AT HE Suppression Fire

[Laryngoscope]

How effective are people finding suppression fire on AT gun positions?

In real life if 4 stationary Pz IVs + 4 stationary PZ IIIs where firing HE shells into a suspected AT position from ~ 400m so that I could bring up a unit to < 200 meters to actually see the gun and put direct fire on it, would said gun still be able to operate normally (ie have *at least* one shot per phase + *zero* chance of indirect HE shells doing any damage whatsoever even over several turns)? Because thats pretty much what I am seeing at the moment.

In fact the more I think about it ...

16 76mm HE shells fired accurately into a small area (the blue bounding box) must be more devastating than say a 81mm mortar randomly firing over a large area? I know if I was the AT commander I would be running for my life as blood came pooring out my ears not calmly loading another round [:D]

Any thoughts on your use of suppression fire?

[FeurerKrieg]

I've been doing it, but the AT guns still manage to fire as well. But does that mean the supression is having no effect? I don't know. Maybe there is a negative modifier on the on the AT gun shots, I can't say I've tracked it enough to see if there is a statistical difference or not between the AT hit rates with and without suppression fire. Maybe the devs can answer if the code does that or not?

[Mobius]

If you see the AT gun why don't you just blast away at it? They don't take hits well.
Trying to suppress open ground without a some sort of target is pretty hard to do. What are you going to range on, some shrubbery? In RL you don't have blue boxes to co-ordinate fire, you just have landmarks.

And direct HE has a kind of wierd ground effect pattern.

[Laryngoscope]

ORIGINAL: Mobius

If you see the AT gun why don't you just blast away at it? They don't take hits well.
Trying to suppress open ground without a some sort of target is pretty hard to do. What are you going to range on, some shrubbery? In RL you don't have blue boxes to co-ordinate fire, you just have landmarks.

And direct HE has a kind of wierd ground effect pattern.

Thanks Mobius

In PzC there will be times when an ATG is opening up on you but is well hidden so you get a "?" over the likely spot of the gun. You can't "see it". Now when selecting "HE" ammo you have a blue bounding box which is effectively the area of effect of the HE shell. Now by centering the bounding box over the "?" (and sometimes even the ATG itself if it has been sighted by another unit) you should be laying down suppressing HE fire. The manual mentions suppression effects, but in the game (mostly) the gun still keeps firing.

Maybe as Feurer Krieg said suppresion effect is somehow in the code and effecting to-hit % for the gun ... but I don't - I have often seen a hell of a lot of supp. fire simply being shrugged off when in RL I imagine the gun would have probably melted. Any kind of "suppresion effect modifier" is not in the XML.

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Laryngoscope
In PzC there will be times when an ATG is opening up on you but is well hidden so you get a "?" over the likely spot of the gun. You can't "see it". Now when selecting "HE" ammo you have a blue bounding box which is effectively the area of effect of the HE shell. Now by centering the bounding box over the "?" (and sometimes even the ATG itself if it has been sighted by another unit) you should be laying down suppressing HE fire. The manual mentions suppression effects, but in the game (mostly) the gun still keeps firing.

If the "?" actually is over the spot of the AT gun then there should be some effect. I don't know if the "?" is displaced from the real object because of "uncertainty". If under suppressive fire the AT gun should be +2 when shooting and subject to the crew being eliminated or routed as if in an artillery attack.

[Erik Rutins]

Laryngoscope,

ORIGINAL: Laryngoscope
16 76mm HE shells fired accurately into a small area (the blue bounding box) must be more devastating than say a 81mm mortar randomly firing over a large area? I know if I was the AT commander I would be running for my life as blood came pooring out my ears not calmly loading another round [:D]

That certainly seems like it should destroy the gun. We'll do some testing on this to make sure direct area fire is correctly applied to AT guns. I have seen it work, but perhaps there's something a bit off.

Regards,

- Erik

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
That certainly seems like it should destroy the gun. We'll do some testing on this to make sure direct area fire is correctly applied to AT guns. I have seen it work, but perhaps there's something a bit off.

Per my previous post's diagram if a box is drawn about the blast pattern that might represent the lethal area it may total 228 sq. meters. If the beaten zone area were to be 100m x 150m this gives 15,000 sq m. So the chance that an element in the beaten zone falls in the lethal zone is about 1.5%. Running the binomial distribution on this for 16 independent chances is that there is about a 21.7% that target will be in any lethal zone of the 16 shot barrage. After this the probability that something in the lethal zone will actually be hit has to be applied.

