Re: Arty

Thomas Barclay wrote:

> Some thoughts out of this disussion:

> Towed or emplaced Arty: Rarer. Cheaper. Used by colonial or indig
> forces. 

Not even particularly cheap, considering how cheap it is to mount a big
artillery piece on a truck with a "crane" to dump the gun down onto the
ground, fire, and lift it back onto the truck. As long as you have a
truck powerful enough to carry the gun (and if you don't, you are
unlikely to have anything to tow it either...), you can have reasonably
SP artillery.

> These would include cheapo katyusha style MRLS 

Note that the Katyusha were usually truck-mounted (at least on all the
pictures I've seen of them :-/ ), so were SP.

> Arty types:
> 
> MRLS - Cheap or expensive. Low recoil relative to CPR guns. Expense >
is a direct product of the sophistication of a round and some FC
> component. Good range. Can deploy submunitions.
> 
> tube-guns - Cheap or expensive. Cost is related to sophistication of
> gun and of FC. Recoil compensation may be employed. Can deploy
> submunitions.

The cost of the gun itself doesn't change too much, but the cost of the
ammunition varies wildly. Certain ammunition types also require
sophisticated FC units, but you can still fire them from 1940s vintage
ordnance provided you supply that FC.

> Arty platforms:
> GEV - fast, but must ground to fire recoil weapons.

Noisy. Energy hogs.
 
> Wheeled - cheap, robust. Not as fast as GEV.

Probably faster than GEV in restricted terrain. The fastest current
military hovercraft I could find notes about is said to move at 70 mph,
but that is over open sea :-/

> Tracked - more expensive than wheeled, but able to carry heavier
> weapons. 

I don't know of any 203mm wheeled howitzers... yet. There are plenty of
wheeled 155mm types around though; and 155mm is the standard heavy
artillery around nowadays.

However, tracked vehicles are considerably better at cross-country
movement than wheeled vehicles of a similar mass.

> Not as fast as Wheeled.

Not on roads or very flat terrain, at least.

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry