Well first off artillery shouldn't be trying to kill tanks, its not what they were designed to do and its not something they did very effeciently. You'd do far better to have a group of tanks and protect you
Asside from that, I'll admit you have a point. If its not too hard to coad this, then perhaps put a slight perk price on a batter? 30 guns will make short work of hangers which could be a major issue. I would hate to see Chewie, the vTARDS, or even my own countryman Jaryo with a battery of 30 M12s under his command.
I didnt suggest otherwise. But arty fired on anything they were ordered to and did have good effect on armored units. If I am not mistaken I believe I read that early in the war artillery saved the Soviets because their armor was not on par with the Germans or there was a shortage of it. Something to that effect.
Anyhow, what you see as a potential problem, I see as a game changer. I see some better strategic action coming into play here. I see fire bases and "pork chop hill" battles.
I see an end to spawn and die battles over the same spawn point terrain where players know every little crevice by heart. I see armored missions moving to destroy a firebase getting ambushed in valleys.
I dont know anything about artillery shell accuracy. I would imagine if a rifle round can have 2 inch group at 600 to a 1000 yards, an artillery round could have huge groupings at 8+ miles. My point is, I don't think artillery was all that precise. With a good spotter and 6 pieces (1 battery) firing on his mark, I would think you would be lucky to get one hit from the salvo.
Even with 30 pieces firing, Im guessing the grouping would be about 4 times larger as opposed to 4 or 5 times denser if you follow. eg 5 batteries of 6 = a shell dispersal about 4 or 5x larger than the shell dispersal of a single battery. And that's ONLY if all 5 of them were lucky enough to be on target in the first place.
If you only had one spotter, and he was calling out a single fire correction for 5 batteries and one was a hundred yards off target, another was 300 yards off target, and another 1000 off, it's likely only the closest battery gets any hits when a 100 yard correction is given.
And by forcing players to rely on other players as spotters we double the inherent human error and eliminate the gamey aspects like land mode. Which is the way it should be.
It wouldnt be any harder to code a player controlled convoy of artillery pieces than to code a drone convoy of trucks. The real work would come in building the 3d model of the guns, the vehicles to pull them, the ballistics, etc.
There would be issues in making the guns visually adapt to any given location, especially if the terrain is not flat. One solution to this is to have fire bases added to the maps permanently. Lots of them.
Arty batteries could still set up at other locations on the map if the terrain is flat enough though.
I would prefer that they build so many FBs, ground vehicles had to fight their way from fire base to fire base all the way to the enemy fields and towns instead of using the gamey spawn system we have now. Essentially having a conventional front line that moves as you gain control of every fire base between you and the enemy towns.
Fire bases could remain vacant until players decided to set up shop there.
Fire bases should have AA guns of different types or arty batteries should include an AA vehicle or gun.
