Heavy or long range artillery to destroy supply

[nakorkren (OP)]

Since all armies march on their stomachs and don't fight well when out of bullets, now that collateral damage has been reduced substantially (1/5th of prior), has anyone had a chance to evaluate whether heavy or long-range artillery, which can fire on enemy units in the rear-echelon, are effective at destroying the enemy's supply trucks and hence depriving them of resupply? If it's successful, it would cut their ability to shoot at you by 75%, and deny them the ability to use Front Line Attack, based on the change logs from when C# was released:

"After that point, only one quarter of units in a formation element that is out of supply will fire in each round. In addition, a formation with out of supply elements cannot use a field position of 'Front Line Attack'"

Anyone tried this? Thoughts on effectiveness of intentionally making your force heavy on long range artillery to deplete enemy's GSP?

[nuclearslurpee]

Once all front line attacks have been concluded, each unit in each element providing supporting bombardment will engage either the hostile formation being targeted by the friendly formation they are supporting, or one of the hostile formation's own supporting elements (counter-battery fire). If the hostile formation is targeted, each unit in the supporting artillery element engages a random element in the hostile formation, with the randomisation based on the relative size of the hostile formation elements (the same as front-line vs front-line). If a hostile supporting element is targeted, all fire is directed against that element. This represents the difference between providing supporting fire in a combined arms front-line battle and targeting specific hostile artillery for counter-battery fire. The decision to target the hostile front-line formation vs hostile support elements is based on the relative sizes.

Emphasis mine. This means that counter-battery fire will pretty much only target supporting artillery formations in practice. I'm not extremely knowledgeable about NPR formations but I don't think they tend to do what players do and combine higher HQs, artillery, and LVH supply units into the same formation.

[Andrew]

A Random unit listing for an NPR
Armour Brigade HQ
Transport Size: 20,292 tons
Build Cost: 1,221.9 BP
35x Armagh  Mobile Artillery
13x Angus  AA Tank
2x Construction Vehicles
200x Resupply Vehicle
2x Tank Brigade HQ
Armour Regiment
Transport Size: 14,678 tons
Build Cost: 1,107.8 BP
92x Aberdeenshire Medium Tank
26x Anglesey Infantry Support Tank
17x Angus  AA Tank
2x Construction Vehicles
32x Resupply Vehicle
2x Antrim  Tank HQ

So it looks like HQ , artillery and supply are combined in the same HQ unit

[ranger044]

Even if they're in the same HQ unit, the odds of targeting the supply units is fairly slim. I assume they're marked as non-combatant, which lowers the chance of targeting. For the support fire to target the HQ unit, one of your other units has to target them, which assumes either their HQ isn't in rear echelon or you've already killed most of their other units (I don't recall off the top of my head but I'm fairly certain that in a breakthrough the support unit doesn't get to fire again), and if the element chosen in the supporting fire is artillery then ALL of the supporting fire for that attack targets that artillery element (counter-battery). In theory, yes you could kill supply units with LR and HB, but the chances are slim.

[nuclearslurpee]

Even if they're in the same HQ unit, the odds of targeting the supply units is fairly slim. I assume they're marked as non-combatant, which lowers the chance of targeting. For the support fire to target the HQ unit, one of your other units has to target them, which assumes either their HQ isn't in rear echelon or you've already killed most of their other units (I don't recall off the top of my head but I'm fairly certain that in a breakthrough the support unit doesn't get to fire again), and if the element chosen in the supporting fire is artillery then ALL of the supporting fire for that attack targets that artillery element (counter-battery). In theory, yes you could kill supply units with LR and HB, but the chances are slim.

We can estimate the odds for a first approximation:

• Assume that the average size of an NPR ground formation is roughly constant and that NPRs use a 3:1 ratio of HQ to line formations. If the HQ formation is supporting one of its three frontline formations, there is roughly a ~5% chance that it will be targeted directly in the support echelon (which is where it must be to lend MB support), and about a ~30% chance that the frontline formation it is supporting will be targeted.
• If the formation supported by the HQ/artillery formation is targeted by a supported player race (or other opponent's) frontline formation, there would be about a 20% chance for the HQ formation to be targeted by counterbattery fire. This gives a total ~12% chance for a HQ formation to be targeted by your own supporting artillery.
• Going from the numbers in Andrew's post for an example, 200x LVH+LOG = 12,400 tons, if these are non-combat units as they should be their effective target size is 3,100 tons. Assuming the HQs are also noncombat STA with an effective target size of 131 tons, and the CON units have an effective size 159 tons - the LVH element has approximately a 30% chance to be selected as the target.
• Taken together, this gives about a 3% to 4% chance that our artillery will target the LOG element. If the NPR uses MBL or HB these odds probably drop below 1% due to the fact that rear echelon formations are even harder to target as their effective target size is 4x or 5x lower than even a support-echelon formation.

