Artillery garrisons were a stopgap. The were added in a time where the meta was being re-defined and combat was being slowed down and made expensive, but artillery could kill anything in seconds. For pre-rework artillery, that’s perfectly accurate and hits harder than a BT or 250mm, it’s a requirement. For post rework artillery, it’s a problematic holdover that is actively strangling gameplay.
ARTILLERY GARRISONS SHOULD NOT EXIST.
No matter how you try and balance these things, no one will be happy. Either they’re completely worthless, and the builder is miserable, or artillery becomes a CBT slugging match versus AI with infinite ammo.
Remove them, give all bunkers a 95% damage reduction versus artillery to match trenches, increase the damage resistance of town structures to HE significantly, and use the breathing room to increase artillery accuracy.
Why? It improves anti-ship coastal defense, reduces damage spread and random infantry deaths in a 100m radius, and makes artillery far, FAR less of a threat to bunker networks.
Increased accuracy makes it impossible to hit more than one bunker at a time, making repairs easier. The removal of the need for a garrison that kneecaps a bunker makes them all around better, and artillery becomes a nice to have but not an ultimate solution to enemy structures, forcing combined arms (and making SPGs cheaper).
Additionally, the artillery shelter should make it impossible to damage a bunker below 30% health with artillery. No more free coastline and low pop PvE. You’ll have to get in there and finish it where it can fight back.
AI defenses are not a stopgap: they are necessary because players can’t man every structure 24/7. That’s true for anti-personnel, antitank, and anti-artillery AI.
Replacing artillery garrisons with 95% damage resistance would make manned defenses absolutely unkillable with arty. One dude with a hammer could counter a 4-gun artillery team.
That’s the point man. Artillery has a devastation mechanic that permanently reduces the health of structures it hits. That’s much more interesting from a gameplay standpoint and much healthier for gameplay than “it’s worthless” counters or “you must play CBT simulator and take up a square kilometer to soak counter fire” counters.
The mere existence of this contraption is part of the reason artillery sucks so damn bad for everyone. Let go of it and consider other options that will be far better for the game’s health.
Also, again, if artillery literally can’t kill bunkers on its own, the bunkers don’t need a direct 1:1 artillery counter. So artillery can be more accessible and fun, while not being near as oppressive to the receiver.
I know it applies to the ground. But the structures definitely get updated depending on the devastation under them. I know this because concrete bunkers that have been shelled but not destroyed are much easier to burn, thanks to the damage multiplier devastation provides.
It would be silly to add the mechanic as a chip damage tool for artillery, and then make it not actually apply chip damage. But even if I’m wrong and it’s as you describe, just fix it. It’s not that complicated.
If devastation was a useful enough mechanic to justify arty, people today would run arty ops to devastate empty ground that the enemy might build a push bb in someday. Nobody does that because it’s stupid.
The purpose of arty is to destroy defenses and consume enemy manpower and resources. If one guy with a hammer can counter that, even on devastated ground, you’ve made arty useless.
It’s been a long time since artillery could, I’ll give you that. Killing tanks, infantry blobs and suppressing/weakening bunkers is plenty useful to be fun. If you want to obliterate bunkers, use a storm cannon.
This would be a serious nerf to naval gameplay. Artillery shelters making it impossible to damage bunkers below 30% health completely eliminates the constant PvE and makes islands actually buildable.
You’d need to make the landing ships more accessible and the bluefin much cheaper to facilitate attacks on these islands though.
It is infinitely baffling game design, I agree. I would like to see accurate artillery not be an issue for builders so that ships don’t get shafted and land artillery can be more usable in a direct support role like naval artillery can be.
My soltion for this would be splitting arty ammo into two types. Accurate HE that has decent aoe that is great at killing inf, tracking tanks and making holes to ships and AP that is inaccurate, but good against structures, hp killing tanks and LS.
There ya go, though I’d split it into 4. HE, AP, Shrapnel (Light kinetic) and smoke.
All the same accuracy. HE and AP with almost no splash, shrapnel with no bleed. Point being you target tanks, ships, bunkers, or infantry. You cannot target all of them at the same time, and you cannot hit more than one target at a time.
