King Of The Battlefield – Artillery Mutator Mod

"It is with artillery that war is made."

– Napoleon Bonaparte

who may not appreciate a British artillery piece being in the thumbnail.

This mod allows bots to call in off-map artillery strikes of different varieties. Through configuration, it is possible to set separately for each team the frequency and capabilities of their indirect fire support assets.

There are two identical mutators that can be enabled, one for each team, allowing for distinct artillery configurations to represent differences in doctrine or capabilities

There are different kinds of artillery, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Select the kind that is most thematically appropriate and well balanced.

The classic tube artillery, this type of bombardment produces a barrage of high explosive shells that arrive fairly quickly can suppress enemy positions with a decent chance of killing unprotected enemies. A good balance between saturation and lethality.

The multiple launch rocket system unleashes a salvo of missiles from afar to impact the target area. These projectiles are slow moving and easy to see coming, but the psychological toll of witnessing impending doom should not be discounted.
Compared with tube artillery, the MLRS is meant for precision saturation rather than blindly suppressing a wide area. To this end, the rockets fired by this battery have the unique ability to lock onto enemy vehicles and strike them with lethal precision, providing a hard counter to armored thrusts.

WARNING! Thermobaric munitions are extremely powerful! Use with caution!
Thermobaric munitions work by dispersing a cloud of flammable vapor across a wide area the moment the round impacts. Then, following a brief delay, the vapor is ignited, resulting in a massive fireball explosion that conspicuously eviscerates anything caught in the target area.
Thermobarics are built for pure destruction, and attempting to use them in close support of friendly units may result in devastating consequences.
It is recommended to limit the frequency of thermobaric strikes through further configuration

An form of improvised artillery used by irregular forces, it has a relatively low level of lethality, but nevertheless can offer effective suppression.
The individual rockets are not particularly deadly, only causing real damage with direct or near-direct hits, and are unlikely to knock out heavy vehicles on their own. However, the affected targets will still be dazed or knocked over by the barrage of explosions.

White phosphorous is a substance that loves to burn. While it can be employed for the relatively mundane purpose of providing concealment, a more sinister use leverages its flammability to make it a potent incendiary device.
The initial blast of the white phosphorous round may not deal heavy damage, but the pool of fire formed immediately on impact is extremely deadly, lingering for a period of time, during which anyone within the affected area will suffer extreme damage. Furthermore, it can penetrate into vehicles and harm the occupants directly, turning protective armor into a trap.

Refer to the corresponding Discussion thread.

Miscellaneous notes and tips.

• The ridiculous power of thermobaric munitions cannot be stressed enough.
• Different settings of precision, frequency, quantities, probabilities, etc. may be more suited to certain types of artillery. The default settings were largely configured for Howitzer/MLRS artillery types and may not be the most suitable for all situations.
• Obviously, more bots per side means more artillery call-ins.
• The artillery is not actually meant to be exceptionally lethal (excepting thermobarics). The main goal of the artillery is to suppress (read: knock over) enemies, look cool from a distance, and be scary up close. A direct hit will always be lethal of course, but more likely than not they will be dealing balance damage. This design choice allows for artillery to impact more frequently without causing battles to stalemate.
• If you are in a vehicle, and are targeted by an MLRS strike, the rockets will all lock onto your vehicle. Using countermeasures (if available) immediately will only throw off the the first few rockets, but the rest will impact directly and destroy it unless you are lucky. Try to wait until all rockets have appeared, and then use your countermeasures to spoof them all at once.
• If you are fast enough, you can bail out of your vehicle as it is being struck by an MLRS, and move far enough away from it to be safe from the successive impacts. The area of effect of an individual rocket is not that great.

Sofa, for providing the Vanilla+ prefabs and effects used to make this mod.
Maps in screenshots:

• La Solanera.
• Oblast Highway.
• Air-to-Ground Snowdrift.