Joy Of Hex:Artillery Orders

Artillery Orders


There are two types of artillery orders: orders where you specify the target hex in which you want the artillery unit to pay attention, while the other orders are where the precise target hexes are determined during the execution phase of the game. Orders that are given can be seen by the yellow highlight about the command button. You can only fire an artillery piece once per execution phase.

Barrage - for this order you must specify the target hex. There are two types of barrage orders that you can give: one to do damage to an enemy unit by directly targeting it, the other is to target hexes that you expect enemy units to try and move over in order to slow their movement down.
Counter Artillery - for this order you merely toggle this button on, and if during the execution phase an enemy artillery piece fires a barrage attack, then if your artillery piece is in range and hasn't already fired then it shall automatically fire upon the enemy artillery piece. Once you give this order it stays on until you switch it off, so it is a good idea to keep this in mind to prevent the unit from tiring itself out and becoming worthless.
Defense Barrage - for this order you merely toggle this button on, and if during the execution phase some enemy units launch a ground attack upon one of your units, and if your artillery piece is in range of your defending unit and hasn't yet fired during the present execution phase then your artillery piece will fire in a defensive role and help your defender.
Smoke - for this order you must specify the target hex. Smoke has a habit of reducing the knowledge that one can gain about an unit, so don't help your enemy by dropping smoke on his units - for the best effect you drop this smoke onto your own units so that the enemy's knowledge of the hexes that you target with smoke shall be reduced.

Some examples will make the above more clear:

The first step in giving an artillery unit an artillery order is to first select it by clicking on its image on the hex map as pictured to the left.
If you then look up in the toolbar and at the artillery order buttons, you will see that the particular artillery order that we want to give is already in the down position - this is because for artillery, barrage is the default order. If the button wasn't in the down position I would merely need to click on the button. In the picture to the left you can see that I want to fire a standard artillery barrage, although what I am saying here will also be valid if I wanted to fire a round of smoke.
I then move the cursor down to the hex map and over the hex that I want to fire my artillery upon.
I then hold down the Cmd key which will change the cursor from an arrow to a bullseye (provided the hex is within range of the artillery piece).
If you then Cmd click the mouse a few things shall happen. First an artillery order is made, and is shown by the appearance of a red disk, with the letters "ART" printed on them, on the hex map above the target hex. This is shown in the image to the left where I have moved the cursor slightly to the side so that the red disk is more clearly shown.
The final change that occurs is that in the toolbar a yellow highlight appears around the button corresponding to the artillery order that I wanted to give.
Standard barrage and smoke share the same functionality in making their orders, but the defense barrage and counter artillery are different in having their own way of making orders. In the example pictured to the left I intend to make a counter artillery order. Notice that the old barrage order is still present as noted by the yellow highlight.
If I just click on the counter artillery order you will notice a few things: firstly the red artillery disk disappears from the hex map; secondly, the yellow highlight disappears from around the barrage order button in; and finally, a yellow highlight appears around the counter artillery button.

To completely undo whatever artillery order has already been made, I merely need to make certain that one of the artillery order buttons has been selected and is in the down state before pressing the delete key. Doing this will remove the artillery order, remove the yellow highlight from the button in the toolbar and remove the red artillery disk if there was one printed on the hex map.


One order combination that artillery can do is to first fire a round of barrage and then latter move to a different hex. Since the artillery phase is right at the begining of the execution phase then this means that artillery can't avoid counter-barrage from enemy artillery units. This artillery order and movement order combination merely allows one to speed up the events of a battle by having the opportunity to fire an artillery piece and move it. The cost of combining different orders is that exhaustion can mount up quite baadly.


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