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[E. Albright]

I hadn't noticed the Dune parallel, but that seems to nail it. My initial impression was that it's an attempt to not completely disrupt the existing economies while also not misrepresenting exactly how resource-intensive projecting modern naval power tends to be. By making it abstracted third parties who control production and maintenance of fleets, the existing economic model does not need a fundamental overhaul to balance the possibility of needing to spend ruinous amounts of resources on sea power. I'm wondering how technology will be handled, though - will merchant houses have maintained pre-fall tech and thus avoid the necessity of adding a research council or making a wonkier tech tree? The more I think about it, the more I suspect naval tech will be more-or-less static and not develop over the course of the game, though I could be wrong.

[Il Palazzo]

How's the general perception on artillery barrage before attack vs sending the same artillery with an attack? I have always done the former, but I'm wondering if it's perhaps not actually sub-optimal.

[Dostoevsky]

The way it's described, it sounds like the Guild of Navigators from Dune. Only while it made sense in the vastness of space, you really don't need to be a monopolistic mutated clairvoyant mega-junkie to navigate a pond. So it's going to feel a bit odd.

Makes me think of the train monks from Girl Genius.

[Karlito]

How's the general perception on artillery barrage before attack vs sending the same artillery with an attack? I have always done the former, but I'm wondering if it's perhaps not actually sub-optimal.

There's a hefty attack penalty on the ranged attacks so generally I think its better to have the regular artillery pieces in the battle.

[Nirur Torir]

I usually play on small worlds and tank blitz without using much artillery, so I don't have a save game I can easily run a direct test on.
Save scumming I've done in the past to capture a city on the last turn before a quest expired showed a small independent unit of artillery bombarding being able to reduce average entrenchment from ~100 to ~50.

I also noticed that having enough recon to see how many units your fighting is very useful for regular combats. In combat it goes up faster with more units nearby, even if they're not fighting. I think recon vehicles and light tanks make that go up faster.

I would expect blind artillery bombardments into poor recon hexes to be worth less than mixing them with the assault, but very helpful against entrenched and well scouted enemies.

[E. Albright]

My understanding is that ranged attacks trade having inflicted up to 10 rounds of casualties/morale/readiness damage before the assault starts (and higher artillery safety) for efficient ammo usage and increased opportunities to be able to score hits. The actual attacks should not change. [Except for the progressive effects of recon, yes.]

Separate barrages always burn 10 rounds of ammo, and will most likely have the enemy do an orderly retreat (and thus be unable to be further hit) before those 10 rounds are up. OTOH, there's only risk of counterattack if there's enemy artillery. When you attack alongside the rest of the force, the artillery's damage to units (either in the form of casualties, morale, or readiness [or entrechment, as Nirur pointed out and I'd forgotten]) will not be front-loaded, so the defenders will be stronger. Additionally, if defender units manage a breakthrough, artillery can no longer target those units, but the guns suffer a -66% HP penalty against their now-close-combat attacks. Even w/o breakthroughs, any attacks they suffer in non-ranged combat will be against gun HP -33% - basically, they're extra vulnerable in any non-ranged combat, and the closer it gets, the worse they are.

[Oh. And if the artillery makes a separate attack, they don't count against the Unit Stack limit for attack penalties for over-concentrating your forces.]

[Il Palazzo]

Yes, my dear people. I understand what artillery does, the risks, the general mechanics. I'd like to know which way is more effective.

[E. Albright]

That's the thing: I don't think one way is categorically better or worse. Good recon and lots of entrenchment? Bombard them. Low entrenchment and poor recon? Send the guns in with the troops.

[Journier]

this game is good gonna come back for this latest patch

[Il Palazzo]

More questions about the mechanics.
The quad machine guns. Are there any downsides to using them over regular machine guns? Apart from the extra cost and maybe ammo consumption. Do they move slower? Do they have some special modifiers? I can't see anything in the manual.

[Karlito]

They're pretty good. As I recall you can't upgrade them directly (instead having to replace them like other larger equipment pieces). Does that mean they count as guns instead of infantry for stratagem and skill purposes?

[E. Albright]

I was wondering that myself when looking at my casualty stats - quads counting as guns might've explain why I thought I had some jumps in "gun" losses that don't match my ATG+arty+AA losses. However, I went and double-checked and had an epiphany: they're definitely not guns b/c they're 100/subunit instead of 10 (and all other guns, plus the guns troop/cas graph, are incremented by 10s). It'd also be really weird if they were given that they fit in any MG slot. [Pretty sure my "discrepancy" was forgetting irregular artillery...]

Their on-foot movement is exactly the same as regular MGs. However (and this is contrary what you see when you open the info screen on an individual subunit, but not what you see on the design tab of the model list page), they weigh a lot more than regular MGs; as such, it takes more log points when you ship or reinforce (or replace/upgrade) units with them. Looking at what's listed during a strategic move for a couple of newly-formed units, the difference is 72 QMG vs. 23 MG. Those don't match the detail numbers, and frankly feel like voodoo (esp. since I can get different ratios elsewhere to do moves), but that's probably more to do with strat move voodoo than these two things in particular; my experience is definitely that QMGs take more log points to move around even if they're not slower on foot*.

[Also note that it lists the same cost in log points to raise a remote formation of QMG vs. one of MG. The UI doesn't seem to know WTH is going on with them and their weight.]

*My brain is telling me they're slower, but a quick test tells me my brain is wrong.

[EuchreJack]

So, Quads are not ideal for my outlying border defenses...

[Il Palazzo]

Right, so I think I know what confused me earlier about the linear mining optimisation tech - the demetalization plant doesn't seem to use it. Other mining assets merely don't list it among the modifiers.
Which brings about a question - does the mining robotization tech affect demetalization or not?

And while I'm at it - do the robotization techs affect private industries too?

[E. Albright]

Demetalization only benefits from your governor. No other mods.

Private industry (and mining), OTOH, does benefit from robotization tech.