viability of static enplacements.

somehow i think static emplacements in coh2 well "sucks" most of them can be lost on a single call in. "anny call in" i would dare to say they die to the smoke call in and even the Molotov grenade can kill them instantly. keeping them in the back makes them less than useful.(in the case of the German pak)

artillery is another thing. they do have the long range, but their turning speed and low fire rate. makes them useless against non static objectives.

they only seem to work to destroy enemy bases or to try and get a lucky kill with a behind the lines shot. but in turn you loose capping power and a huge amount of manpower better put elsewhere.

perhaps i have not seen their usefulness yet.

Static emplacements lock down areas. They aren't meant to be there alone unprotected, you need to have your units work along with it. For instance, build a pak43 in a defensive location. Use it to lock down armor control (this thing can shoot through things like forests and buildings) and build your own tanks to take control of the area.

Example: opponent builds 2 SU-85's. Lock down area with pak43, build 2 panzer IV. Why? He cannot attack your PIV without getting in range of the gun. You now have armor supremacy in the area. Here you can decide if you NEED both tanks in the area you're trying to contest. Now, the only thing you may be weak against is infantry, lay mines, set MG ambushes, etc. Basically an emplacement like an MG bunker / pak43 is defensive.

The artillery however is not, use it to bombard a position before a counter attack. Don't build it in a position where your enemy can spot it and call in arty off map or something similar.

Do you mean a molotov destroys the emplacement? Or... do you mean it de-crews the gun/ bunker/ whichever. You can simply recrew these things which you may have to do against good players. Your emplacement will often be contested.

Also, are you playing team games? It can be annoying to get scouted by a plane then bombed instantly, it's happened to my arty. But these things cost munitions and you have to trade eye for eye using your own munitions in situations like these. But on the note that your opponent can insta-bomb the arty and destroy say a 600 Manpower piece in one call in, yea I can see that being a little dissapointing and maybe it will change in the future.

i tried them in a 1v1 game. the pak did lock part of the map. i didnt know it could shoot trough buildings and terrain. so i guess i could try something better with it.

the German arty. was funny. i managed to get veterancy with it. and my enemy built an arty of his own. i set it to counterartilery (vet skill) and realized it is pretty useless. i started loosing the game when he got a shot that instagibed one of my greens (does arty has accuracy? i want to try using the arty officer before shooting). by that point i just got bored and finished the strategy trial.

I've found the artillery to be pretty inaccurate to be honest. It's more area denial. You could argue its offensive or defensive but i've found them harder to use defensively (especially if your opponent just retreats from the area being shelled). But then again that kind of supports my point, just use it as area denial. Don't want your enemy sitting ready on a flank? start shelling! It also has the benefit of a constant mindgame, kind of like the sniper. Always worrying when arty may come down, what it might kill, how important the unit is it could kill.

Static units suck. I give using them. Won't touch AT guns unless I'm desperate and won't touch standard mortars no matter how desperate.

i feel they are too expensive. and being lvl 4 makes them come too late. at least for the pak emplacement. the arty lvl 4 is fine. i try to use them but with the current conscript spam. my manpower has better use elsewere

I am finding that they are a lot of manpower to be destroyed by 1 katyushka barrage (the pak43 mostly)...

It's sad because it's really one of the only items in the game that can compete with an su85s range.

Thumbs Up, you give a good textbook description on how to use the Pak, and I agree with it completely and have tried more than once to play that way. But there are a few things that come along with it.

1. It really makes you more static, Russians always tend to have a minimum of 2 SU85 with maybe even a T84 call-in. In a case like this it's 4 tanks. No matter how much you want to, now you can't leave the area where you camped out. You might hold 2/3 VP's (for a while) but you'll get torn apart by lacking in munis/fuel. Eventually you'll just end up getting steamrolled anyways.

2. The german pak comes 1CP too late. Which only ever might make it a sort of counter to late mid-game SU85's. But in a recent game I got rushed by 2 SU85's and 2 T84's and the big boy PAK was destroyed by 2 shots of the SU85. Now does anyone remember how many shots it took for a Panther or Tiger to destroy a british AT-gun? Enough so you wouldn't rush a single tank into it but at 2-3 shots to destruction (not de-crew) it's price is waaaay to high. One would think that 2 "small" PAKs and 1 emplacement and 1 P-IV would be enough to deal with that unit composition but the russians completely destroyed the the 3 PAKS and my P-IV with 2/4 tanks left. What saved me was a shreck and a late arriving panther.

Anyways I just wanted to say I think the PAK is to costly to be so fragile and that babysitting it most likely will cause you to lose the rest of the map in anticipation of your impending doom because you could have spent fuel and MP somewhere else.

to me pak43 should be cp lvl 3 i was in a match where i tried to use it poped the spotter plane just to see a howitzer finished. and yeap thats the end of the story.

I think the pak43 is more viable in team situations where your team can cover the map more easily.

600 manpower for 260 munitions. That's probably not a good trade.

Other than that, what ThumbsUp said sounds pretty solid.