Friendly fire.. (ARTILLERY!)

[Colt Ward]

I have not really had fratricide cases with my own artillery- you know the drift patterns so you can always make sure you are in one of the scatter 'holes' . . . though that does not work with Long Tom as well but I do not use it that often.  I prefer multiple Sniper tubes to throw hate down range.

While I am good, the best person I saw with artillery taught me a few tricks like using the ranging shots to herd enemy mechs & armor towards his pre-plotted hexes.

[Sartris]

i would learn to do shit like that if artillery actually caused substantial damage. as it stands i've taken a few five / ten point hits that more hilarious than harmful

[AlphaMirage]

Forget courage, fanaticism, or guts - the amount of dice luck needed for such a shot to actually trouble swarming suits is TERRIFYING. :o

They got a healthy amount of SRMs their way beforehand and artillery hits everything in the hex. It was good luck on my part and a Mech falling does remove them from it at the cost of a pilot hit but it was worth it to save an Albatross.

[Weirdo]

and artillery hits everything in the hex.

No, this is a common misconception. BA riding or swarming a mech *only* get damaged by shots that strike the mech, strike the right location, and then make the D6 roll of Icantremember or better. Artillery is not an exception to this. You're confusing them with the rules for AE striking a hex with loose BA in it, which are indeed largely hosed by artillery.

[Colt Ward]

No, this is a common misconception. BA riding or swarming a mech *only* get damaged by shots that strike the mech, strike the right location, and then make the D6 roll of Icantremember or better. Artillery is not an exception to this. You're confusing them with the rules for AE striking a hex with loose BA in it, which are indeed largely hosed by artillery.

Is swarming the key or Std vs Homing rounds?  Homing hits the single location and if BA are there then yes . . . but if it was a standard HE round hitting the hex does the swarming BA each take damage or have to do the location dance?

I ask b/c I never payed too close attention in MM which is where I use most of the artillery.

i would learn to do shit like that if artillery actually caused substantial damage. as it stands i've taken a few five / ten point hits that more hilarious than harmful

Which is also where you get into density- you have to do more than popping off a single gun.

[Weirdo]

Swarming or Mechanized BA is the key. Even HE rounds need to do the location dance.

[Sartris]

Which is also where you get into density- you have to do more than popping off a single gun.

don't generally play games that big. not in the index of things i care about

[Colt Ward]

Artillery infantry platoons are BV cheap without getting into 'big' games.  I used the 3 canon Thumper platoons in a 5k force with . . . 2 mechs, a hovertank and 2 BA- so 8 units in 5k.  Or maybe it was 2 and I added the 3rd with the next 5k.  Thumpers with their single ton of ammo getting you 20 shots was enough . . . though I also used Smoke rounds for one of the guns a couple of times- lol, unfortunately I could NOT get that to land where I need.

[Sartris]

let me put it another way - very little has ever incentivized me to care about artillery at all and now that BMM has the abstract battlefield support, i will never use artillery unless its cannons or on-board for campaign reasons