Hello.

TL,DR: Multiple artillery pieces extend duration of fire mission too much, and the player has to wait dumbfounded for many minutes after all life has perished. One unit (I counted 6 grenades over 30-45 sec) is good, but additional units should extend coverage (spread) or rate of fire, rather than duration.

I feel like it is counter-productive to have overlapping artillery coverage. (Many pieces of artillery in range to shoot to same location from different locations.)

What happens when many artillery units are in range: Fire mission duration extends. Of course if purpose of it would be to suppress enemies down it would be great, but it just basically happens to kill everything with few first grenades. They are very powerful, which IMO is good (When encountered mirelurk queen, 3 non-direct hits took it down on survival difficulty.), but when barrage keeps going on for many minutes at 10 x 10 meter area (from which all life has perished during few first hits) it just keeps player from advancing and moving there.

My suggestion is that overlapping artillery's fields of fire do not just extend duration of fire mission.
If it does: Add more coverage for barrage= More spread and effect.
Other idea would be to keep amount of shots (Lets assume each unit fires 6 grenades.) but increase rate of fire.

Does anyone else feel artillery is a good addition, but extensive coverage denies area of firefight / combat for too long?

Unfortunately you cannot curtail your call for fire with how many rounds you want in effect I agree though multiple pieces gives you more shells per minute and not extend duration. In fact how many guns you have up has zero to do with duration and just how many rounds you will get for the duration that you want if you specify.

Shameless self-bump. I think this deserves more attention.

Are you kidding me. I am a Forward Observer so Fire Missions is what I get paid for! I was about to bump this my self dammit!

This post needs more attention !

Haven't used artillery, other than the training mission. What's the max range of say a single piece at the centre of The Castle?

OT: on another forum an member had his son brought home by the police because he and an friend had build an catapult and used it to shoot water balloons on cars.

Reply from another member who probably had your profession was: Take an serious talk with your son about the benefit of indirect fire and forward observers

And yes it should be rate of fire, has not used it much but see many fight where it would be useful. See this as an obvious mod part.

I would say it is easily to the Goodneighbor, if not even to the Diamond city. I cannot test it for time being because so many artillery pieces all over the place, but when having more time I could do that (remove other than one from The castle and try different distances for fire-missions.)

Bah, Ill do it in few hours and report back.

Hah! Danger Close. 600 meters for artillery/mortars and 750 for naval guns in reality. Every Fire Mission in Fallout is danger close. A wet dream for me! I have had quite a few in my time but not EVERY mission. Its more fun

@ Zaria I couldn't agree more with the reply to that post hah!

Is there any way to know the radius of the mortars?

@jberry0410 for now I doubt there is, as far as I know.

Since we can see our supply routes in map, why not artillery coverage? At least it seems to be big deal for minutemen.

Alright! I made some science:

TL,DR: I tested to best of my abilities artillery range, and it appears to be 6 grid squares in map for single unit.

First, I set up artillery unit as exactly on top of North-South "map line" (When you look at map, you see grid made of lines which scales with map when you zoom in or out.) as I could inside The Castle.
In addition, I removed every other artillery piece from my other settlements.
Then I proceeded to travel straight line to West, and doing fire-missions on those lines:
I happened upon Supermutie camp around 5? grid-squares (or just grids? Not always sure of English impressions..) and barrage come on top of it as hoped, then I went straight away to test it on a road 7 grids to the West from The Castle.
Barrage never came. (I took my time between fire-missions, like, about 5 minutes to make sure artillery were ready to fire.)
Next I reversed back to 6? grids (there is Relay tower around there.) and no barrage.
Then I went back to line 6 grids from The Castle, and got barrage.

Conclusion: Artillery range is more or less 6 grid squares in map. So from The Castle you can shoot around Goondneighbor.
In addition: Since there is no indication of artillery coverage, you can take ruler (or something similar) and measure distance in your screen for 6 grids, and then adjusting it to know if certain area is within artillery coverage!
Not easiest option, but I am Forward Observer too in reserve, and it pleases me to get some way to do this.

Good to know.

Now for someone to mod in voice commands and grid references.

Having been personally targeted by said artillery, i don't like it one bit.

Thanks for the range info, good to know how far my grid search parameter as to be

I would like to have blue circles on the map based on where you have artillery and where it will hit while you have smoke grenades equipped.

These are all good suggestions. More artillery should equal more intensity, not more time. A strike from all of my sixteen current field guns should hammer a small city block, not thump on a fifteen meter square for five minutes. And there should be a map overlay for artillery coverage.

If I have 2 settlements within artillery within range I'd rather there be no cool down, between strikes, rather than both firing for twice the duration.

I am currently having the issue where artillery is inconsistent. I will be in range of multiple settlements with artillery, but only one or two strikes onto the target. sometimes there are none at all. I will get the "Firing for Effect..." Silence then "...Hope that helped!" No. No it did not.

PS4

I didn't think it made a difference how many you had in one place but yea. Needs greater spread and an all clear signal. I usually dont use the radio because you risk getting a minuteman assignment. Which would be fair if you didn't already have 3.

Ok, going off topic here. There have been several people in here who are "Forward Observers" in the military. This fascinates me. What exactly is your job and how does it work, er rather. How do you do it? With binoculars or is it all computer controlled now? Just curious. And, of course, thank you for your service. Even if you happen to be doing this for a different country than mine. People who serve in the military are awesome.

My only issue with artillery is that I can never get it to do for me what I can't do for myself better. It requires you to be in grenade throwing range to mark the target, then requires you to get out of the area of effect unless you're playing catch with the gun-bunnies.

Grenade throwing range is also within aggro range. Which means 1 of 2 things. Either I sneak in to mark the target, which means I get a modifier that lets me 1 or 2 shot every enemy in the area quicker than it takes for for the mortar rounds to travel. Or I don't sneak in, aggro quite a few people I would rather play catch with the gun-bunnies, and they chase me out of the kill zone. Sure, I do get a nice display and soundtrack as I manually kill my sudden mortal enemies, but sometimes I'd rather save the caps and not spend that ammunition.

I have a Pip-Boy, that marks my location on a map. Knowing my location, and the location of a known landmark, its a trivial matter of giving the gun-bunnies coordinates that I want to go boom.