Marines vs Artillery

[Stalker0]

Marines recieve a +50% bonus against artillery, but I'm trying to understand exactly what that means.

Let's say an artillery attacks a stack of two marines and an infantry man. The marine will defend.

1) Does the 50% bonus against the artillery mean that just the marine will take less damage, or does that lower the collateral damage done to other units?

2) Does the second marine take less collateral damage because of the 50%?

 

[SlightlyMad]

No, it's a combat bonus, it's calculated into his strength when attacking or defending artillery. This is a lot less meaningful on defense in BTS, and still not as useful as flanking on attack, so it's not really that useful.

 

[Leveler]

Marines have only +50 % attack vs artillery. On defence they aren't any better than paratroopers for example.

 

[Neo Guderian]

I never understood why marines have this useless bonus. Artillery are always going to be the last in the stack to defend and marines would simply destroy arty even without the bonus. Besides, as mentioned above, flanking makes this bonus even more redundant.

 

[Quagga]

I had forgotten that this was an attack-only bonus. I had been thinking all along that these guys were defending better against siege units.

But... if you remember back to unpatched vanilla, siege units did defend. Back then the Marines special bonus was more useful.

It probably should be changed to be combat bonus instead of an attack bonus.

 

[Leveler]

I never understood why marines have this useless bonus. Artillery are always going to be the last in the stack to defend and marines would simply destroy arty even without the bonus. Besides, as mentioned above, flanking makes this bonus even more redundant.

It is far from useless. Marines has 91 % change to win artillery on attack and paratroopers only 78 %. In WB test I put 2 stacks of 10 barbarian artilleries and stacks of 10 marines and paratroopers for myself and then attacked.

2 paratroopers were lost on attack and average str was around 15/24 for survivors. Marines accomplished same tasks without losses and average str was above 20/24. That can be the decisive difference if enemy counter attacks next turn.

Even though artilleries are last to defend, they will eventually defend after everything else is destroyed. And then marines come useful to finish the job with minimal change of losses. Also, there is no flank attack against artillery. Cavalry is the last unit with flank attack and it is only against cannon.

 

[Stylesrj]

Don't Gunships get a flank attack against artillery and mobile artillery?

 

[Leveler]

Apparently yes. I have managed to miss that completely. However Advanced flight is quite far from Artillery and not as useful as Industrialism.