[Erik Rutins]

Mobius,

Understood and I realize that area fire is therefore more difficult than it might seem. However, I think the beaten zone in this case is smaller and I would have expected to see better results.

Regards,

- Erik

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
Understood and I realize that area fire is therefore more difficult than it might seem. However, I think the beaten zone in this case is smaller and I would have expected to see better results.

Oh, in that case, say the dimensions were halved so the area is 50m x 75m or 3750 sq m. the chance being about 6%. For 16 chances brings it to 63% of at least one hit with chances for 2 or even 3 hits. Though getting several tanks all spread out to fire together into the same tight pattern like an artillery battery is a little much.

[Laryngoscope]

Oh, in that case, say the dimensions were halved so the area is 50m x 75m or 3750 sq m. the chance being about 6%. For 16 chances brings it to 63% of at least one hit with chances for 2 or even 3 hits. Though getting several tanks all spread out to fire together into the same tight pattern like an artillery battery is a little much.

Mobius, difficult to tell for sure but it looks like about maybe 300 - 500 sq m. No way is it as large as 3750 sq m.

I don't know maybe it should be left the way it is? The problem with the area fire concept (as opposed unit direct fire), is that in an indirect way it re-introduces the "Hive Mind" problem. A unit which has never seen the ATG, never heard the ATG, never been shot at by the ATG, never seen the ATG shoot, can still be ordered to indirect fire on a position it otherwise has a line of sight to.

In that case Mobius could you please weave your statistical magic again for both 16 HE shots and say 4 HE shots for a 500 sq m bound. The main reason for indirect firing is not to destroy the gun but to suppress it (so it can't return fire for this phase or the next). What do you think the odds are for suppression against destruction?

Also are you connected with the Panzer War Mini rules at all?

Eric,

Do you have the good oil on the sighting modifiers for ATG? The manual only lists for inf. and vehicles. What rules do ATG work under. There are times when I am really frustrated I can't see a gun especially when I see (from the manual)

Target unit fired cannon 42-82mm: +1400m Distance


I calculate from the other values even worst case scenario of a tank buttoned moving + shooting and ATG in 25m of heavy woods, if it fires I should be able to see it from about 750m. In the game I am not seeing anything like that.

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Laryngoscope
Mobius, difficult to tell for sure but it looks like about maybe 300 - 500 sq m. No way is it as large as 3750 sq m.
I don't know maybe it should be left the way it is? The problem with the area fire concept (as opposed unit direct fire), is that in an indirect way it re-introduces the "Hive Mind" problem. A unit which has never seen the ATG, never heard the ATG, never been shot at by the ATG, never seen the ATG shoot, can still be ordered to indirect fire on a position it otherwise has a line of sight to.

I agree. At 500 sq meters is 22.36m x 22.36m virtually every shot is in the same spot. Not bad shooting at some piece of indiscernible real-estate that one cannot tell the range of. The problem is if a tank does see a flash or a cloud of smoke out in a field or stepp how is it going to tell its buddies exactly where it is? Its real hard to range on something like open snow fields. It all looks alike from 1500ft away. If there is a building, farm or house or something distinct nearby it is much easier to describe and target.
If Matrix wanted to drive this point home they could just displace the "?" by 20-40 meters (or 5-10% the range) and all the shells would be grouped in the wrong place.

In the Western Desert the Germans often dug their 88s in behind ridges. But sometimes there was an intervening ridge that the shells just made it over. When passing over the sandy second ridge the shell kicked up some dust. This made the British think the 88s were firing from the closer ridge and they kept pounding it instead of the right spot.

ORIGINAL: Laryngoscope
Also are you connected with the Panzer War Mini rules at all?

Yes. I wrote them.

[Deride]

ORIGINAL: Mobius

ORIGINAL: Laryngoscope
Also are you connected with the Panzer War Mini rules at all?

Yes. I wrote them.

Now that's hard to argue with!

Deride

[Yoozername]

ORIGINAL: Mobius

If you see the AT gun why don't you just blast away at it? They don't take hits well.
Trying to suppress open ground without a some sort of target is pretty hard to do. What are you going to range on, some shrubbery? In RL you don't have blue boxes to co-ordinate fire, you just have landmarks.

And direct HE has a kind of wierd ground effect pattern.