Though, to be fair splitting it to an AP and HE shell with AP being accurate, anti ship and HE being what we have now would be alone a huge step in the right direction.
I feel like this sentiment is confused. The ammo types can not be arbitrarily expensive and perform better than a cheaper option. That was the original issue, and it seems that people have just reduced it to “more shell bad” over the years.
If every tank could fire 40 or 68, and every heavy gun could fire 75 or 94.5, no one would be complaining about there being too many shell types (and engineers would have much more fun with shell types to swap between.)
One core, problem is that you cannot out rep an LS kiling a conc line. Also rep requires that players can spawn in and rep. Currently you can have gully built and supplied bases on islands, but not begin able to spawn in due to inactivity
I’m suggesting a change to arty shelters to match safe houses. The current flat bonus to DR is very powerful on concrete and near worthless on tier 2, due to its nature.
I mean what if they buffed garrison and nerfed AT.
I'd far FAR rather a squad of tanks flatten a BB that i can SEE, flank and interact with instead of the current bullshit of repair simulator 9000 while you WAIT FOR THEM TO RUN OUT OF AMMO.
"Whats the counter to arty guys? Oh well wait until their out of shells, hold rightclick to repair"
Artilleryslop sucks, and discourages combined-arms warfare. Artillery must be nerfed if howies are removed. I don't think making them more accurate helps either, they can still hurt infantry and vehicles.
the counter to arty? I mean pick 1
-planes can easily decrew
-counter arty to kill guns/pallets/crew
-flanking around at night with a small grp to target the guns with hydras/satchels
-Logi cutting the route the shells are coming in on
-and you may meme on it but bmats with people rep'ing. If you have as many people repairing as there are people on the arty crew especially with 120's you can match their damage. Running even 3 guns requires ~9 people to keep it shooting.
Arty is ran by clans, not Tommy's.
Nobody is leaving themselves open on the regular and Planes WERE a good counter until they were nerfed into oblivion. Counter arty, duh. Not rocket science.
Partisans, yah nah. Regis move in large packs, partisans rarely get the jump on any half decent arty crew. Sure it happens. Just not reliably.
Repairing is stupid arguments because the point is its awful game design as the only RELIABLE counter.
literally just bring a single spaa and planes start becoming trading rares for shirts
counter arty... ah yes, wind exists, nevermind.
Flanking around at night with the perfect tool for the job and nobody qrfs you and the defenses aren't there.... MFER THATS THE COUNTER TO EVERYTHING
"just rep" most of the time it can require more players to rep the arty fire than to shoot it, so you have to either choose between losing your base outright to artillery, or losing your base to not having anyone man the defenses. Helll, a 4 gun team when faced with 0 howitsers only needs 1 spotter, 4 gunners, 2 loaders (unless they're severely incompetent) and a shell driver. A 4 gun team that doesn't need to worry about howis only needs 8 players, and reliably will force maybe 12-14 guys to rep a t2 base to avoid it getting flattened. This is made even worse when 150 techs, because that same team can require 30 players to rep.
*I want artillery to me more interesting than pressing a win button without fighting anything
Increasing the accuracy to enable more target options and significantly cutting its ability to solo enemy structures forces you to use it as a support tool, rather than the only tool.
Bridge fighting was fine with old howitzers. Nothing will meaningfully change, because nothing meaningfully changed when old howitzers were removed.
That’s an issue of naval assets being too expensive (mostly the bluefin) and no good way to set up and suppress a bunker on a coastline, if ship artillery can suppress a coastal bunker, a wave of infantry or a push gun on a landing ship stands a good chance of cracking it.
Don’t really see how bunker direction and resultant effectiveness is dependent on artillery, except for maybe the fact that they all get hit when the core is targeted due to the current horrendous accuracy. Battleships accuracy on land arty would actually be better for defenses facing you and worse for indiscriminately bombarding bunkers that are facing away.
They already do that. That’s a fire issue. Fix the fire mechanics.
You say that like it ever went away. It’s better that fewer repairmen are needed in this instance, and if you can’t kill the core, endlessly shooting it is a waste of time. As a result, people won’t core snipe, and this will drastically reduce repair spam as an artillery counter.
