Artillery

Combat role

Ranged ground bombardment — fires at distance 3 without entering melee, enabling suppression without retaliation.

Lore

Precision munitions were supposed to make massed artillery obsolete. Then the satellite constellations started going dark in the opening exchanges of the Fracture, guidance kits lost their positioning fixes, and every general staff quietly reopened the tube-artillery production lines.

Modern batteries split the difference: self-propelled guns with inertial navigation that works when the sky doesn't, firing shells that are smart for the last three seconds of flight and dumb, cheap physics the rest of the way.

Crews live by a rule older than any of them: shoot and displace. A battery that fires from the same coordinates twice has volunteered its position to everyone listening. In the Red Age, artillery is how a commander says something to an enemy who cannot say anything back — provided the guns stay behind a screen that keeps the conversation one-sided.

When to use

Soften garrisons and heavy units from Range 3 before your melee units commit; the target cannot retaliate. Always screen the battery — anything that reaches it in melee usually kills it.

Counters