ktj1138 said:

Standing in the open when artillery comes down gets you dead.  Cover gives you a better chance to stay alive.  That doesn't mean you have a great chance, but some is much better than none.  Cover from artillery is best as foxholes with a top cover, or something large between you and the center of the blast.  Hollywood likes to yell 'Take Cover!' against screaming barrages of artillery coming in, but soldiers might call, 'Incoming!' with that after the first round lands, because artillery comes in too fast for you to hear before it gets there.  Most would figure the explosions had clued everyone in, and simply look for better cover for themselves, with NCO's checking troop status.  'Take Cover!' or 'Incoming!' would be more effective against an air attack, where they mounted screamers on the bombs just to unnerve the target area.  Stukas frequently added screamers to their wings for the same effect on a strafing run.  Another use of, 'Incoming!' is when friendly artillery is firing anywhere near a unit, because artilery blasts can reach out quite a ways to make your life miserable, whether they're friendly or enemy.

DUST gives blast weapons the ability to ignore cover, because blast weapons are designed to make cover much less effective.  A direct fire shot from an 88mm gun is still a lot of nasty, but it's normally coming direct, and having to blast through any cover.  Grenades, flamethrowers, artillery, etc. are lobbed into the middle of the cover, or worse fired as air bursts, where the protection the cover gives is minimal.  The wall the 88mm is firing through won't help much against a grenade tossed over it to land at your feet.

WW2 saw more deployment of timed and probe fuses for air bursts, and the initial deployment of proximity fuses for better air bursts, and made artillery much worse when they were available.  A ground burst might have its effect lessened because it hit soft dirt, buried in before it detonated, and had reduced fragmentation and blast on surrounding troops.  Rommel noted in his WW1 tactics book how he survived a few artillery strikes that way.  One of those could wind up worse for the guy in the foxhole, as the blast wave shredded and buried them at the same time.

The two Artillery class weapons for DUST are the nebelwerfer and the 4.2" rockets.  Nebelwerfer's throw a lot of smaller bombs (though some nebelwerfers from WW2 threw fewer bigger bombs) to saturate an area.  Nebelwerfer means 'fog thrower' because they created a dense cloud of shrapnel at the grouns throughout an area.  The 4.2" rockets on the Steel Rain each run probably over 100 pounds of explosive (based on the 60 pounds carried by the initial 3" rockets used on the Sherman in WW2).  That's a lot of explosive, in either case.  The nebelwerfer gives you a masive cloud of shrapnel to bounce around and through the cover, while the rockets give you a massive blast wave and shrapnel from fewer points.

As for tactical usage of the Steel Rain, consider what it can do: four small attacks are not really an effective use, as artillery is designed to be used for massive strikes.  All four rockets fired together give an average roll with a normal attack that kills any current medium walker.  The more dice involved in such a situation, the less the probability that you will not roll average results, so 12 dice for four hits is pretty reasonable.  That can pay for the cost of the Steel Rain in one attack, and let you get bonus points with the petard mortar.  You can do that without exposing the Steel Rain if you have a unit with Artillery Strike.  If you fire direct, you might be able to use Sustained Attack, for an average of close to seven hits, and have a heavy walker close to destroyed in a single attack.

Two separate two rocket attacks would average two hits each, up to over three hits on Sustained Attack, to take out more points than the Steel Rain is worth in light walkers or heavy infantry.

The Steel Rain is a heavy strike weapon (the rockets) added to a short ranged dangerous strike with the petard mortar.  If you can use it well to pay for itself with its rocket strike, the extra firepower it brings to bear at shorter ranges is all gravy.

Artillery is there to destroy the enemy, and the Steel Rain can do that rather well.  If it could reload its rockets, it would either have to cost more than a heavy walker, or have the rockets mush less effective, to remain balanced within the game.

Supaplex said:

The rules keep the rocket troops with rocket troops, so this comes down basically to the Fast or Assault abilites.

I look at it this way:

A unit that is trained to move quickly is simply more willing to push to get close to the enemy.  A hero fielded with them will have learned to keep up, or be left behind.   That's a good reason to not let heroes join units during the game.  Once the hero leaves, they don't have the unit driving them forward, so they lose the ability.

A hero with either ability fielded with a unit is a leader, and good leaders are trained to get the most out of their troops.  So long as the hero is there, they can keep the unit moving faster.  I never knew I could run a marathon until I dealt with one unit's First Sergeant.  Top didn't look incredibly impressive, but he was infamous for leading us out on occasional morning runs that lasted from 0530 to 1200.  When he did that, you did NOT want to be someone who tried to drop out of the run.  He could keep an entire battery (artillery company) of men moving at a run by sheer force of will.

It doesn't make since with the movement but I see there point. Action Jacksion has movement 1 and if he joins the say Grim Reapers he is upgraded to movement 2 which is the movement of the Grim Reapers. Same with OZZ117 or Rhino with movement 2 joining the Red Devils. The Red Devils get movement 2 b/c the fastest model moves at 2.

