Not much needs to be said here, but it needs to be said, nonetheless.
Currently, a player can call artillery directly on top of an enemy APC and that APC will take no meaningful damage, whatsoever, unless a round hits it directly.
This is not only hilariously unrealistic, but exceptionally bad for game balance. If a player/team coordinates accurate artillery fire onto the location of an enemy APC, they should be rewarded for that. Not slapped in the face by the invincibility APCs seem to have against artillery.
I think the issue lies with the damage that artillery fragments deal to soft vehicles like APCs and Scout Cars, in that I seriously doubt it’s coded to do any at all. That does, however, make the fix pretty simple. Increase the damage of artillery fragmentation to soft vehicles drastically.
Also, it may be worth giving artillery rounds and bombs alike a proximity kill threshold for APCs. Artillery and larger (250kg/500lb) bombs that detonate within 10m (unobstructed) of an APC kill it without exception or further computations. Smaller bombs (50kg/10lb) do the same within 5m (unobstructed).
Actual APCs? No, some (most) of them were designed to survive light bombardments, to transfer troops and wounded in and out of contested areas, the British Universal Carrier is a example of this. Unless you’re directly hit you’d survive…
I actually wished my troops in my APCs would learn how to duck when under artillery bombardment.
They were designed to keep crew and mechanized infantry (in the case of German halftracks) alive through LIGHT bombardments, yes. But that means grenades, mortars, and at MOST very light field guns, not actual artillery and certainly not 50kg+ bombs.
The kind of off-map, area blasting, radio-called artillery that is depicted in-game is in the 105-120mm range. That would completely obliterate any APC or Armored Car it landed anywhere close to. Heck, if we REALLY wanted to be realistic, the artillery calls should disable armor it lands close enough to.
Light bombardment reffers to the intensity of fire, not nessesarily the weight of the ammunition. If we discount things like overpressure/concussions, top-down shrapnel and spawling (because the game currently does not model any of these) the shell of a field howitzer going of 10 meters away (by pure HE damage alone) from your APC shouldn’t do much.
I mean, a across the board artillery buff would be the most realistic, but that would include similarly armoured tanks. So if you want realism, that would include killing tanks in close support, and we don’t need more reasons for tanks to greyzone camp.
As is, HE is more generous on the reciever in the game rather than the giver, you can survive way more situations here than in real life, and that’s across the board. Making trucks and APCs specificly more voulnerable seems a bit unfair.
That too, rocket artillery will deal with trucks and APCs just fine, unless parked against a building, then the sideways incoming fire wouldn’t do so much.
That entire mechanic is locked behind event and premium squads… And is largely ineffective against any target. That’s why nobody uses it. Rocket Artillery might be the most un-used mechanic in the entire game.
I’m actually thinking about making a suggestion post, arguing for giving these event squads the same squad upgrade as tech tree squads, the upgrade to let radiomen in other squads also call in the main squads unlocked abilities, in this case unlocking rocket artillery for all squads.
I think that’s a nice bonus for owning the squads, because the squads by themselves are very meh.
I would like this comment btw, just ran out of likes.
If this is what your suggestion is about, I would support it, I don’t mind realism (I in fact like it), but arbitrarily giving it to some things but not others (like German S-18 AT rifle, only AT rifle with brace mechanic) is not on, at least not for me.
It would also give sub-factions the ability to use rocket artillery without the need of making new squads for them, the UK had their rather famous Land-Matress after all.
I may just be lucky, But I find it really reliable against vehicles…the issue with it is most of the time, the vehicles are positioned where you cant call it in (greyzone)…making it rather pointless…I would like to see that fixed and it would be infinitely more useful
Would be a good way to spread out where and what artillery is used, instead of the constant HE arty spam in a localised area