Fire at Point

I'm wondering if there's a trick to getting mortars/arty to fire at a point for longer than a few minutes. I've set the duration for much longer, but after firing for 5 minutes or so, they stop.

I assume maybe they run out of ordinance?? If that's the case is there a unit (truck or something) to add to their group to keep the shells flying?

Yes they run out of ammo. They tend to fire at their maximum rate, so to get them firing longer you'd need to have them only fire for a short time (enough to get only a few rounds off) and then have them stop and start again. The problem with that is you'll have to wait for them to 'aim' again so you'll face a minimum 2 minute delay between each set of shots.

If you have a few different groups timed properly though you can set up a fairly continuous barrage that lasts a long time.

I think they should reload if they have a truck in the same group; for the US forces it's obvious which truck to use, for the others I think the Ural-375 is good, but probably a few others can do it as well. Reloading will take at least a few minutes, though.

I don't think you need a truck in the group. Has a smerch group made this week, with only smerch units. They fired after initial aiming. Then they started rearmin, wich took an hour. Then they fired again.

Odd thing was, that I had 9 units in the group. 6 of them started to fire together. Once they were done, the other 3 did. Was the same after reloading.

In my experiments, the presence of a truck in the group makes absolutely no difference. Most units have a reload time of about an hour, and that includes artillery too.

I might also add that setting your indirect fire weapons to "expert" helps both reload time and set up time.

Oh and also, back a few patches ago, I believe that the M109s would never fully run out of ammo. What happens is that they will use up all their ammo with at a rate of fire of like 6 rounds/min, and after like 60 shots reduce their rate of fire to about 0.5-1 rounds a minute, and maintain 0.5-1 rounds a minute indefinitely.. All other arty guns I tested will completely stop firing after their initial ammo loadout is spent. I donno if M109s still behave this way in this patch or not.

Thanks for the info, Speed. I guess the trucks aren't needed. I still like to add them though, since it adds authenticity and gives you more things to spot + shoot.