This doesn't make since but I don't make the rules I just follow them. I guess they give the models without jetpacks, jetpacks kinda like the medic with a bunch of ammo hahaha.

arkangl said:

Action Jackson can't join the Grim Reapers, as there is an additional restriction that only Jump heroes can join Jump squads, and vice versa.  The same would hold for OZZ  117 or Rhino with the Red Devils.

Yes, that is a crucial point that could easily be overlooked.

Loophole Master said:

Maybe my posts' length made people miss where you had already pointed that out...

I know that I was giving an example, I'm sure there will be various speed units without jump that can be compared. Or for example since everyone likes my cards they prob asked for that reason. Like my superheroes.

We've been playing on maps much larger than 3x3 and have found the Steel Rain to fail quite often. Especially when the AXIS can just sit back and rain artillery fire every turn (with at least 2 Lothar's and 1 Artillery Strike unit), that now ignores cover (which I will ALWAYS call bullshit on, though respect the rule when playing). Trying to march a Steel Rain down the map when you have AXIS observer units on the battle field is just a waste of resources. And when the length of the map is 4 or more tiles long, the Petard is kinda useless with it's extremely limited range. And artillery isn't supposed to be up and in your face. It hangs back and does damage from a great distance. Adding that with the fact that you pretty much just have 1 shot to try and POSSIBLY take out 1 of the enemy units, I don't see how the ALLIES have a great use for the Steel Rain. Maybe on small maps it's useful, but not on any type of large scale map, which is what Artillery was made for so it makes little sense in my eyes. Plus with the extreme lack of Unlimited range weapons for the ALLIES, the AXIS have the balance greatly in their favor on any map over 4 tiles big and over 250 points per army.

Long ranged artillery should try to stay off of the battlefield.  The Steel Rain and Lothar aren't.

The rockets mounted on the Steel Rain, based on those mounted on the Sherman, like the petard mortar, were designed for battlefield deployment, with both direct and indirect fire.  They were supposed to throw heavy fire fast with the rockets, while the petard mortar was designed to break fortifications.  The Steel Rain fits for those.

The Calliope Sherman and the various nebelwerfers and katyushkas were designed more for saturation attacks, but had a limited range compared to full blown artillery.  None of the WW2 rockets were accurate enough for long ranged fire other than saturation attacks.

If you're having problems advancing a Steel Rain across the table in the face of long ranged Axis firepower, perhaps your table should include more terrain.  Even Kursk had rolling hills to allow advance and ambushes, as did North Africa, so any tabletop game should deal with that, instead of playing on flat open fields without any covered approaches.  There should be the allowance for long range fields of fire, but never a table with no covered approaches when the battlefield grows larger.

With DUST that becomes more important, because it uses a fast and lethal combat mechanism, so every turn granting unanswered fire is a significant advantage.

 @Arkangl,  I never really looked at your superheroes, though I appreciate the effort you put into them.  Perhaps you should shift them so they match the rest of the game, and don't allow normal units huge movement increases.  DUST has been careful thus far to keep all Movement 2 units (hero and squad) restricted to Jump units.  Ensuring that only superheroes with matching movement values can join squads would retain DUST's current status and not add conflict.  DUST also restricts joining units to having the same Armor value, which should make it easier.

Well for example my Wolverine has movement 2 and armor 2. Most of my speedies like JSA Flash and the Whizzer are armor 1 with movement 3+ so they dont have to work about it. Things with flight (which is different than Jump) cannot join any units without flight. I'm in the process of reqorking and putting up my hero card so no one can look them up right now.

Note: I just realised I did make a change to them with heroes that have superhero ability cannot join units unless specified but, I didnt add that until like a couple of months ago so maybe people were asking when I had that or maybe people just wanted to know in general with their own house rules.

 As I read in the Revised Core RuleBook, Arc Weapons (range X–Y) shoot their shells on a parabolic trajectory, in a way that’s similar to artillery.

Cadavre said:

If you mean it can also shoot the Petard Mortar when it's activated by Artillery Strike to use its Rockets, then yes.

If you mean that the Petard can be fired indirectly, then no.

Loophole Master said:

But how can we do if we run out of ammo for the Rockets ?

Can you request an Artillery Strike when there is no more Rockets, to attack with 0 Rockets and the Petard Mortar ?

No, of course not. That would be a very cheap exploitation of the rules (though it would have to be a very specific situation where it would be advantageous to waste the option of firing the Petard with Sustained Fire).

It seems clear now.

Thank you very much.

So I think Axis Lothar is more interesting than the Allies Steel Rain.

Lothar can be placed in a protected zone without any LOS until the end of the game and shoot everytime, but it can't be possible with the Steel Rain if you want to keep a good rate of fire with it.