Nebelwerfers NEED some tuning. Here is why...

[Thoragoros]

Nebelwerfers are supposed to act as light, inaccuarte artillery. Here is why it does not fill that role,

1) the payload is ludicrously low. Seriously, not much better than a mortar round. Therefore when a shot does hit a target, it does next to nothing.

2) It is TOO inaccurate. Meaning that even after several rounds from one, the targeted area has taken very little damage, simply because the shots are hitting nowhere near the intended target.

3) It reloads far too slowly. With such an innacurate shot, and low payload it simply shouldnt take this long. HOWEVER if the payload were increased, then the wait may be necassery for balancing reasons.

Please consider these points.

[Boomstar]

Argreed on all points. Every time I've got one it just seemed to be a waste of manpower.

[Mirage Knight]

The 15cm Nebelwerfer 41 was designed to fire off 6 150mm HE rockets in succession in the span of 10 seconds. Accounting for reload time, 3 salvos of 6 rockets each could be fired in 5 minutes by a trained crew. While not terribly accurate, the Nebelwerfer was well liked for its ability to quickly saturate an area.

If anything, it MIGHT need a slight shorter cool down and a larger blast area.

Interestingly enough, the weapon was loaded and aimed by the crew and fired remotely using a plunger-type ignitor due to the weapon's backblast.

[TigerVX]

Both rocket artillery seem to be rather weak, I've used a walking Stuka and Nebelwerfer together and watched a replay after, and it took a whole lot of barrages to soften up a town. I watched at one point to see a Walking Stuka rocket hit -RIGHT- in the middle of a blob of five ranger squads, when the smoke cleared, it didn't inflict one casualty =/. Even a mortar round in COH does more damage then that.

[Clonesa]

Nebelwefers wreak havoc on infantry positons. I find them to be very useful.

[TheLoneKnight]

...I love Nebelwafers. I've seen a single rocket strike take out 7-8 light vehicles and assorted infantry, and a combined bombardment of 2-3 Nebelwafers can pretty much devastate any defensive position I've ever seen.

Though in the latest patch I noticed a rather odd bug when I upgraded my weapon teams to the highest "elite" rank: My Nebelwafers reloaded before their barrage even finished launching. I kept a constant barrage on the same area for about three or four minutes, no problem.

But I haven't re-checked this bug, so I'm hoping it was just some minor oversight that I didn't spot. Perhaps I'll try checking it again when the RO servers clear up a bit.

[ceejayoz]

I've seen them used to great effect, but you can't just have one. 3-4 of them do a nasty job on anything they're all hitting at once...

[n0z3k1ll3r]

I can't see what's wrong with it. Isn't the shots from it free? Compared to the Calliope which costs a good 125 munitions per volley.

[FooF]

Agreed with Ceejayoz. Even Mortar teams leveraged en masse do respectable damage but the lone Mortar team is a joke. Nebelwerfers are uber-Mortars.

Two games ago, an Axis player had 4 of them constantly harassing my lines near the railroad in St. Hiliel (that right?). They parked them near their fuel point (near middle) and simply pounded my very well-constructed defenses near the sanbag wall and munitions point. They also managed to destroy every barrel of fuel near the fuel point O.o.

He had one there for some time (which as we were saying is more of a nuisance than anything) but brought 3 up at some point and just unleashed hell. Fortunately they can't return fire on offmap artillary ;).

[Someguy]

Nebelwerfers have uber range and you can move them around.

[TigerVX]

I guess I've just been using them wrong, I tend to only build one if I have extra man power to harrass enemy lines. But even one does some fantastic work, though sometimes it takes more then one volley to hit a target. Though in retrospect the Walking Stuka and Nebelwerfers are fantastic, they don't cost any munitions to fire and aren't doctrine bound, they're really fun toys to use and can do a number on infantry and dug in positions. (In my previous post, after the first coupel barrages they started absolutely devestating upon watching the rest of the reply. After a bit, they did enough damage to everything to blast open the tank destroyers guarding the village and killed a whole lot of rangers, imagine if I had used them en mass.)