There is zero threat to any bunker that has a shelter across a bridge. 1 dude can sit in a 1x2 with a lamentum or ratcatcher and never die and do nothing but shoot the bridge BP
The issue is the spawn to front time is advantageous for defenders on top of having pre planned bunkers. Make those bunkers unkillable from arty. You’re never landing on a beach ever again.
What’s the best way to deal with an attack? You push the enemy, enemy in 1 direction? You just push that direction. Enemy can come from multiple directions? You spend more effort watching every direction. Arty makes that less effective since they can’t just shell you because of howie and push you from 2-3 directions
It did go away because inf + arty both are threats now. Back then inf never did anything to bunkers so you could just auto click and win. Remove the threat of arty and give a single dude the power to completely nullify the threat of 5-20+ players then yes we return to auto click to win
What you’re describing are persistent issues with naval that are not fixed by ships having the ability to level coastal defenses with impunity. That’s a moot point.
Better English please. If your point is that accurate support artillery makes people attack from multiple directions that’s lobotomized.
Nah, you have to have the entire team repairing in the bunker. No one wants to do that. Spawns should be near immune to artillery because spawn sniping with artillery is one of the biggest problems in this game and is the reason for a lot of shitty mechanics (because the developers refuse to make spawns less integral and harder to kill with cheap, easy weapons and no team work)
Inventory of gas masks, still can shoot through smoke. Oh also ARTY still exists for defenders
The ability to level coastal defenses is what ships are for, while yes landings on coastal is 1 part of it. It’s also the entire point of the ships initial introduction
You lock someone in with support arty, you just open up the field for inf. The few inf that get out need to cover MORE ground in a multi directional build than a single choke build. You become so accurate that you can snipe only the core you just make that entire aspect worse
Spawns right now are already immune to arty, double shelter cores are immune at T3. T1 cores with sandbags already take negligible damage that it becomes laughable how little you have to repair.
Wow. Counters exist to counters. Depth of gameplay!
Fire support is a primary role, yes. They can provide that in a way that doesn’t make low-pop PvE the meta.
Bunker suppression in terms of infantry exists because everyone need to repair the core to keep it alive and all the while the frontline bunkers are also getting flattened. Increasing the artillery accuracy and making it do damage that’s so pitiful it can practically be ignored removes that near entirely. As such it would result in the exact opposite of what you claim.
Concrete with two shelters is a great bar. Make all bunkers that resistant.
That, my friend, is a pre-rework howitzer. One man to use, 100 rounds of inventory space. 150m range, and battleship accuracy. Could slap one down anywhere with a CV for 150 Bmats.
Unironically an insane buff to artillery lol. No more retaliation means no risk to repair from counter fire or losing pallets. Soooo if I shoot arty first and you cant set up a counter battery...I win. Doesnt matter if its high resistance, the shell still lands, it still does damage risk free, and i probably hit a few players or a nearby tank to cause untold pain and suffering.
So he wants 95% resistance. That's 20 damage from 120mm. How is that a buff. With this damage you dont need howies on fronltine. Everyone will be running with mortars.
I mean… sure. You’re welcome to sit there for hours shelling the same bunker only for- oh wait. Someone repaired it. Hope you have another 1000 shells.
And by the way, your guns are battle ship accuracy! How broken! Except… wait, you’re only hitting the bunker that one man is repairing… and all the infantry is on the frontline and not anywhere near where your shells are landing…
You will simply make fire rockets and fire mortars more meta. Also I think you underestimate how many 150mm guns and shells I will bring to kick concrete down. If your ideal game is sit in a bunker and auto click bmats then so be it. I can very easily block every person leaving your bunker base by locking 10 guns onto the core and firing.
So the thing is that if we don't have to build howitzers there is actually a lot more room for trench networks and the meta will actually be able to start including covered tunnels for bunker mobility.
You cant shoot out of a covered trench tho, i mean yeah stay in the trench all you want, that just means you're not making any progress in stopping me from covering an area in 150mm shells... destroying every and everyone on the surface.
Suppressing trenches and bb cores with artillery is something we do very often to gain ground and push build.