Actually, most 75mm main guns can use ricochet fire. This is when the round is shot 'into' the ground a short distance before a target. The round will land nearly flat, initiate the delay mechanism, and bounce back into the air. Being under the airburst is devastating as fragments are blasted downward and cover a larger area than a ground burst would.

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Yoozername
Actually, most 75mm main guns can use ricochet fire. This is when the round is shot 'into' the ground a short distance before a target. The round will land nearly flat, initiate the delay mechanism, and bounce back into the air. Being under the airburst is devastating as fragments are blasted downward and cover a larger area than a ground burst would.

This seems more like something artillery could do much better than tank guns. To get a shell to ricochet the shell has to be set to a time delay. This delay needs to be set to a certain time based on the range. Other things too must be taken into account like levelness of ground and soil conditions. I don't know if tankers are going to waste time setting a time fuse. They may just go with a ground point contact burst rather than finesse.

The optimum airburst is said to be 25-50' while the ricochet height seems to be best somewhere at 4000 yds distance where it gets to around 20'. At 500 yds it will probably only get to around 4'.
Nevertheless there are tables for this in TM-9-1907 as in this sample:

[Yoozername]

Actually, most tankers stored HE shells set on delay.  They set them for SQ (superquick) point burst as needed.  It was a common tactic and even antitank guns (See Panzerjaeger book) used this method of ricocheting.

This seems more like something artillery could do much better than tank guns. To get a shell to ricochet the shell has to be set to a time delay. This delay needs to be set to a certain time based on the range.

Is incorrect. Ricochet fire is by using the delay option on the fuse. Not a special time set fuze option.

[Mobius]

[

ORIGINAL: Yoozername
Actually, most tankers stored HE shells set on delay. They set them for SQ (superquick) point burst as needed. It was a common tactic and even antitank guns (See Panzerjaeger book) used this method of ricocheting.

Not entirely correct.

ORIGINAL: German 88-MM Antiaircraft Gun Materiel TM E9-369A
c. German Fuze A.Z. 23/28
(1) Description: This fuze, shown in figures 74 and 75, is similar to the A.Z. 23 used with the German 105-mm howitzer high-explosive shell. The fuze contains two actions, superquick and delay. Although both actions are initiated on impact, the functioning of the shell depends upon the setting of the selector of the fuze. Unlike the US Fuze P.D. M48, it should be noted that there is only one firing pin, should this fail, the projectile will become a dud. .. As shipped, the fuze is set for superquick action... The delay action is provide by a delay pellet of 0.11 second delay. The setting may be changed at will with a screwdriver or with "SETTING KEY A.Z. 23" at any time before firing.

(2)Preparation for Firing: As shipped, the fuze is ready for firing with superquick action... Fuzes which have not been fired should be reset to superquick..

In another reference it is estimated that only 40-60% of shells will ricochet. And at under 2000 yds the maximum height might be 3-5 feet, not really reducing the protection provided by foxholes or gunshields.

[Yoozername]

Well, I am sure you see that it does not depend on the 'time based on the range'.  You confused the technologies.

FM-17-12 US Army ARMOR manual states that HE is to be stored at Delay setting.  It is the most usefull setting and the manual goes into detail regarding its use for ricochet fire and use against armored vehicles set on delay.

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Yoozername
Well, I am sure you see that it does not depend on the 'time based on the range'.  You confused the technologies.

TM-9-1907 has a great number of tables. There are Ricochet tables for 75mm guns with shells with the M48A2 fuze for 0.15 second delay and another table for 0.05 second delay.
As an example: MV 1520 f/s at 3,000yds of 0.15 has a ricochet burst height of 19 ft. MV 1980 f/s with 0.05 seconds it is only 6 feet.

A note with the tables is such:

ORIGINAL: TM 9 1907 July 1948
Note: Tables XL to XLVIII contain data for the listed delay times only. These same fuzes have other delay times than those listed. However, the delay time is indicated on each fuze as part of the fuze nomenclature.

So, both MV and fuze time are technology factors in ricochet burst height.

But as yet PzC does not contain any US weapons.

[Yoozername]

Bothe German and Soviets had HE with delay.  It is no big secret.

Only 6 feet? That would be devastating.

[Erik Rutins]

Is everyone finding HE fire vs. concealed AT guns to be better balanced in v1.12? Based on our testing, the initial issue should be resolved.