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 bull 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.

Don't forget though that you can only fire Lothar indirect every other turn as it takes both actions to fire indirect and then it has to load, you are much better off to fire direct if if in a good position to do so.

I rarely fire indirectly with Steel Rain. I really like it though, as its dice mean I can generally pick a squad or Armor 3/4 vehicle on the board and crush it in a single hit. It makes it feel more like a "sniping" vehicle. Once its used up its rockets, it can still do damage with its Petard mortar, but I find the main reason to have it is for that surgical strike, where you take out that one unit that is somehow important to your opponent's strategy.

Post the Corps Officers in line of sight of the Steel Rain and, with a little Ammo Dump, you can fire all of its rockets twice in a row, without even needing to reload. It can be quite a blow early in the game.

Loophole Master said:

Unless you miss as often as I do with the rockets and mortar . My friends have started calling it a retard mortar ftl.