Basically, we can draw a couple of conclusions. First, there's not really a way to effectively target enemy logistics units, in the best case we simply get lucky that the enemy has mixed supply and bombardment elements in the same formation. Second, it is not going to be an effective way to attrit enemy logistics. Estimating a very generous ~10% hit rate and three shots per round, it will take about 100 rounds of ground combat to destroy a single LVH+LOG unit per artillery gun. This is over a month's worth of combat by which point the battle should already be decided, and to be frank by this point if you are still fighting the NPR they are probably already out of supplies anyways. Point being, you'll do better to just straight-up kill the enemy troops which you are pretty much forced to do anyways since, per the first conclusion, you can't really target the enemy logistics units very selectively anyways.

[Aetreus]

Once all front line attacks have been concluded, each unit in each element providing supporting bombardment will engage either the hostile formation being targeted by the friendly formation they are supporting, or one of the hostile formation's own supporting elements (counter-battery fire).  If the hostile formation is targeted, each unit in the supporting artillery element engages a random element in the hostile formation, with the randomisation based on the relative size of the hostile formation elements (the same as front-line vs front-line).  If a hostile supporting element is targeted, all fire is directed against that element. This represents the difference between providing supporting fire in a combined arms front-line battle and targeting specific hostile artillery for counter-battery fire.  The decision to target the hostile front-line formation vs hostile support elements is based on the relative sizes.

This implies that targeting is not on the formation that is providing supporting fire, but on the individual element.  So elements in the same formation(like logistics, or HQ's) that are not providing supporting fire cannot be targeted, ever.

[nuclearslurpee]

Once all front line attacks have been concluded, each unit in each element providing supporting bombardment will engage either the hostile formation being targeted by the friendly formation they are supporting, or one of the hostile formation's own supporting elements (counter-battery fire).  If the hostile formation is targeted, each unit in the supporting artillery element engages a random element in the hostile formation, with the randomisation based on the relative size of the hostile formation elements (the same as front-line vs front-line).  If a hostile supporting element is targeted, all fire is directed against that element. This represents the difference between providing supporting fire in a combined arms front-line battle and targeting specific hostile artillery for counter-battery fire.  The decision to target the hostile front-line formation vs hostile support elements is based on the relative sizes.

This implies that targeting is not on the formation that is providing supporting fire, but on the individual element.  So elements in the same formation(like logistics, or HQ's) that are not providing supporting fire cannot be targeted, ever.

I was reading "element" as "formation", but I think you are probably right and I have been sloppy.

[Destragon]

Once all front line attacks have been concluded, each unit in each element providing supporting bombardment will engage either the hostile formation being targeted by the friendly formation they are supporting, or one of the hostile formation's own supporting elements (counter-battery fire).  If the hostile formation is targeted, each unit in the supporting artillery element engages a random element in the hostile formation, with the randomisation based on the relative size of the hostile formation elements (the same as front-line vs front-line).  If a hostile supporting element is targeted, all fire is directed against that element. This represents the difference between providing supporting fire in a combined arms front-line battle and targeting specific hostile artillery for counter-battery fire.  The decision to target the hostile front-line formation vs hostile support elements is based on the relative sizes.

This implies that targeting is not on the formation that is providing supporting fire, but on the individual element.  So elements in the same formation(like logistics, or HQ's) that are not providing supporting fire cannot be targeted, ever.

You can also read "supporting element" as an element that is in a formation that is set to support another formation though. I guess only Steve really knows.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I can say with fairly large confidence that counter battery bombardment will ONLY target the artillery element providing the support if the support formation is targeted. HQ, AA or Logistics in that formation will never be targeted this way.