i'm sorry,
wizkidds will not get the whole picture, and there isn't that much wrong with the game. now it doesn't make sense that mechs take heat from walking twice in a row, except when you think about it they just imagine that the whole army is moving and doing things in very shot amounts of time. our 'one hour battles' take place probably in a few minutes, like in an RPG. and it just seemed the best way to make it 'balanced'

the game will never be perfect, and it's pretty good, except for some inbalances, but if you're playing with friends make rules to avoid the inbalances...

but for tourneys the artillery rule is great, atleast for now

What about the Option:

Multi-Pog artillery can either place: 1) One pog with any applicable SE's 2) Multiple Pogs without SE's

That's my favorite idea...the only thing here is that this REALLY makes armor worth-while, but not to the point of the "No SE's on an Artillery Shot" Idea (because then we'll see Jonah Levin camping in Hindering with SW Fenrir...EWWWWE...

Mid :)

IMHO WK hasn't understood where artillery become unbalanced. Their proposed rule change shows it clearly.
As I stated before, I think the problem is with multiple pog artilleries. 1 order to fire even 3 piercing pogs! slowing down artillery will make single pog units unusable, leaving the multipog problem as it is.
I see I am not the only one that would like damage to be splitted between pogs as per direct fire: I think it would be the easiest fix.
However multiple pogs arties would still force you to move more than one unit (since damage has to be splitted after the to hit roll..), leaving them always a better choice.
I'm unsure how to fix this.... Ideas?

Precisely, with the lack of direction in fixing things, it's up to us as players to come up with the changes, in a reasonable manner, that need to be made.

The problem with arty is not just with multiple pogs. The biggest problem is that it ignores defence values making it far more powerfull for it's point cost. Any arty vehicle is more far more efficient then 95% of any none artillery vehicles in the same point cost or even 10 points higher. And the includes crappy spirit cat artillery. The reason for the is ignoring of devence of target.

Fundamental problems with artillery.

1. First Strike
2. Controls the use of orders by the artillerist
3. Damages units that normally could not be hit
4. Thier points are too little for what you get

First Strike:
They can hit units in the deployment zone of the opposing army on turn 1. This is an advantage that can never truely be compensated for.

Controls the movement of Opposing player:
Skilled Pogwarriors can force you to choose which units to move and when. Worse yet by proper placement of pogs they can literally prevent a player from moving in a certain direction.

Defense ignored:
Admitedly in the real world defense is ignored and artillery has virtually pinpoint accuracy. This is not the real world. Pinpoint accuracy and area effect damage should cost a lot more then 65 points.

All these advantages should place thier point cost up to atleast twice what they currently cost.
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HARLEY-DAVIDSON S-125

I agree with pinpoint accuracy being worth more than 65 points but unless artillery has come on in leaps and bounds since 1991 then pinpoint accuracy is stretching it a bit. It takes more than one shot to draw a bead. Artillery barrages are usually far longer than the typical MWDA engagement.

They are ideal if you want to hit an immobile defense, dug in troops or to lay a pre-prepared field of fire along an enemy's line of advance.

Not exactly the best option if you want to hit a fast tank (Pegasus top whack about 90kph, Regulator over 110 kph, Fulcrum over 150 kph). Artillery is not as much use against moving targets as people think (unless your shells are landing in concert along an enemy's line of advance and the concentration of targets is enough that inaccuracy in placinbg the first shot is irrelevant). In MWDA the artillery is supposedly targeting the ground (hence the accuracy) but thanks to the abstract movement system the timing is also perfect.

In real world artillery attacks you may hit the ground you meant to but being a few seconds too early or late is what makes it miss. In MWDA, thanks to pushing etc etc, targets are much too easy to hit because the timing is irrelevant. Artillery commanders know exactly where and when a unit will be (for that matter the target knows where and when a shell will land but that's another thing).

