When the player calls in a Artillery strike he or she must be in Vox range of Friendly FOB Once the Strike is called it will take two turns to come in . The Gm will roll on the stats of the guardsmen found in the back of the core rule book. He or she Will then use the earth shaker cannon( Or other indirect weapon) in the core rule book as the rules follow for that weapon.

The player can ask for the following to improve the chances of hitting.

Standard shot : The Round is called in with a +20 as the gunners have aimed the shot. The round will hit it's target in two rounds

Quick round!: The round will drop on the players next turn, rather then two turns later But is unaimed.

Delayed Round: The rounds are delayed by an extra turn giving +30 to the roll as gunners have more time to aim.

There Right on top of me ! : The Rounds come down that turn at -20 to the roll.

Types of Artillery :

Round HE : the player calls in a single round of high explosive. +10 for single round

Three rounds HE: the player calls in three rounds of high explosive at a -10

Make it rain! : Five rounds of high explosive are fired at -30

Specialist rounds can be called for but only one at a time, see armory section of appropriate rule book for types of shells.

So, what kind of problem is this adressing? I don't think I've ever used artillery strikes in a game of Only War, so I'm not very experienced with them.

What gets me is that there's a Specialism dedicated literally to the use of abilities like this.

See the Master of Ordinance Advance Specialty in Hammer of the Emperor.

So, what kind of problem is this adressing? I don't think I've ever used artillery strikes in a game of Only War, so I'm not very experienced with them.

Many situations in war that require a Artillery strike.

What gets me is that there's a Specialism dedicated literally to the use of abilities like this.

Yes there is, This is for when the players are going up ageist hordes of hostiles, but are low ranked or have not chosen this ability / class.

See the Master of Ordinance Advance Specialty in Hammer of the Emperor.

Very well aware of this. But there are many situations that would require an artillery strike or air support may be required, but giving the players an earth shaker for the mission may be highly impractical, and giving the players the ability to use such things seems to work in my case. You dnt have to use it if you do not want to.

well i honnestly think there is waayyy to much precision in this, it makes the master of ordinance useless so why would anyone advance to that class. with a siege auspex i could see the +20 possibly but that's with gear bonuses. so already you could potentially give a shell a +40 and beyond virtually defeating the need for a lot of classes. if there was more risk involved than what you wrote i'd think it'd be a good idea.

In case you haven't seen them already, here is the writeup I did for artillery calling.

I thought about artillery strikes and how to include them in the game and don't spoil it for the Master of Ordnance. And I made the "Artillery Strike" achievable through logistics roll. It's availability was one level higher than artillery shell's (Nearly Unique). It required Navigate(Surface) test from a player and BS Test from Earthshaker crew with the possibility to "borrow" Fate Points to the ES crew.

After all it's one heck of a firepower, well placed might be a scenario winner.