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Battlefront WWII
Battery Fire Missions


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Artillery Batteries are capable of performing several different fire missions. For our example we will look at the German Heavy Mortar Platoon (FS-01 p.75).
German FS-01 This small but potent element has four possible fire missions.
  1. Independent Fire by Section
  2. Battery Random Shelling
  3. Battery Shelling
  4. Battery Concentration

In the examples below and throughout the rest of the tutorial, we show the stacking of the various templates and the mission modifiers on the left side, and the shape of the beaten zone and the final attack modifiers on the right, taking into account the type of artillery firing. For example, +1 120mm means that the a +1 modifier is applied to the basic 120mm weapon values. A 0/+1 means that the attack will be resolved with a 0 modifier against V targets and a +1 attack against other targets.

Independent Fire By Section

German FS-01 Fire by Section Almost unique among off-board artillery batteries, the German FS-01 has the option of firing each of its two templates as an independent fire mission. Each of the missions can either be a smoke or shelling mission (the number of available smoke missions must be specified in the scenario) and requires a separate observer and call-for-fire roll.

Battery Random Shelling

German FS-01 Random Shelling Random Shelling may only be conducted by battery sized organizations (p. 39), and requires that all of the templates in the battery participate. It does not require a spotted or suspected target, but can be called onto the edge of a terrain feature. Random shelling is subject to a -1 modifier, to indicate that it is not focusing in on an actual target, and is probably more dispersed than is actually indicated by the template. Place all of the templates from the battery side by side and center them on the terrain feature being shelled.

Battery Shelling

German FS-01 Shelling A Battery Shelling mission requires that all of the templates from the battery participate. Battery shelling requires a spotted or suspected target. There is no modifier to the basic attack values of the artillery for a shelling mission.

Battery Concentration

German FS-01 Concentration A concentration mission increases the attack values of the battery by 1 but reduces the size of the beaten zone to a single template. In essence, all of the templates of the battery are stacked on a single target. The +1 modifier is the same whether the battery contains two templates (as does the German FS-01) or 3 templates. Concentration missions may be called on spotted or suspected targets. A 120mm mortar concentration can devastate an exposed soft target, with the +2 modifier yielding a 30% chance of a knocked-out result.

On-board Batteries

Russian FS-01 The German FS-01 is an off-board battery, but the rules are similar for on-board batteries such as the Russian FS-01 (p.67) While on-board units are capable of spotting for themselves and firing by section, to use battery fire they require a qualified forward observer and must perform a call-for-fire roll. Also, if any one unit that is part of an on-board battery fires by section, the rest of the units in that battery may NOT combine into a battery fire mission.

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This page was last updated on 01/05/2020 at 07:07AM

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