[House Rules] Tank-Killing Artillery

[plloyd1010]

In mists of old and days long past, there was an article in the Daily Content entitled Tank-Killing Artillery. It addressed the often historical event of artillery fire breaking up armored attacks. I never used that variant because I didn't think it really simulated the event. I don't think anything really does in this system really does. Still I got to musing about it. The dichotomy of the problem is, bigger shells hitting a vehicle, or near it, are more likely to cause damage. Conversely, bigger shells come in smaller numbers, thus less likely to hit. In other words bigger results at diminishing returns.

The idea that eventually formed was getting a die roll for each each X result times the number of batteries. This creates a push-box effect of wanting more, smaller batteries because because you get more dice on an X, verses wanting a big batteries with are more likely to get that X in the first place. The effect on the game is likely to be small, but I think it is worth trying sometime.

P.S. Never formally adopt a house rule, before testing it at least 3 times.

[Blackcloud6]

The biggest effect artillery has on armored units is forcing them to button up.

When I did threat work at US Army TACOM we determined that artillery rarely did much against tanks, something like 99 rounds fired per hit on a vehicle as far as I can remember.

[plloyd1010]

My PG interest in artillery vs. armor has to the U.S.S. Boise breaking up the HG division's attack on Sicily and artillery breaking up an armored attack on the 117th Reg in Holland, in 1944. In the Sicily matter, one of the armored columns came through a valley, and direction was provided by NGF's. The attack in southern Holland was similar, but an all army affair, of course. The question becomes, how to simulate that in PG, without excessively specialized consideration.

I don't know what Mr. Rahman's motive was, but I thought his rules were excessively heavy on weapon caliber. As Mr. Schwarz alludes to the danger is in the number of shells of sufficient size. My suggestion makes a few heavy guns somewhat less effective. Contrariwise, too many small guns don't get much of a chance of any effect. Overall the effect should be less than Mr. Rahman's variant. That is the philosophy behind my potential variant.

[Blackcloud6]

One thing you could do is simply allow one or two fires of 70+ factors in a scenario.