Myself I like the idea of slowing artillery down (like the proposed changes). This means units can then move out of the way of the artillery. Fast units will get outside even the drift but slower units may still be within the blast radius. The artillery then becomes a potent threat to force units to move out of sequence and yet retains its use for targeting stationary targets (pinned by Fa Shih or shut-down 'Mechs and pushed vehicles that were forced to push by a buddy artillery piece or that elected to push).

An alternative is increasing artillery drift not to reflect poor accuracy but as a proxy to mistiming the shot. One could say that unless artillery has direct line of sight then double the drift distances (for example).

Another alternative is allowing 'Mechs to move-fire. That allows a 'Mech to move up and target artillery without having to take limitless punishment for using an order to fire instead of moving out of the way of a bombardment.

I myself dislike having to beat defense not just because of the extra roll. In my view with defenses dropping in general it is not a long-lasting solution on its own. Furthermore we remain exposed to a future artillery piece being given a 22 defense or something - so being immune to counter battery fire. I do not trust WK enough for them to not break something just after they had fixed a mechanic (can we say Arrow IV?)

Well, just to chip in my two cents why there was a lack of love on the proposed arty fix. There are just three kinds of players:

1. The one who doesn't like to play arty much - arty becomes order incentive, we can't expect these kind of player to even love artys now do we?

2. The one who likes to play arty - arty becomes order incentive, neither can we expect them to be happy do we?

3. The one who hate and I mean puke at disgust in facing arty cheese armies - not so many of them, and they're not so vocal either.

now, ya know what i like about multitargeting artillery?

it can't kill a mech in three orders.

now, an arrow IV, any of them targets a mech that is shut down, so it cant move, places pogs in front of it so it still has line of sight, and critical hits... that's 3 or even 4 damage to a mech an order as where multi targeting only does 1 or two clicks of damage, so you figure out why i like the new rule alot more than limiting pogs on a feild

Don't forget my suggestion for Artillery fix

This will make artillery more desirable for big playing areas (table size)

Each artillery piece has a min/max/art range so :

Change the Artillery rules to the following: (from the rule book pg 29)

A unit is an artillery unit if it has a number in brackets after its maximum range. The number in the brackets is call the artillery range. This artillery range is the minimum range that from the artillery unit that an artillery marker can be placed. The maximum range of an artillery marker is twice the artillery range.

Edit the following line from page 30 of the rule book

The line of fire for the artillery attack must pass through the front arc of the firer and must be greater than the artillery range and not more than twice the artillery range.

(you can say greater than or equal to if you want )

What the above does is remove the poging from Standard Tournament table top games except for the units with the shortest range. If you stay in your deployment area and your opponent has artillery you can be pogged hard.
It will help in large scale battles (large table top space games) to force both sides to rush into battle or be pogged to death.

AA units only be come slightly more powerful (depending on any future units.) AA in Large table space games will definately have some advantage on anything in the air. But that just makes the air unit commanders think more (in my opinion).

This suggested change to the rules works well at all levels and does not dramatically change the point cost. It will cause many players to redesign their standard army for tournament play.

This creates a dead space of artillery units not being able to fire on anything but that is a real fact in the real world.

Excellent suggestion Dave!! I LOVE it! :)

I think Stalie did a pretty good job of laying out all the options I've seen anyone propose (the only exception being my proposal for making the artillery shot take 2 turns to land).

@Xyberbart: Of course, every one has advantages and disadvantages, but I think some of your responses sell the possibilities short.
Stacking fixes some of the problems. The situation still allows artillery to do 2 or 3 times their rated damage, something only AnP can do otherwise and only in limited situations. Further, artillery can more or less force multiple order responses to a single order. This one does make some sense, but like you I think some arty would be overly hurt by it.

The only SEC that really matters here is AP. This view suggests that if we just get rid of AP for artillery the situation will be fixed and since AP is the only damage SEC that currently works and the working could conceivably be interpreted to not allow it to work this is a clean solution. I think it may do too much to arty because in the rock-paper-scissors of the game we need AP arty to be able to hit the hardened armor 23 defense mechs.