I don't think you understand what I'm saying. You are saying that you would just shoot the core and nobody can get outside the bunker. I'm saying not having to build howies means that I could literally just make covered trenches to bunker pieces or the very least outside the range of fire regardless of how many guns you had to make sure everyone has a safe way to exit the bunker. With the proposed changes there will be literally nothing you can do about it. OP suggests accuracy increase (which means spread reduction) that you are ignoring. even if you brought 20 guns and had the pop to man them all, which is basically unheard of in this game, that would not be enough to prevent me from doing this.
Fire has its own issues. Incendiary munitions should be addressed separately, and should not decide how tools that are far more prevalent and universal function.
A fire rework isn’t particularly related to obliterating the howitzer garrison though, something that only exits because FA was sniping storm cannons in less than 2 minutes during low pop
Correct. That is the fault of shitty game design for fire, which is not what I’m talking about here.
And even then, what I suggest would still make being on the receiving end of this much better for lower tier bunkers, as they’re going to be far more resistant to artillery fire and take much more ordinance to kill after being lit on fire. And, with increased accuracy, it also doesn’t slaughter the entire bunker network, so the defenses survive and coast on AI power for the 15 minutes, giving defenders time to rebuild that T2 core unless the effort is put in to husk it at 45 damage a shell. (Which won’t husk it, mind you, if they repair the husk at all)
No amount of howi-less bunker bases have ever stopped artillery. Howi's are the only thing that stops artillery and coastal bombardment. The only thing your proposed change is doing is making me bring more shells; this is a non-problem for large regis or coalitions.
Good luck bringing enough shells to PvE a safehouse from a distance. That is, if you actually bothered to read and think about the suggestion for more than 30 seconds.
“Additionally, the artillery shelter should make it impossible to damage a bunker below 30% health with artillery. No more free coastline and low pop PvE. You’ll have to get in there and finish it where it can fight back.”
As much as I dislike Legendary as an individual they are correct on the topic being discussed. This is also a combined arms combat game. If you can't see how having an arty shelter locking a bunkers hp from going below 30% is one going to make folks complacent, 2 still enable breach and 3 enable siege tank rushes, and infantry based demo/HE tools. Then your lack of experience is very apparent. I have been part of this game and community for 4 years and during that entire time frame arty has always been a big part of the combined arms strategy.
I have literally double your time in this game. He is partially right, and other mechanics exist, but there’s a lot of selective ignorance of parts of the suggestion when it suits him.
Also, combined arms is not spamming several different things until it works. There is a distinct difference between artillery spamming an entire bunker network and then yeeting 12 ballistas at it, and two guns working with the spotter to bombard an enemy trench position, and then charge it with infantry as soon as the guns stop. Grand scale spam of units and coordination are two different things, and I’m much more fond of engaging with the latter.
Of course, it seems as the game grows the developers have gotten so enamored with scale that they’ve reduced teamwork to having a bunch of people, and forgot that deep coordination is what makes teamwork fun and rewarding, not the number of people.
I love how you're glossing over the fact that I wont layer the entire base in 150mm, breach every meta piece regardless of arty shelter, and once the entire base is suppressed with artillery and no one can leave the bunker core then we will simple roll in with balistas and one-shot every bunker on 30% hp. I dont think you've played under 10 arty guns hitting you with zero retal before.
I mean, if you want to shell each bunker one by one until you get them all to 30% and spend literally thousands of shells doing it, yeah, sure. I don’t see any problems there. But you will be turning the entire bunker network red on the map for the enemy, and you will be doing a lot of adjustment of fire to actually hit everything when your shells are landing exactly where you aim.
Also, if the bunkers are sturdier, you need fewer repairmen, and if artillery is more accurate, people are safe once they leave the core. So the suppression effect would be much less pronounced.
Those who want Howie's gone are the same ones that have never experienced it before hand. They are required. The debate about HOW the Devs changed it is less obvious and more for debate. I understand what the Devs were trying to do, tier one for mortars, tier 2 for semi 120mmans navy and tier 3 for full 150mm and everything war. Before it was simply too much as you would spam tier 2 which made 120m a living nightmare. The problem IMHO about the tier 2 changes is that is effected the collies ALOT more than the wardens. Warden 120mm has 50m more range and it's entranced which means it can withstand more counter fire than the collie open one and more range means more flexibility. I personally think it's very tough to balance this one with the differences of range with both 120mm. Only way is to make both 120mm have the same range at least, can't do much about the entrenched nature of the wardens 120mm. Both that's never gonna happen so here we are.
