Artillery Team

The Artillery Team (also Artillery Squad) is an unseen heavy weapon battery the Air Raider can call on for artillery support in Earth Defense Force 2025 and Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair. The leader of the team is a male character never referred to with anything but the group's name, credited as being voiced by "Sam Regal," a pseudonym used by Sam Riegel.

Description
The Artillery Team is an off-map support unit equipped with powerful howitzers and cannons; they apparently also have self-propelled rocket launchers at their disposal, though there are no Artillery Team rocket strikes.

The Artillery Team are mentioned in mission 6: Underground Cave and properly introduced in mission 7: Eruption. Like all artillery they are affected by storyline events, and are forced to withdraw during Brute Force and City of Horror, with the entire Artillery Team seemingly killed by Dragons in the latter mission. However, in Mountains Ablaze it is revealed that the leader of the team was the sole survivor of the attack, and has joined with a new team to provide support fire to the beleaguered EDF troops, immediately launching a howitzer strike against a group of Deroys lurking in the mountains.

In 2025 DLC 3 mission 11 Aerial Bombing (DLC 2 for 4.1 mission 10 Bombing Run), constant Howitzer strikes are called in four at a time.

Obviously, Artillery Team strikes cannot be used underground.

Calls for Support
All Artillery Team support calls use a smoke grenade marker.

Howitzer
Area-suppression attack with weak damage but immense splash. The Howitzer is primarily useful against large groups of basic enemies like Ants and Spiders, and not much good against tougher ones. It will level a huge area of any map with buildings, creating clearer lines of fire for other classes or the Air Raider's vehicles.

The basic level 0 Howitzer is one of the Air Raider's default weapons.

Cannon
Focused area attack with enormous damage but lower splash radius. The huge damage means this strike will even bring down groups of tough foes such as Hectors and Deroys with ease, and a well-targeted hit will deal enough damage to take down a boss enemy. Cannon D is one of the most powerful tools the Air Raider has access to, dealing total damage equivalent to eight Tempest S1A missiles.

In 2025 the Cannon is the most undercosted strike in the game, cheaper than attacks that deal a fraction of the damage and a very easy way for the Air Raider to deal with Tunnel Exits and their occupants. In 4.1 it is nerfed somewhat with a cost increase: Cannon strikes cannot be used immediately and require 2,160 additional credits before their first deployment. The reload cost is still very low for what the strike actually does.

Numbers in (brackets) are EDF 4.1 changes.

Trivia

 * Cannon's effect is also used for the Grind Buster.