This one in my opinion is one of the worst ideas. The artillery mechanic adds interest to the game in that it bypasses the defense check. The problem isn't that it does that, but in that certain individual artillery units are too strong. Adding a defense check takes away arty as a counter to another group of units that has the potential to be overly dominant: Defense 23 Hardened armor units. I'm an old CBT player and I like mechs being dominant, but IMO they already are close to it and I don't want all the other units unplayable.

A major complaint is that artillery is too accurate. This addresses that complaint and tones down the overall effectiveness of artillery.

No, the ECM ability would just have to be adjusted so that it affected either the pog or the allowable positioning of the pog. Some possibilities are, "ECM adds +2 to the defense of any pog placed within the attack range of the unit with ECM." or, "No pog may be placed within 4" of a unit with ECM."

I hadn't thought much about this one before, but it offers interesting possibilities of allowing a counter unit to artillery units. It does make sense for the rocket based artillery although not shell based artillery.

Are they balanced? Then they haven't been erratae'd enough. This is actually my favorite, but only the point errata side of it. I think errata that needs to remembered during play overly complicates things, but errata (point value) that only matters during point calculation and army construction is a good way to balance unbalanced units.
I agree this would be difficult to deal with since it would be a pain for everyone to have to create their own pogs or somehow get them from WK.
And actually a similar idea to the multiple commands for multiple pogs idea, but possibly better implemented.

All this suggestion says is arty can't push. It's far weaker than the proposed rules and probably not worth bothering with since Warpog doesn't often need to push anyway.
This is actually part of the proposed rules. If not used in conjunction with the proposed rules it really doesn't affect arty much.

As far as penalizing 'non-broken' arty: ANY change to the arty mechanic that weakens arty as a whole does that.
Again, this is a piece of the proposed rules.
Sure there is, arty aims the first turn then first the second. If they are interrupted firing they don't fire. However, the better question is how it affects the game and whether it balances or overly weakens arty units in general and in particular.
Highly artificial from the perspective of the game. Why can't I bring 10 arty tanks to a 600 point battle? The answer should be that you're welcome to do it, but it would be stupid. A lesson we can take from Magic is that if an artificial limit on the number of a unit that can be played must be placed to limit the power of that unit, then that unit is powerful enough that almost every competitive army will want to field one -- and that is a bad thing. Of all the proposed solutions, this is my LEAST favorite.

My proposal does not address all of your issues that a majority of you have brought up.

What it does do is address the tournament structure issues (where all of the issues have been addressed) with out throwing the entire rules out of balance. Out side of motars and other small artillery pieces, Artillery is designed to hit them from a distance.
The rules that I suggest not only reflect this 'real world' concept but they place the table top battle back into the hand of the fighting force.

Dave

Dave: Fun > Reality when it comes to gaming. The problem I have with your proposal is that it makes some artillery units stronger (Mortars, Padillas) while while taking most artillery completely out of competitive play (A4 Tanks, A4 Towed, Snipers, Thumpers, Long Toms, Towed AAA). Sure, you could still bombard the enemy DZ, but it's not worth 50 or even 30 points to do that.

"I think it may do too much to arty because in the rock-paper-scissors of the game we need AP arty to be able to hit the hardened armor 23 defense mechs."

I don't think they should, not as easily as they do. Not for their point cost. How many arty units can you lay the smack down with for the same point cost of my 250 point assault Mech? Are they of equivalent power? Hardly. I would get pummeled. I for one wouldn't terribly mind of SEs were non functional in arty mode. I know it has issues as well, but I don't think arty should be able to pound Mechs from a much greater distance, with AP, with a much easier roll to hit. Those 23 hardened Mechs mostly cost over 250 points. A few exceptions (Caden costs 193 I think), but none are cheap. And remember, Mechs like Caden from HL have those high armor ratings because they ARE HL, and that is their bonus. Don't forget they favor nasty attack values among other nerfs. Why must those who play HL be penalized?

fleabitfox