only 3 man units anyway, so them surviving an artillery hit should probably be none too common anyway. I'm not too sure how many men the German SPAA contains, but it is fairly comparable to these taczanka's and it takes usually at least a couple of hits to wipe them out often enough. But, then again, I'm not all that frequently getting bombarded by 155 type artillery where my AA assets are, but it is pretty weird to get them all wiped out by one hit apiece and then for none of the other units to be affected in that same area. Maybe it's some sort of weird fault of the Polish forces, but that seems far-fetched. I don't intend to play as Poland long enough to find out. In fact I already switched long campaigns after I got bored with them after a bit.

Ohhhh, nevermind about my dud comments, as I thought panzerbob was commenting on those in the Polish game. Obviously he was commenting on the shutout game, which isn't the same game where I lost the taczanka's. Yes, in the shutout game you might say those were duds, because it is pretty rare to have that amount of rounds hit from artillery and not lose a man. To say nothing of how rare it is to fight as you usually do the rest of the battle and not a single infantry or tank unit is lost. I wasn't suddenly brilliant in that shutout game, everything just worked my way.

Curious I would bring these two stories together isn't it? Because now that I think about it the stories are sort of opposite. In one the artillery had no affect whatsoever. In the other it looked like they had homing devices for taczanka's built on them, and one hit was all it took. I know at least two of them were just from the blast radius and weren't direct hits.