[mrmin123]

Those Nebelwerfers are such a bitch if you're on the receiving end... Now whenever I hear the telltale noise it makes, I begin to move all my units even if they're not at me.

[TheLoneKnight]

Me too, Mrmin. My defensive lines constantly move whenever I hear that forboding scream.

On the bright side it has taught me to spread my units out a bit to avoid losing all of them in a single blow.

It has also taught me to keep camoflaged snipers behind enemy lines to shoot the SOBs when the player leaves them undefended. :D

[DatonKallandor]

Nebelwerfers are better against vehicles. They seem to have more armor penetration. Walking Stukas have a giant blast radius, perfect for clearing infantry blobs.


Daton

[FatalTheRabbit]

I've only used nebels a couple of times in 1on1, and as you say they were pretty ineffective. I can see how that wouldn't be so obvious to a team gamer where multiples would be possible, but I think they could use tweaking. I haven't used them enough to suggest exactly how though, but I don't think it could be much for the sake of team games.

[theBlind]

I like to use them on teamgames, haven't tried em in 1on1 yet.

If their noise makes you spread your infantry, shift your lines, abondon your defensive positions, then they DID already pay for their cost.
Artillery isn't there to kill stuff, it's area denial. What kills stuff is your men on the ground when the enemy tries to retake the position you just took from them.
Ah, of course, if the enemy decides to stand his ground, your artillery *will* start killing stuff. And you can keep it up as long as you want, until the time when the enemy finally decides to either fall back (and then subsequentially has to assault a defensive position) or to attack you (and then has to assault a defensive position).

Artillery is fun. It's all in the mind game.

[SquidDNA]

1) More than one nebelwerfer.
2) Veterancy.
3) Follow up with offmap strike to catch the enemy when the dust has cleared.
4) Bodies everywhere!

[naradaman]

This thread has inspired me to try nebelwerfers. I've never encountered them as Allies yet, I am uneducated as to their deadliness.

[Hellraiser]

Nebelwerfers are better against vehicles. They seem to have more armor penetration. Walking Stukas have a giant blast radius, perfect for clearing infantry blobs.

Oddly enough nebelwerfers deal barely any damage to building despite the fact that one round can easily halve a stug's health if it lands on top of it(I once hit my stug by accident).
They're a good anti-infantry weapon and anti-vehicle but absolutely useless against buildings, a mortar team can destroy an MG emplacement faster than a nebelwerfer.

The stuka zu fuss on the other hand is THE long-range fire support unit.

It's good against buildings, tanks and infantry the only downside is the 150 munitions you need to pay to turn your halftrack into that monster and the tech requirement.
Oh and as people before me stated one nebelwerfer isn't enough, you have to have at least 2 to see how good they are.

[AndyB]

150mm Nebelwerfer: 3 vs. infantry, 2 vs. light armour, 1 vs. heavy armour, 2 vs. structures

SdKfz 251/1 Walking Stuka Upgrade: 4 vs. infantry, 4 vs. light armour, 2 vs. heavy armour, 3 vs. structures

Max number is 10 and the above is the weapon's overall effectiveness and not based on each round fired.

Even though the ratings are not amazingly better for the Stukas I prefer them anyway due to the increased mobility they have (go go haltrack chassis).

More on each unit here: http://planetcoh.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Units.list&category_show_all=1&persist_search=127be840c547380b503b6c7e335bbce9&Data_page=1

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Nebelwerfers are good spammers.

The main use i've made of them is actually defensive. I got in a late game once where my team quit and all 3 allied players were rushing the same hq position with infantry as much and as fast as they could. A player who quit left 2 nebelwerfers around and I had a Walking Stuka. The nebelwerfers and stukas wreaked enough havoc that he wasn't able to remain in close; so after every rush I was able to push back out and rebuild.

[shadowcreaper]

if you refering to the german art, then HELL NO i had 1 of them take out a whole defencive wall, they ARE NOT inaccurate sinse they hit al my defences and destroyed them ALL. if anything they too damm good lol