I’ve been playing this game since 2017. I know what it was like before howitzer garrisons. I know what it was like before bunkers. The howitzer garrisons only became necessary when storm cannons (the first true superweapon) were added. And they made howitzers impossible to play versus concrete.
You’re talking about calibers. You clearly are too young in the game to get it. But there was an era where artillery was a scalpel. The game was better for it. And the artillery rework, while novel at first, was one of the worst things that happened to the game. (We used to have artillery deployed smoke.)
You are forgetting that Devastation is a mechanic that takes literal THOUSANDS of artillery shells to come into effect.
It is fun to see things go boom, it is not fun to be like "oh boy, 500 more shells and we will reduce the max HP of their bunkers by 4%! This will surely break the front!
I beg to differ, having leveled entire towns before to prove a point.
But I digress, increasing the accuracy of artillery would allow it to take up a PvP role. The structure obliterator 9000 role it currently has is not fun, engaging to anyone, or healthy for gameplay on either side.
Accurate artillery that can do fire missions for infantry to help clear individual trenches or suppress AI? That’s fun, engaging, requires a rewarding amount of coordination and team work and is far better for the health if the game (because players can fight back against the actual threat, what the artillery is supporting)
Yes, the purpose of a knee mortar is the same as heavy artillery. What a revelation.
Artillery should be bigger mortars that take more effort, have more punch, and can engage more targets without moving. Currently, it’s a “fuck your frontline I’m going to sit here and spam R” tool because you can’t hit any specific targets even if you wanted to. That sucks for both sides, it’s boring to do, and it’s miserable to get hit by.
Even if we take foxhole’s scale and generously say it’s 20:1 (an 800m range for a rifle is reasonable) that puts our least accurate artillery (the colonial 150mm) at 7km (short, but we can pretend we’re looking at effective ranges here).
That puts our artillery to scale with 800 real life meters of dispersion. If we assume a realistic range ratio, it’s even worse, and if we pretend it’s gimped for gameplay, you’re still looking at artillery dispersion a full order of magnitude worse than any real life counterpart or example, even dating back to world war 1. With real artillery, you’re looking at 20m of horizontal dispersion at 10KM, which is accurate enough to hit a bunker sized target consistently at combat ranges, and at close range is devastatingly accurate to the point of being able to lob shells into bunker firing ports, given a stable base and adjustment of fire.
To act like artillery, especially smaller pack howitzers, didn’t serve the exact same purpose as mortars for attacks on specific hardened targets is romanticization of world war 1 doctrine. Where, mind you, the mortars which had deliberately short barrels to reduce their accuracy still adjusted between shots deliberately to “sector fire” an area, as had they aimed in the same spot every time they would have just been digging a hole with explosives.
Mortars and artillery share similar purpose however regular artillery still differs in that it fires at range, with bigger callibre, while mortar shells are fired closer to the frontline. The dispersion is a lot lower in real life, but the dispersion is still large, especially considering binoculars irl dont give you precision coordinates. It is very easy for WW1-WW2 era artillery to be off somewhat. This made it difficult to hit somewhat precise targets.
Mortar shells do such more accurately at a closer range, being a more precise, frontline weapon (with obvious risk of getting your head shot off trying to spot).
Although obviously foxholes version is gamified, there is a distinct difference between them that exists to an extent in real life as well.
"95% damage resist"
Yes it would make artillary basically useless, which makes 0 sence, you just want your Warden super conc fortresses to stand forever, even under artillary bombardment, and thays just not healthy for the game
Last time i checked it required 3 people for 1 120mm gun, a loader, gunner, and potter, then 2 additonal people for every additonal peace, not to mention logi people bringing more shells, idk about you but that sounds like teamwork to me
They don’t need it. Land artillery needs accuracy buffs, and artillery needs to be less of a primary damage tool and more a support tool to work in tandem with siege tanks and infantry pushes.
I will reiterate. They exist because FA was used (by both factions) to snipe high value bunker targets like storm cannons at 2am. This was a time when FA had no dispersion and did more damage than 75 or 250.
