I've got maximum sneak skills. I throw a smoke marker grenade and hide far away in the shadows. The enemy doesn't know where I am - I am far away and not moving or firing a weapon. The artillery shells start landing, and THIS causes the enemy to instantly know where I am hiding! So then they all start running towards me and out of the artillery strike zone before most of the shells even arrive on target.

It's as though the game treats the artillery shells as a player-weapon, and using artillery causes the enemy to detect you as if you were firing a noisy handheld gun. That's BS! That's stupid! That needs to be modded out! What's wrong with you Bethesda? Artillery already takes a lot of effort to set up, and the smoke grenades are rare enough. You'd think artillery would be somewhat useful, but it just isn't.

Things to change:

1. The explosion area needs to be larger. I've used artillery many times, I've saturated enemies with fireballs, and I rarely kill anything with it.

2. The explosions shouldn't magically reveal where the player is. If the enemy can't see me or hear me, then why does artillery reveal where I am?

Omnipresent Guard syndrome. Bethesda has always been terrible at this type of stuff. I love their games, and they're the only publisher I will preorder from, but they have failed to really evolve this system ... like ... ever.

Stealthboy steal something in another room with no one watching? Whole building kicks off *rolleyes*

I don't think I've ever had that happen...I've had enemies get alerted after I throw a smoke grenade tho...

But I haven't used artillery at lower levels either...I have all but the last of the sneak perks, plus at least 4 of the magazines that make detection harder...I have rained death on that satellite super mutant base before, and sat and watched all but 2 get killed, and none came running at me...idk..

Also there's a container in the castle that refreshes 10 smoke grenades at least once a day, I believe...

Ugh it just makes no sense! You can move a whole grid away from where the smoke nade lands, and the enemy will be clueless. But once the first shell lands, they instantly start running towards you. It's SUCH BS. I'm so mad at this! FUUUUU

That doesn't happen to me. I throw a smoke grenade inside an encampment wall and sit right outside the wall and wait for the shelling to stop. It's cool cause it's 5 shells and the first two usually get everyone to investigate them so the last three takes 'em out. Seems like that is what they intended to happen so for me it works as advertised. I have no stealth perks BTW.

Yes it does. I has to. We're playing the same game. Try this:

Throw a smoke grenade at a base (not in the city), run the opposite direction as fast as you can and hide. Your stealth indicator will say you are undetected, and the enemy base will be far away on the horizon. But once the first shell lands, the base knows where you are and they run straight towards you. If it does it to me, it will do it to you too.

Hi, you must be new here, welcome to Bethesda games, where one person can have a flawless experience and another a horrible nightmare.

These games are WAY too dynamic to make that statement truthfully.

I've been very lucky to have played OB, FO3, SK, and FO4 on three different PCs and the only serious problem i ever had was the fact that FO3 would no longer run after upgrading to Win 7.

I believe the attacks are registered as coming from you. If they didn't, you wouldn't get experience for the artillery killing them.

The player gets xp from practically everything that is killed in the same cell whether they fire the shot or not. Marvel as you approach a fire fight between super mutants and BOS and your xp dinger goes off with every SM death.

If this were ANY piece of software OTHER than a Bethesda game, I'd agree with you.

However, it's well known that different people can have VERY different experiences with these games, especially where bugs and A.I. behaviour are conerned.

Take the "items-falling-through-tables" decorating bug, for example. Some people have no issues at all, wheras I can't seem to get a *single* loose item to stay where I put it. Others can get certain specific items to stay in certain specific spots. If what you said was true, either EVERYONE would have a problem ALWAYS, or NO ONE would, EVER. This simply isn't the case.

The game considers the artillery shells as player-dealt damage (the hit marker is the dead giveaway). Hopefully they patch it or balance it so the AI ignores the player during a sneak -> artillery opening move (lmao never going to happen though, Bethesda doesn't balance their games).

This is certainly true because getting hit with artillery will also cause friendly team mates to aggo on you after being hit with artillery.

Honestly I'm surprised they are awake 24/7 manning the artillery waiting for your smoke and they can even see it with how far away you are let alone hit within a mile of it on the first try so ya I like it how it is.

Reminds me of playing Oblivion...

Me: *steals a thing and runs and manages to hide self* Ooookay, that got dicey, I think I...

Guard: HALT CRIMINAL SCUM

Me: mother[censored].

But the stealth does work pretty well in this game only you cannot be 100% undetectable like in oblivion.

Thank god I never use this. The first and only artillery-strike i ordered (story mission, Level 25-30 i think) made me think "Why throw a grenade from medium distance, wait some seconds and then get mediocre results (e.g. spread out enemies, poor accuracy) if i can kill all of them from double the distance in 2 seconds with a sniper rifle without being detected?" I'm at Level 62 now, so there's really no need for artillery for me.

I found it usefull at the airport wiping out the BOS but that's only cause their was a lot of them there and I had dence modifications on my chest peace so the explosives did very little when they hit me

Maybe they're just running from the, you know, BOMBS that are falling on them! lol