I already made a video & topic about this (link: - YouTube), which I consider to be a bug, and most people in the threads or when I comment about it in-game agree that it should be fixed, but I don’t think people realize just how bad this situation is and how urgently it needs to be fixed.
I’m talking about the pre-warning on artillery strikes (red dot) which, after the delays introduced in Jun 18th patch, gives the enemy the precise location of incoming enemy artillery a full 25 seconds before the barrage effectively starts, which renders artillery functionally obsolete in-game (& creates a bizarre, unrealistic situation only seen in this game, where the enemy is telepathically informed of incoming artillery at the exact same moment the other team calls it).
I show in the video how, because of that, even bots evacuate the exact area of the circle way before the artillery hits, even if you call it directly above them or in a crowded area, bots will almost never get killed by artillery & only unaware or highly incompetent players will largely get killed by it.
Now, I already knew that, but then I saw something… It was an invasion match, about 8 or so players & their (mostly full) squads were crowded together near the enemy point, there must have been at least 40 soldiers there, only me & 1 guy from the team were not there… then a red dot for artillery appeared… every one of the >40 soldiers was within the circle… and I watched as every single player & bot emptied the area many seconds before the strike eventually hit. An artillery strike on such position would have been a slaughter, but not a single soldier was killed by it. (and it should be reminded that artillery was the main source of infantry casualties in WW2, responsbile for >2/3 of infantry deaths - just look at any source) And, worse, most of the people evacuated the point in the direction of the objective, so that masterfully positioned strike didn’t even serve to protect the point or divert enemies away from attacking it. And if a strike called over 40 people doesn’t do that, when will any artillery strike ever do it? Nearly impossible.
Game was being fun, team was winning and I was doing well, but I straight rage quitted after seeing that. It shows just how completely broken and absurd artillery has become in-game (and, I believe, unintentionally, devs probably did not pay attention to the unwarranted causes of the 25 sec delay + old red-dot pre-warning). Really, now you can only get any real kills with artillery on some choke points in Invasion matches, it might as well not exist outside of it.
Another problem is that, also because of the delay, friendly-fire kills by artillery strikes have significantly ramped up, because of people calling it above enemy points, not realizing it takes 25 seconds to actually hit, and by that time several people from your team might actually already be on the point trying to take it. I kill more of my team-mates with artillery now than I kill enemies, this is stupid. Calling in artillery now can be often more detrimental to your own team (due to delays on hitting the point) than to your own enemies.
I understand that some people had such trauma from the unlimited artillery strikes per team before the patch that they might be skeptical towards any improvements to artillery, but this absolutely needs to be done, it is not a matter of buffing artillery but of actually inserting it in the game again. It will never be OP again when limited to 1 strike per team and doing such reduced damage after the page. The pre-warning for enemy artillery that gives the exact location of the strike 25 seconds before it hits is completely ahistorical and bizarre and shouldn’t be present even in a game, even if it was a fantasy game because it absolutely makes no sense.
What should be done? Well, fixing this bug is quite simple. Suggestions could be: removing the red dot pre-warning in the map for incoming enemy artillery or only displaying it after one or two of the ranging shots hit the target (thus giving an idea of the area that might be hit), or by removing the extended delays before the actual barrage hits, or by a mixing of the two (reducing the delay before the strike a bit & increasing the time before the red dot appears a bit thus balancing things) but, really, any improvements are much welcome and necessary. Functionally removing artillery from the game, as it has been currently, is just a downgrade, especially in a game that includes very powerful planes and tanks…
), so this already increases it to 3% of actual deaths. Now if you remove plane bomb abuse and gray zone tanks, we’ll easily reach 5 to 10% of “traditional” deaths.