State of USF artillery

(or, how to have the most variety of tech artillery in the game and still lose the tech artillery war)

major: way too obvious and slow to actually hit anything. Maybe the shell deal decent damage but any competent player can move out of the way.

Remove the signal smoke



M8 Scott: Good fire-support with its auto-fire, but the barrage recharge too slow for what is basically a glorified mortar barrage. (75s)

increase the number of shell and/or decrease the recharge time on the barrage. The duration of the barrage and its recharge time should sync up like the mortar barrage.


Pack Howitzer: the shell pack a punch, but is plagued by the similar barrage problem as the m8 scott. It's also hard to keep this unit alive due to the lack of gun shield.

Need to be able to retreat. It's actually more fragile than it appear, as the gun require a 3 men crew. Combined with the lack of gun shield mean the crew is likely to get stun-lock after losing 1 of its operating crew. There's also other possible tweak but this is the main one.

81mm mortar: basically a 60mm mortar masquerading as a 81mm mortar. extremely fast fire rate but short range. Excellent in the early game but the range become a liability later on as you're going to get counter barraged to oblivion.

remove it and give the rifleman ability to throw smoke similar to the shock troops. The rifleman with smoke was good enough to provide the USF with one of the best early game and they didn't need early game mortar. The only way they could fit a mortar into the USF early game is to make the mortar weak and nerf the rifleman (no more smoke).

The m8 provide mobile firepower. The major call in barrage on entrenched position. Pack howitzer is a combination of the 120mm mortar and leig. the 81mm mortar is unnecessary given the USF early game and there's already three other artillery piece late game.

Also give them a nuke to be balanced.

(or, how to have the most variety of tech artillery in the game and still lose the tech artillery war)

major: way too obvious and slow to actually hit anything. Maybe the shell deal decent damage but any competent player can move out of the way.

Remove the signal smoke



M8 Scott: Good fire-support with its auto-fire, but the barrage recharge too slow for what is basically a glorified mortar barrage. (75s)

increase the number of shell and/or decrease the recharge time on the barrage. The duration of the barrage and its recharge time should sync up like the mortar barrage.


Pack Howitzer: the shell pack a punch, but is plagued by the similar barrage problem as the m8 scott. It's also hard to keep this unit alive due to the lack of gun shield.

Need to be able to retreat. It's actually more fragile than it appear, as the gun require a 3 men crew. Combined with the lack of gun shield mean the crew is likely to get stun-lock after losing 1 of its operating crew. There's also other possible tweak but this is the main one.

81mm mortar: basically a 60mm mortar masquerading as a 81mm mortar. extremely fast fire rate but short range. Excellent in the early game but the range become a liability later on as you're going to get counter barraged to oblivion.

remove it and give the rifleman ability to throw smoke similar to the shock troops. The rifleman with smoke was good enough to provide the USF with one of the best early game and they didn't need early game mortar. The only way they could fit a mortar into the USF early game is to make the mortar weak and nerf the rifleman (no more smoke).

The m8 provide mobile firepower. The major call in barrage on entrenched position. Pack howitzer is a combination of the 120mm mortar and leig. the 81mm mortar is unnecessary given the USF early game and there's already three other artillery piece late game.

Off-map without a smoke is a big no-no.
I agree with Scott and Howitzer, though Scott barrage is irrelevant anyway, given how good auto-fire is
I dont really agree with the mortar, low range vs fast fire rate and accuracy is a decent balancing design and it dont hurt to have a more accurate alternative to the pack-howie

I'm not saying rifles don't have issues at the moment (I'd probably look at reducing their cost given how well volks perform for 30mp less), but smoke on all baseline infantry makes it crazy easy to shut down almost every form of suppression in the game. It was just bad design. WFA was simply poorly designed when it came to clearing garrisons.

Anyway, the USF mortar is getting more range in the next patch, IIRC.

USF arty looks fine at the moment.

They do lack rocket artillery, but they have mobile arty with no setup in the form of the Scott, which can constantly keep shelling things even when reversing compared to rocket strikes every 2 minutes.

USF arty looks fine at the moment.

They do lack rocket artillery, but they have mobile arty with no setup in the form of the Scott, which can constantly keep shelling things even when reversing compared to rocket strikes every 2 minutes.

Are you really comparing completely regular, mobile mortar to squad nuking rocket arty of other factions?
You for real?

What's the next silly statement?

USF's indirect does its job. I'd say its main problem is redundancy rather than balance: the Scott serves the same role as the Mortar HT and the Pack Howitzer overlaps hard with the mortar.

I've no clue what to do with the Scott but it'd be nice to see the Pack Howitzer reworked to be more of a howitzer and less of a glorified mortar. A slow, long range, barrage only unit would be nice.

USF's indirect does its job. I'd say its main problem is redundancy rather than balance: the Scott serves the same role as the Mortar HT and the Pack Howitzer overlaps hard with the mortar.

Scott used to be unique, but since no faction can have nothing that would be even remotely unique, that uniqueness in form of direct fire was stripped.
Same fate met ISG.

What about giving all officers thw ability to call in major arty once the major is unlocked? It would push officers as support units and maybe break up the mehs of rifle spam. Might need to rework teching tho so the officers dont come free tho...

