Running the gun: SPH-2 crew guide
Three seats, two arcs, one ranging round. How to lay the howitzer, read its sight, take a spotter's corrections and park where it can shoot.
What you are crewing
The SPH-2 is $8,000 at the vehicle vendor, gated on WARDOG level 55 and a one-off $400,000 unlock, and it seats three. The Handbook lists an L52 cannon plus an M249, 105 L of fuel at 8 L/km and 65 km/h, and files its kills under Support XP: 350 a kill, 150 a vehicle. Like every vehicle it is sold empty; shells are a separate purchase. None of the sources names the three seats. They describe a gunner's view with its own sight and a machine gun beside the main gun, so settle on the radio who drives, who lays the gun and who watches the flanks before leaving HQ.
Reading the sight
Azimuth is a compass bearing from gun to target, 0 north and 90 east; you traverse to it. Elevation is what you dial on the barrel, in mils. They are the SPH-2's own scale, not NATO mils, so a mortar table or another game's numbers will not match, and the sight steps in whole mils. Wardogs Zone's board says the sight also reads the flat-ground range for that elevation and the gun's altitude.
The community table runs 780 to 2,629 m over 20 to 1,390 mil. Players measured it; Bulkhead has published nothing. It is what our artillery solver interpolates. The gun groups about 10 MOA, roughly 3 m at 1,000 m and 7.6 m at full range, and past about 2,625 m the arc turns over: two elevations land in one place and the table goes flat. Do not fight for the last hundred metres; move the gun.
Low arc or high arc
Two trajectories reach most targets, and choosing is the biggest decision at the gun. Low arc is flatter and quicker, the shot for anything that might not be there in ten seconds. High arc lobs the shell and drops it steeply, the only way over a ridge or onto a reverse slope; Wardogs Zone's worked example has a 2.4 km shot airborne for about 30 seconds.
The catch is the floor. Low arc does not reach inside about 1,181 m, so from 780 to 1,181 m the high arc is all you have and a target at 900 m must be lobbed. Against a vehicle in that band the SPH-2 is the wrong tool; ask for the mortar or a launcher.
One round, then the spotter
Fire one round, not a salvo, and tell the spotter when it is in the air. Corrections come back as left, right, short or long with metres, as the spotter sees them; apply the opposite, then fire for effect. Our spotting guide has the vocabulary. Two things push the first round off even with perfect numbers. The tables assume gun and target at one height: shooting up a ridge falls short, shooting down carries past. And the vehicle's attitude moves the barrel. In the gunner's view two small markers either side of the vehicle silhouette show lateral tilt; level them, and take flat ground over a good position when the two disagree.
Where to park, and when to leave
Bakurani is one town on a valley floor with steep forested ridges either side, and the valley road is the only sustained flat route across it. Set up on the floor: the gun wants flat ground, and a ridge between you and the target means high arc or nothing. Pre-solve a couple of points on the road before anything is on it, and park so the fight sits between 1,181 and 2,629 m; a gun left at spawn often cannot use its low arc on the fight at all.
Every shell draws a line back to you. The Hub's line is that artillery is killed a minute after it fires, in the same spot, and Wardogs HQ says enemy pilots are the ones who find it. Fire the mission, correct, fire for effect, stop, then drive out along the exit you picked when you parked. Pre-solve more than one position so moving costs nothing. By the Handbook's figures a full tank is about 13 km, so refuel at a FOB station when one exists.