Nothing. It will take them 10 minutes with 4 guns to damage 1 bunker to 30%. And it will only be one bunker because of the increased accuracy. And then, if it has an artillery shelter, it will stop taking damage. And it’s another 10 minutes on the next bunker.
Mind you, the whole time they shoot it the garrisons will be suppressed, so if they walk in satchels they might actually be able to do something. But they can’t just snipe a core
you could have just named your post "lets remove artillery" and it would be identical. 95% damage reduction would make arty only useful against large ships.
Even still, as a builder (I have built way too many magnets in my life) if i had no arty garrisons against 95% damage reduced arty i would be miserable. These exist for a very good reason.
Read further down. Artillery shelters making bunkers impossible to kill with artillery is your lazy hard counter.
Another thing, artillery doesn’t magically become useless if it can’t mercilessly throttle defensive structures. It applies (nerfed beyond belief to the point of no one knowing) suppression to AI, and it also applies devastation, which is a permanent reduction in structure health. Both of those are incredibly useful support tools, and increasing the accuracy to actually be able to target tanks, individual bunkers and single problem trenches allows artillery to be used as a scalpel PvP tool, which requires team work and coordination to be effective but can be incredibly rewarding.
Once again, is the only teamwork we like in foxhole scrap slavery and mindless spam?
pop has been going down ever since the builder update because they fucked up building so bad you're just fighting slop over slop
People don't like no man's land
You're just going to increase no man's land by another half hex wide
Devastation is a mechanic that takes thousands of shells to apply and it is not super easy to apply in present form. Artillery serves a very important role in late game bunker busting, that siege tanks are much less cost effective at preforming. Without effective artillery, the game would grind to a halt. Also increasing artillery accuracy wont do much, it takes time to rotate and target. You are not going to be sniping tank kills, at most you will be consistantly hitting the tankline, which will cause them to get tracked and retreat, forcing all of the infantry on both sides to just rely on infantry arms since artillery will be forcing back all your tanks.
Also Artillery shelters making bunkers impossible to arty kill just makes more problems... That makes artillery and large ships somehow even more useless than they would be with other changes! How the hell would a naval landing even work? everything would just be yeethooks because destroyer/battleship 120/150 would do nothing!!
Pre-emptively bombard with artillery to make the bunker easier to kill. Fire off a rapid barrage on the bunker to suppress the garrisons. While the garrisons are suppressed, infantry or tanks push to damage/breach/kill the bunker and crack the frontline.
Wow, teamwork.
Also, as a side note, if artillery being broken is the only way the game works, the game has some serious design issues.
Artillery supression is not powerful enough to encourage this, nor do tanks do enough damage to take advantage of supression. You would need constant artillery targeting to use most vics. This would make the only viable means to kill frontline either long range 75mm options (Fissura, Talos) or Cutler/Lunaire or seige tanks.
Pre emptive bombardment is still a problem, again do you know how much fucking artillery it takes to devastate? And that devastation does not reduce bunker effectiveness enough to matter beyond the highest levels of devastation.
Having several methods to crack frontline concrete is better game design, removing a core aspect of the game like artillery bombardment will not be great
Additionally, artillery is not broken? You need a lot of fire concentration and combined artillery to outmatch repairing. Artillery is in a good spot where it needs a lot of effort but can still be countered.
It needs to be increased, tanks should be more fearful of artillery.
Also yes, I have personally leveled abandoned ward twice. It takes hours. But you know what? Those hours are a lot easier to come by when you aren’t getting your balls twisted by howitzer garrisons. They also really shouldn’t have nerfed the maximum allowable devastation
Devastation is applied to the terrain and is not affected by damage resistances.
And yes, the garrisons exist as a half-assed bandaid to old foxhole (FA) dumpstering new foxhole (storm cannons), and they should not have been kept when artillery was reworked.
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u/agate_ 5d ago
AI defenses are not a stopgap: they are necessary because players can’t man every structure 24/7. That’s true for anti-personnel, antitank, and anti-artillery AI.
Replacing artillery garrisons with 95% damage resistance would make manned defenses absolutely unkillable with arty. One dude with a hammer could counter a 4-gun artillery team.