Their bread and butter arty is fine. Major arty is nothing significant either way in terms of good or bad and is entirely useable and relatively inexpensive. USF gets the fastest arty in the game with the I&R pathfinders too.
The one thing that needs to be looked at is the Calliope, it was nerfed into oblivion and its cost remained the same. No one uses this unit anymore.

Now that you mention it, the USF do have the most varied artilery of the game.

3 mobile indirect fire units and 1 ability non-doctrinally and not to mention the mobile 105 on the Priest and Calliope as additional docrtinal mobile indirect fire units.

In stark contrast to the British, who believed in artillery being the kind of battle, are left with just 3 all around indirect fire units in total, with the Mortar pit not even being mobile, and the other 2 arguably underperforming compared to other units of the same role.

But all in all the mortar was added to the USF because of their liner tech-ing, designed as such for whatever stupid reason by you know it, Relic.

Take the US Army from CoH for example, with which you could take a different route than just spamming 3 Rifles straight out the bat because you had no other options. You could make Jeeps, snipers, machine gunners and mortars, but they were all T1, not T0.

My opinion? In order to solve the issue look back at what was successful and worked instead of trying to reinvent the god damn wheel.

My opinion? In order to solve the issue look back at what was successful and worked instead of trying to reinvent the god damn wheel.

Ah the argument that burned out the 2013 era playerbase...

Pack howi is less effective impact by 3 barrage shot with 1 min cooldown
3 shot not enough for break some static base like bunker or HMG garrison
ok Range on 120 is far but need mirco Frontline soldier spot or Recon spot
if fire in FOW is hard to shot on target

I hope Preview patch with indirect fire focus have buff Pack howi useful

Are you really comparing completely regular, mobile mortar to squad nuking rocket arty of other factions?
You for real?

What's the next silly statement?

I merely said they had the Scott compared to rocket arty Ost and Sov have. They're late-tech indirect-fire weapons.

I'm not comparing. I'm saying non-doc rocket arty is what they lack, but they make up for it with a variety of other indirect fire.

From my limited play in USF - I didt find the mortars bad tbh , they do their job well.

Mortar half track ( doctrinal ) has been a fave of mine for awhile , scales quite well too till it gets pushed by Axis armour.

Pack howitzer I never use.. when I played axis I saw that thing as a wanna be LeiG and abit of a meme.

M8 is good , godly auto fire , barrage left alot to be desired.

Priest is good too , good range and splash. Probs best self propelled arty tbh.

Lets just vrush the calliope under the rug and not talk about it

Removing smoke from major strike would make it godly for wiping and be OP as hell. Anything off map needs marker , atleast give the sturmpio blob a chance.

I merely said they had the Scott compared to rocket arty Ost and Sov have. They're late-tech indirect-fire weapons.

And late tech indirect fire is the only similarity here.
Its a regular mortar on a light tank. It supports a playstyle that does not exist and fills a niche that is not needed and overlaps with 2 much cheaper and comparatively performing units that come way earlier.

I'm not comparing. I'm saying non-doc rocket arty is what they lack, but they make up for it with a variety of other indirect fire.

Non doctrinally?
Not really.
PACK howi is a meme since forever.
Mortar is going to be idnetical to MEME howi and will make scott even more irrelevant then it already is.

USF do not need 3 different mortars with escalating exponentially cost, but no benefits to that.
The moment USF got T0 mortar and scott had its direct fire removed it lost all relevance.

The moment USF got T0 mortat PACK howi lost its relevance.

Major arty is more of a gimmick then a viable option because of low range and inability to use it without LOS.

USF do have options, but what of it if these options are all bad.

At least doctrinally it looks a bit better.

Off-map without a smoke is a big no-no.

the major arty is merely the USF's analogue to the ost and okw's rocket arty. A barrage from either of those rocket artillery is likely to be as devastating as the 6 shell from the major.

the difference is the rocket artillery is much more likely to hit.

...
Major arty is more of a gimmick then a viable option because of low range and inability to use it without LOS.
...

If only USF had some sort of reckon like the recon planes Major has so that they could use their Major arty.

OR maybe some smoke so that major could close in.

I am not sure what some people expect from one of cheapest units in the game (cheaper than CE) that comes with 5 unique +1 abilities and from an ability that cost 60 munition

If only USF had some sort of reckon like the recon planes Major has so that they could use their Major arty.

OR maybe some smoke so that major could close in.

I am not sure what some people expect from one of cheapest units in the game (cheaper than CE) that comes with 5 unique +1 abilities and from an ability that cost 60 munition

Or maybe something else could be done?

If only USF had some sort of reckon like the recon planes Major has so that they could use their Major arty.

OR maybe some smoke so that major could close in.

I am not sure what some people expect from one of cheapest units in the game (cheaper than CE) that comes with 5 unique +1 abilities and from an ability that cost 60 munition

at this point the major artillery turned into a 110 mu ability.

and you're still unlikely to hit anything since the ability is even more telegraphed.

Removing smoke from major strike would make it godly for wiping and be OP as hell. Anything off map needs marker , atleast give the sturmpio blob a chance.

The major artillery is a rocket barrage disguised as a off map. It is nowhere as strong as the typical doctrinal off map. The shells are weakers, there are less of them, and they arrive sequentially with longer pause between them.

off map barrage usually rely on alpha strike or have several artillery even going off at once. Major artillery have neither.